Ouch.

[Moons]

12 minutes ago, Periple said:

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.

 

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.

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.

I dont think so - as i stated before the expectations of players and therefore the mood of the feedback is directly related to the price - obviously. So a lower price would change the feedback to a way more positive state - yes people that have already bought are a problem - on the other hand - they also probably want this game to be a success since if it fails they also will never get a good KSP2 with an active community, modding etc.

Just look at Sons of the Forest - lots of bugs - not that much content - lots of problems - but positive feedback. Let me ask you directly - do you think Sons of Forest would have a different launch and feedback at 50 USD?

 

 

From what ive read the GPU is used for calculations and for graphics - so thats probably one of the reasons why graphics are rather medicore in regards to the requirements. But with stylized graphics in general one  could make the planets feel way more alive - especially kerbal.

 

I wonder about that - do you really think the biggest ammount of KSP2 players will be new players and that the tutorials cant be outsourced to youtubers that will draw in additionals buys?

Edited March 1, 2023 by Moons

[Periple]

1 minute ago, Moons said:

Just look at Sons of the Forest - lots of bugs - not that much content - lots of problems - but positive feedback. Let me ask you directly - do you think Sons of Forest would have a different launch and feedback at 50 USD?

I think there's a legit case to be made that the EA price was too high, although that would have meant an even bigger influx of players and even more noise, so I'm not sure that it's a slam-dunk case. However, putting the game on discount in the first week... no. Just... no. Bad idea.

3 minutes ago, Moons said:

From what ive read the GPU is used for calculations and for graphics - so thats probably one of the reasons why graphics are rather medicore in regards to the requirements. But with stylized graphics in general one  could make the planets feel way more alive - especially kerbal.

I haven't looked at it all that closely but from what little I have, I haven't seen anything to indicate that the GPU is being used for anything other than graphics. Whether a different art direction style would be better or not is a separate issue, but a mid-range GPU should be able to run graphics that look as good as (or, really, better than) what we're seeing now. The game just needs optimization.

4 minutes ago, Moons said:

I wonder about that - do you really think the biggest ammount of KSP2 players will be new players and that the tutorials cant be outsourced to youtubers that will draw in additionals buys?

I definitely think that. Not for EA, for sure, but in the long run. TT/PD is clearly aiming to expand the player base several times over, and to do that you do need really good onboarding.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

They need to suspend marketing and focus on the bug hunt with GREATLY increased communication to those who have the game - get it past a Beta state to something that actually resembles an EA title and then... And only then... Restart the sales push. 

[Moons]

1 minute ago, Periple said:

I think there's a legit case to be made that the EA price was too high, although that would have meant an even bigger influx of players and even more noise, so I'm not sure that it's a slam-dunk case. However, putting the game on discount in the first week... no. Just... no. Bad idea.

I haven't looked at it all that closely but from what little I have, I haven't seen anything to indicate that the GPU is being used for anything other than graphics. Whether a different art direction style would be better or not is a separate issue, but a mid-range GPU should be able to run graphics that look as good as (or, really, better than) what we're seeing now. The game just needs optimization.

I definitely think that. Not for EA, for sure, but in the long run. TT/PD is clearly aiming to expand the player base several times over, and to do that you do need really good onboarding.

Im not so sure about that - i would agree if it was a normal release since it would devaluate the product. But in this case its an EA release that was priced way too high and is now leading to lots of negative feedback, reviews and press that will never go away - that will damange the brand and the game way more in the long run and could even make this the last KSP game.

I just read that elswhere and it made sense since it would explain the extremely high GPU requirements - but maybe its was jut false information.

Well i dont think so - i think with all the publicity and the mods it already reached most of its potential playerbase. Even with lots of tutorials the base game mechanics are probably too niche for most people so i dont think its a good idea to concentate too much on a different audience. A prime example from my point of view for a mistake like that were Torchlight 3 and Command and Conquer - they pretty much tried to get a completely new audience and thought their main audience would buy anyways. In reality they didnt get the new audience and lost the old audience.

