Another exercise in frustration

[Kerbart]

Preface

Yes, I'm very salty about the state of the game, and it didn't take long to see that 1.4 isn't the leap into “playable” territory. Still, I do want to get into a “seeing the game imrpove before my eyes” vibe and the only way to do that is by putting in the hours between updates. But my god, Nate, you’re asking a lot from us...

The objective

Building a medium rocket to launch a series of communication stations around Kerbin an Mun. Over-engineered communication stations, with a Mk I lander can (so when the electronics need fixing or upgrading an engineer can work on it in short sleeves) and a large dish, so a substantial rocket is required.

Ye olde engine mount plate

An expected problem is that when returning to a ship in flight, engine plates will have their fairings back. If you're lucky it just looks ugly. But most of the time a sign “HEY KRAKEN OVER HERE IF YOU DARE” seems to be slapped on, stretching and disfiguring the ship at best and ripping it apart at worst. Yes, it's still there. But surely using it on the first stage will not be an issue? Well, the good news is that the game will not lull you into a false sense of security by pretending things are right at first. My first rocket exploded on the pad before launch, the second one decided spontanous mid-flight to eject all engines, which, now detached and without a lot of mass, accelerated a lot faster as somehow they were still getting fuel. Colliders seem to work as designed though, with expectable results.

Decouplers aren't reliable either. Let's just shift your engine off-center for no good reason is something else I just learned can happen.

Adjusting Orbits

Setting up synchronous orbits requires precise maneuvering. Finally, got the first one in place. Engine off, solar panels out... back to tracking station. Click “control” instead of focus. That sound you hear? That’ Nate laughing hysterically, he knows what's going to follow. Stupid me clicks “Tracking station” in the escape menu without thinking. Did you spot my mistake? Collect your prize if you thought “Kerbart, you didn't deactivate your engine when you accidentally went to control. So now when you go back to the tracking station it's going full throttle!” Aside from the frustration of having to correct my orbit back to what it should be, I even can't — by the time I notice and I'm back in control I'm already out of fuel. Thank goodness for the Lazy Orbit mod.

Renaming ships

At least Intercept tackled the annoying KSP1 feature of making it way too easy to change your vessel name. You can only do it from the tracking station. Then you have to click on the vessel in the left panel. Then click on rename, only to be reminded if there's an "M" in the name that it's not really renaming it because you didn't click "focus". Nate laughs again, because map mode is of course controlling your ship, so now it goes back full throttle when you return to the tracking station. The game can be very helpful here, because if you had deactivated your engine before hand and you go full throttle, obviously it should automatically be reactivated. There are about 25,000 things the game doesn't do without asking, but this one it will, when you really don't want it. Ok. Click ship, Very carefully, as if dismantling a life bomb, click focus. Then click on the pencil button. Then click on the edit box. Then change the name.

Setting up a Mun orbit

The straw that broke the camels back was, what I thought, the easy task of flying one of the com stations to the Mun. Setting up maneuver node and executing it was easy. Click on the Mun periapsis and naively click “time warp to point” and Nate starts laughing. Once again I fell for it! The ship time accelerates right past it, exits Mun SOI and then stops. I lazy orbited it back where it should be, and quit the game. I don't think I have the courage to go back until 1.5

Conclusion

I really want to play the game. I really do. I like the graphics. The UI is different but I do like it, I think it's a more a matter of getting used to it than anything else. Sound is great. But game play is such a non-stop exercise in frustration, and making sure you don't fall for making “mistakes” that aren’t really mistakes but simply triggers for known bugs. The lack of content doesn't even bother me at this point; it's impossible to play the game long enough to notice the lack of content. I doubt the next patch will make it playable, so it will be at least another half year (at the current patch rate) before we get to a point where I can play it without having to hear Nate hysterically laughing.

 

[modus]

Thanks for going through this and writing this.

You the real mvp!

[Alpha_star]

Yes. I totally understand you as:

1. Gameplay is a very personal manner. A lot of people just can’t withstand all the bugs and not everyone has a 3070.

2. I have seen people encountering much worse bugs such as the kraken KSC and crafts falling through the surface. I’m not sure that they exist in the current game, however.

