Multiplayer question, how important it is to you?

[HebaruSan]

I may never play KSP2 multiplayer (or singleplayer), but cutting a major announced feature would be extremely concerning.

1 hour ago, shdwlrd said:

The big thing with KSP that doesn't apply to Minecraft or Space Engineers is you can't collaborate/assist while designing and building. That's a single player thing with KSP. You can fly with each other, but if you need to design a new craft, you're better off going to single player because there's no chance of interacting with anyone during the designing phase of KSP. (That probably will change with colonies, but for now it's moot.)

This is an excellent point. To be fair, we don't know exactly what they have planned (or how those plans might evolve). A "Share VAB" button is unlikely but not inconceivable.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, shdwlrd said:

The big thing with KSP that doesn't apply to Minecraft or Space Engineers is you can't collaborate/assist while designing and building. That's a single player thing with KSP. You can fly with each other, but if you need to design a new craft, you're better off going to single player because there's no chance of interacting with anyone during the designing phase of KSP.

For the first FEW HOURS of a Stellaris game you don't even know where the other players are or what they're doing, a game is long and you can play the first few sessions without ever seeing one of the other players you're playing with, if you do one or two sessions a week, you can go on for a couple of weeks before you actually interact for the first time with another player empire.

And that's just for the first contact, both cooperation or war aren't that straightforward or obvious, you can find yourself at opposite sides of a lot of things, the map, the political spectrum, an alliance, a war, and often enough you interact from far away and in indirect ways.

And yet MP is a huge thing for that game, and games like it, slow interactions never was a problem for gaming.

 

1 hour ago, shdwlrd said:

Nah, I didn't miss it. It really seems like a lot of KSP players will have a tough time with multiplayer whether it's lack of interest with their group of friends or they don't want to cat herd rando players.

Yes, I get it, tons of people around here don't have a group of friends that is interested in KSP, my point is, those groups of friends exist out there, and it's a prevalent phenomenon. Even among people "violent 13 years old gamerz" playing at "Shooter 385" (that doesn't sound elitist at all) or MMOs you usually don't play solo but more often go with friends, a club, a guild or some sort of play group, especially for team-based games, you're not really playing seriously if you go solo (in those games). 

Again, when Microsoft had to offer a paid service for Minecraft multiplayer they didn't open huge servers, or minigames, which are the most obvious choice if you only superficially know the game (Just open an official Hypixel equivalent, no?) but decided to capture the true invisible audience, they started hosting small servers, the Realms, for smaller friend groups.

I'd argue that most multiplayer gaming is like this, you play a game because your friends also play it and solo players jumping in with randoms are the exception.

 

PS Suggestion if anyone want to get into any MP game: DONT PLAY/INTERACT WITH RANDOMS. Just search a small community/guild/forum/discord server that has a beginner section and start from there, if that group is toxic just leave them and try another one. It will make any game a lot more enjoyable.

[The Aziz]

2 hours ago, shdwlrd said:

The big thing with KSP that doesn't apply to Minecraft or Space Engineers is you can't collaborate/assist while designing and building. That's a single player thing with KSP. You can fly with each other, but if you need to design a new craft, you're better off going to single player because there's no chance of interacting with anyone during the designing phase of KSP. (That probably will change with colonies, but for now it's moot.)

Last time I read about KSP 2 MP the players should be able to share their workspaces - so, collaborate in building, one person building the payload, another the lifter etc; interact with each other's craft - so, collaborate in constructing a space station, adding different modules, maybe even launching nearly simultaneously for faster results...

[asmi]

6 hours ago, shdwlrd said:

The big thing with KSP that doesn't apply to Minecraft or Space Engineers is you can't collaborate/assist while designing and building. That's a single player thing with KSP. You can fly with each other, but if you need to design a new craft, you're better off going to single player because there's no chance of interacting with anyone during the designing phase of KSP. (That probably will change with colonies, but for now it's moot.)

Actually I think this would be fairly easy to implement - think of it like a meeting via MS Teams  or something like that, when one person is controlling the VAB, and the rest are watching, with ability of "organizer" to temporarily pass control over to someone else so that he/she would be able to assist. If you couple it with a voice chat, I can totally see folks collaborating like many do during meetings at work for example. This would be a killer feature for EDU version of KSP2 if it ever sees the light of a day.

