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

[MarcAbaddon]

Yeah, I agree as well - the currents bugs are so obvious that you don't need user feedback to identify a lot of them. There are some exception like the jet engine exhaust and wheel, those is hard to find. But they must have known the majority of those bugs were there.

Edited March 1, 2023 by MarcAbaddon

[TheOtherDave]

1 hour ago, HebaruSan said:

One possibility is that the state of the game was worse 1 month ago, worse than that 2 months ago, even worse still 3 months ago, etc., and they spent that time fixing even more serious problems that we never saw. We'll never know what problems the devs fixed before release, because they were fixed before release.

Yep. There's like a 99.9945872% chance this is the answer.

Edited March 1, 2023 by TheOtherDave

[Mutex]

Exactly, they spent the last few months fixing thousands of bugs that didn't make it into the release.

[EngineerinSquid]

8 hours ago, linuxgurugamer said:

And your point is?  I didn't say they didn't exist, just that they didn't happen to me.  and if they don't happen to me, that only says that they don't happen to everyone.

In case you can't read, this is an Early Access game.  That not only implies, but specifically states that there are going to be bugs.

Gamebreaking is dependent on the player, some players can work around bugs, others can't.  Obviously you are in the group which cannot (or is unwilling to) work around bugs.  Others, like myself, can.

I strongly suggest that you stop complaining about the issues, and either wait for a few updates, or at least provide constructive criticism.  I've seen lots of EA games go through these teething problems, this is one of the very few I've really participated in.

Not sure why you decided to point at my patreon link.  If you don't like my content, you are free to not use it.  You don't have to watch me, you don't have to use any of my mods, etc.  Doesn't bother me, I don't have an ego involved here, unlike some others I've seen on the forums

I bring up the patreon link and your content as an example as to how you have a monetary stake in this, which is the reason why you are taking a very elitist attitude in this thread and likely others. A vast majority of these are game breaking bugs, and clearly you dont understand the meaning of game breaking. A bug causing fuel to not stage properly isnt game breaking as there are workarounds, a bug causing the game to think your whole rocket crashed after a stabilizer clipped into a clamp on launch and forcing a ship destroyed screen is game breaking. a bug that could be causing SAS and RCS to not be applying enough torque/thrust isnt game breaking, the game deleting your stations flight path so when you switch back to controlling it, it is now falling straight back down onto kerbin IS GAME BREAKING. Using docking ports on an Apollo style moon lander and having your entire ship blow up from selecting undock EVERY SINGLE TIME IS GAME BREAKING. I have been a part of many other early access games and this is the first one at this high of a price point to have this many issues after what, 5 years in development? 

The other issue here is that many people only have a few playstyles on KSP that they actually like to play. And the fact that there are this many game breaking bugs at this high of a price point is very disconcerting. especially because this was very much advertised as more of an open beta while it is now clear that it is more of a PRE-ALPHA release. My advice is to stop being so high and mighty and assuming people are unwilling to work around bugs, as many are impossible to work around right now,

2 hours ago, Jacke said:

And I do hope they weren't just doing this on the highest end machines; it's long been a staple of proper programming to not use the highest end machines so that issues with the market's equipment will be found during development.

I wonder if this is the case. I personally have been struggling with the undocking bug where it just blows up your whole ship, and watching through a few prominent youtubers pre release play throughs on the provided high end rigs, I didnt see a single issue with the docking, which seems to be a common occurrence on the forums right now

[RocketRockington]

3 hours ago, Jacke said:

Really, wherever it is, it's rather damning.

But that's the past.  Things are wrong now.  How quickly and how properly they are addressed is now the ongoing test.

Agreed.  Cadence is going to be key.  But I wouldn't draw too much from the first bug fixes even for that.
1. Almost certainly they will address the lowest hanging fruit, in terms of both frequency of occurrence and ease of fix.
2. Almost certainly they will be working at their best tempo for this fix, given that it's likely an 'all hands on deck, damn the future features, damn the overtime' sort of situation.

