Ouch.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

RPS doesn't deliver a review as much as an indictment. 

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/kerbal-space-program-2-early-access-review

"... early access review: a catastrophic re-entry" 

 

[The Aziz]

Paragraph 1, 2: game bad
Paragraph 3, 4, 5: explaining what the game is about
Paragraph 6: KSP1
Paragraph 7: "There are fewer parts to build with." (incorrect); "the sequel is missing many of the basic features found in the original game." (partially correct, some are not, but most are present)
Paragraph 8, 9: game good!
Paragraph 10, 11, 12, 13: game bad "We delayed our review by a weekend" (great idea).

Yeah that's a rant.

[Bej Kerman]

Just now, The Aziz said:

Paragraph 1, 2: game bad
Paragraph 3, 4, 5: explaining what the game is about
Paragraph 6: KSP1
Paragraph 7: "There are fewer parts to build with." (incorrect); "the sequel is missing many of the basic features found in the original game." (partially correct, some are not, but most are present)
Paragraph 8, 9: game good!
Paragraph 10, 11, 12, 13: game bad "We delayed our review by a weekend" (great idea).

Yeah that's a rant.

Average journalist rambling 

[Chilkoot]

8 minutes ago, The Aziz said:

Yeah that's a rant.

Unfortunately, it will still be widely read, shared and used as a framework by other "reviewers", and may well still be the top result in a couple of years when 1.0 drops and potential buyers type in "KSP 2 review".

Bad press can't be ignored - it doesn't go away like it did in print media days.  There's limited time to turn the boat around before it can't be bailed out any further.

I'm squarely in Intercept's corner, but hand-waving reviews (even rants) is not something they can afford to do right now.  They need to crank up the damage control dial to 11, get the most critical problems (performance) addressed ASAP, and then beg/borrow/steal as many review amendments as possible.

[Izny]

9 minutes ago, Chilkoot said:

Bad press can't be ignored - it doesn't go away like it did in print media days.  There's limited time to turn the boat around before it can't be bailed out any further.

I disagree. The collective attention span nowdays is so much shorter than it used to be. It lasts until the next thing to be collectively upset about presents itself in the next news cycle or tweet. things blow over so much faster than they used to. Just wait till some idiot hurls out a sponsored opinion about something so they can get some ad revenue, and the whole herd will go RAAAAAABBLE RABBLE RABBLE, merely waiting for the next thing to rabble about. 

it will blow over when the simpletons move on to the next game's release, and the 1st patches start rolling out. Then in some time when the full release happens, the reviews will be:  "even though it was ill received at it's early access release by people who don't understand early access, kerbal space program 2 is everything it aspired to be, and more."

Edited March 1, 2023 by Izny

[Chilkoot]

3 minutes ago, Izny said:

I disagree. The collective attention span nowdays is so much shorter than it used to be. It lasts until the next thing to be collectively upset about presents itself in the next news cycle or tweet. things blow over so much faster than they used to. Just wait till some idiot hurls out a sponsored opinion about something so they can get some ad revenue, and the whole herd will go RAAAAAABBLE RABBLE RABBLE, merely waiting for the next thing to rabble about. 

it will blow over when the simpletons move on to the next game's release, and the 1st patches start rolling out.

I sincerely hope you are right.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

This has been a very busy week for me, and will likely continue through the weekend... when I'm out of town.  The sad thing is that my limited experience with the game so far has been:

• Day One:  "Yaaay, OMG - It's finally here!  It's performant.  It's got a few bugs, but this is cool!"
• Day Two: "This is a frustrating buggy mess.  Why in the heck doesn't the AP/PE stay up?  This doesn't work.  That is - I don't know what that is, but it isn't right.  That's cool, but why did my ship explode?  What the heck is going on?!?"
• Day Three:  "Okay... some stuff works and is fantastic.  Some of it needs work.  That needs a LOT of work.  Oh look - this works... Its fun to do this thing that works!"

I'm really torn.  Love the game - and the Devs... but they REALLY should have invited several hundred people from the forums to a Closed Beta.  We have a very slight indication from photos that there was a Beta... but by whom?  No idea.  I get the feeling from the ESA event that none of the big streamers were part of a Beta.  I haven't heard anything about a Beta... I've only seen pictures labled 'Beta.'

