A week in... 10% still playing

[TomKerbal]

2 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

I've never seen any mods that have fixed the god-awful UI and attempts at running interstellar modpacks just lead to the usual crashes or save corruptions when trying to mount these missions. KSP 2 on day one was similar, but after a few patches I've been able to cruise around without finding part modules missing or anything, and mission-breaking bugs tend to fix themselves after a reload. The developers are here and are fixing bugs, which I couldn't say for Squad. KSP 2 just came out and I can confidently say the stability has gone up more than I've ever seen KSP 1 do over the course of 1-2 patches.

Mods fundamentally suck. Sorry, but even having thousands of mods provided for free, it's still a high price to pay for a fractured experience with no sole dev team to consult when things go awry.

 You are absolutely free to ignore their acknowledgement of the bugs and the fact they've went on to kill many of them.

I think that is now somewhat exaggerated or even a little unfair of you. Think of the RSS mod or RO mods. I don't know any software with such a superbly organized MOD support as KSP1. I think you are getting a bit carried away, dear colleague.

[K^2]

44 minutes ago, TomKerbal said:

I don't know any software with such a superbly organized MOD support as KSP1.

I don't know, modern mod managers for Skyrim, with virtual file systems, where you can create different configurations without having to go and delete everything, as well as being able to quickly and safely toggle things on and off, are rather nice. I haven't been able to get that level of mod management in KSP1. Maybe I haven't looked hard enough, though.

On the net I agree. KSP1 has some decent mods, and good community support overall. The way the assets are loaded hurts scalability in mods quite a bit, which is a hassle, of course, but not a deal breaker for a lot of people.

Some people just don't like playing with mods, though. And that's something that has to be kept in mind when comparing games. For some people, the fact that some of the problems that KSP2 addresses that could be solved with mods in KSP1 removes all advantage of KSP2 over KSP1. For others, mods aren't a viable option, and KSP1 just doesn't have these features. And then there is a whole spectrum in between. None of these positions are wrong. These are different demographics, and success of KSP2 isn't going to be measured by just one of these groups of players.

[regex]

1 hour ago, TomKerbal said:

I don't know any software with such a superbly organized MOD support as KSP1.

It had good community support for modding, built up over years of experience looking into KSP1's mess of obfuscated code and knowing what was what, but Squad themselves weren't exactly forthcoming with help unless you actually knew one of them and could ping them randomly, or if you knew someone who knew a dev. At least around the time I was modding. No idea if it got better but if it did, that's the sort of situation we're probably looking at with KSP2, modding support from the company will get better (if the team is to be believed) and in the meantime you're pretty much on your own using code sniffers.

[K^2]

45 minutes ago, regex said:

situation we're probably looking at with KSP2

I don't know if you've looked around any KSP2 modding communities, but they're doing some really cool stuff already. Of course, at this point, it's all involving EULA-violating kind of code scraping, since there's no SDK, so I can't link to any examples, and we'll probably have to wait for some official mod support before that changes. But the community is already forming, and that's good to see.

[regex]

Just now, K^2 said:

I don't know if you've looked around any KSP2 modding communities, but they're doing some really cool stuff already. Of course, at this point, it's all involving EULA-violating kind of code scraping, since there's no SDK, so I can't link to any examples, and we'll probably have to wait for some official mod support before that changes. But the community is already forming, and that's good to see.

I haven't but that's good to hear. Hopefully there'll be some good experience built up before an SDK is (hopefully) released, that'll help inform Intercept on what to open up to modders.

[Alexoff]

It's good to have a choice. Someone wants to force the game with mods so that it does not look like the source. Someone like me only uses the graphical enhancements and info-control mods of the tiba mechjab. And someone does not like fashion and does not install them. In KSP2 there is no choice - there are practically no mods. If a Ferrari is parked in the garage, then you can easily walk to work if the weather is good. And if there is not even a bicycle in the garage, then the choice of how to get to work in any weather is one - on foot. It's bad that the developers completely forgot about this feature, or is it such a T2 policy, or is the game so bad that it's not up to it at all.