Edited April 15, 2023 by asmi

[Piotrr]

That turned out to be an interesting read. Let me adress some points and expand a little on my point of view.

19 hours ago, Master39 said:

The more multiplayer topics I read on this forum the sadder I get for the kind of experiences that must have traumatized the KSP community to get to this level of apprehension towards multiplayer.

[...]

I think we're all missing a whole category of players, I have 230 hours on Factorio, not a lot compared to other more dedicated players, but enough to count as more than the playtime I have on most AAA games. I never finished a single run in single player, I'm simply not interested in doing so. For me Factorio is a multiplayer game and every so often I start a new run with the same friends I've always played it with for the past few years.

Factorio is my favourite game (sorry KSP). With about 1.5k hours sunk into it I've never even touched multiplayer button. And it's not about traumatic expieriences. I don't think I have any. I simply get the most enjoyment when playing alone. Yes, I would like to bring a person or two into my modded Factorio Space Exploration campaign, but it would simply be a pain to find the time to actually play together. Either someone looses a lot of progress or we don't progress at all. Couch coop, hotseat, in-person board games - it's all fun. Once my only option is someone random through internet connection, I'd rather not.

18 hours ago, Scarecrow71 said:

The only person I can trust to not hose me, whether intentionally or unintentionally, in any game is me.  Nothing against other people, and I say play the way that makes you happy.  But I refuse to play multiplayer primarily because I don't trust other players.

I don't see many possibilities for grieffing in KSP. What's the worst that can happen? Someone landing a duck-shaped blockade in the middle of my runway, or attaching to my space station and deorbiting it. It's a bit too soon to speculate how syncing player's timelines would be done, but those problems may not even exist. Think about Souls-like multiplayer when you can opt-in or out of others worlds at will. If my station is safe, because others only ever see it's "shadow", then there is no place for intentionall carnage. And again if there is an option to "enable PvP" and battle that one friend, that's cool.

9 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

If there was an option above the top one of "never ever not even a chance" I'd have picked that.

Honestly I expeced myself with "3.14% chance of happening" to be at the end of the spectrum. I didn't want to be too sugestive with the poll itself (I've seen some bias-inducing polls at this forum), but rather to get a general overview.

 

One more thing: I'm happy that Nate focuses dev team so much on new player expierience and multiplayer. Will it affect me? Not directly. Does it mean that I'll get to play KSP2 later than I would if multi wasn't a thing? Yes. But my altruistic side says: if it means more players get to enjoy KSP, it's well worth additional time.

There is also other side of this coin (that may have impact on my expierience with the game): modders gonna mod. Multiplayer codebase can get them to do things that couldn't be possible without it. Just imagine doing air launch mission and then desyncing time to actually both orbit one vessel and land another without resorting to quicksave loading and sacraficing one in "true timeline".

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Piotrr said:

Factorio is my favourite game (sorry KSP). With about 1.5k hours sunk into it I've never even touched multiplayer button. And it's not about traumatic expieriences. I don't think I have any. I simply get the most enjoyment when playing alone. Yes, I would like to bring a person or two into my modded Factorio Space Exploration campaign, but it would simply be a pain to find the time to actually play together. Either someone looses a lot of progress or we don't progress at all. Couch coop, hotseat, in-person board games - it's all fun. Once my only option is someone random through internet connection, I'd rather not.

It's not abut the fact that everyone has to play every game in Multiplayer. I'm just pointing out that the kind of audience that only play a specific game when they can do so with friends exist, and the kind of bad experiences people point out are more the consequence of the lack of a play group than anything else.

I never finished Factorio alone, not that I haven't started some solo games, but usually when I have the itch to get back to that kind of game my friends soon follow suit and we just start another multiplayer run. But I play other games in the genre, my 58 hours on DSP would be 3x that if only that game was multiplayer, and I don't think I would have endured the 22 hours of Satisfactory without a friend to suffer through it with me.

And, right now, I'm back to the origin, a modded Minecraft, Create, Immersive, Mekanism, always with the same play group.

