Shine On, You Crazy... Planet?!?

[Kerbart]

On 4/28/2023 at 5:00 PM, Nate Simpson said:

On the subject of updates: our update cadence is going to slow down a little bit. There are a couple of reasons for this, not least of which is that every time we release an update, we divert resources that would otherwise be focused on continuing to improve the game. We are always balancing our desire to improve the current Early Access experience against long-term goals that involve more time investment. This is a very personal issue for me, because as a fan I want the game to be perfect and awesome right now! But since genies don’t actually exist, that’s not how we’ll arrive at the best version of KSP2. We will continue to release updates prior to our big Science Feature update, and hopefully a slower update cadence will mean that when they do go out, they contain more robust improvements.

Without wanting to be as audacious as telling the devs what to do (there are plenty on the forum who consider themselves  much better at that), why not distinguish between patches (bug updates) and feature updates? So we'd get 1.2.1, 1.2.2, 1.2,3 and then 1.3.0 with new/refreshed features, and so on.

The bug fix releases can sill have a pretty fast cadence without putting too much strain on feature development. At the moment there are still plenty of bugs that will stop people from playing the game, or from enjoying it at the level where they should.

[Xelo]

53 minutes ago, regex said:

He actually promised? Does anyone actually have a source for this quote? KSP developers have historically been pretty bad at communicating (seems like a curse of the franchise) but to actually promise the game was near completion two years before EA release?

I believe in this 2021 interview, Nate mentions being in the final stretch for release (near the beginning)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RHbvphmnyE&ab_channel=GamerHubTV
 

58 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

But it's still the same tired line we got for 3 years leading up to EA, coupled with Nate's promise from 2021 that the game was nearly finished. 

Yes, while I dont doubt the game is in questionable shape, this would be the reason I wont trust any predictions of completeness in software development in future. I'll believe it when I see it. The projects with accurate predictions tend to be the outliers and most projects blow their time budget internally. This is why most studios don't release dates at all until they are nearly done.
But not to fault Nate, such is the PR reality of trying to predict software and he is not a programmer or a veteran game PR guy but the creative director (that is in charge of the art).
And to his credit, the art side of things is fairly 'complete'! He did his job well. The game visually looks great and the art assets are top notch and carry a strong identity. Most of the updates shown pre-release, were spearheaded by the art and vfx department. 
So something happened in the software side of things, where Nate was less privy perhaps and it was understandable that he had a overly optimistic prediction. But there are clues.
✨Speculation time ✨
There is an old adage in software development that "90% of the work happens in the predicted last 10% of the project". Now picture yourself in Nate's shoes in 2021, riding off the covid era. In the video, Nate mentions the 'all these larger portions being sewn together'. 
We can infer these portions to be separate systems of the game being developed in isolation. One programmer may be doing the PQS, one may be doing the rocket physics, one the save serialisation and so on. 
You are told these pieces are nearly done, and pieces like the colonies and science are going along a good pace.  Surely, one thinks, once the pieces are brought together, we would have a functional game in no time right?
And you can see where the problem of prediction starts...  while the planned schedule suffers a slow death by a thousand additions that no-one could've predicted looking at features in isolation. 


But it doesn't matter, in hindsight the warning signs were all there with tangible gameplay only being shown less then a year before release. And I guess if its not there it might as well not exist.

Edited May 1, 2023 by Xelo
wording

[Alexoff]

The worst thing is that the developers are absolutely not going to do anything with mod support. I think if KSP1 had not been benevolent and convenient for modifications from the very beginning, then it would hardly have met with such success. Nate never once said anything about mods, the community manager only wrote that she saw an open letter, the story ended there. Now, even if the game is suddenly fixed in a couple of patches, there is absolutely nothing to do in it except what could be done in vanilla KSP1.

[regex]

13 minutes ago, Xelo said:

I believe in this 2021 interview, Nate mentions being in the final stretch for release (near the beginning)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RHbvphmnyE&ab_channel=GamerHubTV

"we're releasing next year" in June 2021, so they were a little less than a year past that. hrm...

Edited May 1, 2023 by regex

[Majorjim!]

On 4/29/2023 at 12:27 AM, Little 908 said:

Rip, I guess its gonna be years until we finish the roadmap 

Honestly the early access hasn’t been going great, and I think this is the breaking point for me, I don’t think the game will be at the 1.0 release for quite a long time. I might hop into the game now and then for updates and maybe to update my tips and tricks, but I don’t think playing it for 30 hours every two weeks, is going to be fun. 

I’ll probably still be on the forums 

It will be at 1.0 in a little over a year I think but I also think it will at that point still be a very poorly performing broken game… the longer this goes on the dream that once was for an amazing KSP2 is dying. 

On 4/29/2023 at 1:21 AM, twich22 said:

We went through it with KSP 1 and it ended up being great. We will just have to do the same with KSP 2. Cant wait for the next update!

