Nate Simpson at Space Creator Day talks about KSP 2.

[Wheehaw Kerman]

55 minutes ago, Vanamonde said:

Just out of curiosity: the game was delayed, but what would anyone gain from knowing the specific reasons? 

Mild curiosity about said reasons on my part - not enough to make me go full conspiracy theorist vision board with every single dev post or video all tied together with thumbtacks and string conclusively proving that Nate is really a Krakenoid alien in a human suit, though…

[PDCWolf]

5 hours ago, Spicat said:

The official twitter said the opposite in 2020:

(The delay was probably not just covid, but it was an issue apparently)

Again, I can't find the source. So yeah, can't do much about it. I do remember them saying COVID wasn't "as big" of an issue, but yeah, it is well known the second delay was blamed on it.

5 hours ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

This is a great illustration of what I’m talking about - I’ve watched the video a few times, and my earlier post took that knowledge into account.  You’re conflating your frame with knowledge - the sourcing isn’t the point, the  interpretation is.

-snip-

Essentially, the For Science! videos are encouraging in many respects - a lot of things in earlier videos have made it into the EA.  And we have a timeline for the first roadmap item.  And lately IG’s been close enough to their timelines for hand grenades, if not horseshoes.  So overall the trends are positive.  But I don’t think they give us any hard evidence for the speculative blame shifting exercise, and while I’m vaguely interested in what happened, until we get some hard evidence the exercise is just speculative groupthink.

Your original point was that a lot of it was speculation. My point is that we're slowly getting more facts about it, even if they of course aren't enough to build the full picture, which we probably will never be able to.

As for FS! it does seem to be locked in and in the very last steps of testing, which is good. I don't agree with the rest, as it's relentless and even violent speculation what's gotten people to ask the questions and finally got them to answer. If we all shut up, we'd still be on release day strategies, and honestly those upnates and blogs were vomitively tone deaf on all fronts.

2 hours ago, Vanamonde said:

Just out of curiosity: the game was delayed, but what would anyone gain from knowing the specific reasons? 

Imagine you arrive late to your job, half naked, and forgot more than half your stuff at home. Now, when your boss asks why, all you say is "I'm not telling." Well, that's kinda what's happening, and you honestly can't expect your boss to be happy with that explanation. On the contrary, if you give a really good explanation, with proof if it's something too crazy, then reasonable people will probably understand and give you a chance.

Now, if you're following the metaphore, going silent for months, grumbling when asked about stuff or outright not answering, and then saying you have the most amazing update ready to release is not something people are going to just believe. Right?

 

[Vanamonde]

I don't get your analogy. Until you paid for the game, they didn't work for you. A better equivalent would be to ask why the employee didn't apply to be hired sooner. In which case, who cares? At any rate, I still don't see how anyone benefits from knowing the specific reasons it was delayed. 

[Lisias]

28 minutes ago, Vanamonde said:

I don't get your analogy. Until you paid for the game, they didn't work for you. A better equivalent would be to ask why the employee didn't apply to be hired sooner. In which case, who cares? At any rate, I still don't see how anyone benefits from knowing the specific reasons it was delayed. 

As a matter of fact, buyers are not the only stakeholders on this history. Every single one that bought one single share of Take Two Interactive is also a very important stakeholder. Anyone thinking on buying (or not!) TTI shares is also another very important one.

Knowing exactly why so many delays happened, what is being done to mitigate the problem and how this will affect future prospections are of the upmost important to anyone considering investing in the company.

You know, not every KSP player is a kid - some of us own companies, and others even invest on the game industry. I wonder that TTI shares on Brazil halved the price in a year for a reason, no?

It worths to mention that T1TW34 didn't paid a single cent in dividends on the last 12 months. Try to imagine investing your Pension Funds on something that didn't paid back anything for a whole year… 

On the bright side, they are slowly recovering in the last 3 months, but still a far cry from what they used to be valued early 2020 or even 2022.

How a Company treat their costumers have direct influence on the prospections of income, that by its turn reflects on the expectation of value on the shares in the forecoming months.

And, frankly, it's simple like that.

Edited October 31, 2023 by Lisias
(sigh). tyops.

[whatsEJstandfor]

5 hours ago, Vanamonde said:

Just out of curiosity: the game was delayed, but what would anyone gain from knowing the specific reasons? 

