The Future of KSP 2 Multiplayer

[Kerbalsaurus]

I really fear that, if KSP 2 becomes more available to other people, the multiplayer feature may become and awful thing. People on online games are already sour enough. In any shooter or survival game, everyone online are apparently the worst people to ever walk the planet. Also, let's look at another great physics game, Brick Rigs. Brick Rigs' multiplayer feature has turned for the worst. All of the servers are SUPER strict roleplay servers with, like, a whole constitution behind them explaining the rules of the server. Could KSP 2's multiplayer suffer the same fate? Could all of the servers become something like "KSC City Life Roleplay", or turn into a no man's land of unrepeatable words?

[PDCWolf]

I've got my years on me, so I got to live the forum+community server era, way before matchmaking and more modern heresy and so I can tell you the following: we don't know what server-hosting technology KSP2 will use, but if it is not matchmaking on proprietary servers, there's almost always a server that fits your needs, or you can just make your own, as we're long past the era where home internet connections were unable to host games. Open your own server, with your own rules (or no rules).

 

 

Edited August 2, 2023 by PDCWolf

[Alexoff]

Will players be able to interact with each other in multiplayer? Is it just me or did Nate say that it would be a space race where players would compete to see who could do the most?

[Periple]

I'm pretty certain that KSP2 multiplayer will be P2P or privately-hosted servers only with small player counts (I'm guessing up to 16 based on the number of KSCs available). So it'll be entirely up to you to decide who you want to play with. I don't think public servers with everything that implies are going to be on the cards.

[cocoscacao]

2 hours ago, Alexoff said:

it would be a space race

It seems that majority of members here expect multiplayer to be some sort of competition. Is there a possibility for a coop mode, where players divide tasks, conquer the space together, plant trees on Kerbin, and generally be total hippies?

[Spicat]

The concept is explained here:

Single agency play (where you can build a rocket at the same time) and multi-agencies play (4 agencies of 4 people max)

And yes, in the first AMA they described that interaction in multiplayer will be a thing, same goes with collision:

 

Edited August 2, 2023 by Spicat

[The Aziz]

3 hours ago, Spicat said:

The concept is explained here:

Single agency play (where you can build a rocket at the same time) and multi-agencies play (4 agencies of 4 people max)

And yes, in the first AMA they described that interaction in multiplayer will be a thing, same goes with collision:

 

And that's pretty much all we know.

It should be vaguely described in my pre-release repository, in my signature.

[Periple]

4 hours ago, cocoscacao said:

It seems that majority of members here expect multiplayer to be some sort of competition. Is there a possibility for a coop mode, where players divide tasks, conquer the space together, plant trees on Kerbin, and generally be total hippies?

I can’t see how four players in the same agency could be anything but coop, and in multi-agency play you can surely ignore any score keeping the game offers and hippie out to your heart’s content, even if there isn’t a mode for that.

I’d be mildly surprised if they don’t offer some kind of official multi-agency coop mode too though as it’s just a matter of disabling the competition incentives, whatever they are.

[K33N]

My hope is that it is like Minecraft: the chaos of open servers is appealing in its own way, while private servers with whitelists are safe and fun too.

It will be years and years before multiplayer gets released so it's not worth worrying about.

2 hours ago, Periple said:

I can’t see how four players in the same agency could be anything but coop, and in multi-agency play you can surely ignore any score keeping the game offers and hippie out to your heart’s content, even if there isn’t a mode for that.

I’d be mildly surprised if they don’t offer some kind of official multi-agency coop mode too though as it’s just a matter of disabling the competition incentives, whatever they are.

I think that they have said that their will be a space race mode, which will definitely be competitive.  

Edited August 2, 2023 by K33N

[shdwlrd]

I think it will be the case similar to Valhiem, Avorion, Space Engineers. The multiplayer experience is meant for a small group of friends. Any public or large scale servers are your problem and IG won't officially support them. At least at first anyway.

So player beware.

[GGG-GoodGuyGreg]

It's way too early to tell what Multiplayer is going to be like.

It's also kind of funny how we still didn't even get the first item on the roadmap, so I reckon we're at least a year or two away from Multiplayer and Interstellar, yet these features get discussed a lot with many people (including myself) have concerns over how these features should or shouldn't be like when most likely these features are still in the concept phase.

[Periple]

9 hours ago, K33N said:

I think that they have said that their will be a space race mode, which will definitely be competitive.  

Sure, but that doesn’t rule out non-competitive modes. And even in the unlikely case that there isn’t one, you can still play space race and ignore the scorekeeping, which makes it coop!

9 hours ago, GGG-GoodGuyGreg said:

most likely these features are still in the concept phase

They’ve said that they play multiplayer internally and have even posted screenshots. That puts it a long way past the concept phase.

[TMS]

Reminder: multiplayer was a late-roadmap, long-teased (if not officially promised) feature of KSP1 which semi-officially disappeared (I have a vague recollection of an official announcement that it was being dropped from active development).

If you want to know what the options are, the old wiki has some suggestions.  The conceptual constraints will probably give you some idea on what the likely gameplay model can be.

