Everything hinges on the first update. Fingers crossed! [discussion]

[AuddieD2015]

1 minute ago, Moons said:

I doubt you will have much fun with KSP2 - you can probably try it but i doubt its fun with heavy FPS drops and everything on low when you could just play KSP1 with mods.

Watch out for the refund window. And i dont think i would upgrade for an EA game right now when you can simply buy better hardware cheaper when the game is actually way more developed. If you want a better PC for other games aswell thats a different story. But watch out - GPU and CPU need to make sense - for example buying a high end GPU for a low end CPU wont lead to good results because of bottlenecks.

Thankfully I am the other way around and my CPU is better than my GPU. Graphics are expensive. Upgrading would probably be a new computer because I am sure I will need a power supply as well as a video card and more system RAM would probably be necessary. I only have 16.

I've only had KSP1 for a about a month so I have plenty more to explore. As I understand it, the Kerbin system is the only solar system right now in KSP2 and I am already there. :-P

[Moons]

Yeah but RAM is cheap you just have to find the same ram since you shouldnt combine different RAM.

Maybe you could look for a cheap used GPU since there is probably a lot of used sales from people that invested in Bitcoin mining and the price drop?

[whatsEJstandfor]

2 hours ago, AuddieD2015 said:

RX 5500. 4GB VRAM. It plays KSP1 just fine though so I can still crash rockets.

 

I might recommend saving up as much as you can for as long as you can, and then biting the bullet and getting a 7900 XTX (assuming your case and PSU wouldn't also need an upgrade to accommodate it). By then, hopefully most of the game-breaking bugs are ironed out, and it'll future-proof you for the next, like, 7 years at least. And, by then, you might even be able to find secondhand ones for a discount.

[Wheehaw Kerman]

3 hours ago, Moons said:

I dont think so - Expectations are set by Marketing and the Publisher - why should i control what i expect?

My expectations are set by a mix of marketing and mostly by the price. When i saw the price i was expecting a pretty stable EA release with lots of content already and a game nearly finished because thats what 50 USD suggests to me and what EA in general suggests. EA means setting a price for what you are selling in the time of purchase - if you set that price almost at full release price than thats what is to be expected since thats how EA works - you pay for the product given to you at the time of purchase with no rights to any further development patches etc. [snip]

There’s a fun discussion to be had about hope versus expectations - the distinction being around what the consequences of disappointing them are. One has expectations of the people they manage; they hope to live up to those expectations.  
 

The only consequences to TT of the game not living up to your hopes is at most $50 in lost sales and the threat of some gamerish badmouthing, which I’m sure keeps nobody awake at night.  That kind of thing is more annoying to the rest of us than it is to them, especially after the first few dozen repetitions.  So I think that “hopes” is a better term.  There’s not much you can do if your hopes are disappointed…

But regardless of that, I find it ironic that you are calling me an optimist when you developed the hopes or expectations that you did based on the leadup to the EA launch, which included the roadmap, the specs sheet, the sneak peeks, and the ESA insider footage.  I looked at those, and concluded that we were going to get pretty much exactly what we got: a buggy EA package with exactly what the roadmap promised us in terms of content.  I think that there’s another term for the belief that the cinematics were accurate representations of EA gameplay - delusion.

As for the fifty bucks… well, there’s nothing wrong with being in a position where that’s a lot of money to you.  I’m beyond fine with fifty bucks for the game in this state.  I’m well past the $2/hr threshold, which makes quibbling about the price tag beyond silly.  In fact, in terms of hours of entertainment bang for the buck, quibbling about dollar value in gaming is completely ridiculous…  And in addition to the gameplay, which is only going to improve, much like KSP1’s did (the KSP1 EA process was the best gaming experience I ever had), I get several months to a couple of years of gaming before 1.0, which I get for free.  That’s a solid deal to anybody with reasonable standards.

[J.Random]

6 hours ago, Moons said:

I dont understand people like you - you call others "venomous reptiles" - probably people with a different opinion than yours

I wouldn't worry about it. It's actually flattering, in a sense: according to at least one religion, a "reptile" convinced first human to bite a certain apple which led to him recognizing the difference between Good and Bad.

