Air Bugs

[Spicat]

Can we stop with the player count argument it’s so tiring, people brought it up just to disrupt things, it’s randomly posted everytime without any context. And strangely people don’t know statistics, you don’t pick the lowest number just because it fits your narrative. If you are not dishonest you pick a tendency, like the average, on multiple day. It’s still declining but at least it’s more honest. (And yes I won’t add to the fact that it’s not a really good metric, already been said)

2 hours ago, Alexoff said:

I think we would discuss KSP2 sales or returns with no less interest, but we do not have this information. Both are important for T2, since it is T2 who finances the development of KSP2 (I have doubts that sales of the game paid for its development in 6 years). Perhaps these consequences have already come - there are several new vacancies on the website of the game developer, where applicants are required to be able to work with unreal engine. Apparently some new game development has started, but I doubt that a new game needs only a few developers. Most likely, this is now being done by a part of the team that previously developed KSP2. But there is no clear evidence, maybe I don’t know something.

Yeah we don’t know how much they sold but if they keep funding and hiring new people (2 people this month), it’s an indicator that’s they trust they can have a profit (and are maybe happy with the result this far). Even more when we know the milestones update will probably bring a lot of players. There is also the case of multiplayer who might bring some cash from regular player thanks to servers subscription (like minecraft realms) so economically speaking, why stop before that even happening?

Also, why do you mention only the unreal engine, there is also unity. (And some that didn’t mention the engine)

So this do not prove that people are being diverted to the new game because of ksp 2 bad launch. Even more when we know that the new game started before release, it’s not new.

A game can have a few developers, it’s usually the case for early development, especially for pre production. The team grows after that (that’s what happens with ksp 2, the team didn’t stop to grow). Besides, we don’t even know the scope of it, I doubt it will be as big as ksp 2.

And as you said, this new game seems to be in unreal engine, so transfering people who work on unity is quite a bad move. Especially when they are required on a game in active development.

So, as much as people think it will be the case, for now there is absolutely no indication of ksp 2 being abandoned, quite the opposite actually.

Edited June 15, 2023 by Spicat

[RocketRockington]

3 hours ago, Alexoff said:

I think we would discuss KSP2 sales or returns with no less interest, but we do not have this information. Both are important for T2, since it is T2 who finances the development of KSP2 (I have doubts that sales of the game paid for its development in 6 years). Perhaps these consequences have already come - there are several new vacancies on the website of the game developer, where applicants are required to be able to work with unreal engine. Apparently some new game development has started, but I doubt that a new game needs only a few developers. Most likely, this is now being done by a part of the team that previously developed KSP2. But there is no clear evidence, maybe I don’t know something.

We kind of do.  While vginsights doesn't pull directly from Steam's internal sales information - it does managed to do a very good job of estimating total sales from past experience.  I think they have a few developers that are feeding them info and then they can extrapolate from the positions of those games on the sales charts to know what a particular product is grossing, so they're usually pretty close - of course they don't capture sales on other platforms - but those other platforms generally don't make a meaningful contribution to a PC game's sales unless there's a anomalous factor (eg its never going to capture Fornite's revenue correctly.)
   
https://vginsights.com/game/954850

Edited June 15, 2023 by RocketRockington

[theJesuit]

On 6/10/2023 at 7:04 AM, Nate Simpson said:

We’re currently aiming for a June 20 update

Why did I think this was 15th June?  Oh.. that may have been Strange New Worlds.  My bad.  Tuesday is a good day as any, but it means my Wednesday night is going to be a long one trying out all the things.

Science is not this update though right?

[stephensmat]

1 hour ago, theJesuit said:

Science is not this update though right?

No. Still fixing problems.

Whenever we get science, we're going to want the least amount of bugs when we use it; let alone Colonies.

[LoSBoL]

19 hours ago, regex said:

I just find it funny that extra specificity and words translates to "more transparency" or is somehow better in quality. It's not like we really learned anything new here that's actionable...

I guess people want reassurances, and when they get that, they are comfortable again. even if like you say, it goes without saying they are working on the game and fixes. People sometimes have a hard time reading between the lines. I for one do think it's nice to know what's not going to be fixed in the next update, so there is a form of managing expectations in my eyes, which is good.

[WelshSteW]

11 hours ago, stephensmat said:

No. Still fixing problems.

Whenever we get science, we're going to want the least amount of bugs when we use it; let alone Colonies.

 

Wait, what? I thought this was the science update??

