KSP2 EA now on sale for 20% off?!....

[Lyneira]

Like @herbal space program I do also worry that with this sale they're expending the "attention potential" the game has left (being an early access title) too early. A signifnicant portion of new customers this sale brings in will find out soon there's not much to do yet in the game once the novelty of experimenting with sandbox is over and the game's shortcomings and bugs start to outweigh the fun still to be had. The ones that don't refund will put the game down, but only some will return when the game improves later, leaving fewer potential newcomers to spread positive word of mouth when that time finally comes.

[The Aziz]

6 hours ago, Lyneira said:

A signifnicant portion of new customers this sale brings in will find out soon there's not much to do yet in the game once the novelty of experimenting with sandbox is over

Pricetag and bugs aside, currently the game has nearly as much to do as KSP1 0.23 (except there's no placeholders for things and what's there represents the best KSP1 had to offer and more). The whole solar system is open for exploration, for a new customer that is quite a lot. Hell, it's a lot even for me, I am yet to discover all the wonders of rebuilt Kerbol system and limits of my flying skills.

[Wheehaw Kerman]

30 minutes ago, The Aziz said:

Pricetag and bugs aside, currently the game has nearly as much to do as KSP1 0.23 (except there's no placeholders for things and what's there represents the best KSP1 had to offer and more). The whole solar system is open for exploration, for a new customer that is quite a lot. Hell, it's a lot even for me, I am yet to discover all the wonders of rebuilt Kerbol system and limits of my flying skills.

To this point, check out this video.  It shows the development of KSP from 2011 onwards, warts, wonkiness, and all.  The pace of development is informative (IG launched a far more complete EA and are progressing faster).  But more importantly, it’s a great trip down memory lane for those of us who’ve been playing for years and for those who haven’t, the jank, wonk, and crudity of early KSP is a good laugh:

If KSP succeeded as it did with beginnings like that, I’m sure that KSP2 will do just fine.

[Scarecrow71]

1 hour ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

To this point, check out this video.  It shows the development of KSP from 2011 onwards, warts, wonkiness, and all.  The pace of development is informative (IG launched a far more complete EA and are progressing faster).  But more importantly, it’s a great trip down memory lane for those of us who’ve been playing for years and for those who haven’t, the jank, wonk, and crudity of early KSP is a good laugh:

If KSP succeeded as it did with beginnings like that, I’m sure that KSP2 will do just fine.

I'm going to start this by reminding everyone that I have been one of the loudest naysayers of KSP2 to this point.  I have been very vocal about how I feel about EA, and what we believe was promised vs. what we got, and the future of KSP2.  I want everyone to keep that in mind.

With that said, this video should be must-see TV for the entire community.  As someone who came to the party late, I either had no idea or had forgotten the details about how far KSP actually had to go to get to a playable state.  All of those updates prior to the 1.0 release are nothing short of amazing, and the fact that most of it was handled by 1 person?  Mind-blowing.  Like, my mind is blown and may never get put back into its original shape.  Just...wow.

When compared to KSP2, I can absolutely now see where KSP2 is vs. where KSP1 was at specific points in its development.  Although the comparison still isn't apples to apples (because of who developed which game in the series), you can see where KSP1 was, where KSP2 currently is, and how each got to where they are.  And that's a handy piece of information to have right there.

My only question that I have left:  Why didn't TT/PD/IG follow the same development path as KSP1?  I mean, they could have and we'd never know it (because we will never know what decisions are made internally, right?).  But if you look at what was available in EA for KSP1 vs. what was made available in EA for KSP2, it seems to me that the only real issue here is the TT/PD/IG tried to give too much in EA.  Or, at least, they tried to give more than what KSP1 had during EA.  And that, I think (for whatever my own opinion is worth) is why there are so many bugs and game-breaking mechanics.  They simply tried to give too much, and they rushed it.

Now, that doesn't alleviate the questions as to how it all happened, or why the endless delays while stating they were just polishing the game up and such.  Nor does it entirely excuse the state of the game at this point, especially when you consider that the latest patch introduced a pretty nasty bug (and I agree with @schlosrat that this needs to be the #1 priority for fixing right now).  But this does help me to see the whole in a new and different light.  And it reminds me that perhaps I need to take a step back, calm down, and keep Kerballing on because, in the end, we are all hoping that KSP2 not only becomes as good as KSP1, but that it surpasses it in ways that we never dreamed.