So I wouldn't just draw a straight line from where we're at to where we are at with this next fix, whenever it comes in, and project from there.  I expect the projection would be overly optimistic, especially since a lot of people have been pointing out just how low some of the low-hanging fruit, in terms of fixes, are.  Let's see 3, 4 rounds of fixes - hopefully with better communication - before we draw conclusions.   So we can see a a trajectory but also a first derivative of that trajectory curve, so to speak.

Edited March 1, 2023 by RocketRockington

[Chilkoot]

10 hours ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

look at the EA cinematic and tell me that nobody at TT is thinking movie or animated series

There are definitely palpable "Minions" vibes to the Kerbals now, and what appears to be an appeal to a somewhat younger demographic.  Is TT hoping this will be their Minecraft?  We shall see...

[RocketRockington]

2 minutes ago, Chilkoot said:

There are definitely palpable "Minions" vibes to the Kerbals now, and what appears to be an appeal to a somewhat younger demographic.  Is TT hoping this will be their Minecraft?  We shall see...

Most likely.  Between the cartoony tutorial videos, squeaky P.A.I.G.E, and the focus on bling over substance evidenced by the state of the build, my feeling is their business strategy consists of believing that the old fans will come back because it's Kerbal and there's not much else like it on the market, so the goal is to find new users.  And yes, those new users are likely to be the younger demographic.  Which isn't a bad thing to me - it's great that KSP2 might seek to educate a new crop of space enthusiasts... if it doesn't end up being about dumbing the thing down a bit while merchandising the Kerbals themselves.   

Unfortunately I think it's at least partially about the latter.  The Kerbals themselves have been featuring pretty heavily in the promotional material, and even in the UI.  Tbh I just really wanted a good aerospace simulator myself, I don't care about the Kerbals themselves that much,

[Jacke]

26 minutes ago, Chilkoot said:

Is TT hoping this will be their Minecraft?  We shall see...

It's more TT's Dwarf Fortress.  TT better be careful they don't dig too deep in search of Candy else they accidentally let the Clowns out of the Circus.

[Periple]

5 hours ago, RocketRockington said:

Almost certainly they will be working at their best tempo for this fix, given that it's likely an 'all hands on deck, damn the future features, damn the overtime' sort of situation.

I should hope they’re not doing overtime on this. There’s a lot to do and crunching to do it would be a death march. 

I do suspect they’ve reshuffled their priorities and will be doing more stabilization/optimization and l fewer new features at this stage than they thought. 

[LoSBoL]

15 hours ago, Dakota said:

See our latest comms about the first patch here, which includes the major issues we're looking at:

May I suggest reviving this much requested thread to centralize KSP2's social post communications and content? 

 

 

 

Edited March 2, 2023 by LoSBoL

[almagnus1]

Just wanted to throw my two cents in, but IMO it would be prudent to push out an update preferably early next week addressing some of the issues along with visibility on the Steam forums that things are improving (slowly).

While I've got a copy... I really don't like that I've had so severe kraken issues that I'm basically in a holding pattern until I start seeing patches drop.  I can't imagine that I'm alone in this regard either, despite how well much of the game experience has improved.

I wanna see KSP2 succeed... but this launch hasn't been good tbh.

[Periple]

25 minutes ago, almagnus1 said:

Just wanted to throw my two cents in, but IMO it would be prudent to push out an update preferably early next week addressing some of the issues along with visibility on the Steam forums that things are improving (slowly).

I'd rather be a bit more prudent than that, and take as much as it needs to make sure the patch works as intended and doesn't break anything new... even if it's not next week.

(There is a certain amount of time pressure though, if there's no patch in two or three weeks, the mob will switch from pitchforks to guillotines and we don't want that.)

[almagnus1]

1 minute ago, Periple said:

I'd rather be a bit more prudent than that, and take as much as it needs to make sure the patch works as intended and doesn't break anything new... even if it's not next week.

(There is a certain amount of time pressure though, if there's no patch in two or three weeks, the mob will switch from pitchforks to guillotines and we don't want that.)

Yeah, stay off of the Steam forums, it's really not good and I really don't like seeing the community riled up like this - but I also completely understand why they are.  I basically tuned out the KSP2 dev side of things, so I'm not really sure how we got to this point, but it's kinda the exact opposite of the launch I wished KSP2 would have had.  I want to be able to go tell friends and family to pick up a copy and enjoy it... not stay away until it's playable =/

[Kubas_inko]

On 2/28/2023 at 2:09 PM, Mutex said:

They'll absolutely give the developers a good chance to turn things around before they cut their losses.

