KSP2 EA Grand Discussion Thread.

[cocoscacao]

Most of the hydrogen tanks, except 2x one, seem really fragile. The containers look like a golden tin foil. I'm wondering if they will need protection from atmo-heating in the future...

[Alexoff]

3 hours ago, Royalswissarmyknife said:

I'm guessing that's due to the lack of boulders or any other features then craters. Along with its very spheroid shape.

It looks more like a satellite, and not the smallest one, than an asteroid. It is impossible to move such an object using conventional engines. I think this is some kind of early concept on which the developers worked on procedurally generated craters. Such objects are easily made in KSP1 using the Kopernicus mod. I wouldn’t be very surprised if this picture createded in that same KSP2 from 2019. The picture was shown to us in those days when there was no KSP2 gameplay, this is a clipping from some editor.  In reality, even the largest asteroids look like this in our Universe.

[TLTay]

Please close my forum account.

Despite the date listed when I opened >this < forum account, I've been with kerbal since harvester created it as nothing but blog posts you couldn't play yet.

That said, T2 killed it. Not in the good way.

Close me out. I waste too much time caring about this dumpster fire.

[The Aziz]

I don't know why would you care so much, it's just a game after all.

[Royalswissarmyknife]

10 hours ago, TLTay said:

Please close my forum account.

Despite the date listed when I opened >this < forum account, I've been with kerbal since harvester created it as nothing but blog posts you couldn't play yet.

That said, T2 killed it. Not in the good way.

Close me out. I waste too much time caring about this dumpster fire.

Goodbye. 

[MarcAbaddon]

On 10/14/2023 at 4:27 PM, gluckez said:

my exact quote was: what's stopping you from going through the code and seeing for yourself then? so it's not like I'm asking people to just believe me. so no, I'm not "banking on people to not do that". 

I did in the first Early Access version. There were some things, but nothing that was even close to fully implemented. Some rudimentary code for delivery routes, some science stuff, some multiplayer stuff that seemed like they did just include basic unity lobby code, some minor references to colony founding as a part module. Admittedly there is some code related for modding in the future. But feature complete? Not by a far stretch. If anything the posts by Nertea show how much they are in the design phase on basic features.

[gluckez]

17 minutes ago, MarcAbaddon said:

There were some things, but nothing that was even close to fully implemented.

As I mentioned 2 comments before the one you quoted. This is likely why they have 6 development branches, so they can develop the features further while also working on the base game.

[AtomicTech]

12 hours ago, TLTay said:

Please close my forum account.

Despite the date listed when I opened >this < forum account, I've been with kerbal since harvester created it as nothing but blog posts you couldn't play yet.

That said, T2 killed it. Not in the good way.

Close me out. I waste too much time caring about this dumpster fire.

Hey man, you'll be missed 

Happy trails, partner...

[PDCWolf]

3 hours ago, MarcAbaddon said:

-snip-

You're not supposed to state you did this on the forums, which is the loophole used to straight up spread misinformation about the stage of stuff lost in the code.

[Bej Kerman]

16 hours ago, TLTay said:

That said, T2 killed it. Not in the good way.

I'd say the corrosive and pessimistic community nowadays is more incentive than anything to leave, but whatever floats your boat

[Alexoff]

I wonder why the community became pessimistic? Why on Reddit posts about KSP1 are full of enthusiasm and fun, but any mention of KSP2 leads to a storm of indignation? After all, this is the same community! If anyone can solve this riddle, they could claim a Nobel Prize in Psychology! It's a shame this prize hasn't been invented yet

[Infinite Aerospace]

41 minutes ago, Alexoff said:

I wonder why the community became pessimistic? Why on Reddit posts about KSP1 are full of enthusiasm and fun, but any mention of KSP2 leads to a storm of indignation? After all, this is the same community! If anyone can solve this riddle, they could claim a Nobel Prize in Psychology! It's a shame this prize hasn't been invented yet

Reddit literally tears into this game and the developers, I think they're a bit extreme if I'm honest mind.

[Alexoff]

26 minutes ago, Infinite Aerospace said:

Reddit literally tears into this game and the developers, I think they're a bit extreme if I'm honest mind.

Well that's obvious. But they glorify some things extremely, and on the contrary, they extremely spit on others. For some reason, the story with KSP1 is diametrically opposite to KSP2.

[chefsbrian]

47 minutes ago, Alexoff said:

I wonder why the community became pessimistic?

While I think some of the active hate for the game can be heavily questioned, the pessimism is unfortunately well earned.

