KSP2 EA Grand Discussion Thread.

[Alexoff]

38 minutes ago, Superfluous J said:

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.

This was not a detailed essay about the problem and its solution, it was a sudden revelation that the heating, unfinished by the release date, ended up at the concept stage five months later. With posts like this, the developers expose themselves.

[Superfluous J]

14 minutes ago, Alexoff said:

This was not a detailed essay about the problem and its solution, it was a sudden revelation that the heating, unfinished by the release date, ended up at the concept stage five months later. With posts like this, the developers expose themselves.

Thank you for making my point.

Chris' time would have been better spent that day working on the problem instead of explaining it to us lot.

[Periple]

16 minutes ago, Alexoff said:

This was not a detailed essay about the problem and its solution, it was a sudden revelation that the heating, unfinished by the release date, ended up at the concept stage five months later.

That’s not what “concept stage” means and it isn’t at all uncommon to have to redesign systems as you go.

[Scarecrow71]

9 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

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.

Well, you can't really say that though, primarily because you aren't involved in the discussions taking place.  How do you know they are actually talking about stuff?  Because they say they are?

"We know that you want an update on Science.  Trust us when we say that we are talking about it internally, and will have information for you on this soon.  Until then, here's a video we shot that we promised would be out mnths ago that may no longer be relevant."

Them saying they are talking about it does not mean they actually are.  And the big rub here is that they keep stating they are talking about stuff, and that they will have updates for us, but then those updates either never come OR they come out way beyond when they should.  No, they aren't promising actual dates.  But saying stuff like "Re-entry and heating will be out in weeks not months" only to turn around and tell us they are still working on the concept and design months later is, simply put, poor communication.

[Superfluous J]

11 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

Well, you can't really say that though, primarily because you aren't involved in the discussions taking place.  How do you know they are actually talking about stuff?  Because they say they are?

"We know that you want an update on Science.  Trust us when we say that we are talking about it internally, and will have information for you on this soon.  Until then, here's a video we shot that we promised would be out mnths ago that may no longer be relevant."

Them saying they are talking about it does not mean they actually are.  And the big rub here is that they keep stating they are talking about stuff, and that they will have updates for us, but then those updates either never come OR they come out way beyond when they should.  No, they aren't promising actual dates.  But saying stuff like "Re-entry and heating will be out in weeks not months" only to turn around and tell us they are still working on the concept and design months later is, simply put, poor communication.

I'm not (and I don't think anybody else is either) talking about internal communications. So to be as clear as I can be, I meant:

To the best of my knowledge no one on the team has ever mentioned that they will tell US something, and then not later actually tell us the thing. I'm aware they've not said what people want to hear, but they've always said it.

Edited October 17, 2023 by Superfluous J

[AtomicTech]

17 hours 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 [the sequel]] 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

At this point, there is no use in complaining about or defending the sequel to KSP. Just play the game or don't; it doesn't matter. It's concerning to see how a video game tarnished this beacon of civility in the often rabid and rancid internet wasteland. The only hype I have left for the aforementioned is nothing else than some hope tucked in the recesses of my mind that one day it'll get better. I've wholeheartly re-embraced my copy Kerbal Space Program and have no interest in playing its sequel until it offers everything that my copy with mods offers. On top of that, I have no interest in convincing others that my opinion on what game should and shouldn't be liked is absolute, as I have seen repeatedly in various different threads and something that I once was guilty of. No more. 

What I do think, however, is that this thread should not be a gripefest that regurgtates the same points over and over again, regardless of how correct they are. This thread ought to talk about news when there is news, like what we used to say in KSP modding before the sequel killed KSP's modding scene.

[Periple]

59 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

But saying stuff like "Re-entry and heating will be out in weeks not months" only to turn around and tell us they are still working on the concept and design months later is, simply put, poor communication.

I have very little doubt that they believed what they said, but something went wrong with development. That’s not a communication issue, it’s a development issue. Things aren’t progressing as quickly as expected and in some cases they’ve had to do redesigns when they didn’t expect it.

[Alexoff]

5 hours ago, Periple said:

That’s not what “concept stage” means and it isn’t at all uncommon to have to redesign systems as you go.

Darling, this is not at all what you thought!

So, what is this stage? For the development of KSP2 this is rather a rule. All these changes in plans were not commented on by the developers, who knows what they said before?!

