Nate Simpson at Space Creator Day talks about KSP 2.

[Periple]

48 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

The game would be fine if it wasn't so buggy.

I think it still has quite a long way to go before it’s fine! It is buggy but also very rough in lots of places, and only the foundational mechanics are even implemented. 

I am having fun with it but mostly just to sightsee, and it really needs a lot more than that!

[Lisias]

10 minutes ago, Periple said:

I am having fun with it but mostly just to sightsee, and it really needs a lot more than that!

 

"I will stick with the users, it's where the money comes from. "

[Periple]

2 minutes ago, Lisias said:

 

 

"I will stick with the users, it's where the money comes from. "

You’re confusing me again!

[Lisias]

42 minutes ago, Periple said:

You’re confusing me again!

Not enough people are getting fun from the game!

Look, if bugs where the main reason for players fleeing, KSP¹ would had been canceled before reaching 1.0. Bugs are annoying, but except by some few fatal ones, people works around them if they are getting fun enough from what's working fine.

The last patch solved a lot of serious bugs, and yet the player count is on the fall again. KSP2 is not being able to keep people interested for more than a week:

Looking on the historic data from the Franchise, KSP¹ never had fallen so deep on the concurrent users even when it was terribly buggy - Steam Charts have data since Feb 2013, V0.18.4 (I think) - and until 1.0 reached the virtual shelves, and even well after that to tell you the true (the game became really stable only on 1.3.1), KSP never experienced a shallow curve like we have nowadays - not even on its worst times (removing 2023 from the history data, of course), when a lot of competitors were already on the market (watering down the excuse of KSP2 having to face more competition nowadays).

The bugs are annoying, but as they are being solved, people are still having a hard time to keep motivated on playing it.

This should be passing some message here.

Edited November 2, 2023 by Lisias
Tyops, what else?

[Periple]

15 minutes ago, Lisias said:

The bugs are annoying, but as they are being solved, people are still having a hard time to keep motivated on playing it.

I think that’s because there’s not much game there yet. Not even a progression mode! What do you think?

[cocoscacao]

11 minutes ago, Periple said:

What do you think?

 

1 hour ago, Periple said:

am having fun with it but mostly just to sightsee, and it really needs a lot more than that!

I know it wasn't addressed at me, but there's an answer. KSP 1 set the standards, the novelty is gone, we need more. Remake Doom 1 with new graphics and old mechanics. I bet it won't last long. 

[Kerbart]

22 minutes ago, Lisias said:

Not enough people are getting fun from the game!

Look, if bugs where the main reason for players fleeing, KSP¹ would had been canceled before reaching 1.0. Bugs are annoying, but except by some few fatal ones, people works around them if they are getting fun enough from what's working fine.

The last patch solved a lot of serious bugs, and yet the player count is on the fall again. KSP2 is not being able to keep people interested for more than a week:

[...]

The bugs are annoying, but as they are being solved, people are still having a hard time to keep motivated on playing it. This should be passing some message here.

I was going to say "you're wrong" but looking back at the KSP1 version history... you have a point although not entirely

The KSP1 updates came about every two months, not that different from KSP2. But for a long time the game remained in Sandbox only, so that's where you are wrong. However... you're right in the sense that every update brought new content. Usually just new or revamped parts, but that did offer something new to play with. You're right; we get bug fixes (and by Jove are they needed), but only bug fixes. In that sense, what we're missing are the non-milestone updates. Something like re-entry heating goes in great. KSC colliders. Parachutes for Kerbals. More parts. More QOL upgrades.

I think in that the issue is not that the milestone update should have come out earlier—with the buggy state it might still be too early, but you're absolutely right that nothing new is added to the game. KSP1 was definitely different in that sense.

 

[Lisias]

5 minutes ago, cocoscacao said:

I know it wasn't addressed at me,

This is an open forum, we are shouting in a square. If you had read it, then it was addressed to you too.  

 

2 minutes ago, cocoscacao said:

KSP 1 set the standards, the novelty is gone, we need more. Remake Doom 1 with new graphics and old mechanics. I bet it won't last long. 