I love that they've given us access to the game.  I hate (for them) that whatever decisions drove them to release EA in this state that the reviews, reactions and press are so negative.  I'm committed to sticking this out, continuing to post bug reports and 'do my part' to make the sequel to my favorite game a success.  But, really, Intercept and the entire team deserved a better launch weekend than they got - and part of that has to be on... I don't know?  Them?  T2?

Looking forward to (at some point) hearing about what happened with the apparent Beta and why a lot of these issues we've been identifying were not resolved before it went EA.

Edited March 1, 2023 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[LameLefty]

I couldn't give a rats @$$ about gamerblog "reviews." I knew what I was getting (for the most part) by watching all the streamers in the days before purchase, and I knew it was likely to have issues. And it does, several of which are critical and will hopefully be addressed Soon!(tm). But so long as I stick to single-missions sessions at a time (e.g., not a "program" of overlapping contemporaneous in-progress flights all going on at once), I'm having a great time.

Tonight after work, for the first time in very close to a decade, I spitballed a lander and lifter design based on my own gut instincts, launched it to LKO, went to the Tracking Station and used timewarp to eyeball a proper phase angle, manually plotted and executed a Duna transfer, made a couple midcourse burns, managed to make a nice orbit, eyeballed a huge plane change and deorbit burn, and put my lander down within 330 meters of my target.  No MechJeb, not even Kerbal Engineer. Just the stock in-game dV estimator and my own brain, as an engineer and experienced KSP player. Extremely satisfying.

Oh, and the Duna music is great.  

Do I still very much want a "Day 5 patch" tomorrow or ASAP? You bet, the sooner the better. But the game IS playable, and it IS fun and satisfying. 

[Basto]

The review was spot on.  The game in its current state is a buggy mess.   I was spending more time doing bug testing to figure out why my rocket was not staging properly or exploding into a million pieces while in orbit because I had the nerve to try and undock from the mother ship, or shouting at my computer because trying to use the maneuver planner to go anywhere other than Mun or Minmus is excruciating...  I strongly believe this game will be great but right now it's barely playable.

 

I went back to KSP1 and installed all of the most demanding visual mods and part packs and have been playing a stable performant game that looks as good as KSP2 and plays at more than 10FPS.

I hope they can turn things around and deliver the game they promised but early access should not be beta testing, and I have played games in open beta that are less buggy and more complete than this is.  

 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Actually I'm kinda PO'd right now. 

I've been posting bug reports, uploading screenshots,making videos and doing all the things that most EA communities/ Dev teams appreciate...  I've been reading hundreds of other, similar posts and interacting with members of our community who have been fans and supporters of KSP and  KSP2 for years...

 

...and just found out that @PD_Dakota and @Ghostii_Space have been spending all their time and efforts on "socials" and "discord".  Why the hell is this community being ignored? 

Is any of the stuff we are identifying getting to the Devs?  Are we wasting our time? 

Edited March 1, 2023 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[Periple]

2 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Is any of the stuff we are identifying getting to the Devs?  Are we wasting our time? 

Probably not, and probably. It’s just too much work to filter out the signal from the noise at this point, the devs have their hands full with very high priority issues, and QA will have no trouble finding more. There’s simply no time to make use of community feedback when everything is on fire. Right now it’s almost certain that there is a better written ticket already in their Jira for whatever it is you’re reporting.

Relax though, when things calm down this will change. For now it’s better to just enjoy the ride and save your energy for later when it is more likely your feedback will be heard.

They’re not ignoring you out of laziness or meanness, they’re just overloaded with way more feedback than they can make use of. 

 

[razark]

2 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

...just found out that @PD_Dakota and @Ghostii_Space have been spending all their time and efforts on "socials" and "discord".  Why the hell is this community being ignored? 

I'd really like to know the context here. 

Not disagreeing, just wondering.  It wouldn't be the first time the forum has been disregarded; just that I haven't seen this yet.

[RocketRockington]

3 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Is any of the stuff we are identifying getting to the Devs?  Are we wasting our time? 

Likely no.  Chances are the big backlog for the devs is already miles deep, and anything that's not a P1/critical issue (crash, save deletion, etc) isn't on their radar.  And that given all the moving pieces, many bugs will become invalid as various code changes.

I think it was a disingenuous statement that they want community feedback.  Not in the same sense that KSp1 did with their public big tracker, at least, or like most EAs have.  The feedback they wanted was 'how many people will buy this for $50 based on nostalgia/hope/lack of information, and how many won't.'   

What else could they want?  What course would they change based on our feedback, they have their roadmap, they know they have to fix the bugs, and the only big decisions to make are whether to double down or pull funding.