And as i stated - i think it would probably be way more cost efficient to cooperate with youtubers - because not only can they do community interaction better - they can also draw in lots of new players.

[Periple]

20 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

They need to suspend marketing and focus on the bug hunt with GREATLY increased communication to those who have the game - get it past a Beta state to something that actually resembles an EA title and then... And only then... Restart the sales push. 

Pretty much this, except I don't think the communication is all that important. There's really nothing they can say right now that wouldn't just add fuel to the fire. Actions speak louder than words; when the updates start rolling in and we see tangible progress, people will calm down. 

I have zero doubts whatsoever that they're working megahard on the patch. Nothing concentrates the mind quite as effectively as an intense wave of focused nerd rage. I think even the knowledge that you'll be hanged at dawn comes a distant second.

[pandaman]

I don't think dropping the price is a good idea, because I don't think it will help.

Yes $50 for as it is currently is not good value.  But I bought into v1.0 and beyond at a discount, with a chance to play it in its unfinished state now.  As I suspect most of us did.

I think that price helps to limit the 'casual I'll just give it a go' customers, which really  isn't what it needs just now, that would just generate even more disgruntled refunders and scathing reviews.

It needs reasonably experienced players that can give feedback on functionality etc.  as well as being in a better position to judge what looks like a bug or a functionality implementation issue.

[Drakenred65]

14 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

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? 

In all fairness a number of bugs date back to the KSP2 eVent. The list of things from that that were reported their and were shown to developers included.

 

Debris clips from KSP loading screen flying through camera in space .

 

Easter eggs showing up after reloading a save .

 

Physics treating staged or detached parts as being still attached.

 

Parts disappearing between VAB and launch. Also parts disappearing or re appearing in flight. Also parts disappearing or reappearing after loading saves.

 

Camera following random discarded part or seemingly decide they have to split the difference between discarded parts.

 

Rendering issues.

 Also, The reality is that right now they are being snowed in with bug reports, many of them are duplicates ( there's not that much difference between "hey! I reloaded a save and now I have a statue chasing me around that was not their " and "I reloaded a save and now I have a weird asteroid or rock chasing me around that was not there before" and "I reloaded a save and now I have a floating Kerbal chasing me around that was not their because I was flying unmanned probes."

 

I suspect they are focusing on on ones that are showing up on the best shape * or in community's that are felt to be the most vocal.

 

Also you tend to see more CM s there than devs because honestly the developers job is finding out what went wrong (and may talk to the person privately) not just start conversations in chat. Those tend to explode with dozens of " HEY DEV! As long as your here! " posts when they really wanted to get more info if possible on a specific bug

 

* Meaning have the most detail and or logs and or save file.

 

 

Edited March 1, 2023 by Drakenred65

[Moons]

3 hours ago, pandaman said:

I don't think dropping the price is a good idea, because I don't think it will help.

Yes $50 for as it is currently is not good value.  But I bought into v1.0 and beyond at a discount, with a chance to play it in its unfinished state now.  As I suspect most of us did.

I think that price helps to limit the 'casual I'll just give it a go' customers, which really  isn't what it needs just now, that would just generate even more disgruntled refunders and scathing reviews.

It needs reasonably experienced players that can give feedback on functionality etc.  as well as being in a better position to judge what looks like a bug or a functionality implementation issue.

But thats the point - thats not what you bought. With EA you bought the game at its current state with the risk of it never beeing finished and not knowing the feature complete version if it ever happens. You bought EA not a pre-order with BETA Access.

 

The problem is - the game right now is having huge issues - having half the numbers days after release as a game that was released a decade ago (KSP1) is a very bad sign. For this game to become a success it needs lots of players that will lure even more players and modders in. But that right now is not happening and chances are that if it doesnt recover soon it will never recover with all the negative press and reviews. And if they seriously increase the price even more at launch im 98% sure that they will never recover - they also wont find many casual players with a game with hardware requirements that hard - recommended is a GPU that almost cost 800 Dollars (3080).

