Friday the v0.1.3.0th

[TickleMyMary]

18 minutes ago, running_bird said:

The thing is I fail to see how this is a QA problem

It's a QA issue because of the easy to find bugs that came with the latest patch... Most people experienced them all within 10 mins of gameplay and it kind of shows that the QA team just aren't testing the basics of the game. 

I worked in QA Compatibility for one of the big console names in another life,  so it's an area I'm actually familiar with... Now, whether QA noticed these issues, reported them, and they went unactioned is also a possibility though neither is a great option as it just shows a lack of care at IG imo.

[twich22]

Excellent work on the patch. I think the team has come a long way since release and is now at Mach 1 and on the right trajectory. Patch 0.1.3.0 is exactly what it should have been. People are always going to want more, but what is important is that the things this patch fixed were the most fundamental parts of the game. The game is now performant to an extent that almost anyone, with any level of computer, especially beginners who have never played KSP, can run the game and enjoy it. This is obviously critically important. It also fixed a bunch of game breaking bugs, again critically important.
 

This patch did all the right things and none of the wrong things. All that needs to happen now is iterate n times and we will have a great game. Looking forward to getting back into the game. 

[Delay]

Maybe, in the name of even more transparancy, the QA process employed (or anything else related) should be given some time in the spotlight as well in these update posts?
Seems like there's lots of concern here that their job is not adequate.

[Scarecrow71]

4 minutes ago, twich22 said:

Excellent work on the patch. I think the team has come a long way since release and is now at Mach 1 and on the right trajectory. Patch 0.1.3.0 is exactly what it should have been. People are always going to want more, but what is important is that the things this patch fixed were the most fundamental parts of the game. The game is now performant to an extent that almost anyone, with any level of computer, especially beginners who have never played KSP, can run the game and enjoy it. This is obviously critically important. It also fixed a bunch of game breaking bugs, again critically important.
 

This patch did all the right things and none of the wrong things. All that needs to happen now is iterate n times and we will have a great game. Looking forward to getting back into the game. 

I could not possibly disagree with you more.  Three fundamental, core mechanics from KSP1 that have been reported as broken since day 1 are still not fixed:

• Orbital Decay
• SOI Trajectory
• Decoupled Probes/Loss of Control

What the patch fixed may be core mechanics, but they certainly weren't the most fundamental.  Heck, the first two bullet points up there should be the top two mechanical things in any space game.  And this doesn't even take into account that a major drag bug was introduced with this patch.

Edited June 24, 2023 by Scarecrow71

[The Aziz]

It's not even a matter of opinion.

18 minutes ago, twich22 said:

This patch did all the right things and none of the wrong things

Because if you take a look at Bug Report section, you'll see how this is unfortunately plainly wrong.

Yes it did a lot of good but gods there have been some solid regressions.

[kdaviper]

1 hour ago, RaBDawG said:

The first roadmap(Science) item most likely being released almost a year from launch is pretty hysterical.

And so are people's reaction to this fact

[Scarecrow71]

2 minutes ago, kdaviper said:

And so are people's reaction to this fact

Well, people are understandably upset that the game still has bugs, and that the first roadmap feature won't be here for months (Nate's words).  People want the game to be good.  People want the game to succeed.  People want to play the game.  And all of us, in one way or another, are trying to deal with a game that is both less than it could be AND less than what we thought it would be.  Some of us - myself included - are just so passionate about this game that we don't think before we type sometimes.

[Starhawk]

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[LunarMetis]

2 hours ago, Scarecrow71 said:

I could not possibly disagree with you more.  Three fundamental, core mechanics from KSP1 that have been reported as broken since day 1 are still not fixed:

• Orbital Decay
• SOI Trajectory
• Decoupled Probes/Loss of Control

Don't forget to add missing thermodynamics / aerodynamic heating to that list. Not a broken feature, but it's just something that we should've gotten much earlier in the EA process.

Edited June 24, 2023 by LunarMetis

[Stewcooker]

I think the main issue for most of us who have criticism of the current state of the game, is that this game was supposed to release in 2020. That is three years ago. Then the release date has been pushed and pushed and slipped further and further, but each time we were lied to, and told that it was for polish, or that the game was "in the final stretch". And then when the game is actually released, we find out that the game is not  even close to what we were told, and the product that was release has not had three years of tuning and polishing, not at all. 