My opinion is still the same as it was eight years ago:  I hope it never comes to fruition and that no developer resources are allocated to it.

Edited August 4, 2023 by TMS

[cocoscacao]

8 minutes ago, TMS said:

My optinion is still the same as it was eight years ago:  I hope it never comes to fruition

Ehr... There was an interview with Nate where he said that every time they wanted to include something, they had to make sure it's compatible with multiplayer, so a lot of ideas were (possibly) dropped because of it. Whatever those ideas were, I'd gladly trade multiplayer in favor of them, but... If multiplayer gets dropped at this point, we (probably) lose both...

Edited August 3, 2023 by cocoscacao

[Alexoff]

12 hours ago, Periple said:

They’ve said that they play multiplayer internally and have even posted screenshots. That puts it a long way past the concept phase.

They played multiplayer in 2019. We saw a screenshot of plasma from a rocket taking off in March, we saw radiators last year, but heating is still a concept. Multiplayer screenshots are generally a rather dubious thing, I can make the same screenshot of cyberpunk 2077 multiplayer in 10 minutes

[BowlerHatGuy3]

On 8/1/2023 at 10:08 PM, PDCWolf said:

I got to live the forum+community server era, way before matchmaking and more modern heresy

Lol. Needing to matchmake to get into a game really killed multiplayer games for me

[cocoscacao]

3 hours ago, Alexoff said:

They played multiplayer in 2019. We saw a screenshot of plasma from a rocket taking off in March

Going back to Speculationland, something tells me most of that is scratched, and we're watching the game development in front of our eyes. Not necessarily a bad thing, if you have patience. 

[Periple]

16 hours ago, Alexoff said:

They played multiplayer in 2019. We saw a screenshot of plasma from a rocket taking off in March, we saw radiators last year, but heating is still a concept.

"Concept phase" has a specific meaning in gamedev. If you have working code in the development branch rather than throwaway prototypes, then you're well out of the concept phase. My educated guess is that multiplayer (and science, and a bunch of other things) are now in the production phase, which is two steps forward from the concept phase. 

16 hours ago, Alexoff said:

Multiplayer screenshots are generally a rather dubious thing, I can make the same screenshot of cyberpunk 2077 multiplayer in 10 minutes

Are you insinuating that IG is straight-up faking the screenshots? If so, that's rather a serious accusation which could potentially even have legal consequences. Do you have anything to support it?

[TickleMyMary]

1 hour ago, Periple said:

Are you insinuating that IG is straight-up faking the screenshots? If so, that's rather a serious accusation which could potentially even have legal consequences. Do you have anything to support it?

I'm sorry, what now? What possible legal consequences are you envisaging here? 

[KerbolExplorer]

First of all the devs need to sort out how to get 50 parts on screen without the fps going to 5

[Alexoff]

1 hour ago, Periple said:

Are you insinuating that IG is straight-up faking the screenshots?

Yep, thats right

1 hour ago, Periple said:

If so, that's rather a serious accusation which could potentially even have legal consequences

I really hope that right now IG is preparing a lawsuit against me and a video of Nate and his colleagues playing KSP2 multiplayer at the same time.

2 hours ago, Periple said:

Do you have anything to support it?

Very serious suspicions and lack of videos of many features of KSP2. The only colony on Dune has been shown to us for three years from different angles. Of course, I have no evidence of the absence of an invisible teapot in orbit.

[VlonaldKerman]

I suspect multiplayer will be fine. Big servers will be chaos, private ones will be whatever you want them to be. I also suspect it will be less popular than people are expecting.

As a side note: On the internet, I expect chaos, and draconian rules in response to counter it. Such has always been the way of the internet- is there any reason to be concerned about KSP specifically?

21 minutes ago, KerbolExplorer said:

First of all the devs need to sort out how to get 50 parts on screen without the fps going to 5

Minor detail. Don’t worry- the core systems are solid 

[The Aziz]

21 hours ago, KerbolExplorer said:

First of all the devs need to sort out how to get 50 parts on screen without the fps going to 5

Weird, I can do that easily.

[Periple]

On 8/4/2023 at 2:24 PM, Alexoff said:

Yep, thats right

If they got caught, it would destroy the reputation of not just the studio but also the publisher, and open them up to possible legal repercussions regarding false advertising.

I could imagine a solo or indie developer with too much ego and some psychoactive substances doing that, but not a studio under T2 oversight, with an army of lawyers vetting everything they say.

On 8/4/2023 at 2:24 PM, Alexoff said:

Very serious suspicions and lack of videos of many features of KSP2. The only colony on Dune has been shown to us for three years from different angles. Of course, I have no evidence of the absence of an invisible teapot in orbit.

Your claim that a 100-strong studio overseen by a subsidiary of one of the biggest publishers in the business is faking screenshots and outright lying about a core feature is one really big teapot in really high orbit! 

[pipe]

I've never imagined KSP 2 servers as public which anyone can join. Private/Friend-only Peer-to-peer servers are a much better choice for simulation games like KSP 2.