A week in... 10% still playing

[Moons]

2 minutes ago, tstein said:

If it was government funded it would cost 400 billion,  would be delayed for 11 years and would have an operational ratio of under 30%.. oo  wait, that is the F-35... but close enough.

There are lots of government grants for private companies. I didnt mean funded completely by the government.

Also - i think your overly negative - NASA isnt a private company either.

Edited March 3, 2023 by Moons

[Chilkoot]

7 minutes ago, Moons said:

most of what i see is fans of KSP1 really disappointed by the quality of the release and the price at what its sold - which did set expectations pretty high

I don't mean to be a Monday morning quarterback, but given the state of the game currently, there were probably at least two ways to have avoided the current review-bomb situation:

1. EITHER:  Don't sell as EA, but do a "preorder", where preordering gives you access to dev milestone builds like the one we have.  This would have kept expectations low, and made the Kraken insanity more funny and less infuriating by framing it as "a peek behind the dev curtain".  Additionally, Steam doesn't permit reviews on pre-order items.  Con: this would have limited sales (PD wants returns on the books FY'23), and may have led to less feedback. 
2. OR: Start EA at a much lower price (~$20), then ratchet up as permitted by the Steam TOS each time a new milestone feature is released.  The $50 tag does create an expectation with people, and the game is not a $50 game yet.  Con: again, probably lower total sales revenue, and it would poach future revenues, too, if a lot of people jumped on at the $20 price point.

You can bet that PD considered both of these options, but their analysis showed the $50 EA to be the best long-term path.  It's clear they didn't predict the hugely negative press, and the long-term impact that press will have on sales for the coming years.  Damage is done, unfortunately, but also undoubtedly.

[Starhawk]

13 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Virtually zero interaction from the Community Management team, no word on a patch and the rare possibility from pure guesswork that Friday might be a day to expect something... But maybe not. 

Some may have missed this the CM engagement in this thread:

There is a lot of CM engagement here and discussion of the upcoming patch.

Happy landings!

[Moons]

4 minutes ago, Chilkoot said:

I don't mean to be a Monday morning quarterback, but given the state of the game currently, there were probably at least two ways to have avoided the current review-bomb situation:

1. EITHER:  Don't sell as EA, but do a "preorder", where preordering gives you access to dev milestone builds like the one we have.  This would have kept expectations low, and made the Kraken insanity more funny and less infuriating by framing it as "a peek behind the dev curtain".  Additionally, Steam doesn't permit reviews on pre-order items.  Con: this would have limited sales (PD wants returns on the books FY'23), and may have led to less feedback. 
2. OR: Start EA at a much lower price (~$20), then ratchet up as permitted by the Steam TOS each time a new milestone feature is released.  The $50 tag does create an expectation with people, and the game is not a $50 game yet.  Con: again, probably lower total sales revenue, and it would poach future revenues, too, if a lot of people jumped on at the $20 price point.

You can bet that PD considered both of these options, but their analysis showed the $50 EA to be the best long-term path.  It's clear they didn't predict the hugely negative press, and the long-term impact that press will have on sales for the coming years.  Damage is done, unfortunately, but also undoubtedly.

A product with lots of problems at a high price getting negative reviews has absolutely nothing to do with the term "review-bombing".

 

Yeah but those 2 options - and option 3 - delay - are the only reasonable options. Especially Pre-Order is way better for consumers than EA since you have a guarantee that you will get a product.

 

I think 2 could also start at a higher price - i think 30 USD would be reasonable.

 

I doubt that they didnt predict the negative reaction - i mean its pretty simple - they knew the state of the game and they knew that tehy charged way more than most EA games - they pretty much charged almost the full price of a released AAA game.  I hope its not what TLTAY suggested ...

Edited March 3, 2023 by Moons

[Stoup]

8 minutes ago, Starhawk said:

Some may have missed this the CM engagement in this thread:

There is a lot of CM engagement here and discussion of the upcoming patch.

Happy landings!

I think in addition to that, this thread provides a pretty good example of communication from CM to dev team to the players:

 

[Pthigrivi]

31 minutes ago, TLTay said:

I do not have access to their books, 

I just think it's silly to speculate on this with so little actual knowledge of the situation. People are being unnecessarily dramatic about all this. So much has already gone into this game, both what we've already seen and the follow-on content with colonies and interstellar. I know its very en-vogue to imagine evil corporate masters twisting mustaches while conjuring ways to make players angry but even from a purely corporate machiavellian standpoint it be pretty stupid to dump 5 years of development in the trash for no reason. The smart thing to do is just take the time to get the code cleaned up and follow through. Even the more scathing reviews I've seen have mentioned how much promise they're seeing. The goods are there, they're just bogged down in bugs and poor performance.