3. The time warp bug is annoying, though I have encountered the same in KSP1.

Edited September 17, 2023 by Alpha_star

[modus]

For me, this is not about the severity of the bugs. It's about apparently* not being able to do even the most basic mission. It's not like they wanted to something extraordinary or super complicated.

Spoiler

* I say "apparently" because I haven't played since the second patch. Not going to either, reading reports like this.

 

[Infinite Aerospace]

1 hour ago, modus said:

For me, this is not about the severity of the bugs. It's about apparently* not being able to do even the most basic mission. It's not like they wanted to something extraordinary or super complicated.

  Hide contents

* I say "apparently" because I haven't played since the second patch. Not going to either, reading reports like this.

 

To be fair I feel my laptop must have been blessed by the Pope himself before it was shipped as I've encountered an alarmingly low amount of bugs and I'm not quite sure as to why.

[modus]

23 minutes ago, Infinite Aerospace said:

To be fair I feel my laptop must have been blessed by the Pope himself before it was shipped as I've encountered an alarmingly low amount of bugs and I'm not quite sure as to why.

Hmm. My laptop is well above the specs, but I had many of the issues Kerbart described, and many more. 

[Kerbart]

3 hours ago, modus said:

For me, this is not about the severity of the bugs. It's about apparently* not being able to do even the most basic mission. It's not like they wanted to something extraordinary or super complicated.

Exactly. Engine plate fairings is a good example. Ok, so don't use them on interstages; I can handle that. Although it doesn't seem a particular hard to find issue yet it's still there in 1.4 and worse you can't use them anywhere now.

I can handle not doing a complex Grand Tour but even just going to Mun is asking too much of the game.

[Infinite Aerospace]

2 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

Exactly. Engine plate fairings is a good example. Ok, so don't use them on interstages; I can handle that. Although it doesn't seem a particular hard to find issue yet it's still there in 1.4 and worse you can't use them anywhere now.

I can handle not doing a complex Grand Tour but even just going to Mun is asking too much of the game.

Oh god yes! Engine plates have been broken since the game was released, you have rockets almost fold in half using them as interstages, it's like there's zero joint rigidity there.

[Siska]

Not to mention that jettisoning the payload fairing just destroys your rocket. 

The only thing you can do that works is planes. And that is fronm patch 1.4 on.

So we can call it Kerbal SemiAvionics Program for now. I don't wait it to becom Space Program anymore.

 

[Alpha_star]

 

On 9/17/2023 at 9:35 PM, Kerbart said:

Exactly. Engine plate fairings is a good example. Ok, so don't use them on interstages; I can handle that. Although it doesn't seem a particular hard to find issue yet it's still there in 1.4 and worse you can't use them anywhere now.

I can handle not doing a complex Grand Tour but even just going to Mun is asking too much of the game.

Yes. They are a bit fustrating to use, especially with clustered engines. You can get struts to run along the main body of the rocket, though, as done with myself. This solves the problem in some ways, but I hope that we won't be needing to deal with that level of instability once they are done with the short-term solution. Or, if you rock at file editing, why not consider changing a couple of numbers in a .json file?

[Siska]

2 hours ago, Alpha_star said:

 

Yes. They are a bit fustrating to use, especially with clustered engines. You can get struts to run along the main body of the rocket, though, as done with myself. This solves the problem in some ways, but I hope that we won't be needing to deal with that level of instability once they are done with the short-term solution. Or, if you rock at file editing, why not consider changing a couple of numbers in a .json file?

Propably because programmers should do that instead of gamers. I don't remember i had to hack any early acces game to make it playable.

Hell, they should pay gamers then for doing their work:D

[TLTay]

Sorry for your trouble, OP.

I'm afraid it looks like they've moved the devs to another title while giving this one the bare minimum effort to avoid a lawsuit.

[Superfluous J]

20 minutes ago, TLTay said:

Sorry for your trouble, OP.

I'm afraid it looks like they've moved the devs to another title while giving this one the bare minimum effort to avoid a lawsuit.