It'd make for a very interesting case study in (mis)management. Duke Nukem Forever and Daikatana come to mind as games that absolutely nobody cares about, and are only famous BECAUSE of the interesting behind-the-scenes intrigue and drama. On the other hand, there are also games that are beloved, but still had notoriously rocky developments (Halo 2 as an example), and I think knowing those stories makes me appreciate those games even more. I'd like to think that KSP2 will ultimately end up in the latter category.

For me, the short answer is, "I'm extraordinarily curious". I mean, why do people watch behind-the-scenes stuff on Blu-Rays, or listen to crew commentary? It's just genuinely thrilling to see how the sausage is made sometimes.

[Vanamonde]

Are any of you, in fact, shareholders in Take Two? If so, why are you trying to get information through a game forum rather than the company's representatives? 

[Lisias]

42 minutes ago, Vanamonde said:

Are any of you, in fact, shareholders in Take Two? If so, why are you trying to get information through a game forum rather than the company's representatives? 

Are you nuts? Asking information from the people that have every motivation in the World to do not share them to you?

Do you think that Unity Technologies had disclosed any of the crapstorm they were planning about the Fees to their shareholders (or to the few ones that would be considering to be) before doing it?

This is beyound naiveness… 

Edited October 31, 2023 by Lisias
yeah. moar tyops!!

[Vanamonde]

Are you under the impression that a game forum is a better source? That you'll get the real dirt here that they wouldn't tell their stockholders? 

That's assuming there is any dirt, of course. 

[Periple]

If you want the actual inside scoop, your best shot is to find someone who knows at a conference and buy them lots of drinks. Not saying how I know!

 

[Wheehaw Kerman]

13 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

Again, I can't find the source. So yeah, can't do much about it. I do remember them saying COVID wasn't "as big" of an issue, but yeah, it is well known the second delay was blamed on it.

Your original point was that a lot of it was speculation. My point is that we're slowly getting more facts about it, even if they of course aren't enough to build the full picture, which we probably will never be able to.

As for FS! it does seem to be locked in and in the very last steps of testing, which is good. I don't agree with the rest, as it's relentless and even violent speculation what's gotten people to ask the questions and finally got them to answer. If we all shut up, we'd still be on release day strategies, and honestly those upnates and blogs were vomitively tone deaf on all fronts.

Imagine you arrive late to your job, half naked, and forgot more than half your stuff at home. Now, when your boss asks why, all you say is "I'm not telling." Well, that's kinda what's happening, and you honestly can't expect your boss to be happy with that explanation. On the contrary, if you give a really good explanation, with proof if it's something too crazy, then reasonable people will probably understand and give you a chance.

Now, if you're following the metaphore, going silent for months, grumbling when asked about stuff or outright not answering, and then saying you have the most amazing update ready to release is not something people are going to just believe. Right?

 

I think we’re largely on the same page in terms of the unknowability issue.  On the other hand, thinking that what I’ll charitably call the hostile reaction and tone in the community since launch had much influence on the trajectory of the game beyond comms strategy doesn’t make sense.  It presupposes that the team’s plan was not to develop the game to end of roadmap, cleaning up the bugs as it went, but rather that they were going to ruin a niche but valuable property by dropping a half-baked EA and then doing nothing.  I think that the game has been developed according to plan, and even if we’d all been kinder than our grandmothers about the state of the EA, we’d have still seen For Science! drop in December.  Attributing basic development decisions to the tone on the forum ignores the realities of business and project management.  All the forum tone has done has make IG issue some soothing platitudes and carry on as planned (and possibly make Dakota regret some life decisions, but I may be overestimating its effectiveness).

[kdaviper]

10 hours ago, Lisias said:

Are you nuts? Asking information from the people that have every motivation in the World to do not share them to you?

Do you think that Unity Technologies had disclosed any of the crapstorm they were planning about the Fees to their shareholders (or to the few ones that would be considering to be) before doing it?

This is beyound naiveness… 

Aren't companies legally obligated to provide their shareholders with correct information?

[PDCWolf]

1 hour ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

I think we’re largely on the same page in terms of the unknowability issue.  On the other hand, thinking that what I’ll charitably call the hostile reaction and tone in the community since launch had much influence on the trajectory of the game beyond comms strategy doesn’t make sense.  It presupposes that the team’s plan was not to develop the game to end of roadmap, cleaning up the bugs as it went, but rather that they were going to ruin a niche but valuable property by dropping a half-baked EA and then doing nothing.  I think that the game has been developed according to plan, and even if we’d all been kinder than our grandmothers about the state of the EA, we’d have still seen For Science! drop in December.  Attributing basic development decisions to the tone on the forum ignores the realities of business and project management.  All the forum tone has done has make IG issue some soothing platitudes and carry on as planned (and possibly make Dakota regret some life decisions, but I may be overestimating its effectiveness).