 

Most multiplayer is like this, being it Minecraft, "Shooter 3506", LOL, Overwatch, Armello, Sea of Thieves or whatever else, most people don't go solo and deal with randoms, people usually have playgroups, if anything to use as an excuse when someone asks them why they're still playing that, old, objectively terrible, P2W game (we all collectively had a blast playing FO76). KSP2 with the announced 4 agencies with 4 players each max (if I didn't get it wrong) seems to be targeting to that audience and that kind of gameplay.

[The Aziz]

7 minutes ago, Master39 said:

most people don't go solo and deal with randoms, people usually have playgroups

 

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, The Aziz said:

 

 

11 hours ago, Master39 said:

PS Suggestion if anyone want to get into any MP game: DONT PLAY/INTERACT WITH RANDOMS. Just search a small community/guild/forum/discord server that has a beginner section and start from there, if that group is toxic just leave them and try another one. It will make any game a lot more enjoyable.

 

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

Edited April 15, 2023 by Master39

[The Aziz]

My only option is not playing at all then

Like I said in my first post, don't like playing with strangers. Most of the people I hang out with don't play what I play because they have toddler level attention span and don't bother with games requiring any sort of long term commitment.

And also when playing groups were forming 10 to 15 years ago I usually couldn't play with them because of very crappy broken pc that effectively prevented me from playing for longer than 20 minutes, so I was left with singleplayer games.

[Alexoff]

I remember about 5 years ago I was on a server with multiplayer KSP1. About half of the players tried to do something useful, and the other half ruined the life of the first. I think the last half had a lot of fun.

[Guest]

4 hours ago, The Aziz said:

My only option is not playing at all then

Like I said in my first post, don't like playing with strangers. Most of the people I hang out with don't play what I play because they have toddler level attention span and don't bother with games requiring any sort of long term commitment.

And also when playing groups were forming 10 to 15 years ago I usually couldn't play with them because of very crappy broken pc that effectively prevented me from playing for longer than 20 minutes, so I was left with singleplayer games.

You're constantly switching between a general argument about multiplayer gaming to your specific situation.

You are making the personal choice not to know new player groups, and are in the specific situation of not liking the games your friends like to play (or not having the hardware to do so). That's totally fine, it's your choice, nothing wrong with it.

But that has nothing to do with the general situation, multiplayer gaming is designed around player groups, a ton of games similar to what KSP-2 is going to be are basically impossible to play with random people, the already mentioned Factorio or Stellaris are good examples of that.

[K^2]

I suspect that there is bias in the results so far. Since MP is delayed, most of the people for whom this was the most important aspect of KSP2 are probably ignoring the early access, and so aren't going to be as active on the forums. So the people for whom the multiplayer is less important are going to be over-represented in this poll. That said, even with this in mind, this is a lot more people who don't care about MP than I expected. To the point where maybe MP should always have been a future expansion goal.

[regex]

24 minutes ago, K^2 said:

That said, even with this in mind, this is a lot more people who don't care about MP than I expected. To the point where maybe MP should always have been a future expansion goal.

I kind of suspected this tbh. On the other hand, the sample size is ... minuscule, so make of that what you will.

FWIW I have no intention of ever playing KSP multiplayer, and I could easily cobble together a playgroup.

[Little 908]

Im interested in  the people responding "I don't want to engage in multiplayer" 

I see multiplayer being like space engineers, where you buy the game, literally to play with someone else. who knows *insert shrug emoji*

[KSK]

I have no interest in multiplayer for all sorts of reasons, none of which I can be bothered to expand on here. Although I've never been traumatized  by a multiplayer computer game.

These days it's very simple. Computer games are what I play when I want to get the heck away from people for a while, and I don't find that my computer gaming time is any less meaningful  as a result.

For social gaming, I prefer board games or tabletop RPGs. Currently playing in two D&D campaigns (both played on a virtual tabletop) and DMing a third (played around an actual table with real clicky-clacky math rocks).

[Guest]

1 hour ago, KSK said:

Although I've never been traumatized  by a multiplayer computer game.

These days it's very simple. Computer games are what I play when I want to get the heck away from people for a while, and I don't find that my computer gaming time is any less meaningful  as a result.

