Poll: Reviews and Perception of KSP 2 EA release v0.1

[Chilkoot]

Reviews can make or break a game.  What would it take for you to leave a positive review of KSP 2 on, say, Steam or another platform where you can leave public feedback for other prospective purchasers?

[regex]

I left a positive review with a caveat that only die-hard fans who are interested in getting in on the ground floor of early access should buy. I'm also pretty optimistic about the game and even if it (for some reason) dies tomorrow I'd say I've gotten my money out of it 45 hours in.

[The Aziz]

I don't like changing my reviews, so it's going to wait until all planned features are in place. The game has gigantic potential but isn't quite there yet thanks to its roughness. I can't say I don't recommend it, as there is only I think one game I finished and truly hated, but unfortunately I can't recommend it to anyone in its current state either.

[Stoup]

I'd love to see this game in a state where I'd recommend to people I care about who are interested in the relevant topics! 

But that day is not today

[whatsEJstandfor]

If I could play this exact same game, performance issues and all, but just have no bugs that corrupt my saves or destroy my crafts randomly or cause decouplers to not separate or cause the map view to lose orbit lines or cause orbit lines to not show up in other SOIs, I would have already left a very positive review. By far, the thing that makes me either not want to play it, or to stop playing after only an hour or so, is that it feels like I'm fighting it so much. I can take bad performance (just lower the settings and squint harder) or the features not all being there (just have fun messing around in the Kerbolar system) or even little bugs (they're inevitable and sometimes fun). But the stuff that stops me in my tracks, and forces me to either try reloading an older save or investigating my save file to find what went wrong, those are untenable.

[DeadJohn]

IMO it's too soon to be reviewing. KSP2's current state is more like a prototype than a product.

I expect things to be further along when they have science mode in the game. Have fundamental bugs been fixed? Are deltaV and TWR shown to players? Did they avoid adding too many new bugs with each patch?

"Indifferent" is the best word to describe my feelings. It's just a game. I'm hopeful it will turn into a great game, yet disappointed that 3 years of delays didn't make more progress. Software development is hard.

Edited March 8, 2023 by DeadJohn

[Fluke]

1 hour ago, Chilkoot said:

Reviews can make or break a game.  What would it take for you to leave a positive review of KSP 2 on, say, Steam or another platform where you can leave public feedback for other prospective purchasers?

This is a VERY well written poll. Thank you. I hope this can give some insight to the CMs and Dev team. 

[RocketRockington]

I put down other, because I think even with critical bugs fixed, and performance improved,  I wouldn't expect full content in an EA.  But also the price was too high for an EA with the amount of content it released with.

So either the price should have been lower - which I don't think is a good strategy tbh for a long term even higher KSP2 price point, or it needed some more content, though not all.  A progression mode of any type for instance.  

A free demo with even more limited content than what's out now,  but still more stable and performant, would also have been a reasonable way to release something as a stopgap to keep people happy and waiting for the full product.

[silent_prtoagonist]

Specifically, once the worst of the bugs and performance issues are addressed, and once the colonies update hits, adding the first feature beyond what's available for KSP 1, then I'll feel comfortable recommending it to non-KSP-fanatics at the current price. 

2 hours ago, Fluke said:

This is a VERY well written poll. Thank you. I hope this can give some insight to the CMs and Dev team. 

Agreed, a rare example of a well written forum poll. Props to OP. 

[VlonaldKerman]

4 hours ago, DeadJohn said:

IMO it's too soon to be reviewing. KSP2's current state is more like a prototype than a product.

If it costs $50, it’s not too soon to be reviewing.

If it’s a prototype, it shouldn’t cost $50.

 

For me personally, I haven’t reviewed yet; my review will hinge on whether or not the first few patches reassure me that the game will get finished and fulfill its clearly massive potential. The game is currently not even approximately worth $50, except for the potential future value of the game once it’s finished with some appropriate time/probability discount… therefore, the most important aspect to consider when writing a review is, IMO, what is the probability you will one day get a game worth $50+?

3 hours ago, Fluke said:

This is a VERY well written poll. Thank you. I hope this can give some insight to the CMs and Dev team. 