Edited March 3, 2023 by Pthigrivi

[Chilkoot]

20 minutes ago, TLTay said:

I do not have access to their books, but looking at this purely from a financial perspective, if sales are as bad as I suspect, and with the history of development issues, cancellation is a strong consideration, IMO.

Hmm... I would doubt the publisher is ready to cut bait yet, without even a console release which is a very sweet plumb.

I see in a lot of threads the mention of sunk-cost-fallacy (it's very vogue), but there's a difference b/w that and the risk calculation of recovering costs or perhaps not realizing potential returns on the current investment.

Eg:  If PD is, say, $20MM in so far and they completely cut bait, they will recover maybe 10%.  If they believe they are 75% of the way to the "finish line" and still project strong sales of the 1.0 release, they are more likely to pony up the last 6 or 7 million to recover 80% or even hit profitability.

I suppose it all comes down to what the new projections are for 1.0/console sales.  You can bet they are absolutely scrambling to update those numbers given the online backlash to this release.

[regex]

29 minutes ago, Chilkoot said:

Just looking through the builds, and it's like Dev->Dev->Release Test->Dev->Dev->Candidate->Dev->Dev (repeat).  It seems like they're not yet sure what they'll be able to reliably fix yet, so probably no patch notes until the very last moment.

This sounds like a normal merge cycle, each individual Dev branch is merged in as it gets tested in one way or another. For instance, in any given day we may have several merges into staging from individual development branches, each of which got separately tested by QA and automation, and then staging will get the same treatment before getting merged into production and released. The difference is that KSP seems to have a pre-branch called "Candidate" which will then get merged with the "Production" branch, when it's ready.

On topic, I've been waiting for the next patch to drop. Then I will play some more, then wait for another patch to drop. And so on. Every release will see people play, then decide whether to keep playing (it addressed their biggest issues) or wait for the next patch (there is still an issue they're having). I mean, right now I may boot it up for an hour or two just to mess with my little plane and maybe fly to a new spot on Kerbin because the terrain looks so damn good, but that's not really a long-term play strategy.

Edited March 3, 2023 by regex

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

21 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

Jebus Dakota was just here like yesterday. They're working on the game. When the next patch is ready they'll let us know. Patience.

Dakota has rarely responded to anything and hasn't authored a post, AFAIK.  Certainly nothing to address the dumpster fire.

He's a PD employee, not a member of the Intercept team.  Who knows what his priorities are - but he's clearly overwhelmed and not responsive to what is happening.

[Moons]

16 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

I just think it's silly to speculate on this with so little actual knowledge of the situation. People are being unnecessarily dramatic about all this. So much has already gone into this game, both what we've already seen and the follow-on content with colonies and interstellar. I know its very en-vogue to imagine evil corporate masters twisting mustaches while conjuring ways to make players angry but even from a purely corporate machiavellian standpoint it be pretty stupid to dump 5 years of development in the trash for no reason. The smart thing to do is just take the time to get the code cleaned up and follow through. Even the more scathing reviews I've seen have mentioned how much promise they're seeing. The goods are there, they're just bogged down in bugs and poor performance.

I think its a bit naive to think otherwise. Its not about big corporations beeing evil - its about big corporations having simple interrests that arent the same as the consumers interrest.

A big company mainly exists to create profits for its shareholders - every action is taken with that as the main motivation - it has nothing to do with good/evil etc. - and a consumer has completely different interrests. Developers in modern gaming industry are mostly normal employees - most neither self publish their product nor are really included in big decisions or even participiate in risks/reward of a release besides some bonus etc. - but yes managers probably mostly think about how to maximize profits.

Also cutting funding of products isnt a thing companys dont do - it even makes sense when you dont think you can make profits anymore and e very Dollar spent is a loss.

Just as an example:

https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/the-most-famous-canceled-video-games/

 

But obiously thats just a general statement - i have no insights on what is happening with KSP2 and i seriously hope that we will get a full release of this game as soon as possible. I would have just prefered a pre-order or a way cheaper EA. I just wanted to point out that its not completely uncommon for products/projects to never be released.