At the grounds of it, the current game state is such - Slow bugfix patches with major issues still persisting well after launch. Communications are vague (unfortunately an impossibility to fix in the world of bug fixing) and therefore discouraging to the average person. New content is nearly non-existent at this stage - Plenty has been promised, some has been shown, but the current nature of communications around these things have been a lot of window dressing with little promise of delivery. Not to say that they are actively not going to do it, but a dev update about how hard or complex designing for X or Y is does not assuage the concerns of a community wondering when they will get it. Efforts to increase communication have been unable to address this timeline concern, which have been leading to more speculation as to why not, which generally degrades into negatives, as people speculate as to why they can't answer these questions and provide timelines. From the business perspective, making promises you can't keep is a bad idea, and rightly so. From the consumer perspective, people just want X features per the roadmap, and in line with their general perception of what is reasonable, and failure to at least provide corrections on what reasonable should be just feels like weaseling out of the problem. This problem gets worse when the community was told that bug fixing isn't taking time away from milestone work - Now the community is under the impression that bugs still exist because features are being prioritized, but these features also aren't materializing, so what's going on? One or two mild comms 'mistakes' (Only mistakes by the context of whats happened since, to be honest) has really damaged the entire communications plan of the whole early access launch.

Simply put, nothing has gone 'right' in this early access launch for either timelines or communications, the developers cannot say with confidence when it will get better, and the request to trust them has either exhausted said trust, or never earned it in the first place for many. That's a recipe that's guaranteed to generate pessimism.

As for the whole "Why does KSP2 not get the leniency KSP1 had" debate back and forth, its apples to oranges. Consumer expectations for what early access is and means are wildly different - By the time KSP1 was in an era where early access was more 'normal', the game was also very matured, and wasn't hurting for expectations or defects in its update gaps. KSP2, meanwhile has launched in a period with relatively high expectations from games on the quality front in particular, alongside the expectation of more frequent content. Blame other AAA games for launching in such a horrible state that rapid bug patching of initial versions is expected and resented in equal measures. And blame the seasonal content model for people expecting content updates to be frequent, even if not substantial. KSP2 has peers right now in games like Sons of The Forest, maintaining much more active release cycles. Consumers can often have unrealistic expectations about things, but its difficult to argue its unrealistic when teams with less resources are meeting those expectations across the board.

[Alexoff]

52 minutes ago, chefsbrian said:

Simply put, nothing has gone 'right' in this early access launch for either timelines or communications, the developers cannot say with confidence when it will get better, and the request to trust them has either exhausted said trust, or never earned it in the first place for many.

Well, soon there will be some kind of cosmic day where Nate will again be in the same room with many content makers. I hope they have the courage to ask Nate something specific or remember other interviews. And Nate will be able to answer something in English, and not as he usually does - all the words seem to be familiar, but what exactly he said is unclear.

As for expectations, I have written many times that moving the game to a later date will automatically raise expectations. If KSP2 had been released in this form in 2020 and it had been immediately announced as early access, then there would have been a hundred times less indignation.

[chefsbrian]

28 minutes ago, Alexoff said:

As for expectations, I have written many times that moving the game to a later date will automatically raise expectations. If KSP2 had been released in this form in 2020 and it had been immediately announced as early access, then there would have been a hundred times less indignation.

For the forums, sure - Maybe it'd be better received in the first months, but by now the sentiment would be about the same. Once it starts to become reasonable to the average person to describe the time since launch in Year{s} then things get pretty normalized. And that would only really apply to the forums - the average user on steam who didn't know or care much about the game until the launch marketing started, and set their expectations according to the market as I described before. They're the reason the games rocking that mixed/mostly negative and still trending down. Most of us hardcore and passionate people got in early and reviewed early, the new stuffs the new blood or review updates.

Edited October 16, 2023 by chefsbrian
Apparently [] with an S in it will strikethrough even without a closing element, thanks markup :T

[Alexoff]

23 minutes ago, chefsbrian said:

And that would only really apply to the forums - the average user on steam who didn't know or care much about the game until the launch marketing started, and set their expectations according to the market as I described before.

We could do marketing if community managers knew how to work with a passionate audience. If you look at what weekly challenges look like on Steam, it seems that early versions of chatGPT do this. Communication with the audience looks like either the developers are deaf or the players are mute. This approach is counterproductive everywhere, it only turns the audience against the developers

[Chilkoot]

17 hours ago, The Aziz said:

I don't know why would you care so much, it's just a game after all.

If people didn't care about video games, these forums would not exist.  Obviously they do care, and many have invested untold hours into the franchise.

It's more than a bit disgusting to see someone try to just hand-wave that part of someone else's life away because "it's just a game".  Football/soccer is just a game, but look at the emotional investment and response it elicits around the world from players and backers alike.

And frankly, I think you would be more than a little embarrassed to calculate how much time you yourself have spent commenting on "just a game" here on this site.  If you weren't similarly emotionally tied to Kerbal, you wouldn't have bothered to make thousands of posts about it.