Edited March 1, 2023 by RocketRockington

[Periple]

11 minutes ago, RocketRockington said:

I think it was a disingenuous statement that they want community feedback.  Not in the same sense that KSp1 did with their public big tracker, at least, or like most EAs have.  The feedback they wanted was 'how many people will buy this for $50 based on nostalgia/hope/lack of information, and how many won't.'

That’s a bit more cynical than the reality I think. They do want feedback and eventually perhaps even bug reports. It’s just that the state of the game now drowns any useful player feedback in noise about things that are obviously broken. 

It’ll get there. Eventually.

[RocketRockington]

39 minutes ago, Periple said:

That’s a bit more cynical than the reality I think. They do want feedback and eventually perhaps even bug reports. It’s just that the state of the game now drowns any useful player feedback in noise about things that are obviously broken. 

It’ll get there. Eventually.

Yes.  Eventually.  An eventually that's likely months away.  Certainly not now!  But they launched EA now.  And at a full AAA price.  So they launched EA for reasons other than this feedback.  Despite this rationale, there was another reason, one they're not sharing with us, but we all suspect what it is 

And that's why I'm cynical about it.  We (the more informed, less hopium based fans) know they're BSing about the rationale.  They know they are.  They even know that many of us know.  But there are still true believer fans out there who take their statements at face value, and beaver away submitting bugs for no reason, and it's saddening, because marketing in today's winner takes all capitalism is about spinning so hard, regardless of reality, that as long as you can't be sued for it, as long as you get away with it and make money, it's all ok, and it's about the customer doing the research vs holding companies to a higher standard.

Edited March 1, 2023 by RocketRockington

[Periple]

Eh, I don't know how helpful it is to speculate on the reasons they went with EA now rather than call another 2-3-month delay. It's rarely just one reason anyway, and sometimes there's no more to it than "full steam ahead, damn the torpedoes." 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

5 hours ago, razark said:

I'd really like to know the context here. 

Not disagreeing, just wondering.  It wouldn't be the first time the forum has been disregarded; just that I haven't seen this yet.

Start with the OP for context and then scroll down. 

Someone links several posts by our Community Manager spanning the last two days over on the Discord.  PD then pops in the thread to say 

"Just popping my head in here that we're rethinking our comms strategy to make sure any info shared through the Discord is mirrored here. We're around and listening and interacting on Discord and socials, but we definitely have not been giving the forums the time you all deserve "

 

Edited March 1, 2023 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

5 hours ago, RocketRockington said:

Not in the same sense that KSp1 did with their public big tracker, at least, or like most EAs have. 

That is why I'm disappointed.  I actually enjoy the ride with teams doing Betas and EA... 

And I think you are right, here;

The feedback they wanted was 'how many people will buy this for $50 based on nostalgia/hope/lack of information, and how many won't.' 

I'm actively telling my friends to stay away because I actually want them to like it when it's fixed... But as written above - everything is on fire and I don't think this is EA any more. 

I think this is an incomplete, unready pre-Beta game that the corporate-types forced out the door in the guise of EA to get revenue with a Community Management team who are marketing types and have no clue what they should be doing in an EA and a Dev team that are probably crushed by the negativity and honest feedback about what state the game is in.  Of all of these, the only ones I care about are the Devs. 

 

[Majorjim!]

This forum, for some reason, has always been the forgotten child of KSP socials.. 

 

 

[Dakitess]

God, I agree that most of the feedback is going to be properly ignored since the state of the game is really not propitious, with a LOT of bug report in the first place, performance rant in the second place, etc etc. It's fairly logic that they're going to work on Major bugs, which will probably cost at least a month and 2-3 patches... In the meantime, feedback will accumulate here and everywhere on social media and some on the official InGame "error report", without any proper tracking, without a dedicated platform to handle the load.

So what ? People that already wrote their very detailed, comprehensive and passionate feedback won't write it again, it won't ever be taking into account, moreover if KSP2 team consider "1 month old feedback" as irrelevant because they patched the game and things have changed.

Damn... This EA was supposed to be all about giving feedback about enhancement, ideas, propositions, suggestions, to build the game together, to think as players with millions of hours in, with lotta experiences, etc. Nah, instead, people are writing here, there is probably one KSP2 guy trying to assemble barely something in a file but just the main tracks, ignoring all the "smaller" ideas that did not occure more that once or two, and with the rest of the team telling him "you know what, yeah, cool, but so far we need to get this game working and it gonna take some time, do your best, and maybe we will scratch it all and ask for newer feedback when the game is OK-ish as it should have been from the beginning".