As for what hinges on what, one should always bear in mind that investors aren't fanboys. Investors (good investors, that is) recognize the sunk cost fallacy, they know all about throwing good money after bad money, and at some point they may decide to cut their losses. The "long investment" argument is pretty moot at this point, as the development has been funded for three to five years already. The roadmap by itself is just another red flag in modern gamedev landscape. I would give KSP2 three to six months to start bringing profits, and that's optimistic scenario. Whether it's a niche game or not is also immaterial: either it's "niche" and then it's easier to cut losses because not much profit is expected, or it isn't and then it should meet the sales number expectations and if it doesn't it gets the hose, maybe switches to "milk them now" scheme with a couple of DLCs (while in EA, yes, it's not unheard of) and then gets an axe. Whatever happens, developers don't have a lot of time to make their product significantly more appealing to their audience.

[TheArturro]

15 hours ago, J.Random said:

I wouldn't worry about it. It's actually flattering, in a sense: according to at least one religion, a "reptile" convinced first human to bite a certain apple which led to him recognizing the difference between Good and Bad.

As for what hinges on what, one should always bear in mind that investors aren't fanboys. Investors (good investors, that is) recognize the sunk cost fallacy, they know all about throwing good money after bad money, and at some point they may decide to cut their losses. The "long investment" argument is pretty moot at this point, as the development has been funded for three to five years already. The roadmap by itself is just another red flag in modern gamedev landscape. I would give KSP2 three to six months to start bringing profits, and that's optimistic scenario. Whether it's a niche game or not is also immaterial: either it's "niche" and then it's easier to cut losses because not much profit is expected, or it isn't and then it should meet the sales number expectations and if it doesn't it gets the hose, maybe switches to "milk them now" scheme with a couple of DLCs (while in EA, yes, it's not unheard of) and then gets an axe. Whatever happens, developers don't have a lot of time to make their product significantly more appealing to their audience.

It's easy to forget that even though the devs seem to be very passionate about the game (Nate Simpson as prime example) it won't be their call to make.

The call would be made by people looking only at money.

 

 

 As I see it now, there are 3 main ways things can go from now:

1. Game gets mostly fixed within a couple of months and then (with smaller or bigger delays) manages to introduce content promised in the roadmap. After 4 years we'll all look at our current pesimism and have a good laugh, while playing the awesome game KSP 2 will hopefully be!

 

WARNING: Hypothetical, partially pesimistic, crystal-ball (hopefully wrong) predictions below!

Spoiler

2.  Game follows the path of Mass Effect: Andromeda - release goes wrong, some problems are addressed, some are not. Future, planned content is cancelled. IP still has fans playing older game, so they try again. New game from the same IP will be made (ie Mass Effect 5 in case of Andromeda) aftere a couple of years. So ~ 2030. Also (as with Mass Effect) first game is going to be remastered and perhaps some new content would be added in the meantime, while waiting for a sequel.

3.  Game gets cancelled soon, dev team disbanded and studio closed. T2 sells KSP IP, because it doesn't see any future in it. Hopefully someone else buys this IP and makes KSP 2 (or 3) out of pure love.

 

 

[Periple]

3 minutes ago, TheArturro said:

2.  Game follows the path of Mass Effect: Andromeda - release goes wrong, some problems are addressed, some are not. Future, planned content is cancelled. IP still has fans playing older game, so they try again. New game from the same IP will be made (ie Mass Effect 5 in case of Andromeda) aftere a couple of years. So ~ 2030. Also (as with Mass Effect) first game is going to be remastered and perhaps some new content would be added in the meantime, while waiting for a sequel.

The big difference is that ME:A had problems that couldn't be fixed by patching. I mean the gameplay was okay and the environments looked great but people play BioWare games for the characters and there just was no Shepard, Garrus, Tali, or even Miranda there. KSP2 doesn't have any fundamental issues like that, it's just that it doesn't work very well and some of the content hasn't been implemented yet!

5 minutes ago, TheArturro said:

3.  Game gets cancelled soon, dev team disbanded and studio closed. T2 sells KSP IP, because it doesn't see any future in it. Hopefully someone else buys this IP and makes KSP 2 (or 3) out of pure love.