Agreed. Awesome poll

[InterstellarDrifter]

TBH I'd be much happier and practically content with KSP 2 as-is even @ $50 smackeroos, if it were not for 1 thing...the critical game breaking bugs. If what we got just worked, and I mean WORKED, I could see me being ok with spending 50 bucks and a lot more time in the game(though I already have 55hrs logged)but I play every day(I'm quadriplegic so games are my job), and every day, bugs screw up my sessions to where I quit, and not from boredom . I can get pretty creative, but that seems to just bite me in my green kerbal ass. The code doesn't have much function outside of a pedestrian, common, use case scenario(i.e. simple rocket going to LKO), which is quite disappointing. EA or not, this is the lowest bar I've seen a game release in.

Soooowwuhh,  I'm headed back to my RO-RP1 install.       but I'll be waiting for you KSP2.

[Periple]

I left a positive review. Gist of it was that it's very rough but there's a great game waiting to be finished in there, and if you're interested in seeing that happen, you'll have a great time... but if you just want to play the game, you should probably wait a few months.

[Dakitess]

Wow, so much people being optimistic !... It actually feels good to see, as a very pessimistic guy regarding KSP2. Maybe it's just a point of view issue and things are not going that bad, if most people still believe in it somehow.

[InterstellarDrifter]

And well, two things seem pretty obvious. The community is hopeful and optimistic, which I wouldn't expect less lol. And that the big bugs are the main concern. I think most of us would be content(for EA that is) if what we have just worked right. So, it seems that fixing 0.1.0 is the MOST important thing intercept could be focused on at the moment.

[pandaman]

I haven't left an 'official' review, but as it is now (EA v0.1.0) it certainly shows promise. Bugs aside, it's lacking a few things and basic functionality that I thought would be in this initial EA relase.

Currently it's clearly not suitable 'new' players.

[Tazooka]

At 2 hours of playing KSP 2 I left a positive review. However at 6.8 hours (where I currently am) I changed it to a negative review as I experienced a lot more game breaking issues and bugs that left me not wanting to play or enjoy KSP 2 at the moment.

I have not played KSP 2 for a few days now, which I did not expect to happen once the game was released as I was looking forward to it for a long time.

Once the critical bugs are fixed and its playable, I will publish a positive recommendation review again. 

[Guest]

I think this poll lacks a middle way between optimistic and disappointed.

KSP in general is my favorite game, but KSP2 is only one of at least a dozen early access games I own on Steam (Steam tells me it's 38 games with that tag, but I don't know how accurate the tag is), some where better and more polished than KSP2 when I first bought them (Dyson Sphere Program and Timberborn are notable examples) some where worse (looking at you Stationeers) some of them evolved in directions I didn't like (Juno/SR2, Simple plane and its paid VR update, or Satisfactory), a few I forgot about (Balsa Model Flight Sim? How is that game going these days?), and a whole lot went on to release as full 1.0 games (Hardspace: Shipbreaker, Minecraft, Factorio, Terraria, VTOL VR...).

I'm waiting for an update, when the update drops I'll test it out and see if it's still a game to mess around with for 15 minutes (now that 10 of those minutes aren't taken by the loading screen) or a game to get addicted with and spend hundreds of hours on. KSP2 isn't there yet.

I know it's been said over and over around here, but this is Early Access, and for me that means I'm going to wait for an update, test the differences, and see if the game is ready yet for a longer run, rinse and repeat with the next update if it's not. It's an healthier mindset than just waiting for a release date that's months away.

[Tazooka]

8 minutes ago, Master39 said:

I think this poll lacks a middle way between optimistic and disappointed.

True, that's how I feel too

[Chilkoot]

13 hours ago, Fluke said:

This is a VERY well written poll. Thank you. I hope this can give some insight to the CMs and Dev team. 

Thank-you    When you don't work for the company, you can use language and ask questions that CM's my need to avoid, but understanding discontent in clear terms is important.

5 hours ago, Master39 said:

I think this poll lacks a middle way between optimistic and disappointed.