5 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

Chris' time would have been better spent that day working on the problem instead of explaining it to us lot.

Thank you for explaining the developers’ approach - who are these fans to justify themselves to them!? The developers are apparently making the game for someone else. In general, it seems that the issue with bad fans is still due to the approach of the developers, and not because the players are swearing that they are being deceived?

1 hour ago, AtomicTech said:

This thread ought to talk about news when there is news

Dead thread?

[Scarecrow71]

2 hours ago, Periple said:

I have very little doubt that they believed what they said, but something went wrong with development. That’s not a communication issue, it’s a development issue. Things aren’t progressing as quickly as expected and in some cases they’ve had to do redesigns when they didn’t expect it.

And failing to communicate that is, again, poor communication.  I get that stuff happens.  Designs change, priorities shift, complications arise.  But to say "weeks, not months", then have that turn into months, all without communicating what is going on?  Not a good look.

[chefsbrian]

2 hours ago, AtomicTech said:

This thread ought to talk about news when there is news

Were it so easy, but when do we come back to actually get news to talk about? One of the glaring gaps in the communications has been the inconsistency of it. Right now, we're actively encouraged to check in every day, because there's absolutely no consistency in the current communications - You can sometimes predict when the next bug fix news will be, but for anything substantial people care about, its a big old series of question marks. There is nothing consistent of substance - No "Come back on the first thursday of every month for a content blog" or the like, no ticking "Next patch on X" (Stealing shamelessly from my prior comparison to The Sons of the Forest) indicator for the community to operate off of.

If anything, the nature of current communications in KSP2 indirectly encourages complaining and negative discussion. As long as it doesn't get spicy enough for Mods to shut it down, the dialog tends to force actual updates from Dakota and the like that something around X is coming soon and just not ready yet. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, and it feels like if we don't squeak to the max, we don't hear anything at all.

[PDCWolf]

14 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

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.

First off, I realize I quoted you 4 times, this is by no means personal, it's just your posts covering a lot of good ground.

The excuse of satisfying "anybody" is a bad one, there's always someone that's satisfied with the current state of affairs. We could argue whether they're the majority or minority, but whatever they've put out, someone has always been happy with. Of course, when they are the minority, those voices quickly get drowned by another tidal wave of criticism. Why haven't they been able to produce a single piece of communication where the positive messages are the majority against the criticism is absolutely debatable. Sadly, most of a certain group of people would rather just cry "haters" or "doomers" or "naysayers" and look away, and then complain when the other side does the same.

Cause and consequence is something most people get wrong when it comes to defending the devs or criticizing the criticizers.

6 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

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.

That's July 21, 5 months after release. If that's the most you have to show after 5 months with literally nothing new, the community will understandably be mad. Let alone the fact that it's been almost 4 months since then and there's still nothing to show.

5 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

Thank you for making my point.

Chris' time would have been better spent that day working on the problem instead of explaining it to us lot.

That devblog is absolutely barebones, Chris didn't even take the work to make a clay render, a graph, or anything but move his pen or mouse around, there's no way that took a whole 8 hour workday or more. That's a 2 hours writeup and maybe another 2 drawing and I'm being extremely generous. This is also why almost nobody would agree with that same statement: It's really not a considerable time taken away from development (which still falls under questioning, as "developing what exactly?").

3 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

I'm not (and I don't think anybody else is either) talking about internal communications. So to be as clear as I can be, I meant:

To the best of my knowledge no one on the team has ever mentioned that they will tell US something, and then not later actually tell us the thing. I'm aware they've not said what people want to hear, but they've always said it.

Keeping score between what they say and what they do is a losing game if you plan to defend them. As pretty much the only one that constantly re-reads, quotes and then links back to their statements, I can tell you that much. Specially if you remember the 3 to 6 years before the launch.

[Meecrob]

On 10/13/2023 at 12:03 PM, regex said:

From my POV  this perception is largely due to the community actually buying in to hype and also KSP1's novelty, which hid a ton of its flaws (it was a pretty good sandbox and a pretty bad game).

Oh, so its my fault that they hyped up a game that is nowhere close to release? Look at buddy on his high horse here...like c'mon man. This game is not  game yet. Its an alpha riding on the coattails of its predecessor. You cannot deny the fact that they are dealing with the same issues that KSP1 did before 1.0. Like they don't seem to be able to learn from the mistakes of others. We all love flight here and one of the most well known quotes is "you don't have enough lives to make mistakes...learn from the dead."