If KSP2 does get cancelled or Intercept/PD does get shut down, I very much doubt T2 will sell the IP. Nobody would be willing to pay enough for it to make it worthwhile, so it's better just to sit on it. Even passive IPs in your portfolio count for something. Game IPs that get put on ice tend to stay on ice. 

[TheArturro]

4 minutes ago, Periple said:

The big difference is that ME:A had problems that couldn't be fixed by patching. I mean the gameplay was okay and the environments looked great but people play BioWare games for the characters and there just was no Shepard, Garrus, Tali, or even Miranda there. KSP2 doesn't have any fundamental issues like that, it's just that it doesn't work very well and some of the content hasn't been implemented yet!

If KSP2 does get cancelled or Intercept/PD does get shut down, I very much doubt T2 will sell the IP. Nobody would be willing to pay enough for it to make it worthwhile, so it's better just to sit on it. Even passive IPs in your portfolio count for something. Game IPs that get put on ice tend to stay on ice. 

I know the issues are different here. But it is (for me) the most prominent example of the development-failure-trying_again-remaster_in_the_meantime pipeline, that arguably could work well with KSP. Unlike ME series, KSP is a sandbox type game, so a remaster would actually make much more sense because it wouldn't be "the same story all over again", it would be the same possibilities with fixed problems and better graphics (*ekhem* 1st step of KSP 2 roadmap *ekhem*). 

[J.Random]

8 minutes ago, Periple said:

The big difference is that ME:A had problems that couldn't be fixed by patching.

Actually, Bioware games are pretty similar to KSP2 in my mind. Not just ME:A, but also Anthem. Or there's CDPR's CP2077. Not in a sense of how they were all broken at launch because they were all broken in their own different ways, more like how features were overpromised, audience was overhyped, etc. I have a strong suspicion that something similar to "bioware magic" fallacy took place during KSP2 development cycle.

[Moons]

15 minutes ago, Periple said:

The big difference is that ME:A had problems that couldn't be fixed by patching. I mean the gameplay was okay and the environments looked great but people play BioWare games for the characters and there just was no Shepard, Garrus, Tali, or even Miranda there. KSP2 doesn't have any fundamental issues like that, it's just that it doesn't work very well and some of the content hasn't been implemented yet!

If KSP2 does get cancelled or Intercept/PD does get shut down, I very much doubt T2 will sell the IP. Nobody would be willing to pay enough for it to make it worthwhile, so it's better just to sit on it. Even passive IPs in your portfolio count for something. Game IPs that get put on ice tend to stay on ice. 

Looking at the trailers of KSP2 i was wondering if it could actually work as some sort of animated movie similar to Minions - i think it could. Maybe that could also make the brand more important for the publisher and make investing more money in it a resonable business decision.

Edited March 8, 2023 by Moons

[GGG-GoodGuyGreg]

Boy, now with the layoffs starting this first update is even more important. 

[TheArturro]

Just now, Moons said:

Looking at the trailers of KSP2 i was wondering if it could actually work as some sort of animated movie similar to Minions - i think it could.

That is an excellent idea.

An anime pretty much saved Cyberpunk 2077. So an animated movie could work well for KSP 2!

[J.Random]

8 minutes ago, TheArturro said:

An anime pretty much saved Cyberpunk 2077.

Which was very surprising for me, personally. That anime series is crap. Batman-style plot start, 0 character development, everybody dies. That's the whole thing in a nutshell.

Edit: granted, they didn't have much to work with. The whole setting is like that: "Need power", "more power", "MOAR POWAH", dead or psycho and then dead.

Edited March 8, 2023 by J.Random

[TheArturro]

13 minutes ago, J.Random said:

Which was very surprising for me, personally. That anime series is crap. Batman-style plot start, 0 character development, everybody dies. That's the whole thing in a nutshell.

Edit: granted, they didn't have much to work with. The whole setting is like that: "Need power", "more power", "MOAR POWAH", dead or psycho and then dead.

