Multiplayer question, how important it is to you?

[RocketRockington]

14 minutes ago, TickleMyMary said:

Went with he closest option but I really have zero interest or intention in multiplayer, it's just not what I play KSP for... And, 63% of responses saying the same should not be ignored.

At this point, assuming they've worked on multiplayer consistently to integrate it into the engine, it's a huge sunk costnand part of the reason for the massive delays. 

Also I don't think the ksp2 design team has a good sense of what the community wants or cares that much (eg Wobble rockets) - they're chasing 'new users' and assume the old users will fall into line and buy it because there isn't much choice if you want something new in Kerbal... fortunately KSP1 mods keep getting updated.

[EvelynThe Dragon]

On 4/15/2023 at 4:07 AM, Master39 said:

IMHO If you don't have a playgroup you're playing wrong.

What an ableist thing to say. Some of us deal with significant mental health issues that make that extremely difficult. It must be a very rosy world for you.

[Superfluous J]

On 4/16/2023 at 5:01 AM, Master39 said:

If you're not coming here with the idea that people playing multiplayer are only interested in "Shooter 23 from Megacorp", you're not not so subtly hinting at the idea that they are too dumb to play KSP

I know this was not directed at me so I am truly not taking any offense, but to be clear. I love (though rarely play anymore, stupid vertigo effects) Shooter of the Week gamefests with my friends. I'd hop on tonight if a) a friend asked me and b) I wasn't currently working. But still, I'd never play KSP multiplayer for the same reason I'd never play Shooter of the Week single player: That sounds really dumb and boring to me.

One game is perfect for multiplayer and has this sad singleplayer add-on. The other is perfect for single player and sure you can race planes or something but if you want to actually play it as a space game multplayer is tacked on. I don't care how well it's going to be tacked on, it's going to be tacked on.

[Guest]

5 hours ago, EvelynThe Dragon said:

What an ableist thing to say. Some of us deal with significant mental health issues that make that extremely difficult. It must be a very rosy world for you.

No, most multiplayer games are designed around teams of 2 to 6 people.

If you go solo you WILL have a bad experience in most games. Finding someone is the solution to that.

Again, I'm not saying that you must play multiplayer or how you should play them, just describing how that world works.

 

5 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

The other is perfect for single player and sure you can race planes or something but if you want to actually play it as a space game multplayer is tacked on. I don't care how well it's going to be tacked on, it's going to be tacked on.

The other is not the same kind of multiplayer game, had nothing in common with it, and the only ones making parallels apparently never played any multiplayer game in their lives.

Factorio, Minecraft, Stellaris, Trailmakers, Stationeers, Space Engineers, Valheilm, Satisfactory...

Let's use examples that are at least relevant to the discussion at hand, shall we?

[Superfluous J]

8 minutes ago, Master39 said:

Factorio, Minecraft, Stellaris, Trailmakers, Stationeers, Space Engineers, Valheilm, Satisfactory...

Let's use examples that are at least relevant to the discussion at hand, shall we?

I'm game.

Factorio multiplayer works. There is no time warp and no need for it. You can do anything from team up on Biters to attempt speed runs. This is not surprising, Factorio is a Perfect Game^TM.

Minecraft multiplayer works. Again there is no time warp and no need for it, and precious few moving parts.

Valheim is Minecraft with Voxels and multiplayer there works.

I've played all 3 of the above for multiple hundreds (if not over 1000) hours each, though I've never played Factorio multiplayer and I've never played Valheim in single player, I played Minecraft in both.

I can't speak on the rest as I don't play them. Space Engineers looks the closest to not fitting what I'm about to say below but I don't know the game well enough.

These are about as similar to KSP* as Shooter Of The Week is. Why? Two things KSP has that none of the above games have (to my knowledge): Time Warp** and the VAB***

*And by "KSP" I'm talking the main gameplay loop of KSP. Not the area around KSC messing about with planes.

**I mean time warp as an absolute necessity to enjoy the game. I know you can "sleep" in Valheim and Minecraft if you convince everyone on the server to. That's nothing compared to "Hey meet me at Jool." "Okay I need to time warp 6 years to get there."