Source?

[Spicat]

57 minutes ago, Superfluous J said:

Source?

https://www.xfire.com/intercept-games-is-working-on-a-new-science-based-adventure-game/

We know that they are working on a new game since at least one year (so even before ksp2 release).

Some people that think the game is abandoned use that as an argument. Omitting the fact that the new game is on Unreal and not Unity like ksp2 (so very unlikely to have moved employees).

This point was already made before so it was even answered:

Spoiler

[GGG-GoodGuyGreg]

3 hours ago, Spicat said:

https://www.xfire.com/intercept-games-is-working-on-a-new-science-based-adventure-game/

We know that they are working on a new game since at least one year (so even before ksp2 release).

Some people that think the game is abandoned use that as an argument. Omitting the fact that the new game is on Unreal and not Unity like ksp2 (so very unlikely to have moved employees).

This point was already made before so it was even answered:

  Hide contents

This must be the new Kerbal Space Program Forever, unless this one is it.

[TLTay]

7 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

Source?

The progress on KSP2. 

It has been nearly a year (be pedantic about months if you please). 50+ people could not have possibly achieved so little in that space of time if it had been 50 random college freshmen staying up all night on drunken benders and partying all day, only to program during spare time when washing their laundry.

Motivated hack-a-thoners have achieved more in the space of day than these clownshoes have done in 6+months.

Be real.

Edited September 25, 2023 by TLTay

[HebaruSan]

23 minutes ago, TLTay said:

The progress on KSP2.

That's not a source. In the context of the response you were replying to, a source would have been a link to an article or interview discussing project reprioritization and staffing changes at Intercept, not just more of your own interpretation and speculation.

[TLTay]

16 minutes ago, HebaruSan said:

That's not a source. In the context of the response you were replying to, a source would have been a link to an article or interview discussing project reprioritization and staffing changes at Intercept, not just more of your own interpretation and speculation.

Sorry, I forgot the /s.

[Alpha_star]

Not to attack you, but we do not yet have more source other than a few words (six) mentioned in the Private Division job page, so guesses about the splitting of the team and how much personnel each project gets remains pure speculation. What I can say with at least some confidence, is that the unannounced project is not affecting KSP2 too much since we do know that they are hiring new employees instead of just moving the old team.

On 9/25/2023 at 8:14 AM, TLTay said:

The progress on KSP2. 

It has been nearly a year (be pedantic about months if you please). 50+ people could not have possibly achieved so little in that space of time if it had been 50 random college freshmen staying up all night on drunken benders and partying all day, only to program during spare time when washing their laundry.

Motivated hack-a-thoners have achieved more in the space of day than these clownshoes have done in 6+months.

Be real.

And to steer the post back on topic, I'd say that at least some major progress has been made. We have got 696 bugfixes since launch (from patch one to patch four), which avarages out to about 6-7 per day if excluding public holidays. Just my humble math-doing and ranting.

Yes. Some bugs still exist and are fustrating to many, but glad to see the game getting better. Slow but making progress.

Edited September 26, 2023 by Alpha_star

[Siska]

If I have a word about KSP2, after spending most magic 900+ hours in KSP1, it is this.

Overall, I do not blame the dev team or Nate alone. Behind them, there is a big gaming brand, which we all know, focuses mainly on profit. Yes, profits are getting things going in the gaming industry.

I totally believe that the team behind Ksp2 had the best intentions of making a good game, but unfortunately underestimated the complexity of the game (we all remember "slaying the Kraken quotes", which is a clear sign of underestimating the task ahead, and overestimating own capabilities).

I do not know the whole story behind the changes in the team, but that certainly affected the development of the game.

Mostly i see issues in project management (yes, probably that is Nate). First release dates, were so optimistic that i could say that they didn't know exactly what they were getting themselves into.

Since first estimations were too optimistic, at some point, they had to bring in some money for the project to be continued, that's probably why we get a pre-alpha release for 50$. I blame Take-Two Interactive for that, not investing more money so the product development would be supported longer before release. 

