You promised us communication, where is it?

[Alexoff]

11 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

However, it also becomes a problem when their strategy turns to "not say anything and do", as that requires faith, and that's much better to gain when you didn't destroy trust in the first place, which is their current track record.

If instead of rare statements from developers we receive patches and updates, then silence will also be good PR. Now the community only talks about the developers’ intentions to do something, and not about what has been done and what will be done. Once they told us and even showed us scattering on planets, but they couldn’t add it to the game. For some reason they promised us a video in August, but apparently they couldn’t do what they were going to show us. The strategy of overpromising and underdelivering continues to work for unknown reasons.

1 minute ago, regex said:

plus showing progress on science

really? What exactly?

[Stephensan]

24 minutes ago, regex said:

plus showing progress on science.

photo of UI, two(?) parts since release? come on, 7 months for that much? ...

the only thing "new" here is the mission control since,  May 12th, we already knew about the circle module. The only real taste has been the GIF, and then seeing that missions = science, in 7 months...

[regex]

5 minutes ago, Stephensan said:

the only thing "new" here is the mission control since,  May 12th, we already knew about the circle module. The only real taste has been the GIF, and then seeing that missions = science, in 7 months...

Signs of progress, take it or leave it. This is part of the "communication" we're talking about here; clearly, showing something hasn't mollified people so why not show nothing. It won't make any real difference in trust and it's less work someone has to do for little-to-no payoff.

Edited September 21, 2023 by regex

[The Aziz]

"you shouldn't have tried to have kids if you took that job" -some people on reddit/steam forums, probably 

[Stephensan]

2 minutes ago, regex said:

Signs of progress, take it or leave it. This is part of the "communication" we're talking about here; clearly, showing something hasn't mollified people so why not show nothing, it won't make any real difference in trust and it's less work someone has to do for little-to-no payoff.

the thing i was trying to point out is the lack of "real" talk of science, showing us one model (the gif) that had ALOT of people interested in... may... 4 months down the line to see another model, from reentry alongside mission control WIP, in a 7 month span, most people lose interest in it when people expected to be "alongside" the development..

Like, I'm going keep screaming at the top of my longs, look at Twitter user dedaPong.. He is Co-Founder / Creative Director at Gamepires, and is pretty much in "charge" of a game called SCUM. This guy "leaks" as much as you can without just giving out pure dev clients stays talking to his community, leaks things that are months/weeks out, asks the community questions about how the game should be developed, or what can we do to fix it if there is a huge issue, even when there is something wrong, he is there.

Now, don't get me wrong this game has had issues in this game, but the sheer amount of work leaks and user engagement is on another level, and when there is nothing, well it does go silent..

KSP 2 has been different in kind words for a game that had a rough start, and a rough post launch 30 days +...

Even in bad "little to no payoff" he still posts. idk, just offtopic.

[regex]

1 minute ago, Stephensan said:

the thing i was trying to point out is the lack of "real" talk of science, showing us one model (the gif) that had ALOT of people interested in... may... 4 months down the line to see another model, from reentry alongside mission control WIP, in a 7 month span, most people lose interest in it when people expected to be "alongside" the development..

Yeah, and look what early hype got them, people saying stuff like "you promised us X", "you said the game was Y", "where is Z", along with circular arguments about what happened in the last five years. Again, I can't blame them for not releasing more, clearly every early bit of information has to be carefully vetted to ensure it absolutely will be in the game to avoid crazy noises and people freaking out. tbh Nate should have said nothing and continued to say nothing beyond release, just release updates with changelogs and walk the hell away.

1 minute ago, Stephensan said:

KSP 2 has been different in kind words for a game that had a rough start, and a rough post launch 30 days +...

Every studio has a different level of comfort and mode of operation. I didn't know jack about Armored Core 6 until about two weeks before it released in full, aside from some cinematic trailers that told me nothing beyond "it's a mech game and the last cinders are gonna burn".

[Stoup]

I want to do what I can, to give them feedback that might help them make a better KSP2, because I hope that one day the game might approach the heights they've laid out a plan for.

I won't ignore the incongruity of the things they've hyped up versus what they've produced, so my practical expectations are not high.

What can be done to match hopes with expectations? Since most talk is discarded out of hand, what talk do we feel would be appreciated?

I for one would love to hear some reasoning behind their very specific 'Fridays are communication days' kinda idea. I get that they want to have a regular predictable report, but it becomes a pain point when some Fridays pass and there's no word on what progress was made, for example, that very week.