 

In reality its probably in your best interrest that the game becomes cheaper becomes a success and gets more features - as it is now i wonder how long it will take until the publisher loses faith in the product. But i wouldnt give the DEVs the blame - in reality whoever decided to release the game right now at this price in this state (bugs, content, hardware requirements) pretty much made a flop a pretty bad launch self fullfilling prophecy. If not even players are switching to the new KSP then Modders for sure wont aswell - and that will just start a downwards spiral.

 

KSP1: 6200

KSP2: 3400

And KSP2 should still have the benefit of beeing new just days after release ...

Edited March 1, 2023 by Moons

[pandaman]

1 hour ago, Moons said:

4 hours ago, pandaman said:

Expand  

But thats the point - thats not what you bought. With EA you bought the game at its current state with the risk of it never beeing finished and not knowing the feature complete version if it ever happens. You bought EA not a pre-order with BETA Access.

Absolutely, yes.  I agree it is a leap of faith and I fully realise it's a gamble.

I bought it knowing that my old hardware may well struggle (even before the specs were announced).    If I were not a long standing KSP1 player I would not have done so.

[Izny]

On 3/1/2023 at 4:10 AM, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

ut that @PD_Dakota and @Ghostii_Space have been spending all their time and efforts on "socials" and "discord". 

cuz forums are too oldschool for a lot of people. takes up too much attention span and is considered a hassle by many. you have to go to a website, and log on and read topics and all that. discord is more fire and forget. the times of organised phpbb3 social group management and knowledgebase building are over i'm afraid.

[Meecrob]

2 hours ago, Izny said:

cuz forums are too oldschool for a lot of people. takes up too much attention span and is considered a hassle by many. you have to go to a website, and log on and read topics and all that. discord is more fire and forget. the times of organised phpbb3 social group management and knowledgebase building are over i'm afraid.

I get what you are saying, but its simply a poor business decision to decide that communicating to part of their base is "too old school."

 

I mean, this is like "sorry, we don't want to talk to you unless you use Intel processors...we don't have time for AMD users. Also, please buy our game, AMD users!"

[Izny]

3 hours ago, Meecrob said:

I get what you are saying, but its simply a poor business decision to decide that communicating to part of their base is "too old school."

 

I mean, this is like "sorry, we don't want to talk to you unless you use Intel processors...we don't have time for AMD users. Also, please buy our game, AMD users!"

i'm not disagreeing. it's just an observation that forums are for some reason seen as too much effort. i dont get that...  i like having information nicely sorted in threads... i'm old though, and i don't understand a lot of -now- things anymore

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

The whole idea that 'there are a lot more people there' is being reinforced by not being present, here.  The thing I don't like about the Discord is that it is just so much noise - and nothing is adequately sorted into meaningful discussion.  So there's no benefit to being there absent just spraying some nonsense into the chat to see if you can get a rise out of someone.  Anything practical or productive just disappears under all that.

[Meecrob]

@Izny

I think we are in total agreement. I didn't understand that you were making an observation. Instead I thought you were more trying to say that the forums should be sorta abandoned. I think this is an issue that has to do with Take Two has data that "X" worked in the past (i.e. using discord), but failed to realize that KSP is not like their other games, and thus their previous data does not apply universally.

Edited March 4, 2023 by Meecrob

[RocketRockington]

5 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

The whole idea that 'there are a lot more people there' is being reinforced by not being present, here.  The thing I don't like about the Discord is that it is just so much noise - and nothing is adequately sorted into meaningful discussion.  So there's no benefit to being there absent just spraying some nonsense into the chat to see if you can get a rise out of someone.  Anything practical or productive just disappears under all that.

That may also be the point?  A community manager is not there to share concrete information.  They're not a journalist or historian.  They're there to connect with the community, to keep them happy as much as possible, get some information back to their bosses possibly, take the temperature of things - but primarily to help shape the image of the game.  Sharing concrete information was a one good method of doing that with the KSP1 community, but maybe that's not the best strategy for the developing KSP2 community.

[Periple]

I think it’s very simple. They see the number of active users on Discord and on the forums. There are ten times more on Discord, so they spend that much more time there. What would you do?