Someone has to pay for developers, and that someone at some point had to say "you should bring in some money guys, or we will terminate the damn thing". That's how it goes, unfortunately. No publisher is a messiah that would do good deeds for dedicated players.

But as a project management, there were poor decisions made, for instance:

Why did they decide to rival Ksp1 magnitude from the beginning? Why didn't you follow the same route as Ksp1 and make a game with 1 planet and 2 muns circling it, but make that thing flawless? With all physics and no Krakens, maybe only a few parts. That would make the game more interesting because probably you could throw updates more frequently, every update would have new parts, and you would have a well-tested base. Yeah, you would have to sell it for much less money. But gamers wouldn't be frustrated about it. And for each version is it better to charge more for pre-release?

Why do you advertise colonies, and multiplayer... But we are still talking about wobbly rockets. The wobblyness is an experience from past development, which you could take into account. IT seems nobody listened to developers, or they weren't asked (i run a development team of 15 programmers, we do not do gaming so i do not want to be smart, but yes, communication is the main thing that can prevent such things, and yes, programmers and developers are strange people, you have to know how to work with them).  I know very well, if the structure of what you are programming isn't set up correctly, this is what you get. A Frankenstein of fixes and low performance. 

And mostly, they should ask themselves, what does the core fanbase really want... Nobody asked for multiplayer, not even colonies. If the team would really be real ksp1 players, they would know that we all wanted Interstellar travel, better wing mechanics, and updated graphics. 

So it brings up the question, would it be cheaper to remake the game in better graphics, and add a DLC with Interstellar which EVERYONE would buy?  (I am not a developer, merely a project manager of development team, but deciding what effort is worth investing for the financial return is my core task).

Yes, and with DLC painting parts would be welcome (nobody bought the game because of coloring the parts, and I think that updating the original game that changes colors of textures wouldn't be that hard), but not a reason to make a new game.

As for the conclusion for the effort/profit ratio, the player count says everything. Since the low pace of game development and the falling number of players, I think we will never see the game polished and brought to an end. Not without finding new investors, or bragging for more money from the parent publisher. But that decision will be based on the popularity of the game, and that is sinking every day. Heck, if I were the one, I would say make an interstellar DLC for Ksp1, and sell it for 20 bucks and that would make so much more money than investing in the current development of Ksp2.

Also, an honest question, does anyone believe that you will have a polished game with all promised features based on the current outlook of the game? I will answer no.

 

I am merely a fan of the game, this is my opinion and as i said, this is only my view of the state of development, and i surely am not a game publisher or developer.

 

Meanwhile, i started to play ksp1 again and it is beautiful. Yes the wings are weird, yes the famous "flumes" are not that beautiful, but who the heck cares really. I only get frustrated playing Ksp1 because of my errors, not krakens for most basic missions.

 

 

 

 

[Kerbart]

36 minutes ago, Siska said:

Since first estimations were too optimistic, at some point, they had to bring in some money for the project to be continued, that's probably why we get a pre-alpha release for 50$. I blame Take-Two Interactive for that, not investing more money so the product development would be supported longer before release. 

Someone has to pay for developers, and that someone at some point had to say "you should bring in some money guys, or we will terminate the damn thing". That's how it goes, unfortunately. No publisher is a messiah that would do good deeds for dedicated players.

Not just the first, but also the second, third, ... without saying T2 is without blame, the decision to set a hard publication date was something I completely understand. We don't know how many "rewrites from scratch" there were, but given the endless delays and the sorry state of the game at EA, I assume more than one. "Perfect is the enemy of good" and that seemed to have happened here.

It's easy to blame "the suits" for "beancounter" decisions but this one seems to have been a pure necessity or we would never have seen anything (as bad as it is right now)

[Royalswissarmyknife]

1 hour ago, Siska said:

If I have a word about KSP2, after spending most magic 900+ hours in KSP1, it is this.

Overall, I do not blame the dev team or Nate alone. Behind them, there is a big gaming brand, which we all know, focuses mainly on profit. Yes, profits are getting things going in the gaming industry.