*** Again, I am aware you can build things together in all of these games, and in particular you can build space ships together in Space Engineers. I don't think though that any of these games require one person on the server to segregate themselves from everyone else for anything from fractions to multiples of hours just to make something to play with others, and then possibly test these things over multiple iterations before even being able to join their friends.

[Guest]

56 minutes ago, Superfluous J said:

 

These are about as similar to KSP* as Shooter Of The Week is. Why? Two things KSP has that none of the above games have (to my knowledge): Time Warp** and the VAB***

They're similar as in they are all mostly coop games, in which you play things together, mostly played in small servers.

 

57 minutes ago, Superfluous J said:

 

*And by "KSP" I'm talking the main gameplay loop of KSP. Not the area around KSC messing about with planes.

Agree.

57 minutes ago, Superfluous J said:

**I mean time warp as an absolute necessity to enjoy the game. I know you can "sleep" in Valheim and Minecraft if you convince everyone on the server to. That's nothing compared to "Hey meet me at Jool." "Okay I need to time warp 6 years to get there."

Agree.

 

That's why I brought in Stellaris a few replies ago. You can go a full campaign without ever directly interacting with the other players, and yet people enjoy their multiplayer games nonetheless, and it goes similarly for basically any strategic game with a fog of war system, coop or otherwise.

But that's not all, it was never confirmed that the VAB is not multiplayer (not to speculate, but if you were to implement that and disable the multiplayer it would absolutely look like a mere system to build multiple vessels at the same time), and they've already talked about an asynchronous system to deal with time warp.

None of this are insurmountable problems, but, again, I'm not forcing anyone to play multiplayer.

[Superfluous J]

18 minutes ago, Master39 said:

it was never confirmed that the VAB is not multiplayer

I can't speak on how fun this would be.

Playing KSP with someone else sound bad to me. Using the VAB in tandem sounds like a horror movie.

Edited April 19, 2023 by Superfluous J

[caipi]

I've actually played KSP with Dark Multiplayer (DMP) with some friends years ago. It was somewhat fun with one of them. But the others, oh well, let's just say they didn't increase the gameplay experience. (Even if I enjoyed playing other games with them.)

For me, KSP is mainly a single player game. I also fear that since KSP2 hasn't been developed as a multiplayer game in the first place, it's gonna run into serious trouble when "converting" to multiplayer later on (or rather: trying to convert and probably fail). It will probably just be some limited functions similar to DMP.  I mean seriously, how could you make it a real multiplayer when you have timewarp? Either it needs to timewarp the other players as well. That's gonna create problems. Or you're just gonna have to "resync" the game after the timewarp. But that means that one player can still alter the past of the other player. There will be issues! I doubt it'll ever feel like a real multiplayer. The only real multiplayer aspect I see is supplying and building bases and stations together. But who wants to be a resource mule for somebody else? Especially if there are appropriate mods for resupply missions? That's why I personally don't care much about the multiplayer aspect.

[Smegsy]

I keep seeing timewarp as a reason against co-op play.

Well I played Elite:Dangerous extensively and it had supercruise which is a similar thing. You could see other players in supercruise as some sort of bright blob. Not saying this it how it will work but the problem isn't surmountable.

That said I'll mainly do SP, MP for when I feel like it.

[Scarecrow71]

4 hours ago, Master39 said:

You can go a full campaign without ever directly interacting with the other players,

If this is the case...then what is the point of playing multiplayer?

[Casellina X]

Multiplayer isn't particularly important to me. The handful of people I play other games with wouldn't be interested in KSP2 - not enough action or RPG-style customizability,  and even though you can build rockets and stuff, they don't have the patience to learn orbital mechanics. As much as I'd enjoy bringing one or two of them along for the ride, I know there's a slim-to-none chance I'll experience it. That said, I know there's a contingent of people that are going to be all in on it. So I can appreciate that all of the systems are being built with multiplayer in mind. To add it on at the end could destabilize things even more than they are now. At work I'm extending some functionality, which began as a pretty trivial task. Unfortunately, the work I was told to build on top of, while elegantly composed, does not lend itself to changes without nuking existing functionality and having to start over. So I'm forced to hack together a sloppy fix. I'd hate to see similar happen for KSP2, which is doing things more complex than what amounts to a find and replace.