[Arugela]

Unless they really whacked out their discord with some advanced features why would you want a discord for a game like this. If it had features more advanced than a forum maybe. It does have some better image stuff. But It would need much better organization, like tree logic, to make it work like a forum.

[jost]

2 hours ago, Arugela said:

Unless they really whacked out their discord with some advanced features why would you want a discord for a game like this. If it had features more advanced than a forum maybe. It does have some better image stuff. But It would need much better organization, like tree logic, to make it work like a forum.

It doesn't matter what anybody of us or from the ksp team wants. Today more gamers are using discord than forums thus the ksp cms focus on discord. Or live we say in Germany: "Wenn der Berg nicht zum Propheten kommt, muss der Prophet halt zum Berg kommen" ("the mountain does not come to the prophet, the prophet must come to the mountain.")

I don't like this either  ( I would prefer a newsgroup) but that's the way things are today.

Edited March 4, 2023 by jost

[kerbiloid]

On 3/1/2023 at 4:14 PM, 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)

The problem is that the "full price" is not the "total cost of ownership", which includes also the cost of hardware upgrade for the game of KSP 0.21 + Parallax functionality which is happily running on existing potatoes.

When a user has to pay "200" USD to upgrade, the difference between 50 and 10 game price doesn't play a role. They can even make it free, the upgrade will still be a game stopper for significant part of potential customers.

While the game is not an AAA-shooter, and the system requirements of KSP-1 were realistic.

[Moons]

1 hour ago, jost said:

It doesn't matter what anybody of us or from the ksp team wants. Today more gamers are using discord than forums thus the ksp cms focus on discord. Or live we say in Germany: "Wenn der Berg nicht zum Propheten kommt, muss der Prophet halt zum Berg kommen" ("the mountain does not come to the prophet, the prophet must come to the mountain.")

I don't like this either  ( I would prefer a newsgroup) but that's the way things are today.

Well i doubt that - people already have discord join a channel and after that auto connect to every channel they joined. And most people probably use Discord as a tool to communicate with small groups of friends to play so they will be online a lot but that doesnt mean they are active in the channels they joined.

So in my opinon Discord as a community channel seems to be more than it actually is and whenever i go into one of those indie dev discords its just chaotic, people randomly writing and if your lucky someone replys to someone once or twice and thats it. Its more like a casual chat and not like a platform to actually speak about something - also all information collected on Discord is invisible to anyone not using discord since it isnt in the google search so most of the information posted in a chaotic way in discords is just lost forever.

57 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

The problem is that the "full price" is not the "total cost of ownership", which includes also the cost of hardware upgrade for the game of KSP 0.21 + Parallax functionality which is happily running on existing potatoes.

When a user has to pay "200" USD to upgrade, the difference between 50 and 10 game price doesn't play a role. They can even make it free, the upgrade will still be a game stopper for significant part of potential customers.

While the game is not an AAA-shooter, and the system requirements of KSP-1 were realistic.

To me and most people it still matters a lot since most gamers have PCs that can probably run it to some extent - and i think its pretty obvious that requirements have to be reduced since this game mainly is so popular because of mods - if the base game has hardware requirements that give you low FPS even on a ultra high end rig then chances are modding will never work. Having a RTX 3080 for recommended settings for a niche product is to put it lightly - a pretty wild decision ... - i cant even find the card at price below 800 USD?!

 

And im really having issues understanding why this game requires so much better hardware then KSP1 - the graphics arent much better and probably arent the things thata require all the power - physics arent better either from what ive seen and this game is still not even feature complete and even seems to have disabled some physics (i think re-entry).

And looking at the KSP1 and the mods - there seems to be a lot possible with the old game - wouldnt it have been way more efficient to simply use the old game - do engine upgrades etc. make it look better and then add the features this game has to it etc.?

Edited March 4, 2023 by Moons

[Periple]

18 minutes ago, Moons said:

And looking at the KSP1 and the mods - there seems to be a lot possible with the old game - wouldnt it have been way more efficient to simply use the old game - do engine upgrades etc. make it look better and then add the features this game has to it etc.?