People like simple pleasures (just look at TikTok, YT Shorts, Instagram Reels etc.) - like simple anime or cartoons. Since Cyberpunk was aimed at a wide audience the anime didn't have to be great to succeed.

With KSP 2 it will be harder, since it's much more niche game. But I still like the idea!

[Moons]

1 hour ago, TheArturro said:

People like simple pleasures (just look at TikTok, YT Shorts, Instagram Reels etc.) - like simple anime or cartoons. Since Cyberpunk was aimed at a wide audience the anime didn't have to be great to succeed.

With KSP 2 it will be harder, since it's much more niche game. But I still like the idea!

I would keep it in 3D the only thing it would require is some random reason to have at least 1 person in it that actually can talk ^^

I also dont think that Anime could really capture what is important in KSP - showing off space, space flight and awesome planets etc.

 

I sometimes wonder if Minions were inspired by KSP aswell - even their piloting skills are the same ^^ - I think a similar artstyle would be a perfect fit:

 

Edited March 8, 2023 by Moons

[Chilkoot]

2 hours ago, TheArturro said:

WARNING: Hypothetical, partially pesimistic, crystal-ball (hopefully wrong) predictions below!

  Hide contents

2.  Game follows the path of Mass Effect: Andromeda - release goes wrong, some problems are addressed, some are not. Future, planned content is cancelled. IP still has fans playing older game, so they try again. New game from the same IP will be made (ie Mass Effect 5 in case of Andromeda) aftere a couple of years. So ~ 2030. Also (as with Mass Effect) first game is going to be remastered and perhaps some new content would be added in the meantime, while waiting for a sequel.

3.  Game gets cancelled soon, dev team disbanded and studio closed. T2 sells KSP IP, because it doesn't see any future in it. Hopefully someone else buys this IP and makes KSP 2 (or 3) out of pure love.

It's painful to think about, but this is reality in the world of software development.

Two venerated IP's with a boatload of goodwill behind them were essentially killed by awful initial releases:  Duke Nukem (Forever) and The Bard's Tale (IV):

• Both had a rocky development/funding path with a large publisher picking them up mid-cycle
• Both released prematurely for financial reasons and were absolutely panned in reviews
• Both received amazing updates, earning 80+ scores in PC Gamer (80 and 84 respectively)
• Both failed to recover from the poor early reviews, essentially killing the franchises.

KSP is no more immune to this fate than any other franchise - we can only hope the most critical issues (performance and game-breaker bugs) are addressed rapidly and the game moves to a playability footing that will stem the tide of negative sentiment.  I do agree that the first few patches will be critical not only to the success of this title, but to the survival of the Kerbal IP in general.

[TheArturro]

3 hours ago, Chilkoot said:

[...]

KSP is no more immune to this fate than any other franchise [...]

I disagree. Unlike Duke Nukem, which is a shooter (I can't say about The Bard's Tale, never heard of it) there is always going to be interest in KSP franchise because it's generaly one of a kind game. There is Juno New Origins, but it has nowhere near the popularity of KSP. KSP is the only semi-realistic space simulator that got somewhat popular in the recent years. 

There are other space games like Space Engineers (which is focused on combat and Minecraft-style construction with no physics simulation), EVE Online (sci-fi MMO) etc., but none of them fills the niche of semi-realistic space flight like KSP does.

 

However I do agree that the first 2-3 updates will be critical to the survival of KSP 2 game, just not KSP IP in general.

[Chilkoot]

8 minutes ago, TheArturro said:

I disagree. Unlike Duke Nukem, which is a shooter (I can't say about The Bard's Tale, never heard of it) there is always going to be interest in KSP franchise because it's generaly one of a kind game.

Heh - you're showing your demographic bias there

[TheArturro]

Just now, Chilkoot said:

Heh - you're showing your demographic bias there

What do you mean by that?

[Aiels]

6 minutes ago, TheArturro said:

...there is always going to be interest in KSP franchise because it's generaly one of a kind game. 

...

However I do agree that the first 2-3 updates will be critical to the survival of KSP 2 game, just not KSP IP in general.