[Guest]

12 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

Using the VAB in tandem sounds like a horror movie.

Depends on what you're trying to do, I wouldn't constantly use it, but I can see lots of scenarios even if I'm not even actually playing multiplayer.

I've lost the count of how many times I had someone stream me their monitor on Discord to get my help to fix some problem with a craft or a rocket.

Or if we're building a space station together, planning all the modules at the same time in the same VAB would be quite useful. Then every player can take their sub-assembly and build their rocket separately and launch simultaneously from the different launchpads.

And, the game is confirmed to have multiple VABs, so it's not like you have to do it simultaneously. It's all about choice.

 

7 hours ago, Scarecrow71 said:

If this is the case...then what is the point of playing multiplayer?

At the most basic level, players are smarter than the AI empires, no matter of how good or complex they make the AI.

Even if you're not interacting directly the politics play a huge role in the game, everything you do as an impact on the game universe and can change things for everyone.

In KSP2 you're going to have an even bigger and more direct impact on the players, you don't have to be synced with someone and be in the same physics bubble to benefit from their infrastructure.

Look at the Mars sample return mission plan, bring it into KSP, the player playing ESA and NASA would never have to actually interact directly to complete the mission.

Edited April 19, 2023 by Master39

[mcwaffles2003]

I dont see how a game of this magnitude can be fully explored without multiplayer. Not only are there way more worlds to be explored, but now theres the issue of making colonies and managing resources between colonies and all that stuff. Cosmonaut crash is the person I feel that has taken KSP 1 the furthest along this extreme, and it took him years to fill out RSS in his playthrough 

Spoiler

 

I'm excited about multiplayer co-op because it seems like the best way to make the insurmountable task of fully developing a civilization in this game. That aside I'm also excited to see what ways the community mods new ways to interact in this game. There's the obvious BD Armory type gameplay of building fighters to fight one another or doing a similar thing in space, there's also the obvious space race type gameplay that will come stock... but what I'm most excited for is the things I haven't imagined yet. This community has a great sense of humor, passion, and the uniqueness to really birth a new type of game with the open ended possibilities that KSP-2 seems it will offer. Yes its a game about space and rockets but at its deepest core its just a physics simulation with insanely huge boundaries. If this game reaches a point of becoming truly performant, which I still hope it does and believe is possible, the limitations of how we as separate people interact together in this medium is effectively limitless and I just want to see where that goes.

Edited April 19, 2023 by mcwaffles2003

[Scarecrow71]

2 hours ago, Master39 said:

At the most basic level, players are smarter than the AI empires, no matter of how good or complex they make the AI.

Even if you're not interacting directly the politics play a huge role in the game, everything you do as an impact on the game universe and can change things for everyone.

In KSP2 you're going to have an even bigger and more direct impact on the players, you don't have to be synced with someone and be in the same physics bubble to benefit from their infrastructure.

Look at the Mars sample return mission plan, bring it into KSP, the player playing ESA and NASA would never have to actually interact directly to complete the mission.

Never interact directly, but can alter the shape of the game?  You literally just described why I will never play multi-player - other players going out of their way to hose the rest.  At its core, the ability to alter the shape of the game without ever having to deal with other players, whether that be by colonizing planets or cutting off trade routes or what-have-you, simply means that there WILL be players on a server that have no interest in actually playing together but rather going out of their way to "win".

Let's take the inverse here.  If you are in a multi-player game and you simply don't want to interact with the other players, then all you are doing is, effectively, hosing them.  You are taking away resources and trade lanes and planets from other players simply because you can.  It's MP?  They need this too?  Oh, forget them; I came to play BY MYSELF.

You literally made my argument for why some of us will never play multi-player.  And again, if your goal in multi-player is to never interact with the other players, then why are you there?  Why not just play solo instead of taking up the space?