 

Awww man. Why did I think this was science? Now I'm all disappointed and grumpy!

Edited June 15, 2023 by WelshSteW

[Alexoff]

20 hours ago, Spicat said:

Yeah we don’t know how much they sold but if they keep funding and hiring new people (2 people this month), it’s an indicator that’s they trust they can have a profit

Or because T2 wants to somehow end the story of KSP2 by overcoming the roadmap, since corporations value reputation, and money on a T2 scale is small. We don't know how much money the game made or how much it took to develop, so it would be interesting to know. Many developers boast of their sales, for example, Blizzard recently boasted of diablo sales.

20 hours ago, Spicat said:

Even more when we know the milestones update will probably bring a lot of players.

And when will it be? Here one can only guess. We are not told this either, not even about a year.

20 hours ago, Spicat said:

And as you said, this new game seems to be in unreal engine, so transfering people who work on unity is quite a bad move.

Looking about what developers we are talking about. Who makes the design or writes texts - may well change the engine.

20 hours ago, Spicat said:

Especially when they are required on a game in active development.

Since we don't know much about what will eventually be contained in KSP2, T2 can easily reduce the amount of content. A little less new planets, a little less parts for colonies, we won't even know about it.

20 hours ago, Spicat said:

So, as much as people think it will be the case, for now there is absolutely no indication of ksp 2 being abandoned

Indicator - patches began to come out less frequently. New game in development. Of course, these are weak indicators, but it is too self-confident to declare their absolute absence. And I did not claim that KSP2 would be abandoned, it’s just that T2  might start spending fewer resources on the game than they might have planned before.

[gussi111]

22 hours ago, Spicat said:

Can we stop with the player count argument it’s so tiring, people brought it up just to disrupt things, it’s randomly posted everytime without any context. And strangely people don’t know statistics, you don’t pick the lowest number just because it fits your narrative. If you are not dishonest you pick a tendency, like the average, on multiple day. It’s still declining but at least it’s more honest. (And yes I won’t add to the fact that it’s not a really good metric, already been said)

I said the lowest player count so far didn't I?

[Spicat]

10 hours ago, Alexoff said:

Indicator - patches began to come out less frequently. New game in development. Of course, these are weak indicators, but it is too self-confident to declare their absolute absence. And I did not claim that KSP2 would be abandoned, it’s just that T2  might start spending fewer resources on the game than they might have planned before.

The new game in development is not new, we know about it since 2022, so it's absolutly not an indicator of the game starting to have less resources: https://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2022/10/03/take-two-studio-intercept-games-new-unannounced-game/

Same for the patches going less frequently, they have already explained why and it's not, due to attributing less resources, so not an indicator (and even if they lie, I can't see how it's one).

So you can believe that if you want, it might be the case or will be the case, but it's just wild speculation for now. Quite tiring to see this pop up everytime when there is not really anything to back it up, just that the game has a bad launch. There are tons of game with a bad launch that got updated and became good after, and ones that weren't even early access.

Edited June 16, 2023 by Spicat

[Dakitess]

Well we might agree that it's not a "bad launch". It's a very bad one, based on an existing game, using 90% of the same tech, the same parts, the same ideas, with a new UI, barely new graphics, and some tutorials.

This is not a novelty, a risk, a try, like NMS or other examples. Let's not hide behind that. There is other things to advocate, but KSP2 being a new game and needing time to prove its value, well, is a limited argument to my eyes, that we, Indeed, face a lot of time, as much as saying that the game had a terrible launch.

[Spicat]

1 hour ago, Dakitess said:

Well we might agree that it's not a "bad launch". It's a very bad one

I don't know if you answered to me, but I didn't say it wasn't a bad launch.

Besides, that might be a matter of opinion on that one but, I don't think ksp 2 launch is as bad as people are saying (like the "worst launch ever", I know you are very passionate about it but it's not really objective). Time tends to filter out the amount of backlash that some games adds:

Cyberpunk was not just a bug fest and some lack of content, it was really criticized for some lie they said, the worst one is probably the fact they said a few days before release that it runs surprisingly well on old gen console (more enjoyable now it seems). Considering preorder existed for this one, it's much worse than ksp2 just being a bit late to show the system requirements, which was still before you could buy the game.

