You promised us communication, where is it?

[Superfluous J]

5 hours ago, VlonaldKerman said:

No- it’s like you spent $50 for a months supply of milk only to find that they are out of stock for the foreseeable future.

No it's more like you spent $50 for a month's supply of bottled water that you thought was milk because you misinterpreted the ad picture where the gallon jugs looked like milk jugs, and ignored the person leaving the store as you came in who said "man that's just water, not milk."

[shdwlrd]

2 hours ago, RocketRockington said:

Whereas blaming the consumer over and over for their reasonable expectations and their predictable and reasonable reaction to the state of the game is just abhorrent to me, I can't understand why that's the position some people are still taking after it's become so clear how far off the expectations the company set for the game are from the product they provided.

To be fair, Nate did say the game was in "rough shape" before it released. But didn't elaborate on his definition of "rough shape." So he didn't properly manage expectations for the game.

This is a case it's was like buying a car sight unseen that the seller said it only needs some mechanical repairs and all the fluids changed out. But you receive a project car instead. The seller didn't correct the expectation of the buyer. 

Unlike the car scenario, a game (as long as it isn't canceled) will eventually be completed. 

Back to the point of the thread, IG didn't properly manage expectations in the beginning. They tried and failed since then. At this point, I agree with @Periple that the best thing they can do is go silent, get some quality patches out, and then start talking again. Because right now, talking about new and upcoming features will be poorly received. Talking about general dev work will garner a negative response despite the overall progress they are making.

[Periple]

2 minutes ago, shdwlrd said:

This is a case it's was like buying a car sight unseen that the seller said it only needs some mechanical repairs and all the fluids changed out. But you receive a project car instead. The seller didn't correct the expectation of the buyer. 

That’s why there are consumer protection laws and practices. Where I’m from there’s a 14 day unconditional right to return a car you’ve bought online without seeing it. A bit like Steam’s unconditional 14-day/2 hour refund window!

[Cryptobux]

Fair point. Anybody who bought this game on Steam and did not refund within the two hour playtime window knew exactly what it was they had purchased.

I applaud those customers who elected to not refund out of altruism, good faith, and trust that the game would improve at the rate Simpson suggested they could expect.

[shdwlrd]

22 minutes ago, Periple said:

That’s why there are consumer protection laws and practices. Where I’m from there’s a 14 day unconditional right to return a car you’ve bought online without seeing it. A bit like Steam’s unconditional 14-day/2 hour refund window!

Where I'm at the consumer protections are weak at best or non-existent. Only out right fraud will get a strong response.

Yes, you still have a refund period with Steam. With KSP though, (or most games for that matter) 2 hours really isn't enough to get a good picture of the state of the game. It's only enough to figure out if you like the game play or if it's completely non playable for your system. But that is a gripe about Steam’s refund policy. Not so much about KSP.

[Guest]

3 hours ago, shdwlrd said:

IG didn't properly manage expectations in the beginning. They tried and failed since then. At this point, I agree with @Periple that the best thing they can do is go silent, get some quality patches out, and then start talking again. Because right now, talking about new and upcoming features will be poorly received. Talking about general dev work will garner a negative response despite the overall progress they are making.

I kind of understand what you are saying. But KSP will have a hard time to do a "No Man's Sky" right now.

I am not only talking about "No Man's Sky" as a reference of "comeback" but also about how to do communications.

Because after "No Man's Sky" came out they knew the f*ed up and they went into complete radio silence mode. However the main "guy" (not sure which role he actually had) was busy collecting all the negative feedback to improve the game. Furthermore they did actually have a solid foundation. They had designed their own game engine from the ground up and it was pretty solid. They were missing features but the base was there.

And here we are with KSP2. They tried to go the EA way instead. Which means there will be communication. So they were not able to go into radio silence mode. They tried to tell everyone that the game is really great. And they also do not have a solid foundation yet.

"Hello Games" which made "No Man's Sky" never tried to blame the community about the game. They did not say much but they 100% knew they did not deliver what the community wanted. KSP2 however tried to ride the hype train as long as possible.

So I am not sure if we have reached a point where "radio silence" will not work anymore. Especially because they took the EA route.

[Alexoff]

3 hours ago, Periple said:

That’s why there are consumer protection laws and practices. Where I’m from there’s a 14 day unconditional right to return a car you’ve bought online without seeing it. A bit like Steam’s unconditional 14-day/2 hour refund window!