Just as an example. Trying to get the ball rolling on that train of thought 

[Alexoff]

On 9/21/2023 at 9:49 AM, regex said:

Signs of progress, take it or leave it. This is part of the "communication" we're talking about here; clearly, showing something hasn't mollified people so why not show nothing. It won't make any real difference in trust and it's less work someone has to do for little-to-no payoff.

So have they shown progress or not? [snip]

On 9/21/2023 at 10:11 AM, regex said:

I can't blame them for not releasing more

But you can blame other fans

Edited September 22, 2023 by Vanamonde

[Stoup]

54 minutes ago, regex said:

Signs of progress, take it or leave it. This is part of the "communication" we're talking about here; clearly, showing something hasn't mollified people so why not show nothing. It won't make any real difference in trust and it's less work someone has to do for little-to-no payoff.

I think what people want to see more, is how NEW systems are going to work.

We already knew science would have parts, we already knew it'd have... some kind of mission control system? Or rather, we knew science would have some kind UI from the KSC to manage it.

I don't think we knew there would be cranes, but on the topic of communication... what's the context behind some of the images like that? Will we use that for building assembly? Or is it just a backdrop piece? If it's just a backdrop, why drop it along a supposed display of new features without explaining at all

What we've yet to see, is much of anything about systems that we have not played an analogue of before. Stuff that KSP2 science will do, for example, that KSP1 science never did.

There's been a bit of talk about that, but no show unfortunately.

Edited September 21, 2023 by Stoup

[Periple]

Communication is a lot of work! Especially when you have to be extra careful to make sure you don’t say anything that could be misconstrued.

Developers have other things on their plate and if they have to make a presentation every week that’s bound to suffer!

[Royalswissarmyknife]

20 minutes ago, Stoup said:

I think what people want to see more, is how NEW systems are going to work.

I think that's the biggest thing

We have no idea how the new systems are going to be behave do they make the science system superior or exactly the same as Ksp-1's

If the Ksp-2  team so badly want feedback then let us give feedback on your science system before its too late to change it!

Spoiler

Before its too late to change it means before its added and people would complain if their saves broke.

 

[Vanamonde]

Some comments have been removed or edited. Please disagree with each other without being insulting about it. 

[MechBFP]

1 hour ago, regex said:

Signs of progress, take it or leave it. This is part of the "communication" we're talking about here; clearly, showing something hasn't mollified people so why not show nothing. It won't make any real difference in trust and it's less work someone has to do for little-to-no payoff.

This is generally the end state for established game developers from my experience over the decades for exactly that reason.

Insert <stick in bike wheel> meme here. 
 

[regex]

28 minutes ago, Stoup said:

I think what people want to see more, is how NEW systems are going to work.

See below:

1 hour ago, regex said:

Yeah, and look what early hype got them, people saying stuff like "you promised us X", "you said the game was Y", "where is Z", along with circular arguments about what happened in the last five years. Again, I can't blame them for not releasing more, clearly every early bit of information has to be carefully vetted to ensure it absolutely will be in the game to avoid crazy noises and people freaking out. tbh Nate should have said nothing and continued to say nothing beyond release, just release updates with changelogs and walk the hell away.

Also this:

25 minutes ago, Periple said:

Communication is a lot of work! Especially when you have to be extra careful to make sure you don’t say anything that could be misconstrued.

Developers have other things on their plate and if they have to make a presentation every week that’s bound to suffer!

Quite frankly I'd much rather have developers doing developer things rather than interacting with the community.

37 minutes ago, Stoup said:

There's been a bit of talk about that, but no show unfortunately.

It's pretty clear to me from reading Nertea's recent "interview" that Intercept isn't going to take gameplay ideas or tips from the community. They're instead going to consider their own design first, show the playable implementation of that to the community in the form of a release, and then refine that based on community input to deal with pain points in that particular implementation. The community isn't going to be suggesting how things will pan out or involved in any way before the feature is released. We'll get teasers of stuff that will be implemented beforehand but we're not going to get a full walkthrough of a system until it's in our hands.

[Alexoff]

28 minutes ago, Periple said:

Developers have other things on their plate and if they have to make a presentation every week that’s bound to suffer!

Presentations for us from each of the developers? If once a week we receive a presentation from a developer, then for this developer it will be one presentation a year, which doesn’t sound very scary. If Nate demands a presentation from each developer once a week, then nobody should be surprised at the state of the game.

32 minutes ago, Periple said:

Communication is a lot of work! Especially when you have to be extra careful to make sure you don’t say anything that could be misconstrued.