Thank you @Wheehaw Kerman for posting this video; it was certainly an eye-opener!

[RocketRockington]

The situations between the two titles is not analogous.  KSP1 was genuinely developing and evolving due to player feedback, and due to being a title unlike any other.  KSP2 knows exactly what it wants to be, and has been promoting the same set of features, graphics, and UI since 2019.  Further KSP going to EA only had about 2.5 years of genuine, small amateur team development behind it - 2 years of that as a viewable demo.  KSP2 has 6 years of closed door development by experienced developers.

Its like someone picking up a rock for the first time and thinking about how to properly launch it vs someone who already has a blueprint for a catapult and a full engineering team to build it and extra years to test it, looking at the trajectories for both after their throws, and saying it's totally ok that the the rocks went the same distance.

Edited June 26, 2023 by RocketRockington

[herbal space program]

4 hours ago, The Aziz said:

Pricetag and bugs aside, currently the game has nearly as much to do as KSP1 0.23 (except there's no placeholders for things and what's there represents the best KSP1 had to offer and more). The whole solar system is open for exploration, for a new customer that is quite a lot. Hell, it's a lot even for me, I am yet to discover all the wonders of rebuilt Kerbol system and limits of my flying skills.

The price tag doesn't bother me so much, but those bugs are a big aside. I started playing KSP1 at 0.18 (I think), and although docking, wobbliness,  and SAS were still kind of a mess, there weren't nearly as many really bad core gameplay  bugs at that time as there are now. I mean, with the latest patch, you can't even de-orbit a Mk1 capsule because of the no-drag-when-pointed-retrograde bug. The FPS performance wasn't nearly as bad either, and that was on machines that wouldn't even qualify as potatoes now.  As a very experienced KSP1 player, I can battle my way through these things, but there still isn't a lot for me to do that's new, so I'm getting bored pretty quickly. Imagining myself as a new-to-the-franchise user, I can see that what's there constitutes a pretty good amount of gameplay, but between the awful performance and the really bad bugs, I'm not sure I'd have the patience to put up with all of that frustration while trying to ascend an already pretty challenging learning curve. So I stand by my prior statement that this is really no time for them to have an EA promotion. I think they need to get the most basic things all working properly and maybe throw the old hands a bone or two first.

Edited June 26, 2023 by herbal space program

[schlosrat]

4 hours ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

To this point, check out this video.  It shows the development of KSP from 2011 onwards, warts, wonkiness, and all.  The pace of development is informative (IG launched a far more complete EA and are progressing faster).  But more importantly, it’s a great trip down memory lane for those of us who’ve been playing for years and for those who haven’t, the jank, wonk, and crudity of early KSP is a good laugh:

If KSP succeeded as it did with beginnings like that, I’m sure that KSP2 will do just fine.

Wow! That's an incredible retrospective! I agree with @Scarecrow71, this is some Must Watch TV! It may not be a perfectly fair comparison since arguably KSP2 should be building off the legacy and work that went into KSP1 (which I think it's doing), but it does a spectacular job of showcasing how far we've all come in this time. I believe I started somewhere around 0.2.x myself, and it's been quite an adventure.

[Yakuzi]

5 hours ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

To this point, check out this video.  It shows the development of KSP from 2011 onwards, warts, wonkiness, and all.  The pace of development is informative (IG launched a far more complete EA and are progressing faster).  But more importantly, it’s a great trip down memory lane for those of us who’ve been playing for years and for those who haven’t, the jank, wonk, and crudity of early KSP is a good laugh:

If KSP succeeded as it did with beginnings like that, I’m sure that KSP2 will do just fine.

This is a bad faith argument. The development of the two games is vastly different in multiple ways. If you still insist on comparing them, you should do so from the start of development to get some indication of relative progress made per unit of time:

KSP1 went into EA less than 1.5 years after one passionate dude started development and the game was generally received well. KSP2 went into a EA after 5+ years of development by a dedicated professional software studio with nearly 50 employees, which had full access to KSP1's source code and the backing of a multi billion dollar producer, and clearly it's a mess. Early Access KSP1 was a buggy mess too you say? Sure thing, but after 5 years of development KSP1 was fully released and had received multiple additional updates (v1.0.5 ), after 5.5 years we had KSP1 v1.1.3 and were well on the way to KSP v1.2.