Edited March 3, 2023 by Moons

[purpleivan]

Something that should be helping to maintain retention rates for KSP2, relatative this most others, is that it's a sandbox game (even if you play science or career), as your route is your own to choose and the is no end. The majority of games do have definite ends, a proportion of which of which can be achieved in 7 days, especially at the cheaper and smaller end of the range.

Even it it's feature set and content is somewhat less than its predecessor,  KSP2 still has a whole solar system to explore, planes to fly, rovers to drive. So that reduced feature set shouldn't have a serious impact on retention rates after just 1 week.

What's driving players to cease playing is the current state of the game, which is frankly terrible, not a lack of content.

[RayneCloud]

CI/CD (Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery) is different on a per studio basis. What you could be seeing regarding the dev branches we see publicly, could be any of the following,
* Nightly Builds
* Weekly Builds
* Feature Specific Builds (modular development for example where a branch is focused solely on a feature or content base)
* External QA Branches for Testing and Integration
* Integration Testing Builds
* Release Candidates or RC's
* Etc

Just like I asked on reddit, don't hype up the steam builds or look more in to it when you literally have no clue what's going on. Even other devs don't. 
 

[TLTay]

1 minute ago, Pthigrivi said:

it be pretty stupid to dump 5 years of development in the trash for no reason. 

This is the sunk cost fallacy. Money already spent is water under the bridge. It does not factor into financial decisions. This goes for the cost of acquiring the IP as well.

At this point it'll be up to the publisher to decide if it's a sound investment to continue pumping money into development, and by the looks of the EA release, we got that answer already.

Only matter left to decide (it would have already been modelled by a competent analyist) is the threshold for pulling the plug. Depends on the sales expectations upon completion and their faith in devs making a completed and popular product. That faith  may have been damaged, but if completed WELL, it could be a home run. 

It remains to be seen, but I feel the idea needs to be introduced since people have grown very attached.

I can assure you that if it happens, the decision will not be made lightly or with ill intent, it's just about money. 

[coyotesfrontier]

3 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Dakota has rarely responded to anything and hasn't authored a post, AFAIK.  Certainly nothing to address the dumpster fire.

He's a PD employee, not a member of the Intercept team.  Who knows what his priorities are - but he's clearly overwhelmed and not responsive to what is happening.

Dakota is pretty much constantly replying to questions in the discord.

1050 messages since the discord was made, with no sign of slowing down since the game was launched.

Also, there's this:

Doesn't look like the game is going to be cancelled, the dev team gutted, etc.

Edited March 3, 2023 by coyotesfrontier

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

1 minute ago, coyotesfrontier said:

Dakota is pretty much constantly replying to questions in the discord.

What a waste of effort.

Also - nothing of substance.  What's needed is some kind of substantial communication - like a 'Dev Post' or "CM to the Testing Community" post.  

Not holding my breath.

[Dakota]

2 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Dakota has rarely responded to anything and hasn't authored a post, AFAIK.  Certainly nothing to address the dumpster fire.

He's a PD employee, not a member of the Intercept team.  Who knows what his priorities are - but he's clearly overwhelmed and not responsive to what is happening.

Hiya, definitely working towards meeting your expectations. For clarification, I do fall underneath PD, but I sit with the Intercept team literally 8 feet away from Nate's desk.

Can't comment on player-count or retention rates or anything like that - but I'll say again that T2/PD are 100% behind the Intercept team. 

[Chilkoot]

1 minute ago, Dakota said:

I'll say again that T2/PD are 100% behind the Intercept team.

(cheer.gif)

[TLTay]

16 minutes ago, Chilkoot said:

Eg:  If PD is, say, $20MM in so far and they completely cut bait, they will recover maybe 10%.  If they believe they are 75% of the way to the "finish line" and still project strong sales of the 1.0 release, they are more likely to pony up the last 6 or 7 million to recover 80% or even hit profitability.

I suppose it all comes down to what the new projections are for 1.0/console sales.  You can bet they are absolutely scrambling to update those numbers given the online backlash to this release.

I agree completely. Very much depends on whether the devs can pull off a stable baseline quickly. Faith in them has been adversely impacted. The brand image has been tarnished, but could be repaired if another KSP1 is the result.

They need to get it working rapidly to prove to everyone that there's a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and not just  waste.