This is NOT the same thing… KSP was made by folk who where not game developers! This is a supposed professional game making studio.. this will not end well. 

[Majorjim!]

19 hours ago, BowlerHatGuy3 said:

Nah dude DLCs suck.

All KSP content should be in KSP 2 NOT a DLC. Make something more and better for KSP 2 and make that DLC. If they make robotic parts DLC I think I might cry.. 

[Scarecrow71]

59 minutes ago, Majorjim! said:

It will be at 1.0 in a little over a year

I highly doubt this.  The game is barely playable in its current state, major bugs still need fixing, we've received no new content in the game, the first major feature (Science) is still being worked on, and Nate came out last week and indicated they are slowing down the cadence for patches.  What on Kerbin makes you think they can hit 1.0 - which is every major feature on the roadmap being implemented - in a years' time?

[cocoscacao]

Just now, Scarecrow71 said:

I highly doubt this. 

Alas, me too. However, I am wondering if the current bugs can be fixed within, say... 5 patches, so the rest of the roadmap can come faster. 

[Little 908]

1 hour ago, Majorjim! said:

It will be at 1.0 in a little over a year

Theres no way, especially with updates slowing down.

[Xelo]

Reading through the rest of the comments, I dont get it.
The only difference between the timelines of people being ok with KSP 2 and people being angry at KSP 2 in this forum, wouldve been if T2 had just shut its month until late 2022 and started with EA.  No changes to development time, nothing extra promised, nothing. 
To me it seems people that are angry literally took time and scope guesstimates as prophecy, and now blame the game developers for the publishers misguided PR strategy?
Has the fact that its a professional game studio or big publisher ever guaranteed game quality on launch in the lord's year of 2023? I feel like even small indies have a better track record.
Why on earth is the art director (Nate) the only one chosen for doing interviews on the game's programming progress ? What happened to the other 3 directors?
Like where do these expectations for the devs come from? Shouldnt yall be angry at the publisher for setting those expectations, (and the inflated price) up in the first place? 
I guess only in the games industry can you expect people to complain about the dairy farm when the grocery knowingly sells expired milk.

[PDCWolf]

2 hours ago, Xelo said:

The only difference between the timelines of people being ok with KSP 2 and people being angry at KSP 2 in this forum, wouldve been if T2 had just shut its month until late 2022 and started with EA.  No changes to development time, nothing extra promised, nothing.

The downgrade to EA was announced in October 2022, that was always gonna cause extreme friction, as they showed an allegedly complete game in 2019 with a release date in 2020. That's always gonna be a torn in any discussion, what happened in those 3 years? (apart from game development which clearly didn't).

2 hours ago, Xelo said:

To me it seems people that are angry literally took time and scope guesstimates as prophecy, and now blame the game developers for the publishers misguided PR strategy?

In 90% of cases, people will funge "developers", "publisher", "them" and such under the same umbrella. There are some outliers like blaming the tech director, but other than that... not too much specific hate towards the devs.

2 hours ago, Xelo said:

Has the fact that its a professional game studio or big publisher ever guaranteed game quality on launch in the lord's year of 2023? I feel like even small indies have a better track record.

It was their words not the community's. They've been quoted many times saying they've been working to get a "complete, performant" KSP2 out. Even after the tragedy that was release, they have been still taking in a completely tone-deaf manner like they're playing something different than released. It is nothing more than reminding them they set expectations. More importantly, prices set expectations.

2 hours ago, Xelo said:

Why on earth is the art director (Nate) the only one chosen for doing interviews on the game's programming progress ? What happened to the other 3 directors?

One of them got fired and posted a cope-letter on LinkedIn, not sure about the rest. Even on that thread, the PR was tone-deaf.

2 hours ago, Xelo said:

Like where do these expectations for the devs come from? Shouldnt yall be angry at the publisher for setting those expectations, (and the inflated price) up in the first place?

Devs have been pretty open about talking to people (in videos, discord, dev blogs, AMAs), and thus they've received dev-directed backlash. It's not black or white, there's a bit of everything.

Edited May 1, 2023 by PDCWolf

[Alexoff]

2 hours ago, Xelo said:

Like where do these expectations for the devs come from?

Have you tried playing KSP2? After all, the game was created by the developers, not the publisher. The publisher raised the price shamelessly, the developers made the game shamelessly.

[Jacob Kerman]

On 4/28/2023 at 5:40 PM, kanabeach83 said:

ridiculous. 50€ for that?? Really ?? now that the money is in your pocket, by chance the rate of updates decreases. I'm not at all surprised. when I see that for ksp1, the bug still persists, I can't even imagine KSP2. a disaster. it's good to want to bring in money, but you still have to justify it. the game is unplayable, even with a good config. ksp1's bugs are again on 2, but worse. corrupted save, exploding ship, no aero, no science, honestly, with more than 2000h of play on ksp1, I am giving up your buggy license forever and one thing is for sure: I will never be fooled into buying again early access. It's a well-disguised scam, congratulations..