You blame us for buying into the hype, but you don't blame the people releasing this turd of a product and hyping up a turd? Let's be real here. I'm a consumer. I am willing to pay money for decent products, and this product is not decent.

I remember back in the day you used to crap all over KSP1...and now KSP2 is out, it sounds like you have been bought to say it doesn't suck.

Edited October 18, 2023 by Meecrob

[Meecrob]

On 10/13/2023 at 1:28 AM, Periple said:

We’re all guessing and I don’t mind being wrong, especially about stuff where it really doesn’t matter!

I'm sorry, I was a bit salty in my comment. I don't mean to pick you out, @Periple, We are just on opposite opinions...like I'm sure you are a cool person to hang out with...we just have a difference of opinion, I think.

 

Haha laugh at me cuz I just double posted! I suck.

Edited October 17, 2023 by Meecrob

[Superfluous J]

7 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

That's July 21, 5 months after release. If that's the most you have to show after 5 months with literally nothing new, the community will understandably be mad. Let alone the fact that it's been almost 4 months since then and there's still nothing to show.

I just picked one I recalled being particularly nasty in the comments. If that was the last one, so be it.

Also I don't actually consider 5 months all that long. Especially when I don't consider that kind of communication worth it. It's possible that they decided to not bother and that's why they're not doing that anymore. I don't know, but it seems totally reasonable.

And to be sure, I'm not saying they're all crying and hurt feelingsed and sad because of meanie meanie mean people being mean to their poor snowflake selves. I mean looking at time spent vs result and saying "well that was a total waste. Lesson learned."

[PDCWolf]

37 minutes ago, Superfluous J said:

Also I don't actually consider 5 months all that long.

Well, it's clear by now that a lot of people judge time very differently. For me 5 months to show me some paint drawings and literally nothing else is even insulting.

38 minutes ago, Superfluous J said:

Especially when I don't consider that kind of communication worth it.

If we're talking about that specific dev blog? yeah, I'll agree any day that piece was worthless. Why did they expect anything positive to come from exposing the system as a simplification of the previous whilst not mentioning the per-part-save bloating problem and on top of that not even taking the time to show anything but paint drawings... yeah, not sure what were they thinking.

41 minutes ago, Superfluous J said:

"well that was a total waste. Lesson learned."

Again, I agree in principle, but first off it wasn't really that much time, and second off they have nothing to show of where that time might've been better spent.

[Meecrob]

On 10/13/2023 at 1:23 PM, Bej Kerman said:

X

Could you expand on that? I'm not saying you are wrong, I'm saying you didn't give a real reply. Like I want to understand what you are saying.

[Periple]

13 hours ago, chefsbrian said:

The squeaky wheel gets the grease, and it feels like if we don't squeak to the max, we don't hear anything at all.

That also encourages squeaking, which is why I think they ought to just stop communicating altogether until there is something tangible to communicate. I think their best strategy for now would be release notes and nothing else. Actions and tangible results, not words.

[PDCWolf]

6 hours ago, Periple said:

That also encourages squeaking, which is why I think they ought to just stop communicating altogether until there is something tangible to communicate. I think their best strategy for now would be release notes and nothing else. Actions and tangible results, not words.

The problem with this view is that it is completely unrealistic when you take into account the time already elapsed. This is also the problem with a lot of other takes. We're not on February 24th, we haven't been on February 24th for 7 months and three weeks. There's no "they just stop doing this or that and get to work" They should've already been at work doing something. We should have something by now.

Not only do we have nothing by now, what we have is clearly lagging a lot behind. Further on, if we know we're gonna get something, we still have no idea when (heating, science), and for the rest, we don't even have an idea of what that stuff they're allegedly working on is.

You can have all the patience in the world, and all the acceptance and understanding in the universe. However the current situation should at least have you raising an eyebrow.

Edited October 18, 2023 by PDCWolf

[Alexoff]

Nate has something to say on Friday. I hope he will show something new, and not once again tell how proud he is of the game and his team

[Scarecrow71]

1 hour ago, Alexoff said:

Nate has something to say on Friday. I hope he will show something new, and not once again tell how proud he is of the game and his team

I'm not holding my breath.  I really want there to be something of substance said, but his history is working against him here.  That, coupled with the fact that the CM's have gone completely silent, tells me more than any words they can say.