I totally believe that the team behind Ksp2 had the best intentions of making a good game, but unfortunately underestimated the complexity of the game (we all remember "slaying the Kraken quotes", which is a clear sign of underestimating the task ahead, and overestimating own capabilities).

I do not know the whole story behind the changes in the team, but that certainly affected the development of the game.

Mostly i see issues in project management (yes, probably that is Nate). First release dates, were so optimistic that i could say that they didn't know exactly what they were getting themselves into.

Since first estimations were too optimistic, at some point, they had to bring in some money for the project to be continued, that's probably why we get a pre-alpha release for 50$. I blame Take-Two Interactive for that, not investing more money so the product development would be supported longer before release. 

Someone has to pay for developers, and that someone at some point had to say "you should bring in some money guys, or we will terminate the damn thing". That's how it goes, unfortunately. No publisher is a messiah that would do good deeds for dedicated players.

But as a project management, there were poor decisions made, for instance:

Why did they decide to rival Ksp1 magnitude from the beginning? Why didn't you follow the same route as Ksp1 and make a game with 1 planet and 2 muns circling it, but make that thing flawless? With all physics and no Krakens, maybe only a few parts. That would make the game more interesting because probably you could throw updates more frequently, every update would have new parts, and you would have a well-tested base. Yeah, you would have to sell it for much less money. But gamers wouldn't be frustrated about it. And for each version is it better to charge more for pre-release?

Why do you advertise colonies, and multiplayer... But we are still talking about wobbly rockets. The wobblyness is an experience from past development, which you could take into account. IT seems nobody listened to developers, or they weren't asked (i run a development team of 15 programmers, we do not do gaming so i do not want to be smart, but yes, communication is the main thing that can prevent such things, and yes, programmers and developers are strange people, you have to know how to work with them).  I know very well, if the structure of what you are programming isn't set up correctly, this is what you get. A Frankenstein of fixes and low performance. 

And mostly, they should ask themselves, what does the core fanbase really want... Nobody asked for multiplayer, not even colonies. If the team would really be real ksp1 players, they would know that we all wanted Interstellar travel, better wing mechanics, and updated graphics. 

So it brings up the question, would it be cheaper to remake the game in better graphics, and add a DLC with Interstellar which EVERYONE would buy?  (I am not a developer, merely a project manager of development team, but deciding what effort is worth investing for the financial return is my core task).

Yes, and with DLC painting parts would be welcome (nobody bought the game because of coloring the parts, and I think that updating the original game that changes colors of textures wouldn't be that hard), but not a reason to make a new game.

As for the conclusion for the effort/profit ratio, the player count says everything. Since the low pace of game development and the falling number of players, I think we will never see the game polished and brought to an end. Not without finding new investors, or bragging for more money from the parent publisher. But that decision will be based on the popularity of the game, and that is sinking every day. Heck, if I were the one, I would say make an interstellar DLC for Ksp1, and sell it for 20 bucks and that would make so much more money than investing in the current development of Ksp2.

Also, an honest question, does anyone believe that you will have a polished game with all promised features based on the current outlook of the game? I will answer no.

 

I am merely a fan of the game, this is my opinion and as i said, this is only my view of the state of development, and i surely am not a game publisher or developer.

 

Meanwhile, i started to play ksp1 again and it is beautiful. Yes the wings are weird, yes the famous "flumes" are not that beautiful, but who the heck cares really. I only get frustrated playing Ksp1 because of my errors, not krakens for most basic missions.

 

 

 

 

This ^

Spoiler

Finally someone who doesn't put all the blame on a single group.

 

Edited October 3, 2023 by Royalswissarmyknife

[NH4Cl Enthusiast]

19 hours ago, Kerbart said:

Not just the first, but also the second, third, ... without saying T2 is without blame, the decision to set a hard publication date was something I completely understand. We don't know how many "rewrites from scratch" there were, but given the endless delays and the sorry state of the game at EA, I assume more than one. "Perfect is the enemy of good" and that seemed to have happened here.