Considering that they gave them 3 extra years already, I don't think T2 will give them a "good chance". They might give them some chance...

[Periple]

2 minutes ago, Kubas_inko said:

Considering that they gave them 3 extra years already, I don't think T2 will give them a "good chance". They might give them some chance...

The 3 years weren't extra. That's the original release schedule for Intercept. 

[LoSBoL]

2 minutes ago, Kubas_inko said:

Considering that they gave them 3 extra years already, I don't think T2 will give them a "good chance". They might give them some chance...

KSP2, if they get it right, will continue selling for the next 15 years, it will keep attracting new players. T2 knows that, it's why they acquired the KSP IP in the first place. 

[Kubas_inko]

7 minutes ago, LoSBoL said:

KSP2, if they get it right, will continue selling for the next 15 years, it will keep attracting new players. T2 knows that, it's why they acquired the KSP IP in the first place. 

They should've acquired a good dev team too. Uber Entertainment seems to miss the mark all the time.

[AlphaAsh]

I'm not on the KSP2 team. I do have quite a bit of experience in the games industry though so I'm quite happy to admit this, based on that experience:

Internal QA and testing needs employees. Early access is a way to reduce those costs, by asking fans to step up and help with bug finding, reporting, and thus ultimately prioritising through repeated reports.

Honestly, I think this was a mistake, since this is no longer an indie game.

It is unusual to see such early early access for this case, I feel. Especially at the price being asked. However, that price should have helped put off casuals with too high expectations, which it did not.

This may not be an indie game anymore, but you should expect a lot of unhappy casuals with too high expectations leaving you poor reviews. I suspect this was expected, and hopefully the financers agree. The games review industry should also know better than to crucify the game at this point. RPS is certainly on my list right now.

I believe that the dev team and the publisher agreed that a similar dev and release cycle to that of KSP1 would be appropriate. I don't agree... as this is not an indie game anymore.

I'm not enjoying KSP2 right now. It is a buggy, unstable mess. But I won't be refunding and will be keeping a close eye on the game's development. I don't have much faith in the publisher/financer, but I do in the dev team. I just hope one does not stop the efforts of the other.

Edited March 3, 2023 by Vanamonde
Mind the language, please.

[MarcAbaddon]

I agree; and I have seen many posts claiming the devs were very transparent about the state of EA. I don' think this is exactly true. To be clear, what they were very transparent about was which parts of the game would be in at early access. There no being colonies or interstellar at the start was very public. 

I don't think you can say the same about the state of what is in the game (excepting maybe the performance issues, see insane system requirements). If you check their Steam EA page:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/954850/Kerbal_Space_Program_2/

The picture they paint is pretty much that what is in EA is in relatively good shape.

[Periple]

5 minutes ago, AlphaAsh said:

Internal QA and testing needs employees. Early access is a way to reduce those costs, by asking fans to step up and help with bug finding, reporting, and thus ultimately prioritising through repeated reports.

This is feasible for small projects with maybe a dozen engaged and motivated fans. 

It's not feasible at all for large projects with hundreds, let alone thousands of fans submitting reports. It costs more to find the worthwhile issues in the noise and clean them up so they're actionable than to hire a bunch of dedicated, outsourced, professional QA engineers. Certainly not when the game is in this state where you can't swing a Terrier without hitting a half-dozen obvious issues.

[AlphaAsh]

"Honestly, I think this was a mistake, since this is no longer an indie game."

Cherry picking chap. Please don't misquote me.

[Periple]

39 minutes ago, AlphaAsh said:

"Honestly, I think this was a mistake, since this is no longer an indie game."

Cherry picking chap. Please don't misquote me.

Apologies if I misunderstood you, but I did read your post as implying that saving on QA costs was a motivating factor for the early-early EA. I don't believe this is the case because it won't work, you can't use EA to help QA cost-effectively with something this size. I wanted to address that. My intention wasn't to misquote, I just quoted the part I thought was relevant.