[Scarecrow71]

Just now, Alexoff said:

In KSP2 there is no choice - there are practically no mods.

Have you looked at the list of mods for KSP2?  There are quite of few of them already, and there are a bunch in the works.

[regex]

9 minutes ago, Alexoff said:

In KSP2 there is no choice - there are practically no mods.

Game came out a little over two months ago. KSP1 has ten years of mod development surrounding it (and one of the reasons I got into modding KSP1 was to implement stuff that I thought was missing around 0.20). Of course you're going to have less choice with KSP2.

Edited May 1, 2023 by regex

[adsii1970]

4 minutes ago, regex said:

Of course you're going to have less choice with KSP2.

For now. But I have faith in our community.

[Alexoff]

11 minutes ago, regex said:

Game came out a little over two months ago.

The letter from the modders appeared quite quickly, just a few days later.

12 minutes ago, regex said:

KSP1 has ten years of mod development surrounding it

Many mods for KSP1 appeared pretty quickly. Transferring them to KSP2 would have been an easier task if it weren't for the lack of proper mod support.

21 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

Have you looked at the list of mods for KSP2?

Yes, I saw it, except for the maneuver editor and a mod with a bunch of flight data, the rest seemed insignificant to me.

[regex]

Just now, Alexoff said:

The letter from the modders appeared quite quickly, just a few days later.

And yet mods are still being made. Weird...

Just now, Alexoff said:

Transferring them to KSP2 would have been an easier task if it weren't for the lack of proper mod support.

You have no idea what you're talking about.

[AtomicTech]

We're currently at 1.7% of the peak players playing today as compared to the peak of 25,000+.

13 minutes ago, regex said:

You have no idea what you're talking about.

Aye, porting a mod over would require a complete rebuild and rewrite of every single aspect of the mod and adapting it to KSP 2 which has a wildly different modding environment internally.

[regex]

17 minutes ago, AtomicTech said:

Aye, porting a mod over would require a complete rebuild and rewrite of every single aspect of the mod and adapting it to KSP 2 which has a wildly different modding environment internally.

It depends on a lot of factors (including your skill), but yeah, the challenges, even with an SDK, are numerous.

IMO the reason we got that letter from the modders (regardless of what was publicly said, and this would be why I would have signed it were I still actively modding) is that updating a mod whenever the game updates can be pretty tiring, especially with KSP's notoriously ... finicky userbase which wants everything now. I already went through that song and dance with KSP1...

Edited May 1, 2023 by regex

[adsii1970]

1 hour ago, AtomicTech said:

We're currently at 1.7% of the peak players playing today as compared to the peak of 25,000+.

That's really a shot in the dark if you are using Steam to track it. Steam only tracks KSP2 or KSP(original) if launched through the launcher. If you bypass the launcher, as I do, it does not count your time in-game nor does it count your game time in the publisher-reported game statistics.

This thread is based on the number of Steam users who are using the KSP2 launcher to begin the game (and it's reporting tool through Steam) because it has no way of knowing how many of us who are playing KSP2 bypassing launching the game through Steam and the T2/PD launcher by going to the .exe file and launching from there.

[Scarecrow71]

1 minute ago, adsii1970 said:

That's really a shot in the dark if you are using Steam to track it. Steam only tracks KSP2 or KSP(original) if launched through the launcher. If you bypass the launcher, as I do, it does not count your time in-game nor does it count your game time in the publisher-reported game statistics.

This thread is based on the number of Steam users who are using the KSP2 launcher to begin the game (and it's reporting tool through Steam) because it has no way of knowing how many of us who are playing KSP2 bypassing launching the game through Steam and the T2/PD launcher by going to the .exe file and launching from there.

And I'll continue to add that it also doesn't track those people who purchased through Epic or got a direct download from PD.

[adsii1970]

10 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

And I'll continue to add that it also doesn't track those people who purchased through Epic or got a direct download from PD.