In the first weeks and months, a polyphonic choir said that everything would soon change. Half of the positive reviews on Steam are about this. Many YouTubers who played KSP2 before us were also sure that a lot of things would be fixed before release or in the near future. Can we blame this part of the community, which for some reason created unrealistic expectations among others?

[Royalswissarmyknife]

5 hours ago, Wahnfried said:

@Spicat

Steam Roles for EA
Overview
What is Early Access?
Steam Early Access enables you to sell your game on Steam while it is still being developed, and provide context to customers that a product should be considered "unfinished." Early Access is a place for games that are in a playable alpha or beta state, are worth the current value of the playable build, and that you plan to continue to develop for release.

Releasing a game in Early Access helps set context for prospective customers and provides them with information about your plans and goals before a "final" release.
What Early Access Is Not
Early Access is not a way to crowdfund development of your product.
You should not use Early Access solely to fund development. If you are counting on selling a specific number of units to complete your game, then you need to think carefully about what it would mean for you or your team if you don't sell that many units. Are you willing to continue developing the game without any sales? Are you willing to seek other forms of investment?

Early Access is not a pre-purchase
Early Access is not meant to be a form of pre-purchase, but a tool to get your game in front of Steam users and gather feedback while finishing your game.

Early Access titles must deliver a playable game or usable software to the customer at the time of purchase, while pre-purchase games are delivered at a future date. Read more about Pre-Purchasing on Steam.

This ^

Also the amount of excuses in this thread is amusing.

(also steams refund policy is horrible I have tried so many times to get a refund for Ksp-2)

Spoiler

Ksp-2 should adopt Cities: Skylines II's form of communication regarding future features

Just say what your adding and be done.

its not hard to say if your science system is based around collecting science with parts or missions.

its not like you have to predict the future and say what the exact layout of the tech tree is.

 

5 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

No it's more like you spent $50 for a month's supply of bottled water that you thought was milk because you misinterpreted the ad picture where the gallon jugs looked like milk jugs, and ignored the person leaving the store as you came in who said "man that's just water, not milk."

Yes well they told me it would become milk within a relativity short period of time.

its been 6 months and now its lid is glued shut and I cant even open it without breaking.

Edited September 15, 2023 by Royalswissarmyknife

[Royalswissarmyknife]

11 hours ago, Periple said:

Just like Steam can give you a refund if the game you bought was sour!

Spoiler

Not when the game takes more then 2 hours to figure out if you like it or not.

And when your advertised a "Improved user experience".

Edited September 15, 2023 by Royalswissarmyknife

[Spicat]

5 hours ago, Wahnfried said:

@Spicat

Steam Roles for EA
Overview
What is Early Access?
Steam Early Access enables you to sell your game on Steam while it is still being developed, and provide context to customers that a product should be considered "unfinished." Early Access is a place for games that are in a playable alpha or beta state, are worth the current value of the playable build, and that you plan to continue to develop for release.

Releasing a game in Early Access helps set context for prospective customers and provides them with information about your plans and goals before a "final" release.
What Early Access Is Not
Early Access is not a way to crowdfund development of your product.
You should not use Early Access solely to fund development. If you are counting on selling a specific number of units to complete your game, then you need to think carefully about what it would mean for you or your team if you don't sell that many units. Are you willing to continue developing the game without any sales? Are you willing to seek other forms of investment?

Early Access is not a pre-purchase
Early Access is not meant to be a form of pre-purchase, but a tool to get your game in front of Steam users and gather feedback while finishing your game.

Early Access titles must deliver a playable game or usable software to the customer at the time of purchase, while pre-purchase games are delivered at a future date. Read more about Pre-Purchasing on Steam.

Yes?

That's the thing you must follow.

[Guest]

Honestly. Why are people here doing weird comparisons about RL products and software?

They are not the same.

I am not a native english speaker but I am sure this thing about "apples and oranges" is about things which you can compare but it doesn't make that much sense.

And yes you can compare apples and oranges. Like what is your favorite. But this "I buy a car and compare that to a software" is so fundamentally wrong that I don't even care about the discussion at all.

Don't know what you are talking about but maybe it is better to compare things with other digital or virtual products.

[K33N]

25 minutes ago, Spicat said:

Yes?