As far as I understand, two persons in the company were hired for communications with the community. Surely they cope with the presentation of all that huge amount of content for us and do not misconstrued anyone?

[regex]

1 minute ago, MechBFP said:

This is generally the end state for established game developers from my experience over the decades for exactly that reason.

Insert <stick in bike wheel> meme here.

100%

[Stoup]

I think there's a difference between trying to build up hype, and talking about new features they have already finished creating.

Talking up hype would be like interviews and content before EA release, where they went on at length about how KSP2 was going to outperform KSP1, and just generally be better in just about every way.

The kind of talk I would like to see, might be for example, even one screenshot or short video of something not analogous to a system we've used before. And we've gotten some of that for sure, it's just that it feels to me like it simply gets moshed in with generic screenshots of assets that don't tell us anything we don't already anticipate.

Instead maybe these newer features could be put front and center where a little bit of further explanation can be given about their specific context.

I'm just trying to run ideas out, honestly. They've said they want to improve communications, and I'm trying to help brainstorm how that can happen.

Because I hate to see that they're stuck with the same feeling that they know they have to improve communications even though, between the two statements they've made on the matter, they definitely have TRIED to do so

[Alexoff]

Here is an example of a game in early access, how to show the progress of the game forward.

I'm 99% sure that the idea of colonies in KSP2 was taken from this game (and from Surviving Mars). Today they announced the release of a long-awaited feature. Why not take this approach to communications in KSP2? Will we see science in winter? Why not show some video about science, rather than a pathetic screenshot?

[MechBFP]

13 minutes ago, Alexoff said:

Why not take this approach to communications in KSP2?

They did exactly that already. Remember the EA launch video?

What is with the selective memory?

[DunaManiac]

1 hour ago, Periple said:

Communication is a lot of work! Especially when you have to be extra careful to make sure you don’t say anything that could be misconstrued.

Developers have other things on their plate and if they have to make a presentation every week that’s bound to suffer!

I understand that developers have to work a lot, but just like there are separate software engineering and art departments in development teams there would also be a PR manager, like @Dakota, for instance. It's not like the entire development team is stopping to work on a feature video. That's why all the "they can't communicate! It would take away valuable time from developing!" arguments doesn't hold water. To me it would not be incredibly difficult to hire an ordinary graphic designer/community manager to work on previews biweekly. However, I'm not ignoring the fact that developers oftentimes don't have the resources to actually have one. But for large team backed by a multi million dollar corporation that argument becomes much weaker.

To me the communication strategy of the developers is not very good. Half the time things that attempt to build hype actually end up producing backlash, through no fault of their own. Building hype in this instance doesn't work because you first need a large, enthusiastic playerbase with high expectations for it to work. Now we have a dwindling playerbase with only a few hundred players maximum on KSP2, with more bleeding out every day. Generally there are two models for communication: constant, but useless updates (glorified advertisements), or longer-form, specific updates spaced out over a long time. KSP2's model is the worst of both worlds: spaced out and very vague. When you add in no consistent schedule into the mix, said updates spread out across multiple platforms, and various platforms feeling like others are receiving favoritism, you have a very salty playerbase. I can't believe that this is the intended strategy, and I don't blame the devs in any of this: I blame the fact they weren't given enough resources from the beginning.

Edited September 21, 2023 by DunaManiac
formatting

[cocoscacao]

36 minutes ago, MechBFP said:

What is with the selective memory?

Never heard about the game @Alexoff posted, but this is the newest of the videos that are on average 25 mins long. It would be nice to have at least a few new parts shown... in context...

[Stoup]

47 minutes ago, MechBFP said:

They did exactly that already. Remember the EA launch video?

What is with the selective memory?

I concur entirely, building hype is the least thing they need to do. I just wish, quite honestly, that I didn't have to feel that way 

Also, on an unrelated note, Dyson Sphere Program is pretty great! One of those titles I put on a shelf because I wanna experience the full glory of the 1.0 release instead of starting over multiple times

Edited September 21, 2023 by Stoup

[Alexoff]

57 minutes ago, MechBFP said:

They did exactly that already. Remember the EA launch video?

What is with the selective memory?

Communications broke down after the release. As far as I remember, there was only one gameplay video of KSP2 and for the screenshot of the moment with the inscription “fail harder” I was punished by the moderators. And these Chinese comrades release new videos even after the early access release.