[Racescort666]

54 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

Never interact directly, but can alter the shape of the game?  You literally just described why I will never play multi-player - other players going out of their way to hose the rest.  At its core, the ability to alter the shape of the game without ever having to deal with other players, whether that be by colonizing planets or cutting off trade routes or what-have-you, simply means that there WILL be players on a server that have no interest in actually playing together but rather going out of their way to "win".

Let's take the inverse here.  If you are in a multi-player game and you simply don't want to interact with the other players, then all you are doing is, effectively, hosing them.  You are taking away resources and trade lanes and planets from other players simply because you can.  It's MP?  They need this too?  Oh, forget them; I came to play BY MYSELF.

You literally made my argument for why some of us will never play multi-player.  And again, if your goal in multi-player is to never interact with the other players, then why are you there?  Why not just play solo instead of taking up the space?

Don't get me wrong, I'm in the "KSP doesn't need multiplayer" camp but Elite Dangerous is one of those games where you can play single player, other players doing their thing affect the gameplay, and you wanting to do your own thing has basically zero impact on other players. 

At the thread at large:

I think the thing that is a bit of a struggle for both sides is that there isn't a clear vision for what multiplayer looks like in KSP. If it's "regular KSP but now there are 2+ players doing exactly the same things as solo players," that sounds like it will suck. Frankly, there are a laundry list of reasons why this is a terrible idea, for me it's performance, and that's how I would expect people to grief in that scenario. 

On the other hand, if it's more like automated save file sharing, i.e. "use this refueling base I set up but you don't actually have to interact with me" or "Mission Challenge: launch this thing" or "Recover this thing" or "resupply this base with X resource/kerbals." That makes more sense to me at least. An arena that's used for mods like BD Armory would make sense to a limited extent but Children of a Dead Earth style space combat still requires TimeWarp^TM and I think anything that would be impractical unless it was arena style that moved into something turn based. Again, this would be very tedious to play.

[mcwaffles2003]

5 hours ago, Scarecrow71 said:

You literally just described why I will never play multi-player - other players going out of their way to hose the rest.  At its core, the ability to alter the shape of the game without ever having to deal with other players, whether that be by colonizing planets or cutting off trade routes or what-have-you, simply means that there WILL be players on a server that have no interest in actually playing together but rather going out of their way to "win".

Have you never met nice people or something?  This is misanthropic to the point of parody. Who hurt you?

*hug*

 

Edited April 20, 2023 by mcwaffles2003

[18Watt]

Folks, here's a reminder from the Moderation Team:  Please be polite, especially when referring to or responding to another user.  Not everyone has the same opinion, and that is OK here.  However, insulting or bashing another user because they do not share your opinion is NOT OK.  

[Scarecrow71]

28 minutes ago, mcwaffles2003 said:

Have you never met nice people or something?  This is misanthropic to the point of parody. Who hurt you?

*hug*

 

It honestly has nothing to do with whether I've met nice people or not.  The simple fact is these types of people/players exist, and I don't want to deal with them.  It is easier to just do solo, which is what I'll do.

[mattinoz]

On 4/14/2023 at 8:44 PM, The Aziz said:

I don't like playing with strangers and I don't have any friends who would play it.

Depending how it works - you could use it to play with yourself. 

Use different timelines for separating out unrelated missions. Set up an agency for long running special missions, then let them sync-in to the cannon as shorter timeframe agencies catch up. Joint venture with your own diverse group of agencies for complex missions.

 

[pandaman]

Working on the assumption that MP will be limited to a closed group of upto 16 players (based on what I understand from what Nate said about upto 4 agencies each with upto 4 pjayers) then that indicates that it is going to be primarily small group co-op or space race focused (I don't think KSP lends itself, functionally or socially, to large numbers of individuals doing their thing MMO style).

This should make it relatively easy to filter out those you discover don't play nicely.

Whilst I doubt I will play MP much myself, I can see the appeal and think it is a worthwhile feature.