Fallout 76, might need some Internet Historian on this one, bug mess, worsen by it being an online game, where people were losing all their progress, but the worst thing about this game is what Bethesda did. Banning people that used mods or that spend too much time on their game because it was suspicious that they got too good items. Also the store is a joke with pay to win items and "skins" that were comically high priced, some blue paint on your armor for $18. Following that, they decided to release a subscription model that brought a few content, and as you expect this was not well received.

No Man's sky obviously, won't detail it too much (bugs, crash and all) but some are really forgetting how much a disastrous launch it was, 90% of what they said were going to be in the game were NOT in the game (and some are still lacking to this day) and all of those were promised at release. Multiplayer being the worst lie.

SimCity who literally killed the franchise as soon as it released: requiring an online connection at all time (Servers crashed at release and some players couldn't even play a singleplayer game because of this). Also on content, I played it, it was really bad, fortunately cities skylines was the savior.

The Division was boring, buggy, lifeless. Star wars battlefront 2, same content as the first one and the lootboxes backlash.  Anthem, boring, flawed, lack of content. GTA the trilogy remaster, buggy when this was a remaster. Playstation PC ports which always release buggy and unoptimized.

All of those are popular examples, a lot more than ksp 2, so there are probably even more examples of worse launch. The pattern of those is that they all are advertised as fully finished and hyped games (with preorder and sometimes collectors). So seeing an early access game where we saw what content we would have before we could buy it and where the main problems is that bugs are present. Yeah, I don't see this as a "very" bad launch. Just a bad one.

Either way, it's probably just me, but I tend to not be too opinionated with my first impression and isn't bothered to wait for games being fixed, I waited 2 years after release to play Cyberpunk (even though I was hyped since early 2018), 8 months to play horizon zero dawn after the pc port.

Edited June 16, 2023 by Spicat

[Alexoff]

1 hour ago, Spicat said:

The new game in development is not new, we know about it since 2022, so it's absolutly not an indicator of the game starting to have less resources: https://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2022/10/03/take-two-studio-intercept-games-new-unannounced-game/

It somewhat contradicts this phrase, doesn't it?

On 6/15/2023 at 3:33 AM, Spicat said:

A game can have a few developers, it’s usually the case for early development, especially for pre production.

 

1 hour ago, Spicat said:

There are tons of game with a bad launch that got updated and became good after, and ones that weren't even early access.

And kilotons of games that have remained bad.

[Alexoff]

7 minutes ago, Spicat said:

The Division was boring, buggy, lifeless. Star wars battlefront 2, same content as the first one and the lootboxes backlash.  Anthem, boring, flawed, lack of content. GTA the trilogy remaster, buggy when this was a remaster. Playstation PC ports which always release buggy and unoptimized.

Hmmm, almost like KSP2. As I understand it, the main difference is not in technical terms, but that the PR people of KSP2 did not promise anything specific in advance. The regular release became early access, the system requirements turned out to be cosmic, nothing has been heard about the console version for a long time. And there is nothing to argue, even bloggers said to prepare for disappointment.

[Spicat]

10 minutes ago, Alexoff said:

It somewhat contradicts this phrase, doesn't it?

Not really, no. In this message I talked about the new offers on the Intercept Games website. The new game can gather more new developers, but you can't say that people working on ksp2 are being diverted because of it. We also don't really know the scope of this game and since when exactly it has been developed, one year is very short for game development.

10 minutes ago, Alexoff said:

And kilotons of games that have remained bad.

Thanks for missing my point entirely.

Edited June 16, 2023 by Spicat

[Wheehaw Kerman]

2 hours ago, Alexoff said:

Hmmm, almost like KSP2. As I understand it, the main difference is not in technical terms, but that the PR people of KSP2 did not promise anything specific in advance. The regular release became early access, the system requirements turned out to be cosmic, nothing has been heard about the console version for a long time. And there is nothing to argue, even bloggers said to prepare for disappointment.

“Cosmic” is quite an overstatement.  “Runs just fine on a current mid-range Dell gaming laptop” is more accurate.   Ask me how I know :).

[LoSBoL]

And how many times does one need to hear that console versions of KSP2 will come after full release of KSP2 version 1.0.0.0

It's been stated ever since 2019, has never changed and been repeated over and over. 

Offcourse one can ask again, and one will be getting the same answer.

[Alexoff]

13 minutes ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

“Cosmic” is quite an overstatement.  “Runs just fine on a current mid-range Dell gaming laptop” is more accurate.   Ask me how I know :).