[Superfluous J]

On 10/15/2023 at 12:10 PM, Infinite Aerospace said:

You don't think their approach on communication to their small community of early adopters, in an Early Access format just outright sucks and should realistically be better...?  You genuinely believe Intercept Games is effectively communicating?

I think communication is fine, yes. I truthfully don't know what or how they could communicate in a way that would satisfy anybody. Except making sure every single point of communication is on the Forum as a post by an Intercept employee or official Forum volunteer, but I gave up on that desire long before KSP2 was even announced.

I truthfully, 100% believe that what everybody's upset about isn't that they don't communicate.

It's that there's nothing to communicate.

[Scarecrow71]

1 hour ago, Superfluous J said:

I truthfully, 100% believe that what everybody's upset about isn't that they don't communicate.

It's that there's nothing to communicate

I think that this is exacerbated by the constant statements by CMs that an update will be coming soon, with no word of what or when, followed by complete silence.  If there is really nothing to say, then say nothing.

Edited October 17, 2023 by Scarecrow71

[Superfluous J]

33 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

I think that this is exacerbated by the constant statements by CMs that an update will be coming soon, with no word of what or when, followed by complete silence.  If there is really nothing to say, then say nothing.

I'd be happy with that, but there is at least one popular thread on this board asking why they don't communicate enough and I expect it'd be even more popular if nothing came out at all.

It seems to me if they don't post anything, people complain that they're not posting. If they post a teaser, people read way too much into it. If they post a detailed essay about a problem and solutions they're working on/considering, people complain jointly that this should have happened 4 years ago and also that the solution proposed is terrible.

The ONLY communication that could possibly be well received is "we've fixed bugs x, y, and z and also here's science mode, also bug free."

And even then the first post after it would probably be "Multiplayer when?"

--- EDIT ---

I feel I should add, I do not recall an instance where someone said "we'll be discussing xyz soon" and then no discussion of xyz appeared.

Sure they didn't say what people wanted to hear ("we're still working on it" instead of "it works now better than ever"), but still thing xyz WAS discussed as promised.

[The Aziz]

6 hours ago, Chilkoot said:

If people didn't care about video games, these forums would not exist.  Obviously they do care, and many have invested untold hours into the franchise.

It's more than a bit disgusting to see someone try to just hand-wave that part of someone else's life away because "it's just a game".  Football/soccer is just a game, but look at the emotional investment and response it elicits around the world from players and backers alike.

And frankly, I think you would be more than a little embarrassed to calculate how much time you yourself have spent commenting on "just a game" here on this site.  If you weren't similarly emotionally tied to Kerbal, you wouldn't have bothered to make thousands of posts about it.

One thing is caring, another is ragequitting from a stadium never to return to any match because one was lost.

Like if there weren't any others. (Analogy to KSP1 still existing in case that needed clearing up)

Loudly announcing the leave after the sequel turned out to be mediocre (called "dumpster fire" for some reason) while the first one is still there, working fine, is a bit much.

As for my emotional attachment... Emotions tend to mature with time. Early excitements turned to a more stoic approach as you can probably see. The worst you'll get from me is usually "too bad".

[Infinite Aerospace]

11 hours ago, Alexoff said:

Well that's obvious. But they glorify some things extremely, and on the contrary, they extremely spit on others. For some reason, the story with KSP1 is diametrically opposite to KSP2.

I suspect that the main reason the stories are in opposition to one another is basically down to development. Kerbal Space Program was an indie game developed by a literal handful of people, Kerbal Space Program II is being developed by a purpose made studio, with the backing of multi-billion dollar publishers. It's not unreasonable to have expected a smoother development this time around, without repeating the same mistakes. That is where the schism lies, you've got a professional studio with significant financial backing doing no better than a tiny indie developer.

[Alexoff]

5 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

If they post a detailed essay about a problem and solutions they're working on/considering, people complain jointly that this should have happened 4 years ago and also that the solution proposed is terrible.

Any example?

If the developers are so afraid of everything, then how did they get the courage to release the game and then talk about how proud they are of it?

[Superfluous J]

8 minutes ago, Alexoff said:

6 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

If they post a detailed essay about a problem and solutions they're working on/considering, people complain jointly that this should have happened 4 years ago and also that the solution proposed is terrible.

Any example?

If the developers are so afraid of everything, then how did they get the courage to release the game and then talk about how proud they are of it?

I mean, the forum...?

But if you need a specific case, this write-up that could easily have taken a full work day to compose devolved into nitpicking about how x y or z wasn't being simulated.

And I don't recall saying anybody was afraid of anything. I'm not sure where that came from. But if you keep getting your hand bit every time you put it in the cage, eventually you gotta wonder why you keep feeding that thing.

Edited October 17, 2023 by Superfluous J