This is an important point, I think. There really is very little that is anything like KSP at all. If Take-Two is smart, they're thinking about this on a decade+ timescale. If the updates show they are on a positive track, this game should continue to grow and remain relevant for a very long time. You just have to hope the bean counters and wall street types that hold the moneybags can see more than a financial quarter into the future.

[IronGremlin]

7 hours ago, Periple said:

The big difference is that ME:A had problems that couldn't be fixed by patching. I mean the gameplay was okay and the environments looked great but people play BioWare games for the characters and there just was no Shepard, Garrus, Tali, or even Miranda there. KSP2 doesn't have any fundamental issues like that, it's just that it doesn't work very well and some of the content hasn't been implemented yet!

If KSP2 does get cancelled or Intercept/PD does get shut down, I very much doubt T2 will sell the IP. Nobody would be willing to pay enough for it to make it worthwhile, so it's better just to sit on it. Even passive IPs in your portfolio count for something. Game IPs that get put on ice tend to stay on ice. 

I feel like this is a point that doesn't get made enough.

KSP 2's launch was enormously rough, and the game is in a pretty terrible state - but when it works, it's still Kerbal. The bones of the awesome game we all loved are still definitely there.

Essentially the only actual design flaw I can think of is not showing projected AP/PE altititudes/other data while editing a maneuver node, which is an extraordinarily solvable design problem.

Literally everything else I have heard anyone complain about is a straight up bug or a QOL feature that the original KSP didn't have 9+ years in.

I think there are a lot of very valid complaints and fears being expressed here, but if the question were as simple as: "can this group of people eventually make the game they promised if given enough time to do so"  - I don't really see any evidence that they couldn't, and FWIW I personally have very little doubt.

I do, however, see evidence that it's going to take them a really long time to get that done - and so I think it's valid to call into question whether or not the community goodwill and publisher interest are going to hold up for that process.

To echo the OP, I think the first patch is going to be an extremely valuable data point there - right now whether or not they can recover the community goodwill is going to hinge almost entirely on how quickly they can knock out some of these bugs.

Hopefully, they can do so decently quickly, and hopefully sales and publisher interest can recover along with community goodwill, but predicting the decisions of economic actors is even sketchier than trying to predict the performance of software development.

[Chilkoot]

55 minutes ago, TheArturro said:

What do you mean by that?

Heh - just poking some fun that you're young    It's a good thing to be!

The Bard's Tale was a monumental break-through in the RPG genre in the 80's.  As a trilogy, it set the standard of RPG computer gaming for nearly a decade.  Like KSP today, there were others in the genre at the time, but it was the "state of the art" at the time, forging the way with depth of story, game mechanics, graphics and music.

[TheArturro]

2 hours ago, Chilkoot said:

Heh - just poking some fun that you're young    It's a good thing to be!

The Bard's Tale was a monumental break-through in the RPG genre in the 80's.  As a trilogy, it set the standard of RPG computer gaming for nearly a decade.  Like KSP today, there were others in the genre at the time, but it was the "state of the art" at the time, forging the way with depth of story, game mechanics, graphics and music.

I see. Indeed I was not even alive in most of the 90s, let alone the 80s 

But I probably wouldn't even recognise most of todays RPG games. It's just not my genre. From the top of my head only Skyrim, Gothic series and Elden Ring come to my mind.

[Wheehaw Kerman]

18 hours ago, Aiels said:

This is an important point, I think. There really is very little that is anything like KSP at all. If Take-Two is smart, they're thinking about this on a decade+ timescale. If the updates show they are on a positive track, this game should continue to grow and remain relevant for a very long time. You just have to hope the bean counters and wall street types that hold the moneybags can see more than a financial quarter into the future.

I remember hearing that KSP1’s staying power was part of what attracted TT.  That and spin-off potential.  Their plans for it are almost certainly more ambitious and long term than they would be for yet another shooter.

[RocketRockington]

5 hours ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

I remember hearing that KSP1’s staying power was part of what attracted TT.  That and spin-off potential.  Their plans for it are almost certainly more ambitious and long term than they would be for yet another shooter.

You'd like to think so, but this isn't the Star Wars franchise, where it's gotten past the point where even a bad release to the flagship product can't seriously torpedo the value of the franchise.