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, that the only possible outcome is griefing of your work, or that the game is somehow too much for the attention span of the multiplayer crowd then those weren't pointed at you.

I'm not telling people that they should enjoy multiplayer if they don't, just trying to shine some light in a huge portion of gaming that, when it comes to this forum, is only seen through the worse possible stereotypes and misconceptions.

The narrative brought by people clearly not interested in multiplayer is as far from the actual experience as it can possibly be, they're thinking Fortnite or LOL when we have a ton of examples of games that are way more similar to how KSP2 multiplayer is going to be.

 

1 hour ago, KSK said:

For social gaming, I prefer board games or tabletop RPGs. Currently playing in two D&D campaigns (both played on a virtual tabletop) and DMing a third (played around an actual table with real clicky-clacky math rocks).

I love D&D, but sadly in my group we never managed to start a successful campaign (We can manage the time in games like Minecraft and Factorio because we can play even if someone is missing, and we usually do).

If I can borrow it as an example what is happening every time we talk about multiplayer on these forums is that what the Dev talk about is a D&D campaign and people react by using as an example and taking at face value the common jokes and memes about Monopoly breaking up families.

[The Aziz]

2 hours ago, KSK said:

clicky-clacky math rocks

[Starhawk]

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[Kaa253]

Reading through this thread I am actually starting to come around to the idea that multiplayer might be worth a try for the following reasons,

• the top response has been the same as mine "I'm not interested in multiplayer. I might check it out, but I'm not going to play it a lot" 
• so these are possibly the very people who might form a play group I could live with?
• and because otherwise these FPS gamers are all around me ... 

On 4/15/2023 at 10:49 PM, The Aziz said:

Most of the people I hang out with don't play what I play because they have toddler level attention span and don't bother with games requiring any sort of long term commitment.

I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member. Groucho Marx  

[jost]

6 hours ago, Kaa253 said:

Reading through this thread I am actually starting to come around to the idea that multiplayer might be worth a try for the following reasons,

• the top response has been the same as mine "I'm not interested in multiplayer. I might check it out, but I'm not going to play it a lot" 
• so these are possibly the very people who might form a play group I could live with?
• and because otherwise these FPS gamers are all around me ... 

I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member. Groucho Marx  

Sorry to spoil your fun but  I used that opinion because there wasn't a "I'm not interested in multiplayer and don't want to play it ever". 

[Scarecrow71]

@Kaa253

I'm in the same camp as @jost with my selection.  There was no option for "I'm not going to play multiplayer in any fashion", so I went with the one that was closest to that.  I sincerely wish the OP would have included the "Never going to play it" option because now the results are skewed in that the poll shows that everyone who has replied is going to at least try it, which isn't accurate.

[Alexoff]

It will be funny if Nate appears in the topic and says that since no one needs multiplayer, then they will not do it

 

Wait, maybe it was he who started the topic?  Perhaps the topic will soon appear that we don’t really need colonies either?

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Scarecrow71 said:

@Kaa253

I'm in the same camp as @jost with my selection.  There was no option for "I'm not going to play multiplayer in any fashion", so I went with the one that was closest to that.  I sincerely wish the OP would have included the "Never going to play it" option because now the results are skewed in that the poll shows that everyone who has replied is going to at least try it, which isn't accurate.

Fun fact I haven't voted because I feel it lacks on the other side of the spectrum too.

I'm going to be the host, the server is going to be my single player save, and I'm going to play a lot more than the rest of my playgroup, which will probably buy the game after MP drops.

 Technically speaking, "I will mostly play single player, but I'm also going to engage in multiplayer." is the most accurate description of my situation, but it's also the farthest possible from it conceptually.
 

[EvelynThe Dragon]

On 4/14/2023 at 6:03 AM, Scarecrow71 said:

The only person I can trust to not hose me, whether intentionally or unintentionally, in any game is me.  Nothing against other people, and I say play the way that makes you happy.  But I refuse to play multiplayer primarily because I don't trust other players.

I hose myself in games all the time... I am quite good at it.  

And I have had ZERO interest in multiplayer games of any kind. Ever. 

Edited April 19, 2023 by EvelynThe Dragon

[TickleMyMary]

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.

Edited April 18, 2023 by TickleMyMary