[chefsbrian]

7 hours ago, Periple said:

That also encourages squeaking, which is why I think they ought to just stop communicating altogether until there is something tangible to communicate. I think their best strategy for now would be release notes and nothing else. Actions and tangible results, not words.

Agreed in theory, but unfortunately that ship has sailed. They've come out multiple times making promises to improve communication frequency and quality, to attempt to address community concerns. Stepping back now might cause worse damage as the optics of the situation among the most negative become "First they abandon their release cadence, then they abandon any reasonable content schedule, and now they abandon even trying to tell us what's going on - All that's left is to officially abandon the game".

That's why I say that I think their early mistakes have really screwed the team over on the whole situation. They tried to commit early to things that now are evidently not feasible, but those commitments were efforts to address initial genuine concerns in the first place. Trying to roll back to quiet mode now would be an absolutely huge blow that'd undo any and all efforts to maintain positive sentiment about the game. And I want to touch back onto the very start of this post, where I agree "In Theory" to quiet mode. In practice, if KSP2 were to be judged by its actions and not its words, it'd be judged as abandoned or a scam. If the team had said nothing about all the things they say are in the pipe, and all we had was the release day messaging and the following patch notes, then stuff like reentry heat would be burning bigger holes in the community confidence than it already is. The wording back then about it being a brief period would make the lack of it and lack of communication over the following eight months a glaring indicator that something has gone terribly wrong.

So yea, they're stuck in a pickle. They launched the game in a very rough state, and made a lot of public promises about how they'd progress on fixing those, along with how they'd communicate about those fixes to us. They're now failing to deliver those promises, and can't just walk it back since its tied into the whole correction of the rough state of the game - abandoning one would be tantamount to abandoning the other. And they can't realistically expect the community to accept some new solution either - They've already shown by action they can't deliver on game or community update promises, and we've unfortunately no reason to believe any new plan would be any different.

[Periple]

15 minutes ago, chefsbrian said:

Stepping back now might cause worse damage as the optics of the situation among the most negative become "First they abandon their release cadence, then they abandon any reasonable content schedule, and now they abandon even trying to tell us what's going on - All that's left is to officially abandon the game".

I don’t think that matters!

17 minutes ago, chefsbrian said:

They've already shown by action they can't deliver on game or community update promises, and we've unfortunately no reason to believe any new plan would be any different.

I don’t think there is any form of communication that can turn that around. Only material progress can.

I think the most damaging thing that has happened to the game since launch has been the abandonment of a regular release schedule. They were getting there but then dropped it. If we had a release to look forward to every four weeks with a bunch of stuff fixed and occasionally added, I think sentiment would start to turn around.

Ultimately none of this is that important. The game will or won’t be canceled, and will or won’t start to deliver on its promises. Sentiment will follow, although I expect there will be a small but vocal contingent of haters/cheerleaders regardless.

[chefsbrian]

7 minutes ago, Periple said:

I don’t think that matters!

It does though - Publishers can, and do, take community sentiment in mind when it comes to projects. And while I believe the team 100% when they say the team is currently fully funded and staffed and that's not a worry right now, its also guaranteed that its not in perpetuity. When the next budget cycle comes up, the community sentiment and its impact on future revenues will be considered - People don't want to buy a 'dead' game, and even success stories like NMS show it takes literally years upon years to turn the sentiment around once the wider, non-owning public whom you rely on buying the game to continue justifying its development.

There's no reason for leadership to rush into making any funding decisions about the games future as of right now, but if they let the sentiment tank hard enough that the pubic narrative becomes "Games abandoned", they would be remiss to not consider whether they're about to throw good money after bad. Remember, massive community support and excitement is what originally made the publishers agree to a scope increase and three additional years of development over the original plans and release date. Massive community rejection can very much do the same in the other direction.

[Alexoff]

33 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

That, coupled with the fact that the CM's have gone completely silent, tells me more than any words they can say.

In this regard, it is completely unclear why the company has two community managers (it seems they were looking for a third).

[AtomicTech]

6 minutes ago, Alexoff said:

In this regard, it is completely unclear why the company has two community managers (it seems they were looking for a third).

One to do Discord/the Forums and the other for the other social media platforms.