The thing is that the developers themselves stated that 3080 is recommended for KSP2. For most players, these are too high requirements. That is, shortly before the release, we were asked to seriously reduce our expectations.

[Wheehaw Kerman]

5 minutes ago, Alexoff said:

The thing is that the developers themselves stated that 3080 is recommended for KSP2. For most players, these are too high requirements. That is, shortly before the release, we were asked to seriously reduce our expectations.

Agreed that I would have liked to see a bit more lead time on the specs announcement.  I wound up having to play a few days on my old laptop before the new one arrived.  6 fps on launch was a bit clunky - comparable to some of the less optimized versions of KSP on my previous laptop, but still playable.

I’m absolutely open to being accused of slight insensitivity towards the wants of people who can’t afford current hardware, but I’d rather this game be built with an eye to the future rather than legacy hardware.  I expect to be playing it into the 2030s.

And re adjusting our expectations, yes.  It wasn’t that hard…

[Kerbart]

21 hours ago, WelshSteW said:

Wait, what? I thought this was the science update??

The good ole' we never said that, we surely suggested it but we don't think it's OUR fault that YOU interpreted our carefully crafted words in such a way as any normal person would.

The only thing that was mentioned was:

• We're lowering the frequency of updates to be able to spread the load between bug fixing and feature updates
• Next update will be in June, and we're working on Science
• Look! Shiny Science parts!

But never once was somewhere said that this update would actually include Science. I wouldn't bet on it.

On 6/14/2023 at 11:34 PM, theJesuit said:

Why did I think this was 15th June?  Oh.. that may have been Strange New Worlds.  My bad.  Tuesday is a good day as any, but it means my Wednesday night is going to be a long one trying out all the things.

At one point in time, "June" was mentioned. Nate then had to specify that this was not intended as "June 30" which is how the, by now quite salty, community unanimously interpreted it. My own take was the Friday before June 30 (as you know, the previous "cut and run" releases were on Friday COB and hoping the s###-storm dies down by the time Monday comes around), which is June 23, but surprisingly they picked June 20 as the release date instead.

[alexalex]

8 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

The good ole' we never said that, we surely suggested it but we don't think it's OUR fault that YOU interpreted our carefully crafted words in such a way as any normal person would.

The only thing that was mentioned was:

• We're lowering the frequency of updates to be able to spread the load between bug fixing and feature updates
• Next update will be in June, and we're working on Science
• Look! Shiny Science parts!

But never once was somewhere said that this update would actually include Science. I wouldn't bet on it.

At one point in time, "June" was mentioned. Nate then had to specify that this was not intended as "June 30" which is how the, by now quite salty, community unanimously interpreted it. My own take was the Friday before June 30 (as you know, the previous "cut and run" releases were on Friday COB and hoping the s###-storm dies down by the time Monday comes around), which is June 23, but surprisingly they picked June 20 as the release date instead.

FYI even if they were still only bug fixing, the frequency of updates would still slow down.  Dev's fix the big high impact easy to fix bugs first.  The big high impact hard to fix bugs usually aren't bugs at all but rather relate to issues involving deep fundamental code design and require a lot more work since a hefty chunk of code has to be rewritten.  That results in slower updates.

[LoSBoL]

1 hour ago, Alexoff said:

The thing is that the developers themselves stated that 3080 is recommended for KSP2. For most players, these are too high requirements. That is, shortly before the release, we were asked to seriously reduce our expectations.

That was definitely a shocker especially a week for release, many saw the expectations of getting into KSP2 shatter.

[RaBDawG]

On 6/15/2023 at 12:49 AM, stephensmat said:

No. Still fixing problems.

Whenever we get science, we're going to want the least amount of bugs when we use it; let alone Colonies.

Colonies, lol?  Bro, Colonies is like a year at MINIMUM away, ha.

[Spicat]

2 hours ago, Kerbart said:

The good ole' we never said that, we surely suggested it but we don't think it's OUR fault that YOU interpreted our carefully crafted words in such a way as any normal person would.

They didn’t just "not said that it will be the science update", they clearly said the opposite:

On 4/28/2023 at 11:00 PM, Nate Simpson said:

We will continue to release updates prior to our big Science Feature update

[Pat20999]

I have to wait till midnight for the new dev update. 

[LoSBoL]

34 minutes ago, Pat20999 said:

I have to wait till midnight for the new dev update. 

Same, it's Friday evening, not gonna wait, fired up the BBQ and have a few cold ones, after that, I'll probably have to read the update again tomorrow.