Come on man, its early access, give it some time. I mean, its not like you bought it not knowing what was and wasnt there. They said it wasnt done. They said it wouldnt be done for a while. Give it time, not accusations.

23 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

One of them got fired and posted a cope-letter on LinkedIn, not sure about the rest. Even on that thread, the PR was tone-deaf.

WAOH, who got fired?

 

[m4inbrain]

As much as it sucks, that's me out. Waited on reviewing the game until now, but with the announcement that the "development schedule" is slowing down now because apparently, they were going breakneck speeds prior.. Nah. 

Uninstalled today, will stew a bit in my own juices being annoyed at my own stupidity for buying the  game despite knowing better, and then it goes to the void where hundreds of my other steam games disappear to. 

PS: a comparable team in size would be Icarus Studio.  While there's no argument from me that Icarus isn't an award winning game (to put nicely), fact of the matter is that they managed a high cadence of patches until they literally switched to weekly updates (be it bugfixes, balance changes or content updates). Thankfully we can make a reasonably apt comparison since they've released end of february (2021) too. From 18th of february to first of may, they've released 11 patches. Now, they of course weren't always huge updates, but the ones that weren't, usually were fixes for single game breaking issues, of which KSP2 has plenty. 

I gave it a go, got burned, then gave the team a chance to show that they didn't bite off more than they can chew with this franchise - got burned again. Fool me once and stuff. 

[Scarecrow71]

45 minutes ago, Jacob Kerman said:

Come on man, its early access, give it some time.

We gave it 3 years while it was still in development.  And it was during this 3 years that we were told at one point that the game was nearly finished...and then delayed.  And we got the same tired excuse during that 3 year period that we are getting now - we are working on it, the devs are doing everything they can, we want this to be as polished as possible, blah blah blah.  Now, after release, they aren't fixing the major bugs, and they are slowing down the cadence by which they are releasing fixes.  All while showing us shots of them playing multi-player, or showing off shiny new graphics.  Where is the game that was nearly finished in 2021?  Why are they working on features at the far end of the roadmap?  Why haven't they released new content?

We've given them time.  Several years.  A lot of the community, myself included, simply is done with the excuses and the misdirection.  I get that it's early access, and there is no guarantee of anything.  But what we got was certainly not worth the money we paid, and to tell us to keep waiting while they work on stuff that isn't going to fix the game and make it playable is just obscene.

[levenson]

I wonder what would community say if science mode or other non-finished ones would be released as is. 

Are they so bad? There is something that I always liked in KSP. 

Unfortunately I didn't play ksp1 that much, due to lack of proper computer back in a day.

Now, I got cloud PC, and still cannot play.  I paid for both.

I watched all the tutorials. Sent *something* to orbit, but that is it. 

Trying to recreate Apollo programm.

Edited May 1, 2023 by levenson

[PDCWolf]

1 hour ago, Jacob Kerman said:

WAOH, who got fired?

The layoffs came shortly after release, that thread had the link but the mods merged the old threads and deleted the OP from the second so now you have to search in that one which looks unrelated. Paul Furio was the Technical Director, he was the only big name whose layoff went public I think. Here's the message on his LinkedIn, since the mods deleted references to that too.

Edited May 1, 2023 by PDCWolf

[Alexoff]

It's amazing that more than 2 months after the release of a "decent alpha version" of the game, everyone is so excited. I have written many times since 2020 that the developers are not telling us something, that there is something wrong with the game on the technical side, that we are being tested by videos with poor FPS. Maybe if the community had decided to start getting suspicious and grumbling before release, then T2 might have gotten scared. Then the studio would have received more money, time and promises of punishment in case of an unsuccessful release, maybe there would have been emergency professionals in T2 who would have sorted out problems in the game code. I have a feeling that the big bosses of T2 let the development of KSP2 take its course, perceiving that it would somehow come together. For many reasons, the developers could not cope and did not ring the bells that the game would be completed at such a pace by 2077.

[moeggz]

Having played since KSP 1 alpha…

I just have to say, I miss HarvesteR. Should’ve known something was up when he was kept in the dark until the public announcement. Like at least ask him how programming the first one went and get some insight. Also just out of respect let him know.

[robgraham]

I'm just disappointed in how the entire release and post release communication and community expectations are being handled. Intercept/PD/Take 2 knew what state the game was in prior to EA release, but continued to push the hype train on it, then seem to act as if the backlash over the state of the game that they have charged people near full price for is because the 'buyers' are at fault. When their patch cadence at first gets called out they make excuses that 'well its gotta be checked and signed off on and all this stuff' as if it's being released to a console were you have to have 3rd party validation take place, they bluntly ignore when those who've been around from the start point out that its strange that we could get fast update cadence from a smaller far less experienced team back in the day etc.