It's easy to blame "the suits" for "beancounter" decisions but this one seems to have been a pure necessity or we would never have seen anything (as bad as it is right now)

Exactly. I don't want to defend the corpo suits in any way but there is a very prevalent narrative of the poor game dev being ground up by the gears of corporate greed, which probably has some merit to it, but there is also the fact that sometimes the developers just are not very good. It can be due to bad hiring practices, poor management, just plain bad workers or whatever but they are in the end the people who are supposed to deliver the product and make a good game with the resources given to them.

Blaming the suits is easy, but they did pour literally millions on the team and  it's their investment money that they are expecting a return for. And it's painfully obvious that they did not get what they paid for, just like we didn't. At some point they must have seen the product, after delays and extensions and more delays and just realised that this studio will never make it. They didn't want to spend any more millions on a failing project, plain and simple. Because Nate had his second chance in 2020 after having no product to launch and a third one at 2022 with still no product to launch, and is now on his fourth chance to redeem a horrible launch, seven months in and still very little progress.

I know the average gaming forum goer thinks the suits are just greedy morons who don't understand games and if they themselves could just get into that position they would single handedly save the gaming industry, but instead we have this bumbling buffoons. Now I haven't worked with game publishers but I do know big corporations and I'm pretty sure the people at T2 know enough about games to know a turd even if it's painted in gold. And what else they know is what is a sunk cost fallacy and they won't fall into that either. Also they don't care if they drive our beloved Kerbal IP to the ground if it's not profitable. They for sure also would rather not do that and instead rake in the profits, but that's up to Nate and his team to make happen.

There are many many instances where the anti-consumerist corporate behaviour has backfired or caused otherwise good games to become just money grabs (go look at total war for instance) but here? No. This is on the studio over promising, under delivering and generally just not being up to the task. Of course there was the Star Theory shenanigans which must have made things difficult, and I'm sure T2 made a mess there, no doubt, but still. Everything that was released was made by the studio, not T2 and it's a pretty bad game by all accounts.

And honestly to anyone blaming T2 for clearly forcing the 2023 launch and not funding any more delays, if it was your money, your millions right now, would you invest in Nate and his team? Their huge mistake was to fund the studio in the first place.

Now excuse me as I need to go shower for an hour or two, I feel filthy after defending a corporation like T2...

 

[Siska]

2 hours ago, NH4Cl Enthusiast said:

And honestly to anyone blaming T2 for clearly forcing the 2023 launch and not funding any more delays, if it was your money, your millions right now, would you invest in Nate and his team? Their huge mistake was to fund the studio in the first place.

True, the team has a job, they have to manage it, if they didn't it's their fault.  But the team depends on management. Every programmer is a bad programmer if you don't manage them right. Dev has a job that is given to them. If project is not managed correctly, this happens.

BUT, there may be pressures from above, there might be team rochades... 

I think it will not matter longer any more, since the last player count is 10x smaller than ksp1. i mean really, who is going to fund development of the game, that has 149 on average in last 30 days. That is 10x less than Ksp1. I think a new KSP1 DLC would be much more profitable and worth investing in. And it would cost a lot less money for publishers.

Actually, i would rather see a DLC for ksp1 than polished ksp2.

[Kerbart]

4 hours ago, NH4Cl Enthusiast said:

I know the average gaming forum goer thinks the suits are just greedy morons who don't understand games and if they themselves could just get into that position they would single handedly save the gaming industry, but instead we have this bumbling buffoons. Now I haven't worked with game publishers but I do know big corporations and I'm pretty sure the people at T2 know enough about games to know a turd even if it's painted in gold.

Same here! I work for a Big Evil Coro that’s not nearly as evil as customers and outsiders like to think. Customers who also want us to deliver our services for free or even less than that, while complaining when we’re not the best in the industry.

The Suits might not be developers, they will know their products and their markets. Which is why you see micropayments and treasure chests in some games but not in others, and why it is unlikely to see them in KSP despite what some haters will say.

In the end developers need to get paid and need an office to work together in, and running the business that provides that — not to mention upfronting the substantial funds required for that — is why it’s hard to do it without them, and usually the job done, disliked as the decisions that they made are, are usually a necessity.