It is almost as if the developers had to start over from scratch around August or September of last year, rushed the Minimum Viable Product out the door, and are acting like everything is fine. We aren't critical of the fact that this game is in early access, although the majority of early access games launch in a better state than this one did. We are critical of the fact that it appears we are playing a game that started development Last Tuesday, and all official communication acts like that is the case, when these problems should have been fixed years ago.

People have been following KSP 2 for 4 or 5 years at this point, and when it finally releases we are given a broken vertical slice of a game, and the official communication acts like this is the way it was supposed to be all along. 

This is why I am frustrated with the state of the game. I hope it gets better, but I personally feel like all the energy and excitement I gave KSP 2 over the years has been betrayed and cast aside. 

[RocketRockington]

1 hour ago, Stewcooker said:

It is almost as if the developers had to start over from scratch around August or September of last year, rushed the Minimum Viable Product out the door, and are acting like everything is fine. We aren't critical of the fact that this game is in early access, although the majority of early access games launch in a better state than this one did. We are critical of the fact that it appears we are playing a game that started development Last Tuesday, and all official communication acts like that is the case, when these problems should have been fixed years ago.

Them restarting in August 2022 would actually be a good thing - it would mean the pace of dev is extremely fast.  

[Turbo Ben]

I've lost all faith in the devs. So far, each patch has broken as much as it fixed. At this rate we're looking at at least 4 or 5 patches before the game is anything even close to playable, at 2 months per patch, that's 10 months. Then there's all the bugs that will come with science, which will be another 6+ months to fix. Then colonies... We've gone from a game that just needed polish to years of development. I think they've bitten off more than they can chew.

I tried patch 3 for 15 minutes before uninstalling the game again. That's all it took to realise my joystick didn't work any more and the sound kept dropping out. And they haven't even fixed any of the game breaking bugs yet.

[Wheehaw Kerman]

On 6/23/2023 at 11:41 PM, Rosten said:

Being willing to pay $50 to work for free writing bug reports is why we're not playing a finished KSP 2 right now. 

Do you seriously think the game would be complete by now if it hadn’t gone into EA?  

[Geredis]

1 hour ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

Do you seriously think the game would be complete by now if it hadn’t gone into EA?  

I think yes, it probably would have been much closer to complete if that was the case.

And even if it wasn't due to the nature of it being a non-EA product...the game as-launched would technically have been "complete". The very nature of Early Access means the title is incomplete.  So either the game would have launched as it did at the start of EA and be considered "feature-complete" with all of the issues that come from that in public perception due to backsliding in KSP2 relative to KSP1; or the game would have been much more reasonably roadmapped so that the full roadmap in some fashion would be accessible on Day 1 of the non-EA release. 

[Scarecrow71]

1 hour ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

Do you seriously think the game would be complete by now if it hadn’t gone into EA?  

One of the biggest issues here is that Nate literally stated for years that the game was close to being done, and that they were polishing things up.  The game was supposed to be done before they launched it during Early Access.  So it isn't a matter of if the game would have been completed or not, but rather why it wasn't ready or nearly complete to begin with.

[darthgently]

9 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

One of the biggest issues here is that Nate literally stated for years that the game was close to being done, and that they were polishing things up.  The game was supposed to be done before they launched it during Early Access.  So it isn't a matter of if the game would have been completed or not, but rather why it wasn't ready or nearly complete to begin with.

We don't know everything about internal dynamics, but we know there were a lot of team changes, pandemic, etc.  If like most teams, Nate was possibly passing on what he was told by devs and devs often are commenting on their the task they are working on and are often very optimistic about project overall wrt completion time.  The x2.4 rule or similar likely applies: it will take a dev at least 2.4 times longer than their honest estimate for mysterious reasons not yet fathomed.  Very frustrating overall though.  Well beyond 2.4x lol

Edited June 25, 2023 by darthgently

[sleepy_eb]

Great update devs, I tested out a few different spaceplane designs over the weekend and they appear to be working much better. Also the FPS is definitely getting better now.

I'll be keen to test out the SOI hotfix and orbital decay hotfixes if/when they come, as I can't seem to work around those very well at the moment.

Thanks, keep up the good work.

[ArmchairGravy]

Thanks for the update, team, and thanks, Nate, for communicating what's going on with the development process. 

