You promised us communication, where is it?

[Scarecrow71]

10 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

Funnily enough whilst you were banned here and went on Reddit, you should've come across any of the 100 threads polling, explaining or at least showing the phenomenon. KSP2 killed almost 75% of the activity of KSP1, and it never came back to either game, or to the social platforms. Finding people that put down KSP1 to play KSP2 and got disappointed, only to move on to other games is pretty common

Citation for this?  Cuz I just checked steamdb, and the current player count of KSP1 is 1230, and the 25 hour peak is 1723.  Taking a look at the chart, yes, player count is about half now than it was when KSP2 dropped.  But, a lot of people don't use the launcher.  And some of us - myself included - have the game on Epic (and even then I don’t use the launcher).  So...?

This is the same kind of argument about KSP2 player counts that gets shot down constantly.  You can't rely on SteamDB for the most accurate data because it isn't all-inclusive.

And Reddit isn't the best example of threads and polls on the topic.  The same person creates a poll every day about what people think of the state of KSP2, and the options are always "it sucks, it sucks bad, its really horrible, just show me the results".  Not exactly scientific.

[PDCWolf]

23 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

Citation for this?  Cuz I just checked steamdb, and the current player count of KSP1 is 1230, and the 25 hour peak is 1723.  Taking a look at the chart, yes, player count is about half now than it was when KSP2 dropped.  But, a lot of people don't use the launcher.  And some of us - myself included - have the game on Epic (and even then I don’t use the launcher).  So...?

This is the same kind of argument about KSP2 player counts that gets shot down constantly.  You can't rely on SteamDB for the most accurate data because it isn't all-inclusive.

People not using the launcher is only common in the forums where less than 1% of the playerbase shows up and most of us hate the PD launcher. It's not even the case on the Discord.

For some hard numbers: even on the forums, the tutorial on bypassing the launcher is on page 6 by popularity. With an order of magnitude less views than the most popular stuff (giving it about 1.7% the views of the most popular posts, and about 10% the views of the median between the top 100). Now, you could obviously argue that most people here don't need the tutorial, so here's a sister post on Reddit, where it's also unpopular. Lastly, the steam guide, has only 4000 views. The safe conclusion is people who disable or skip the launcher are a 1 digit % minority when looked as part of the total playerbase.

As for Epic, even though SteamDB doesn't include Epic or launcherless, it's still the majority of players. So, even if you doubled the number you see on SteamDB to correct (which is way over-correcting, like a lot), that's still 200 people playing. In reality the player number between Steam + Epic + Launcherless should be no more than 50% bigger than what you see on SteamDB.

47 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

And Reddit isn't the best example of threads and polls on the topic.

Good thing the album includes Steam and Twitter, which are all public places you can check yourself.

[Pthigrivi]

2 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

The last proper devblog was July 21 (83 days) , about the heat system.

The last "dev chat" was 12 days ago (after being delayed from a release statement in August, from which another video is still missing).

The last "upnate" was June 30 (104 days).

We also had the AMA with Nertea in late august followed by a really extensive set of answers about science and other future systems, a sneak peek on entry VX, a hotfix addressing orbital decay and the windows registry issue, the dev chat on wobbly rockets all in the last 6 weeks. Now, you may not have liked what you heard in some of those communications but that doesn't mean they didn't happen. A lot of us were very interested in how the wobble problem gets solved and there are 6 pages of different players with different perspectives giving feedback on the direction they should take. You may have preferred that they just scrap vehicle physics entirely and make flying, shattering bricks and just told us thats what they were doing. A lot of others might not have been so happy about that. Again--communication is nice, but communication should not take precedent over producing robust, sustainable solutions. Maybe its the line of work Im in but I don't just do things so that I can tell people they're done. I take the time and come to the best solution possible. Sometimes that means telling clients "Hey we're still working on this problem and we'll present it to you when it's ready, but here's our reasoning." If in the end the solution works most everyone is happier for it in the long run.