[AlphaAsh]

9 minutes ago, Periple said:

Apologies if I misunderstood you, but I did read your post as implying that saving on QA costs was a motivating factor for the early-early EA. I don't believe this is the case because it won't work, you can't use EA to help QA cost-effectively with something this size. I wanted to address that. My intention wasn't to misquote, I just quoted the part I thought was relevant.

No worries. Cheers and I agree.

[linuxgurugamer]

15 hours ago, EngineerinSquid said:

I bring up the patreon link and your content as an example as to how you have a monetary stake in this

Oh wow!  Believe me, I don't depend on that at all.  In that case, you would exclude anyone who gets any money at all from anything related to this, right?

If I had to do a calculation, I think that Patreon brings in less than 1/2 of 1% of my normal salary.  It's so low that I don't even have to report it to the IRS.  So please, don't say things like that because it just shows how little you think about what you are talking about

 

15 hours ago, EngineerinSquid said:

A vast majority of these are game breaking bugs, and clearly you dont understand the meaning of game breaking. A bug causing fuel to not stage properly isnt game breaking as there are workarounds, a bug causing the game to think your whole rocket crashed after a stabilizer clipped into a clamp on launch and forcing a ship destroyed screen is game breaking. a bug that could be causing SAS and RCS to not be applying enough torque/thrust isnt game breaking, the game deleting your stations flight path so when you switch back to controlling it, it is now falling straight back down onto kerbin IS GAME BREAKING. Using docking ports on an Apollo style moon lander and having your entire ship blow up from selecting undock EVERY SINGLE TIME IS GAME BREAKING. I have been a part of many other early access games and this is the first one at this high of a price point to have this many issues after what, 5 years in development? 

Well, I really don't' know what you are doing in your game.  Believe me, I do know what game-breaking means, and I have been part of other EA releases.

You are free to join me when I stream on Twitch and engage in a discussion.  I'd be happy to try to replicate these issues, but IMHO, they aren't as prevalent as you are implying.  For example, last night I streamed a mission for about 4-5 hours, a complete development of a rover and flying it to Minmus, landing it and then driving around for a bit.  There were minor issues, but not a single game-breaking issue.  It was a very nice stream.  You are free to watch the VOD, as well as countless other people who are happily streaming it for all to see.

Have YOU experienced all of these issues you are describing yourself, or are you just repeating things you've heard over the 'net?   

I _have_ experienced issues where I had to restart the game.  Not often, and, if I remember correctly, were all from the same set of saves, cause is suspected to be a bad build of a vessel which then caused other issues.

15 hours ago, EngineerinSquid said:

The other issue here is that many people only have a few playstyles on KSP that they actually like to play. And the fact that there are this many game breaking bugs at this high of a price point is very disconcerting. especially because this was very much advertised as more of an open beta while it is now clear that it is more of a PRE-ALPHA release. My advice is to stop being so high and mighty and assuming people are unwilling to work around bugs, as many are impossible to work around right now

Well, ignoring the water physics (which are obviously unfinished), I've done rovers, planes, rockets, etc.  

I suggest that you stop insulting people, and do a more reasoned discussion. 

 

For transparency, I will state that I am using a "mid" to "high" end machine, which may be why I'm not seeing some of the issues that other people are seeing.  I've never hidden that, besides telling people multiple times during various streams, my system specs are posted on my Twitch page.  I briefly tested KSP2 on a lower-spec machine, but that one isn't available for extended playtesting.

[MarcAbaddon]

I have a high end machine too and for what's it worth I had major issues on all my missions. Only played for about 5 hours total, so might have been bad luck I suppose.

Mission 1: Ship randomly spinning out of control in orbit due to bad SAS.

Mission 2: Airplane only usable with SAS disabled because otherwise it starts 'vibrating' at increasing screen.

Mission 3: Mun landing, experienced the cross-feed bug, landed with half my fuel tank left and when I reloaded the game the fuel tank was empty.

Mission 4: another Mun mission, experienced AP/PE shifting a lot without net forces (thust). TBH I hate this one the worst, because it seems that even basic orbital mechanics are bugged.

What I personally did not experience are crashes or infinite loading screens.

Edited March 2, 2023 by MarcAbaddon