Nah, that's not what I think they wanted. I am of the vision that KSP1 was a golden egg goose, and 2 has (had?) the potential to be one as well, which is why I took Nate at face value when he said they were funded till 1.0. I've never thought, at any point, that KSP2 could be cancelled or dropped. I also don't think the negativity made them go faster. In fact they're not fast, they're painfully, measurably, and undoubtedly slow by any and all metrics other than comparing them to themselves and negativity didn't change their speed at all because it really seems that's as fast as they can go.

I do think however, that we're getting the minimum viable product on literally anything promised, and so far that's my take on FS! with it seemingly being a carbon copy of KSP1 science with minimal changes (and no, a carbon copy with minimal changes is the opposite of what I expect from a sequel). I also think that negativity did get them to change their tone  on communication, to the point of going on an interview like Matt's, where anyone else would've easily laughed at even being offered the unique chance to commit honesty-cide on camera.

We didn't make them any faster, or make them create a better product. But at least we got them to be minimally honest about the state it is in, partially why, and to stop acting like everything is fine when it was in fact not.

[Periple]

4 minutes ago, kdaviper said:

Aren't companies legally obligated to provide their shareholders with correct information?

They are, but not about operational plans. A pricing change isn't the kind of thing that would have to be disclosed beforehand.

They might have to send out an earnings warning one of these days, however! 

[Pthigrivi]

5 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

We didn't make them any faster, or make them create a better product. But at least we got them to be minimally honest about the state it is in, partially why, and to stop acting like everything is fine when it was in fact not.

Right, so we made everyone feel miserable with no tangible, material difference to the game.  

[PDCWolf]

33 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

Right, so we made everyone feel miserable with no tangible, material difference to the game.  

Not only is that statement greatly overblown (and disproven by Nate's saying when asked about the team's morale). The community felt much better when they actually started communicating like they should with adults, which is still reflected on the comments of those upnates. Then they took to saying a lot without anything to show for it, they'd go on to insult and almost abandon reddit, not say anything for months to anyone, fail to deliver the K.E.R.B. and append clauses to their initial statements about when it's supposed to come out, and so on.

Their communication strategy was a failure, then they managed to turn it into a different kind of failure.

Right now they've only gotten a pass because the presentation of FS! actually has some tangible stuff, something that only began to show up early October.

[Pthigrivi]

7 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

Not only is that statement greatly overblown (and disproven by Nate's saying when asked about the team's morale). The community felt much better when they actually started communicating like they should with adults, which is still reflected on the comments of those upnates. Then they took to saying a lot without anything to show for it, they'd go on to insult and almost abandon reddit, not say anything for months to anyone, fail to deliver the K.E.R.B. and append clauses to their initial statements about when it's supposed to come out, and so on.

Their communication strategy was a failure, then they managed to turn it into a different kind of failure.

Right now they've only gotten a pass because the presentation of FS! actually has some tangible stuff, something that only began to show up early October.

I don't know man you just place a lot more of your emotion on the line than I do when it comes to communications. They're just trying to stay excited and keep us posted. I don't take it personally. I care about the actual game. Thats it. To each their own I guess though.

[Vl3d]

IMHO this discussion and the interview is focusing on the wrong things. The really important stuff is what changes and innovations are going to be implemented for the game systems. This is where the energy of the community has been spent all these years: making mods to improve the game, coming up with new ideas and giving feedback. I'm interested in how the dev team uses what the community brings to the table. Because not even after 4 years we've not reached the point in which we actually know how CommNet is getting implemented and how science is different from KSP1 etc. If I'm really focused on the details, we don't know what KSP2 really is compared to KSP1 - is it a reimplementation, an extension, a sequel? I think these are more important questions because it's the gameplay that matters in the end.

Edited October 31, 2023 by Vl3d

[PDCWolf]

5 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

I don't know man you just place a lot more of your emotion on the line than I do when it comes to communications. They're just trying to stay excited and keep us posted. I don't take it personally. I care about the actual game. Thats it. To each their own I guess though.