That's the thing you must follow.

I think their point is that KSP2 is very obviously breaking the rules.

[Royalswissarmyknife]

25 minutes ago, Spicat said:

Yes?

That's the thing you must follow.

 

6 hours ago, Wahnfried said:

Early Access titles must deliver a playable game or usable software to the customer at the time of purchase

Ksp-2 manages to narrowly avoid being banned from EA with this rule.

Unless you count stable orbits as a major part of the gameplay.

[cocoscacao]

35 minutes ago, running_bird said:

Why are people here doing weird comparisons about RL products and software?

No idea. Software is an imaginary life product.

[AlexTheNotSoGreat]

Intercept should really look at how the Factorio devs are presenting their content plans. Minimal secrecy, minimal hypotheticals, trying their absolute best to explain how a feature is implemented and why they chose that route all the way down to showing every UI and edge case. Considering it's already gotten me hyped for the game's DLC without even going into the primary DLC content, I'd say it's a good strategy for both getting trust and hype from a community.

[RocketRockington]

33 minutes ago, AlexTheNotSoGreat said:

Intercept should really look at how the Factorio devs are presenting their content plans. Minimal secrecy, minimal hypotheticals, trying their absolute best to explain how a feature is implemented and why they chose that route all the way down to showing every UI and edge case. Considering it's already gotten me hyped for the game's DLC without even going into the primary DLC content, I'd say it's a good strategy for both getting trust and hype from a community.

You have to have completed, well thought out designs and significant progress on features that you have confidence in to follow that kind of strategy. 

 Better to just speak in vague terms and consider marking all bugs with no fix as 'under investigation' when you're making glacial progress instead.

Edited September 16, 2023 by RocketRockington

[Strawberry]

I realized I never shared my actual thoughts on this thread. Yeah the communication slowdown sucks, I think its a reason for a lot of tensions. I don't think its because the devs are too scared to speak or whatever (honestly the cms talk about as much in the forums pre comm slowdown). If you want the offical CM answer, check below, if you want my analysis I think its pretty explainable by two things. 1. The CMs have been down a member for around two months now, the most drastic slowdown compared to the time of weekly upnates was right after the CM left the team. Having a third of your team leave will seriously mess up your workflows. 2. The CM team is switching to a new format for large scale communications. I think the call to switch to a video format is a good one, the recent reentry video was pretty well received, however the swap to a different workflow will slow you down a lot. I think in retrospect not doing a fullswap from "upnates" to videos wouldve been good that way natural delays and the like in videos dont get seen as the devs abandoning all communications. Both of these fortunately are temporary things, but both hiring a new CM and being able to better regularize video production will take a while to happen. (btw we got a minor update on the getting a third CM back today see below)

Mildly off topic but also not, for my take on the interplatform communication, its fine. I think there's a fundamental disconnect between "What we (involved community members) would like to know" and "What's actually productive to broadcast out" that I generally try to fill. For example, the unity change wasn't highlighted a lot, it was only posted in the modding discord and the modding subforum on here. I think a lot of people would want to know that the unity is changing as we are a curious bunch, but if you just put something out like that on the unity change, even if you specify its just a change that effects modders, people will either go "Okay and?" or "This means that hdrp is happening in 1.5!!",  both of which arent good responses from your community. 

I do think where interplatform communication could improve is 1. Communicating the mild scales news gap that dev tracker fills to reddit and twitter feels lacking (disclaimer, I dont use either of these platform for ksp),  I think a link to dev tracker or something like that in the reddit header would be neat. 2. I think that casual communication is inherently hard on the forums because threads are very focused and formal (compared to the more branching and casual discord conversations), however I still think some casual communication would be nice.  Like, I dont think there's any thread to where you could go @ dakota hows the hunt for the new cm going? And it wouldnt be off topic for the thread. But I do think there are times where a cm can casually interject in a thread and add a bit more context. For example I think a tiny two-three sentence comment like the first discord image (would probably have to be worded differently to account for cultural differences) would do a lot for this thread. I think just casual clarifications and microscale news here on the forums would do a long way in the perceived communications gap.

[Pthigrivi]

1 hour ago, AlexTheNotSoGreat said:

Intercept should really look at how the Factorio devs are presenting their content plans. Minimal secrecy, minimal hypotheticals, trying their absolute best to explain how a feature is implemented and why they chose that route all the way down to showing every UI and edge case. Considering it's already gotten me hyped for the game's DLC without even going into the primary DLC content, I'd say it's a good strategy for both getting trust and hype from a community.