If it looks good enough quickly enough, they might reconsider funding. As it stands, it looks like it has been thrown to the wolves.

The devs themselves are likely being shielded from this kind of discussion as it has been known to impact morale and productivity negatively for many people. They start looking for jobs instead of working. 

Edited March 3, 2023 by TLTay

[Pthigrivi]

4 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Dakota has rarely responded to anything and hasn't authored a post, AFAIK.  Certainly nothing to address the dumpster fire.

He's a PD employee, not a member of the Intercept team.  Who knows what his priorities are - but he's clearly overwhelmed and not responsive to what is happening.

But as noted the other day this isn't the only place where they're interacting with people. This board has 10% of the active daily users that the discord sees, not to mention twitter, insta, tiktok, etc. They're reaching people where they are. They've said what they can say about it, that they know there are big issues with bugs and performance, they're triaging the worst issues, and this work is going to continue into the following weeks and months. Im not sure what else they can say?

[Dakota]

5 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

What's needed is some kind of substantial communication

soon(tm)

[RayneCloud]

Just now, Dakota said:

soon(tm)

Sooner than Soon would be nice pretty please <3 

[Moons]

8 minutes ago, Dakota said:

Hiya, definitely working towards meeting your expectations. For clarification, I do fall underneath PD, but I sit with the Intercept team literally 8 feet away from Nate's desk.

Can't comment on player-count or retention rates or anything like that - but I'll say again that T2/PD are 100% behind the Intercept team. 

I told you before and i will tell you again - i think most of what you do (or to be more specific the place where you do it) is sadly a waste of time - in my opinion. Discord isnt a good tool for the management and communication with a big community - nothing of what you do will shop up if anyone uses google to find information and most of what you do will be hidden in the utter chaos of what is discord. If you did the same ammount of work here it would be visible to everyone doing a google search.

How would you even have a normal discussion about a single specific topic on Discord - and how would anyone outside of discord ever find out about it? Most of the interaction on discord is probably just people joining it because they have discord anyways and doing some casual chat - looks like a lot of interaction - but isnt.

 

To be honest i think Discord is beeing used for lots of things its not made for. Its like steering a car with a touchpad - you can do it - but you probably shouldnt ...

 

Twitter is bad from my point of view aswell because it locks out way too many people these days - without an account a lot of the content on Twitter is locked - i mostly can only read a few posts before twitters wants me to make an account.

Edited March 3, 2023 by Moons

[TLTay]

9 minutes ago, coyotesfrontier said:

Dakota is pretty much constantly replying to questions in the discord.

1050 messages since the discord was made, with no sign of slowing down since the game was launched.

Also, there's this:

Doesn't look like the game is going to be cancelled, the dev team gutted, etc.

They WILL NOT signal it ahead of a decision. You are ALWAYS 100% behind a project until the call is made to the management to shutter it. Read nothing into it. I don't.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

I want to be clear - I am highly critical of the job that PD Dakota is doing, but I harbor no ill will towards him.

So, yeah, do I think he needs to be doing more here to address the community?  Yes.  But frankly he's the one getting paid to manage this - and I don't feel (as a member of the Community) that we are getting anywhere near the kind of response that the Dev Team or Community deserves.  We have all been in difficult situations - and those times require people to rise to the occasion - so it remains to be seen whether the team can accomplish this.

I have great hope for this game... but the reputational harm has been done and continues to be done with every passing day.  There is no hiding what is going on.  The press is terrible, the reports are piling up and long time fans are recommending to everyone WAIT.

I literally am telling people to avoid the title - but I'm testing because I believe in the potential.

So @Dakota - Strongly recommend some kind of lengthy post where you do more than assure us that T2 and PD are supporting the Dev team.  I appreciate knowing that... but give us something to hope for what is coming up in this very public Alpha?

 

7 minutes ago, Dakota said:

soon(tm)

Noted.

Looking forward to it.

Edited March 3, 2023 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[tstein]

I am not sure it is needed any more  communication  unless there is something to communicate. TO  make a post or annoucement when there is no proper content or plan would not help. I am very critic of this game quality, but  I know it is not words that will fix it.  When they have a schedules plan for  patches that is when a more detailed communication could be helpful.

 

What I hope is that this experience   can be absorbed by PD/intercept and they learn to prioritize   things, that the basics are more important than the  sprinkles on top.