Exactly. I believe there are a lot more people playing KSP2 than the 10% Steam reports...

[regex]

Enough that the Discord is pretty active no matter what time I check it. Sure, a lot of us (me) are in a waiting pattern because the sandbox game doesn't differ much at all from KSP1 and I'm quite frankly still burnt out on KSP1 gameplay, and there are a lot of bugfixes needed, but I don't really see any reason to get foamed up over the "state of the game" or whatever. YMMV naturally, just saying; just because I'm not booting the game up every night doesn't mean I'm not interested,

Edited May 2, 2023 by regex

[AtomicTech]

24 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

That's really a shot in the dark if you are using Steam to track it. Steam only tracks KSP2 or KSP(original) if launched through the launcher. If you bypass the launcher, as I do, it does not count your time in-game nor does it count your game time in the publisher-reported game statistics.

I'm aware of that; I was just interpreting these statistics as saying that the interest in playing KSP 2 is not the best spot. 

[mcwaffles2003]

Geez there are a lot of angry people...

Y'know, it feels better when you look at it like this. Tell yourself the game isn't launched but now you can actually watch the development happening. Could this be construed as denial? I guess. But I got this game with the expectation of it being a broken mess:

Spoiler

(why is quoting an archived section disabled on here?...)

Like I said though, just act like you are getting a first person view to an unreleased game in the works, now we can interact with the updates instead of waiting for a tidbit every month and a half. And if you are mad you spent money on a broken game at launch... Well, now you know to wait for reviews, this is why the phrase "patience is a virtue" exists.

[K33N]

2 hours ago, adsii1970 said:

Exactly. I believe there are a lot more people playing KSP2 than the 10% Steam reports...

Its 2% sadly, and although the number is probably higher, steam is by far the most popular way to be playing and there are likely far less people playing it on epic and very very few launching it without steam. I would guess that tracked steam users represent more than 50% of the players, likely significantly higher than 50%.

[cocoscacao]

 I don't get why daily player percentage is relevant. Especially at this early stage. I've stopped playing actively two weeks ago, simply because I've reached limit on what I can do / what is currently present. But that doesn't mean I have lost interest in the game. 

[pandaman]

25 minutes ago, cocoscacao said:

 I don't get why daily player percentage is relevant. Especially at this early stage. 

I agree, but it's an easy handle to grab for those that want to criticise and paint a gloomy picture.

Though I suppose it's also the only easily available measure, but it's a very, very rough indicator at best.

[Gotmachine]

11 hours ago, K^2 said:

it's all involving EULA-violating kind of code scraping, since there's no SDK

There never really was an SDK for KSP 1 either, excepted for PartTools, which is just an Unity exporter plugin for the KSP wrapper over the Unity asset format.
And KSP 1 being so modding friendly was in a large part an accidental side effect of early architectural choices (as well as a natural consequence of KSP being an Unity game).
And while Squad definitely put some attention to avoid actively harming moddability and took care of building/refactoring the codebase in ways that would be extensible (especially around 1.0-1.3), most of those architectural choices were to their own benefit as well.
The API and constructs that KSP 1 modders are relying on are with almost no exception the actual internals of the game.

And on the topic of EULA violation, there is absolutely no indication of what is allowed or not as far as the EULA is concerned (be it for KSP  1 or 2), and if you actually read the EULA in the strictest sense, modding isn't allowed at all.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

10 hours ago, adsii1970 said:

Exactly. I believe there are a lot more people playing KSP2 than the 10% Steam reports...

Based on my incredibly scientific poll... You can count the number of Steam players and multiply by 1.75 to get the actual number of players. 

[MechBFP]

2 hours ago, Gotmachine said:

And on the topic of EULA violation, there is absolutely no indication of what is allowed or not as far as the EULA is concerned (be it for KSP  1 or 2), and if you actually read the EULA in the strictest sense, modding isn't allowed at all.

Seems like Private Division just takes the laziest/easiest route possible, no matter how detrimental it is to themselves.