 

[MechBFP]

1 hour ago, Yakuzi said:

went into a EA after 5+ years of development

You complain about bad faith arguments, and then say that. Not very consistent.

[cfds]

I think there is litte disagreement that KSP 1 is a janky mess that somehow (mostly due to volunteers who cludged their fixes onto this mess and maintained it tthough update after update) became a success regardless. We kind of accept the problems with Unity PhysX because we realize that a team of amateurs had basically no other option to get the game of the ground. We accepted the bad and slightly less bad aerodynamic models, because there was FAR to fix it.  The "space program" part of "Kerbal Space Program" was only reluctantly tagged on on not very well thought out, but mods kind of helped there as well. The art style was all over the place, but again mods fixed that. We were annoyed when every update brought a whole new set of bugs (and broke all our mods), but after two or four rather quick hot fixes there was an improvement over the previous version.

The weird thing is that the devlopers of KSP 2 either believed that the jank is part of the charm (some remarks regarding the wobblyness of rockets point that way) or are simply not able to provide a better product. The graphics are way better, but that is the thing that mods fix the most easily. They started with the slighty less bad aerodynamic model, but obviously it is just as easily broken by updating things as the one of KSP 1. They use the same chained rigid body system that KSP 1 already showed to be a liability. Orbital stability and SoI changes seems to be actually worse than KSP 1 ever was. We have yet to see if the "space program" part will be implemented in a better way.

It just looks like after multiple years of development with much more than "Indie" budget they just have the same rotten foundation as KSP 1 has, but with nicer graphics.

[RocketRockington]

8 minutes ago, cfds said:

I think there is litte disagreement that KSP 1 is a janky mess...

You'd be wrong about that.  I think KSP1 works pretty well, and even better with mods.

9 minutes ago, cfds said:

They started with the slighty less bad aerodynamic model

It's the exact same aerodynamics model.

[cfds]

9 minutes ago, RocketRockington said:

It's the exact same aerodynamics model.

I meant to express that they skipped the "souposphere" model that was used in the early days and went to the less bad one immediately.

[Gargamel]

There are quite a few other threads about the development history of the two games.  Let’s keep those discussions there.  This thread is about the summer sale price of KSP2.  

[Wheehaw Kerman]

13 hours ago, Yakuzi said:

This is a bad faith argument. The development of the two games is vastly different in multiple ways. If you still insist on comparing them, you should do so from the start of development to get some indication of relative progress made per unit of time:

KSP1 went into EA less than 1.5 years after one passionate dude started development and the game was generally received well. KSP2 went into a EA after 5+ years of development by a dedicated professional software studio with nearly 50 employees, which had full access to KSP1's source code and the backing of a multi billion dollar producer, and clearly it's a mess. Early Access KSP1 was a buggy mess too you say? Sure thing, but after 5 years of development KSP1 was fully released and had received multiple additional updates (v1.0.5 ), after 5.5 years we had KSP1 v1.1.3 and were well on the way to KSP v1.2.

 

Now I wanna joke about the time travel drive in that video I linked.

Neither of us know anything about the development or its timeline beyond what Star Theory and then IG released, and current events over that timeline. The development was probably a gong show due to overly ambitious goals, corporate skullduggery and a global pandemic, and there might have been some bad engineering decisions that lead to some firings and rework, but all that’s unknowable water under the bridge.  So speculation about development is pointless.  We can only compare the games by things like content, subjective player experience, what people who know a hell of a lot more about coding than me can glean by disassembling the code (and I don’t even know whether disassemble is the correct term), and rate of improvement.

I don’t know about you, but I was only able to play KSP2 as of February 24 of this year.   Compared to KSP as of 2013 it had much more and more polished and well thought out content, an experience that’s much bigger, much prettier, subjectively somewhat buggier, subjectively better albeit disappointing if one had overly high expectations due to bad early comms, I can’t speak to the code, and faster patch cycles fixing more issues.  To my mind, this is cause for optimism.  

Edited June 27, 2023 by Wheehaw Kerman

[Wheehaw Kerman]

18 hours ago, Scarecrow71 said:

Thank you @Wheehaw Kerman for posting this video; it was certainly an eye-opener!

Glad you enjoyed it.  The thing gives me the warm fuzzies.  Happy gaming nostalgia vibes about a decade or so spent playing far too much of my favourite game ever.  Hopefully we’ll all be watching something similar about KSP2 ten years from now as we argue about KSP3 :).