I think that was the original plan in 2019 and if they had done that the game would surely be much more stable now. But I think they would have hit hard roadblocks when trying to implement multiplayer, perhaps even with stuff they want to do with colonies. Interstellar would also probably have needed a lot of fudging! 

I think it was a right choice to start over but the payoff for that isn’t quite here yet.

[Moons]

10 minutes ago, Periple said:

I think that was the original plan in 2019 and if they had done that the game would surely be much more stable now. But I think they would have hit hard roadblocks when trying to implement multiplayer, perhaps even with stuff they want to do with colonies. Interstellar would also probably have needed a lot of fudging! 

I think it was a right choice to start over but the payoff for that isn’t quite here yet.

I m not sure - some people suggest that the game seems to have similar physics bugs etc. like the old game. So in the worst case its simply not possible to do what they need to do perfectly with the engine etc. they are using. Also to be honest - i dont care about multiplayer at all and i dont understand how MP should even work in a meaningful way in this game and who the target audience is - this seems to be something where MP only makes sense with friends very dedicated to the game and even that doesnt sound like much fun to me.

From my point of view MP probably would have been better in a game like this with Leaderboards, Stats comparisons etc. Community Missions where people get score for least money used, fastest completion etc. and have leaderbords etc. - is there any info on what sort of MP they are planning - i cant really imagine something i would care about or use in a game like this.

 

I really do hope that the Multiplayer part wont limit the development of SP to avoid having features that will never work in MP.

 

 

Last but not least im also a bit worried about the development time - a lot of the big and complex features are still missing - and looking at the progress up until now and the result i wonder how long it will take. There arent even time-estimates on the Steam page ... - and yes im worried aswell because there obviously isnt endless funding in development. Did they state anywhere what they think will be the release of 1.0 etc.?

I would be way less worried if the released EA game would at least have all the basic things - like physics engine etc. spot on.

Edited March 4, 2023 by Moons

[Periple]

Co-op multiplayer is really big and I think KSP is perfectly suited for it. Lots of things you can do together! Of course it will have to be taken into consideration when designing SP stuff from the start and will take time and effort to implement, it’s certainly easier to make a SP game if you don’t have to think of that stuff. But I think SP KSP2 will be fun too!

 And you can have competitive MP as well but I don’t think it’s necessarily as well suited.

I also don’t think the engine is the limiting factor. You can work around the inaccurate physics for example. It’ll be fine, just give it some time!

[Moons]

4 minutes ago, Periple said:

Co-op multiplayer is really big and I think KSP is perfectly suited for it. Lots of things you can do together! Of course it will have to be taken into consideration when designing SP stuff from the start and will take time and effort to implement, it’s certainly easier to make a SP game if you don’t have to think of that stuff. But I think SP KSP2 will be fun too!

 And you can have competitive MP as well but I don’t think it’s necessarily as well suited.

I also don’t think the engine is the limiting factor. You can work around the inaccurate physics for example. It’ll be fine, just give it some time!

I dont think so - a lot of the game is either played in the editor or in with time fast forward etc. - how is that supposed to work in a meaning full way - and how many people will actually use a multiplayer like that - it doesnt seem to work for multiplayer with random people and even friends would need to invest way too much time with lots of drawbacks.

I think competitive MP in the way of leaderbords - who does the most efficient run etc. is probably the most easy to implement way and probably also well suited since it doesnt actually change the game for people not using it - it s just stats.

 

Could you describe a scenario of fun multiplayer? Waht do you do abuit making time run faster when people do different things etc.? The most i can think of are very specific short interactions.

Edited March 4, 2023 by Moons

[Periple]

Just now, Moons said:

Could you describe a scenario of fun multiplayer?

Let’s go to Laythe together! You build the Laythe plane, Joe builds the base modules, I’ll build the transfer stages, kerbiloid builds the lifters. We’ll RV in LKO 30 days before the transfer window, dock up, and go!