Don't make it about me personally. It's not just me. Get out of the forums a bit and read around, specially around those dates. What you and others took as "trying to stay excited" other people took as "straight up lying to their faces when they can't even play the game". Whether they lied or not can't be discussed in this forum though, as my latest ban had me realize.

Edited October 31, 2023 by PDCWolf

[Kerbart]

18 hours ago, Vanamonde said:

Just out of curiosity: the game was delayed, but what would anyone gain from knowing the specific reasons? 

For one thing, it will give an indication if it's going to be representative for the lifetime of the game. With its unique subject and gaming mechanics, everything takes just much more time than your average FPS, RTS or platform game where pretty much all of the mechanics are known territory. If that's the case, we can expect each milestone to take a long time.

Or was the initial charter wrong and had the project to be rebooted from scratch two years in? Development actually goes along fine but the fresh restart meant everything happens two years later. Milestone updates will follow much quicker.

we're also just curious (I'd say with the character or the game, curiosity is a more-than-average treat among its players). If you bring your car to the garage for an oil change and you expect to pick it up at the end of the afternoon, you'll probably ask them why it was delayed if it takes four days. And “that’s proprietary information” would make you unhappy. Clearly not the same thing, but given that we’re passionate about the product, why would we not be curious why the release was delayed so many times and still came out of the shop with the wheels missing and the engine mounted backwards?

[Wheehaw Kerman]

1 hour ago, PDCWolf said:

Nah, that's not what I think they wanted. I am of the vision that KSP1 was a golden egg goose, and 2 has (had?) the potential to be one as well, which is why I took Nate at face value when he said they were funded till 1.0. I've never thought, at any point, that KSP2 could be cancelled or dropped. I also don't think the negativity made them go faster. In fact they're not fast, they're painfully, measurably, and undoubtedly slow by any and all metrics other than comparing them to themselves and negativity didn't change their speed at all because it really seems that's as fast as they can go.

I do think however, that we're getting the minimum viable product on literally anything promised, and so far that's my take on FS! with it seemingly being a carbon copy of KSP1 science with minimal changes (and no, a carbon copy with minimal changes is the opposite of what I expect from a sequel). I also think that negativity did get them to change their tone  on communication, to the point of going on an interview like Matt's, where anyone else would've easily laughed at even being offered the unique chance to commit honesty-cide on camera.

We didn't make them any faster, or make them create a better product. But at least we got them to be minimally honest about the state it is in, partially why, and to stop acting like everything is fine when it was in fact not.

Did we just basically agree on something again, albeit in different terms?  That’s basically what I meant about platitudes - nice as the improved comms are, I don’t think they have much significant content.  We have slightly more information on what they’re up to, but like Nate’s comments in Matt’s vid, nothing terribly insightful, and frankly, that might have been part of the plan all along.  If nothing else IG does know that the community is obsessed and will lap up anything they tell us.  It’d be odd if they had planned to go into complete silence during the roadmap.  

[AtomicTech]

On 10/30/2023 at 9:54 AM, PDCWolf said:

"Something big and bad did indeed happen, though we can't go into detail, but it took away this much development time"

Really?

Where/when did he say that?

[cocoscacao]

6 minutes ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

nothing terribly insightful

Insightful would be... what? I doubt we'll get detailed description of new gameplay mechanics before they are released.

Edited October 31, 2023 by cocoscacao

[Periple]

Just now, cocoscacao said:

Insightful would be... what? I doubt we'll get detailed description of new gameplay mechanics before they are released.

Good thing too!

[Wheehaw Kerman]

Just now, cocoscacao said:

Insightful would be... what? I doubt we'll get description of gameplay mechanics before they are released.

Exactly.  We see parts and screengrabs designed to send some of us on deep dives and drive speculative discussions.  We get the odd little hint, but overall no spoilers.  Some of the older dev diaries did good deep dives on things like calculating orbits, but we haven’t had that level of peek under the hood in some time.

So what would be insightful?  A bit more technical depth on what they’ve got planned (remember the talk around metallic hydrogen a few years back?), perhaps.  Some more transparency on how the foundational work is driving progress on the milestones, maybe.  Info that might stifle some of the wilder-eyed speculation - if we’d had better comms around the roadmap and how they were planning on delivering it this place might have been more liveable.  Look at how much better things have become since they announced For Science!.

[PDCWolf]

5 minutes ago, AtomicTech said:

Really?

Where/when did he say that?

I think you missed the concept, I was crafting a dummy statement to show Periple you can say something happened and its consequences without assigning blame.