In fairness Factorio was announced 10 years ago, it was in EA for 4 years and its been out now for over 3. We don’t really know a whole lot about the DLC coming out (hopefully) next year.  Frostpunk 2 also comes out next year and all we really know is its gonna have oil. 

[Strawberry]

3 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

In fairness Factorio was announced 10 years ago, it was in EA for 4 years and its been out now for over 3. We don’t really know a whole lot about the DLC coming out (hopefully) next year.  Frostpunk 2 also comes out next year and all we really know is its gonna have oil. 

Also they've had 3 years to prep their FFFs for a single year. More communication is good but sadly more communication is complicated.

[Spicat]

7 hours ago, K33N said:

I think their point is that KSP2 is very obviously breaking the rules.

7 hours ago, Royalswissarmyknife said:

Ksp-2 manages to narrowly avoid being banned from EA with this rule.

Unless you count stable orbits as a major part of the gameplay.

Which rule are they breaking?

If you're mentioning the "playable game", yes ksp2 is playable, it's not bugs that make it not a game. A not "playable game" would mean a tech demo where there is no gameplay, like if the only thing you could do is observing a menu or just looking at Kerbin. It's not "rocket wobble, literally unplayable", people can still have hours worth of gameplay in ksp2.

Either way, I don't want to start a semantic argument. What I was trying to talk about initially is YOUR responsibility. YOU should not buy games on promises. YOU should not preorder.

Yes games can be scummy, and that's why people shouldn't preorder anything or buy a game without knowing what they are going into, like by seeing reviews. That's my point. I see too much people preordering thinking, "This time it's different", it never will.

[Royalswissarmyknife]

6 hours ago, Spicat said:

Which rule are they breaking?

If you're mentioning the "playable game", yes ksp2 is playable, it's not bugs that make it not a game. A not "playable game" would mean a tech demo where there is no gameplay, like if the only thing you could do is observing a menu or just looking at Kerbin. It's not "rocket wobble, literally unplayable", people can still have hours worth of gameplay in ksp2.

Idk man being able to be in a stable orbit seems important to a spaceflight game

maybe just me though. 

Edited September 16, 2023 by Royalswissarmyknife

[Alexoff]

6 hours ago, Spicat said:

Either way, I don't want to start a semantic argument. What I was trying to talk about initially is YOUR responsibility. YOU should not buy games on promises. YOU should not preorder.

Does this mean that developers are unreachable and irresponsible? Do they have any responsibility or are they like a hurricane - a blind force of nature? None of the developers noted in this thread; traditionally the fans should take the rap for them

[DunaManiac]

I disagree that radio silence is the best approach. It could've worked if the launch wasn't a disaster, and it may have worked in the past when expectations were sky-high, but all that would do now is just make people believe that they aren't communicating because they have nothing to show. So it wouldn't improve the attitude that the devs are incompetent and/or are making no progress or make it go away, it would just make it worse.

Also, I do find it somewhat saddening that these days, a lot of defenses of KSP2 are by people who don't play it often, and are some variation of "you were stupid if you expected anything out of EA lol." I mean, if both sides agree that the game was a disaster, what are we arguing about?

Edited September 16, 2023 by DunaManiac

[gluckez]

13 minutes ago, Spicat said:

Not only the case for twitter it seems. 

yeah, people are impatient and easily triggered here, it's almost as toxic as reddit. You get a post about an AMA that the devs did, answering questions from the community, and almost immediately people find something they don't like and it turns into "The devs don't communicate and they haven't implemented this weird feature that I've been demanding since last week so they are worse than hitler". my advice: just lurk, don't engage xD. I'm pretty sure I'm already triggering some salty people here just by saying this and it only proves my point.

[Periple]

1 hour ago, Alexoff said:

Does this mean that developers are unreachable and irresponsible? Do they have any responsibility or are they like a hurricane - a blind force of nature? None of the developers noted in this thread; traditionally the fans should take the rap for them

The devs are under no obligation at all to talk to us. If they do so, it’s a courtesy, and we are under the obligation to treat it as such.

If we don’t, you shouldn’t be surprised if they choose not to.