[PDCWolf]

Just now, Pthigrivi said:

We also had the AMA with Nertea in late august followed by a really extensive set of answers about science and other future systems, a sneak peek on entry VX, a hotfix addressing orbital decay and the windows registry issue, the dev chat on wobbly rockets all in the last 6 weeks. Now, you may not have liked what you heard in some of those communications but that doesn't mean they didn't happen. A lot of us were very interested in how the wobble problem gets solved and there are 6 pages of different players with different perspectives giving feedback on the direction they should take. You may have preferred that they just scrap vehicle physics entirely and make flying, shattering bricks and just told us thats what they were doing. A lot of others might not have been so happy about that. Again--communication is nice, but communication should not take precedent over producing robust, sustainable solutions. Maybe its the line of work Im in but I don't just do things so that I can tell people they're done. I take the time and come to the best solution possible. Sometimes that means telling clients "Hey we're still working on this problem and we'll present it to you when it's ready, but here's our reasoning." If in the end the solution works most everyone is happier for it in the long run.

I listed the dev chat as I understand those will be the continuation of AMAs going forward. This was communicated though not with exactly those words.

I will however die on the hill that the dev chat, and Nertea's AMAs are of no use to people who want to know how features are going, or when are they coming, which is the main issue with the lack of communication: What the hell is the time being spent on.

Lastly, yes, I totally agree that it is better to come up with the best possible solutions, but that clearly has not been the case for any single of the systems in the game right now, so precedent takes place in the very well held belief that "taking long to make the game better" is not what is going on.

[Bej Kerman]

13 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

I mean were wheels and jumping landing legs ever actually solved? All of this seems based on a very glossy view on times gone by. I understand we’re in needier times but I don’t think the laws of physics and the challenges of programming have wildly changed since 2015. 

Indeed. I say cognitive bias. People are living through KSP 2's history and are forced to live through the waits, but they can only remember KSP 1's history and thus selectively remember the exciting times (which were not common IMO - KSP 1's history past 0.90 lacks substance).

[Alexoff]

2 hours ago, Scarecrow71 said:

Cuz I just checked steamdb, and the current player count of KSP1 is 1230, and the 25 hour peak is 1723.  Taking a look at the chart, yes, player count is about half now than it was when KSP2 dropped.  But, a lot of people don't use the launcher.  And some of us - myself included - have the game on Epic (and even then I don’t use the launcher).  So...?

I'm sure that the share of people ignoring the launcher has not changed since the release of KSP2. Steam's statistics are quite representative.

[Vanamonde]

Let's please not do the player count thing again. It's been done and is unrelated to the subject of this thread, which is dev communication. 

[mcwaffles2003]

On 9/14/2023 at 4:19 PM, Spicat said:

Dircord dev tracker is present on the forums at the right of the home page (or at the far bottom if you're on mobile). No need to go on discord.

This, though better than having nothing at all, does nothing to organize responses so that people who aren't tuned in constantly can see or track news or events relevant to their interest like a forum can.

 

On another note, I find it a bit sad that we still havent heard anything about how science will even be implemented, what its implied use is, nor which experiments will be available.

Are they going to stick with stick KSP type experiments? Will they move more in the breaking ground direction? Perhaps a hybrid approach? Maybe something different entirely? who knows?

Its the next milestone and one of the few features everyone knew the game would have from the start... yet there has been nearly no discussion on the matter aside from the animation for the magnetometer boom like a year ago I think?

They really just don't give us much to look forward to aside from "trust us"  

Edited October 13, 2023 by mcwaffles2003

[Quasar2007]

On 10/11/2023 at 9:35 PM, Scarecrow71 said:

The complicated answer is that:

1. They are short-staffed on the social media side, which explains the need for them to post for a social media guru to help with communication.
2. This isn't the only title that TT is responsible for, which means priorities shift.
3. The CM's are probably tired of getting lambasted at every turn, which means they are less likely to show up most days.
4. IG truly is working on bug- and hot-fixes, as well as trying to incorporate new content and features.  And this isn't easy to do.  Have you looked at C code for a project?  I'm a software dev by day, and I can say with a whole lot of certainty that the code for this game is just too big for me to handle.  I can't imagine how the smart guys like Nertea and Trigger_AU (and others who I cannot name off the top of my head right now) deal with looking at the code on a daily basis.  This project is LARGE, and it can take hours just to find the right subroutine to work on, let alone tracking down a bug that may be present in multiple spots in the code.  And let's not forget that adding stuff like features and content would require altering multiple sections of code to deal with the content/feature/enhancement.

That complicated answer is actually far simpler than the truth (assuming I'm even close to the real answer, which lord only knows if I am as I'm not a developer or affiliated with the company in any way, shape, or form). 

I think that you are one of the few people that know what is actually going on.  