Even this announcement SHOULD have been done better, full stop end of story. IF YOU are coming to the community going 'hey we need more time between patches, come with more then vague statements. Honestly I think if they had actually given estimates on how much time between patch cycles was likely to be, while some of the community would be disappointed the amount would be far less. But rather then Nate or someone else stopping going to management and doing this:

"Hey guys, if i'm going to be going to the community and telling them we are slowing down the patches to fix the bugs in our game, I'm going to need to have something to give them in return, how long are we talking for patch cycles now? every 8 weeks instead of 4? Every 12? Give me something we can give them so they KNOW what to expect, they have paid money we owe them that at least"

We basically get nah i'll get those answers later, because apparently it's too hard to ASK before making a statement.

I never thought I'd be looking at KSP and here and going 'what happened' given at this stage in 1 if something went wrong etc Harv was willing to be upfront to the community about it. and I know others will say that 'oh but x happend and y'... I don't care about the other parts at the moment, I care about my experience from literally Squad's first releases onwards compared to how this ones been handled. 

Why? Because I can recall sitting in a forum thread talking OPENLY about updates with them, about how for example building a rocket over x height became impossible and that a launch tower system was really needed, even if it was simply something that put a simple clamp onto the rocket and having Harv and another dev grab the quote and go 'Hey awesome idea, we've been throwing it around here and I think you'll like the next update in a weeks time'.. Or when he released something buggy how rather then 'hey guys your gonna have to wait who knows how many weeks for us to fix it' at times we would see rapid fire hot patches that YES some times broke the game worse but other times rapidly fixed the game.. and you know what? It didn't matter, it was EA we knew it was EA we knew that we were playing Beta's the update cadence and rapid no QA tested stuff didn't bother us, we WERE the QA.

That all seems to be lost here.. We have what at times feels like condescending remarks in press releases and discord statements, lack of open and honesty about what is going on, statements that seem well.. to contradict themselves (We aren't going to patch the game to fix bugs, because patching the game to fix bugs takes away from us being able to patch the game to fix bugs!). Etc.

For the first time in a long while, this last press statement made me change a positive review to a negative.. because if Take 2, PD, Intercept etc can't give time frames for when we can expect patches after 3 years of development, delays, can make statements like they are happy with how it released etc.. I can't recommend to my mates that they should buy into the game. Because at this point I'm not certain I would now.

[Superfluous J]

6 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

There are some outliers like blaming the tech director, but other than that... not too much specific hate towards the devs.

2 minutes later...

6 hours ago, Alexoff said:

the developers made the game shamelessly.

 

[AtomicTech]

Man, what a community we've got here 

Not afraid to sugar-coat anything!

4 hours ago, Alexoff said:

I have written many times since 2020 that the developers are not telling us something, that there is something wrong with the game on the technical side, that we are being tested by videos with poor FPS.

Looking back on this, I totally agree with this. We really should've noticed the fact that we didn't get much content and that it took forever to get gameplay footage (remember the one clip from a tutorial? I do, I was there when it went live.)

[jebycheek]

On 4/29/2023 at 5:00 AM, Nate Simpson said:

On the subject of updates: our update cadence is going to slow down a little bit. There are a couple of reasons for this, not least of which is that every time we release an update, we divert resources that would otherwise be focused on continuing to improve the game

It sounds like you people are forcing all the work to a person who is arm behind his back while you figuring out how to make another post of dishonesty.

Edited May 3, 2023 by jebycheek

[Superfluous J]

24 minutes ago, jebycheek said:

is this really that hard for the devs

When you need to go from development to public builds, you MUST make sure ALL added code doesn't have ANY problems with ANY other code, old and new. This task takes about as much time and effort EACH time you do it, no matter how often you do it.

Maybe it takes a day. Maybe it takes 2 days. I don't know I'm not working on the game and no one who is would dare state here how much time it takes.

If it takes a day, and they release a build every week, you just cut productivity 20%. If they release once a month, it "only" hurts productivity 5%.

If you rush it, you get stuff like the recent maneuver node dV limit addition.

[MichaelJWP59]

Superfluous J is correct, people are getting too heated up about this. (I used to have a game dev company so I know how this works)

As he says, there is a certain overhead for every patch, big or small. You have to test everything against every change, you may have broken something that wasn't even related to the fixes in the patch.

So there is a 'sweet spot' of the right number of fixes to incorporate and bundle up in to a patch. Only the devs are in a position to decide this.

Who would want a daily update with 1 fix, to take it to extremes? Equally, we don't want to wait 3 months. The right cadence is somewhere inbetween. I do agree thought that the focus should be in fixing all bugs that are blockers to the current features being used, not eye candy.