That would be... Haaaa, don't know what to say. It's such a mess, it's such a pity that it started this way.

[Moons]

I dont disagree with the review and i think its important to be realistic now. Releasing it in this state as EA was a bad idea - especially at this price and sadly all the negativity will stay and if people google they will find those reviews which will harm the game in the future.

I think it would be important to do something now and i think the best thing to do would be a price reduction as soon as possible to a reasonable price - because that - from my point of view - is what is most important for positive EA feedback and for sales. Just look at Sons of Forest for example - the game is EA aswell - has lots of bugs, not much content - but people still are positive because the price in relation to what is sold seems reasonable - its also the foundation of EA - people pay less since they act like investors and also take the risk not knowing if a game will ever get released or in what state and with what features.

 

What i think can be done:

• reduce the price to a reasonable EA price and 99% of the negativity will vanish (the only issue is what will happen to people that already payd the full price)
• try to reduce minimal hardware requirements as much as possible (for a bigger playerbase and to enable real modding)
• i wonder if a more stylized approach could help performance and the looks of the game - especially regarding everything that is not a rocket (i always thought that when looking at KSP1 - it seemed to have lots of polygons yet didnt look great)
• i wonder if there is too much focus on beeing beginner friendly when most of the target and potential audience is probably people that already played the game - i think it would be a good idea to use some of the bigger KSP youtubers more for tutorials etc. instead of investing lots of on developing that in the game - dont get me wrong - i like how its done form looking at videos but i wonder if its worth it and wouldnt be better used on new features

 

[HowDoKerbal]

Most of the issues the game currently has are so in your face the devs already knew about them prior to release. They’d have to literally be blind not to.

However, I am sure they are going through the bug report forum and making a priority list based on perceived criticality to gameplay. I’d expect most of the obvious bugs to be resolved or at least improved with the first patch.

[Mutex]

2 minutes ago, HowDoKerbal said:

I’d expect most of the obvious bugs to be resolved or at least improved with the first patch.

There's enough serious bugs that I think it'll take at least a month to make a decent dent in them. I'm hoping there will be weekly patches released for a while as they fix the worst of them.

[Moons]

10 minutes ago, HowDoKerbal said:

Most of the issues the game currently has are so in your face the devs already knew about them prior to release. They’d have to literally be blind not to.

However, I am sure they are going through the bug report forum and making a priority list based on perceived criticality to gameplay. I’d expect most of the obvious bugs to be resolved or at least improved with the first patch.

I wonder about that - many of the issues seem rather obvious so i doubt they didnt know about them - so if they havent fixed them before release chances are they arent that easy to fix.

[Periple]

8 minutes ago, Moons said:

• reduce the price to a reasonable EA price and 99% of the negativity will vanish (the only issue is what will happen to people that already payd the full price)

This would also bring in more people. Even if the percentage of negatively-disposed players goes down, I think the absolute number will likely go up. Also it would make a lot of people who paid full price justifiably angry. In other words I think this would be counterproductive.

9 minutes ago, Moons said:

• try to reduce minimal hardware requirements as much as possible (for a bigger playerbase and to enable real modding)

I'm quite sure this is a high priority!

9 minutes ago, Moons said:

• i wonder if a more stylized approach could help performance and the looks of the game - especially regarding everything that is not a rocket (i always thought that when looking at KSP1 - it seemed to have lots of polygons yet didnt look great)

There's nothing in the current graphics that should need a high-end GPU. It just needs optimization. People digging into the files have already found lots of low-hanging fruit, the ridiculous vertex count on the navball for example.

11 minutes ago, Moons said:

• i wonder if there is too much focus on beeing beginner friendly when most of the target and potential audience is probably people that already played the game - i think it would be a good idea to use some of the bigger KSP youtubers more for tutorials etc. instead of investing lots of on developing that in the game - dont get me wrong - i like how its done form looking at videos but i wonder if its worth it and wouldnt be better used on new features

The people writing, animating, voice-acting, and producing the tutorial videos aren't the same ones working on the actual game. It's an additional investment but it's not holding anything up. 

I think the tutorials are crucial to the success of the game. It's true that they're not all that critical right now, but there's no harm in having them ready already either. The tutorials aren't to blame for any of the bugs or other issues.