DSP is the level of early access that everyone should strive for. Five developers created a great game, which is now played by 20 times more people than in KSP2. And KSP2 is at the opposite pole of early access, which is better not to take as a model.

[PDCWolf]

On 9/21/2023 at 9:16 AM, Strawberry said:

Most of these are just asking for hotfixes in general, not neccisarily for 1.3, and then just to make sure the community knew that was all the hotfixes for 1.3, they went ahead and clarified. Like, I dont think the communication was bad here, it was pretty implicit that this was it for 1.3, and then just to make sure they made it explicit.
 

Its hard to take your complaints about communication seriously when most of them is just ignoring what is said and just hyperfocusing on one phrase completely stripped of context, like tell me again about how nate simpson said “wobble is good” and just convinently ignore the “can” slapped in the middle of the actual quote

On 9/21/2023 at 9:19 AM, razark said:

They did 1, saying they were expecting to release 2 hotfixes.  (You know, setting customer expectations.)

The did 2, releasing two hotfixes.

As for 3, they get complaints they did exactly what they said they were going to do.

 

Damned if they do, damned if they don't.

Good thing my complaints encompass a lot of statements and content posted for about 4 years and not this one time I was almost wrong. You're doing exactly what Razark is doing below here, which is ignoring the dates of the few ones I quoted: 2 out of 6 messages I found on this forum alone, are from before Dakota's clarification that it was gonna be just two hotfixes. People were expecting more than 2 hotfixes. In fact I'll gladly bet all in that most laymen back then expected this to mean the start of rapidly deployed hotfixes as a concurrent practice, and not just 2 "hot" fixes spaced almost a month from the update they were fixing.

Dakota's clarification and not Nate's post is an example of how to properly communicate when looking to create and then manage expectations. I'm totally on board with that, though I'd prefer it if had been Nate's post without the need for clarifications. Asterisks like those have been a consistent theme sadly.

On 9/21/2023 at 9:20 AM, regex said:

They've been steadily releasing updates to address high-profile bugs and outlining work on those as work progresses, plus showing progress on science. If they pull a huge crunch drive to please people that think they're not working hard enough they burn out their developers, if they don't burn out their developers they're not showing that actions speak louder than words. They can't win, no matter what they do. And so, instead, we get these [snip], circular arguments about how they should have done "X", promised "Y", or talked about "Z" five loveing years ago when the state of the game right now is what it is, and that isn't going to change until development progresses further, which is in progress.

This is you assuming their work pace and productivity. I'm sure if you told anyone outside this forum or the discord that they're almost crunching to produce the current volume of content, you'd be laughed out of the internet. Sadly, lack of communication is to blame again, as they really haven't shown any other bar of their productive capacity other than delaying a product 3 years and not being able to produce a roadmap feature for at least 7 months.

The "5 years ago" thing is brought up constantly because people seem to forget when development started, constantly, or talk about credibility whilst gladly ignoring that. No, looking away from it will not make it go away. [snip]

Maybe if people stopped constructing arguments from erroneous facts [snip] then people would stop bringing those things up.

On 9/21/2023 at 10:11 AM, regex said:

Yeah, and look what early hype got them, people saying stuff like "you promised us X", "you said the game was Y", "where is Z", along with circular arguments about what happened in the last five years. Again, I can't blame them for not releasing more, clearly every early bit of information has to be carefully vetted to ensure it absolutely will be in the game to avoid crazy noises and people freaking out. tbh Nate should have said nothing and continued to say nothing beyond release, just release updates with changelogs and walk the hell away.

You talk as if deadlines and spec sheets are things of the devil.

On 9/21/2023 at 11:22 AM, regex said:

We'll get teasers of stuff that will be implemented beforehand but we're not going to get a full walkthrough of a system until it's in our hands.

Which is funny considering we now have the design specs for heating thanks to Nertea, but Science being much closer allegedly hasn't been talked about past a part and a screenshot of what could easily be a KSP1 copypaste in KSP2's UI.

 

Edited September 22, 2023 by Vanamonde

[MechBFP]

5 minutes ago, Alexoff said:

Communications broke down after the release. As far as I remember, there was only one gameplay video of KSP2 and for the screenshot of the moment with the inscription “fail harder” I was punished by the moderators. And these Chinese comrades release new videos even after the early access release.

DSP is the level of early access that everyone should strive for. Five developers created a great game, which is now played by 20 times more people than in KSP2. And KSP2 is at the opposite pole of early access, which is better not to take as a model.

If your complaint is that they haven’t released any videos for any major features when they haven’t released any major features yet, well….