[Starhawk]

As Gargamel said above, please post on the topic at hand.

Some content removed.

Thank you for your understanding.

[PDCWolf]

From this thread, March 31. No sales mentioned is enough of an argument for almost all the complaints I've seen in this thread. Further on, Dakota half-quoting this statement and adding "unless sales" on discord, without echoing here (something that's been a problem since they created the discord basically) creates a lot of confusion.

The appropriate question right now, which for some reason no one bothered asking, is "Will it get a bigger discount on further sales?". As for steam customers, if you bought close enough to the sale, price quickly changing is a valid reason to ask for a refund.

[The Aziz]

Interesting comparison for those saying that 4 months is too early.

NFS Unbound came out in December. Currently sits at -70%. Not 20, not 50, but 70.

[GGG-GoodGuyGreg]

13 minutes ago, The Aziz said:

Interesting comparison for those saying that 4 months is too early.

NFS Unbound came out in December. Currently sits at -70%. Not 20, not 50, but 70.

Did NFSU come as unfinished even by EA standards, at 90% of the full price (justified by the fact price will only go up) being promised it only needs final tweaks cuz there is plenty game to be played already?

Edited June 27, 2023 by GGG-GoodGuyGreg

[Scarecrow71]

I'm curious as to why the sale is only on Steam and not on Epic.  @Dakota, can you answer that question?

[PDCWolf]

29 minutes ago, The Aziz said:

Interesting comparison for those saying that 4 months is too early.

NFS Unbound came out in December. Currently sits at -70%. Not 20, not 50, but 70.

21 minutes ago, GGG-GoodGuyGreg said:

Did NFSU come as unfinished even by EA standards, at 90% of the full price (justified by the fact price will only go up) being promised it only needs final tweaks cuz there is plenty game to be played already?

Unbound was a complete failure for NFS though, that is why it went on such a steep sale. It sold less than a million copies, didn't garner any interest other than to get bashed into oblivion, and had half the peak players as KSP2. NFS Unbound pretty much is the shame of the entire franchise.

Further on, I might not be good at math but Unbound coming out early December means it's almost 7 months old, not 4. It'd be a threat though if KSP went on a 70% sale in 3 months (or a bit more, say Halloween).

[Geredis]

1 hour ago, Scarecrow71 said:

I'm curious as to why the sale is only on Steam and not on Epic.  @Dakota, can you answer that question?

I believe the idea is that the sale is something that was decided on as a more general "Participate in the Steam Summer Sale" kind of deal, than anything else. Essentailly bandwagoning on an existing event, more than...anything else. Thus, there's no expectation, because the sale isn't (really) a milestone sale for the game, for it to be sold at parity across platforms.

[Superfluous J]

6 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

Will it get a bigger discount on further sales?

Why on Earth would a company announce future sales plans?

Sales are a form of promotion, to drive ... well ... sales. Announcing them in advance kills all potential sales from the moment you announce it to the moment the discount starts.

[Wheehaw Kerman]

15 minutes ago, Superfluous J said:

Why on Earth would a company announce future sales plans?

Sales are a form of promotion, to drive ... well ... sales. Announcing them in advance kills all potential sales from the moment you announce it to the moment the discount starts.

It’s absolutely elementary commercial practice.  Bog standard for everything from Corn Flakes to luxury cars.  Getting upset about something going on sale is pretty absurd, although most businesses will offer to cover the difference if you bought a day or two before the sale and raise the issue.

I’m not really sure that a $10 delta is worth most people’s time though.

[PDCWolf]

1 hour ago, Superfluous J said:

Why on Earth would a company announce future sales plans?

Sales are a form of promotion, to drive ... well ... sales. Announcing them in advance kills all potential sales from the moment you announce it to the moment the discount starts.

I'll agree that sales were bound to happen (it's why I banked on refunding some months ago), and will also agree that announcing sales is a bad tactic, however, we're not working with unknowns here, people were working under the communication that the price was going to remain the same during EA and increase on 1.0, thus, the circumstances are no longer the same as for any other product. They already did a wrong, I think communicating clearly on the future of pricing, is a way to right that wrong.

Further on, I'll appeal to what's been said before by others: If the game, or the idea of playing it now, or helping development, is really worth $50 for some people, then those same people wouldn't wait for a sale or get mad with what they spent, would they?