Edited October 16, 2023 by Quasar2007

[Scarecrow71]

29 minutes ago, Quasar2007 said:

I think that you are one of the few people that know what is actually going on.  

As much as I would love to believe that, the fact is that no, I am not.  I may be lucky, but I'm not that good. 

[Quasar2007]

I meant that you weren’t saying the same stuff everybody has been saying in the last 4 months or so.  

[gluckez]

I'm usually very defensive of the devs, because I'm a software developer myself. I understand sometimes things can take a while to fix or implement.
Even though I'm a very patient guy, they're actually really testing my patience right now. The last update was 18 days ago, and it was a hotfix.
Before that, the last actual update was a month earlier and the only real thing we got from the devs was an AMA about wobbly rockets.

Now, I'm all for fixing wobbly rockets, and from what I understand from a technical standpoint is that it's a very difficult problem to tackle, but
they really need to get some info out there on what's happening. Even if it's something as small as a time window in which they will release the next
update, just any sort of information would be nice.

[Meecrob]

14 hours ago, gluckez said:

I'm usually very defensive of the devs, because I'm a software developer myself.

I'm just breaking your balls here, but formatting!!!

Don't think twice about my bad joke, I got what you meant. I think we are on the same page. And look, I'm sorry for replying to you before in a bad way...we all love KSP here...I admit I was wrong. I  think we all just want this game to mature.

 

Edit: I just realized that your formatting is probably correct, but I'm on my second computer and its got a 4:3 aspect ratio and your formatting probably is perfect for a 16:9

Edited October 17, 2023 by Meecrob

[gluckez]

11 hours ago, Meecrob said:

I think we are on the same page. And look, I'm sorry for replying to you before in a bad way...we all love KSP here...I admit I was wrong.

I absolutely respect that, I have to say I probably said a lot of stuff that's wrong as well. I think it just comes down to our love for the game like you said.  We all want it to succeed and there's a lot of emotion that comes with that.

[Meecrob]

2 hours ago, gluckez said:

I have to say I probably said a lot of stuff that's wrong as well.

I bet we are all pretty smart people here to be able to get orbital mechanics and all that. I think its hilarious how people like myself can be kinda smart, but say really stupid things sometimes. Brings me back to Earth when my ego is going out of control haha.

 

Edit: I have to say your reply makes me happy; I never meant to be mad at you, I was annoyed at the state of the game. I'm glad we get eachother.

Edited October 18, 2023 by Meecrob

[AtomicTech]

On 10/17/2023 at 6:19 PM, Meecrob said:

I admit I was wrong. I  think we all just want this game to mature.

Spectator of this conversation but I wanna thank you for being more mature than some of us here and admitting your faults while also stating something that people have rarely admitted (especially those who're very against the sequel).

It's nice to see that there's still some good left in this old bird

[Superfluous J]

I can't help but wonder how many people who wanted more communication, after this weekend's big announcement, now feel like they've been communicated to a reasonable amount.

I know what my gut's telling me (based on comments on that announcement thread) but I'm curious if my gut's correct.

[Scarecrow71]

4 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

I can't help but wonder how many people who wanted more communication, after this weekend's big announcement, now feel like they've been communicated to a reasonable amount.

I know what my gut's telling me (based on comments on that announcement thread) but I'm curious if my gut's correct.

I think we finally got communication that was needed:  the game really isn't what they wanted it to be, it's been rough since launch, but they are working on it.  By the way, patch is coming next week, and Science is coming in December.

The kind of honesty and humility Nate displayed is exactly what was needed.  And he did it without backing down, or pointing fingers.  He simply said things haven't been the greatest, but they are getting there.

[Infinite Aerospace]

26 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

I think we finally got communication that was needed:  the game really isn't what they wanted it to be, it's been rough since launch, but they are working on it.  By the way, patch is coming next week, and Science is coming in December.

The kind of honesty and humility Nate displayed is exactly what was needed.  And he did it without backing down, or pointing fingers.  He simply said things haven't been the greatest, but they are getting there.

I fully second this. Nate's open body language and accepting things didn't go according to plan was great to see.

 

He didn't shy away from anything, didn't sugar-coat their failings and said a few things to me that stood out, biggest of all being 'No more wobbly rockets!'.

 

That single statement says we listened to the concerns of our community, and we put something in place to fix it.

 

Let's just all look forward to 'For Science!' and hope there is again a proper discord between developer and customer.