 

[AlamoVampire]

0/10 will NEVER use multiplayer.  I have 0 desire to do multiplayer in a game whose roots were designed exclusively as single player. For me it adds nothing. I also fail to see a way for parts counts, mods or timewarp to be dealt with in a way that wont feel awkward.  Do others agree with me? Some sure will agree to one extent or another and others will stand diametrically apposed to this opinion while others just cant be bothered to care either way. Thats the fun part, we all will like or not like what we will. Not one of us is right or wrong. A very long way to affirm my complete disinterest in multiplayer in ksp or ksp2.

cheers

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Edited April 20, 2023 by AlamoVampire

[Guest]

10 hours ago, Scarecrow71 said:

Never interact directly, but can alter the shape of the game?  You literally just described why I will never play multi-player - other players going out of their way to hose the rest.  At its core, the ability to alter the shape of the game without ever having to deal with other players, whether that be by colonizing planets or cutting off trade routes or what-have-you, simply means that there WILL be players on a server that have no interest in actually playing together but rather going out of their way to "win".

Let's take the inverse here.  If you are in a multi-player game and you simply don't want to interact with the other players, then all you are doing is, effectively, hosing them.  You are taking away resources and trade lanes and planets from other players simply because you can.  It's MP?  They need this too?  Oh, forget them; I came to play BY MYSELF.

You literally made my argument for why some of us will never play multi-player.  And again, if your goal in multi-player is to never interact with the other players, then why are you there?  Why not just play solo instead of taking up the space?

You are ignoring all I said about player groups.

You don't just join random Stellaris campaigns and start doing stuff. You know the other players beforehand, it's an organized thing and it probably takes a few games before you even try actually opposing empires (as in, trying to conquer each other).

For the first few games you just enjoy mild competition, and the assurance that if the endgame crisis happens at the other side of a player's empire they're not going to block your fleet for some dumb "no military traffic" rule.

Every game is going to leave behind someone at some point. In the case of  coop game, based on collaboration instead of mindless conflict (or games in which conflict is a bit more complex than just clicking heads, such as Stellaris) that limit sits at player groups. For the best experience you need to be in a somewhat organized group or it won't work. It is like that for the vast majority of multiplayer games.

That doesn't mean you have to be IRL friends with a ton of KSP2 players, just that you may open a topic somewhere here in the forum, find a few like-minded players, talk about the dos and don'ts maybe even write them down, and then you start playing, in a private game/server, with either a whitelist or a password, and frequent backups of the main save/world.

If you don't like that GOOD, you be you, but it works, it's a tried and tested way, it's how most of the multiplayer games work. On bigger servers you may start having griefing problems or trolls around, but as always when trying to build something bigger than 10 to 15 people on the internet, at that point you need moderation and moderation tools, nothing new here.

 

I don't know what are the expectations here, to me it's obvious that you don't play some games with random people. If I want to start a D&D campaign I'm not going to stop random people on the sidewalk and scream at them: "Hello Sir, you are now the Dwarf warrior in my D&D campaign, here's your D20, roll Initiative".

 

[pandaman]

6 hours ago, AlamoVampire said:

I also fail to see a way for parts counts, mods or timewarp to be dealt with in a way that wont feel awkward

I'm intrigued to see how they tackle that.  

But at least, I'm not bothered enough about MP for it to be a huge disappointment if they can't make it work sufficiently well, though I hope they can.

[Poppa Wheelie]

I want a different type of multi-player experience than has been discussed so far.  I want to be able to put 2 people into 2 different seats in the same command pod in IVA.  We'll cooperate that way.  With VR would be even better.

[AlamoVampire]

9 hours ago, pandaman said:

I'm intrigued to see how they tackle that.  

But at least, I'm not bothered enough about MP for it to be a huge disappointment if they can't make it work sufficiently well, though I hope they can.

A while back i openly stated that I feared what would happen if they devoted dev cycles too early in the process to a feature that is a PURELY FLUFF feature (which regardless of how much one wants or likes multiplayer, multiplayer is a 100% fluff feature) and how it may negatively affect things. Flash forward to the day of early release and it seems my fears were justified. Im not saying their focus on mutiplayer caused some issues that we see currently but im also not not saying it. 
 

That said I truly doubt they will be able to do it in a truly functional way. My own concerns with timewarp, parts counts, mod compatibility and so on lead me to think this is a task that will meet as much success as Sisyphus and his boulder. But thats me.

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Edited April 20, 2023 by AlamoVampire