Heh - I knew I'd get called out on that, but it was intentional.  With those "how do you feel" kind of questions, grey data points are messy, so the form needs to prod respondents into exactly 4 different shades of positive/negative.

[KSK]

I’m down for: Critical bugs gone, Performance, and Other, but please bear in mind that I’m going off what I’ve read about performance. I haven’t bought the game yet so have no idea how it actually runs on my computer.

As for Other:

More than Sandbox is my main requirement. I had plenty of sandbox time in KSP1 and whilst a prettier sandbox is always nice, I’m unlikely to plunk down my money just for that.

Next requirement (and this might sound trite) is for the good bits of the game to outweigh the meh bits or plain bad bits. I haven’t been following KSP2 development with bated breath but I’ve read enough about it that there are planned gameplay elements that I think I’ll like and planned gameplay elements that *as written*, leave me cold. Time will tell but I’m not expecting to love everything about KSP2.

(Incidentally, I’m not fussed about all promised features being included. Promises change, can be harder to implement than expected, and can get quietly dropped.)

Finally - a well thought out interface that works well with whatever new features get added. As KSP1 acquired expansions, I often felt that the UI didn’t really grow to accommodate the more elaborate features very well, especially stuff like robotics and rotorcraft, which felt kinda wedged into UI paradigms that didn’t really work very well for them.

Some of that is no doubt down to me but on the other hand, I do only have finite time and patience for figuring out UI quirks. I have plenty of other things to be doing and hobbies to be enjoying rather than beating my head against the wall of any one computer game. That’s a general observation - I’m not singling out KSP2 here.

 

[caipi]

I left a negative review because I think -from experience with other EA games- that this game is in an (pre-?) Alpha state, worse than KSP 1 at 0.23 (when I first bought KSP1), not worth the money, and has been disimproved a lot!

I don't care about performance and "promised features" in an EA. Bug fixing and performance are something for a Closed or Open Beta. So Fuel Flow is currently completely broken (even without landing legs etc.), so what? Easy fix. Kerbals count as Debris and cannot EVA if persistent debris is set to 0. Well, that sounds like an easy fix as well. And all the other tiny and large bugs.

What I do care about is that it feels like the devs barely played the original game and made lots of changes which are worse than the original. To name just a few:

The entire interface is way too big, takes up too much screen space (I think a modder in this community once said that screen space is very valuable real estate and should not be wasted - was it LGG? I don't remember), and centralizes a lot of things which makes it hard to compare or access multiple stuff simultaneously. Individual Part Windows are gone. They have been split among Resource Manager, Part Manager, etc. I can't just click on a part and see its fuel content and click on another part and see its content.  In general, the idea of a Resource Manager is good. But why not make it an addition to the individual part window? Same for Part Manager. Why do I always have to open such a big, chunky Manager just to do something tiny? And having to hover over 20 tanks (so that it gets visually highlighted) by the same name just to find the one I'm looking for is just such a bother.

Asparagus Staging is apparently not as easy as in KSP1 anymore because you cannot separate parts in staging anymore (e.g. if decouplers have been added in symmetry mode). Why? It is also a bother having to add all fuel lines one by one. Previously you could just symmetry add them and remove the last two.

/edit: I completely forgot that fuel flow priority has been completely removed for no apparent reason. Yet another disimprovement over KSP1 - why? /editend

Most annoying: If you, the developers, want people to test your product so that they help you in developing a bug free product, don't make them pay for it like a AA game. I remember the time when players were invited and paid (in one form or another, even if it were only cosmetic ingame goodies worth 0) to help developers. Now I have to pay for it an absurd amount of money (for the given broken state of a ported game based on its predecessor)? Thanks but no thanks. I finally refunded the game and don't know if I'll buy it again. It looks too much like a cheap cash grab right now and KSP1 offers much more user friendly content which hasn't been disimproved by a single-minded developer vision of a narrow and centralized gameplay. I fear that with the current direction of the development, KSP2 will miss out on the great diversity that KSP1 offered and which made it so successful. KSP1 had so much possibilities for mods. KSP2 seems to close the door on many cases already.

Edited March 8, 2023 by caipi