[Stephensan]

Also i really like to say something that i don't see a lot of people are talking about

 

we have nearly doubled if not tripled the amount of players playing ksp 2 with 0.1.3.0. pre 0.1.2.0

 

• Avg Players Sub 100~
• Peak Player 220~

and now 0.1.3.0

• Avg Player Sub 300~
• Peak Players 640~+

 

i been saying getting stable FPS is king as of right now, not being able to play at all is worse than bugs.. now with SOME playable framerates now the Big 3 bugs can be fixed whenever they are ready.

 

i been saying and ill keep saying, fps is king for players wanting to play a game.

[Scarecrow71]

1 hour ago, darthgently said:

We don't know everything about internal dynamics, but we know there were a lot of team changes, pandemic, etc.  If like most teams, Nate was possibly passing on what he was told by devs and devs often are commenting on their the task they are working on and are often very optimistic about project overall wrt completion time.  The x2.4 rule or similar likely applies: it will take a dev at least 2.4 times longer than their honest estimate for mysterious reasons not yet fathomed.  Very frustrating overall though.  Well beyond 2.4x lol

I don't disagree with us not knowing internal dynamics.  But what I do know is what we were told, which is that the game was nearly ready for years.  And that is why it makes no sense how this is what we got after being told this.  I mean, if the game really wasn't ready, why tell us it was?  Why not just come out and say "Hey, we are taking the game in a different direction, which involve rewriting the entire core code base, so we have to correct our timeline again"?

[Vanamonde]

A number of posts telling each other how we should all feel have been removed because they are not about KSP. 

[Turbo Ben]

6 hours ago, Stephensan said:

Also i really like to say something that i don't see a lot of people are talking about

we have nearly doubled if not tripled the amount of players playing ksp 2 with 0.1.3.0. pre 0.1.2.0

• Avg Players Sub 100~
• Peak Player 220~

and now 0.1.3.0

• Avg Player Sub 300~
• Peak Players 640~+

i been saying getting stable FPS is king as of right now, not being able to play at all is worse than bugs.. now with SOME playable framerates now the Big 3 bugs can be fixed whenever they are ready.

i been saying and ill keep saying, fps is king for players wanting to play a game.

They've just released a patch that we've all been waiting 2 months for, and put the game on sale, and have trippled their player numbers. Great. If they can tripple them again they'll be getting close to KSP1, a game that's over a decade old.

Looking at the reviews since patch 3 and the sale though, it's not looking so rosy. 38 positive to 50 negative, or 43% positive. Even though it's the weekend and the game is now on sale, numbers are still down since Thursday. Maybe they'll get a bump next weekend when everyone's had a pay day.

FPS might be king to you, but as someone who has had playable FPS from day 1, watching your ship spontaneously vanish is no better at 60 FPS than 6.

I want to see KSP2 succeed, but it looks dead in the water to me. Hopefully they can pull a No Mans Sky, but from what I've seen so far, I can't see it happening.

[James M]

10 minutes ago, Turbo Ben said:

FPS might be king to you, but as someone who has had playable FPS from day 1, watching your ship spontaneously vanish is no better at 60 FPS than 6.

The only right answer. 

I was really hoping to finally get to play the game I bought for 70 bucks, but due to the introduction of the lovely aero glitch within the latest patch, it looks like I'll be putting KSP2 on hold. Again.

Maybe next month. We'll see.

[RocketRockington]

13 hours ago, Stephensan said:

Also i really like to say something that i don't see a lot of people are talking about

 

we have nearly doubled if not tripled the amount of players playing ksp 2 with 0.1.3.0. pre 0.1.2.0

 

• Avg Players Sub 100~
• Peak Player 220~

and now 0.1.3.0

• Avg Player Sub 300~
• Peak Players 640~+

The last two patches, numbers tripled from pre-patch, even without a sale.  1.1 went from ~1000 to ~3000.   Lasted about a week and a half.  Patch 2 went from 500 ish to 1200+.  Lasted about a week and a half.

This patch may have a more durable effect both because # were so low pre patch and because the sale has added some new players, but it's a little early to celebrate KSP2 changing direction - you'll also note that for patch 2 and patch 3, # barely jumped to pre-patch player counts from the previous patch. 

 If that holds true - patch 4 may see numbers jump from 100 back up to 300.  Patch 5 - 33 back up to 100.  Etc.

[mattihase]

As nice as FPS is to have, especially in the VAB, I feel like with the performance we have now, random mission-destroying bugs and fighting the game to actually build the craft I want to launch are wasting my time more at the moment than seconds lasting a little longer than they ought to.