Makes sense. So I checked the hypothesis using, well, Doom 1 to se if the metaphor sticks:

https://steamcharts.com/cmp/379720,2280#All

I'm not proving you wrong, however. Something working for Doom doesn't means that it will work the same for KSP - but it's an evidence that you can make a facelift on an old game and still make it linger and even thrive - a bit (click on the link I posted above and check the All statistics).

 

25 minutes ago, Periple said:

I think that’s because there’s not much game there yet. Not even a progression mode! What do you think?

There wasn't much of a game for a long time before KSP¹ 1.0 neither. And yet… 

Oukey, nowadays we have KSP¹ competing with KSP2 too, but this didn't prevented Doom (remake) to reach ~31.000 concurrent users at launch neither (check my previous link). Some people don't mind playing the same thing again and again, as long it's fun. (hell, I'm playing Abuse again!)

So, something else must be preventing interested players (and they exist!) from keep playing it more than a couple times.

One of the many reasons (I would be naive on thinking there's only one thing screwing things here) may be the introduction of new show stoppers bugs ? Like this:

Spoiler

AMD have a somewhat good footprint in the GPU market, about 17.5% as I had read recently, as well on the CPU market with about 21%. Let's guess that about 19% of the AMD enthusiasts have a full AMD setup ((21+17)/2).

That drop from 325 concurrent users from last Wednesday to 275 counted yesterday relates to a 15% drop.

It's a wild guess, I literally pulled this 19% out of my… hummm… hat  but it's not a completely unreasonable guess - perhaps we are not seeing players getting bored on KSP2, but players being unable to play KSP2? Again… 

 

11 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

I was going to say "you're wrong" but looking back at the KSP1 version history... you have a point although not entirely

I didn't played KSP at that time, I started playing KSP on 1.4.0 (3 days before KSP 1.4.1!! Karma!!!  ). So I didn't expected to get it 100% right. But doing some research while supporting my add'ons, I reached a lot of bug reports (and even commits due them) containing what people were thinking, and I got my hypothesis from these.

 

14 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

I think in that the issue is not that the milestone update should have come out earlier—with the buggy state it might still be too early, but you're absolutely right that nothing new is added to the game. KSP1 was definitely different in that sense.

Playing the Devil's Advocate against myself, I'm pretty sure that even if I'm right, this would not be the only factor influencing numbers here.  The 0.1.5.0 brought back significantly more users than the last patch, after all. And since most users stopped playing KSP2 due showstopper bugs, they didn't had time enough on the game to get bored with what KSP2 have right now - I had read a lot of complains about not being able to play at all, really a lot.

This problem I pinpointed above (about glitches on the image on a full AMD setup) can surely push players away, and if KSP2 players follow the AMD trend on market share, we may have found one of the reasons KSP2 may had declined about 15% in a week.

If I'm right on this last hypothesis, we should see more or less the same concurrent users next week, i.e., KSP2 users that think KSP2 is fun enough and that are not experiencing show stoppers glitches (as the full AMD one). On the other hand, if we see yet more drops on the concurrent players count, then the other hypothesis (game not being fun enough) starts to make more sense.

[PDCWolf]

5 hours ago, regex said:

I paid $50 to watch this game go through development, that's kind of what "early access" is all about. The fact that there's so much disconnect there is utterly baffling to me. If the amount is too much then why the hell did you even buy the game?

You do you, and all power to you, but that's not what EA is normally perceived to be for: you don't pay $50 to watch, you pay $50 (or whatever) to be part. In fact, this launch should've probably cleared it up pretty well that people don't pay specifically to be alpha testers and being held in the dark for months, they pay to influence the game and provide feedback on features, not on obvious bugs that anyone playing for 5 minutes would've noticed. As for watching the development, neither the forum, discord, or anywhere are paywalled, you don't need to pay to watch.

Also, price sets expectations. Ask anyone on the street if they'd expect this mess for $50. Heck, you don't need to ask, reviews are right there.

5 hours ago, regex said:

Y'all need to exercise better judgement regarding hype campaigns lol

They showed a "complete" game (bar the obvious performance problems) for the best part of 2019 to 2022. Only in October did they announce it'd be early access with stuff missing, and even then they were still talking about how performant and polished it was gonna be. From experience, the people are really not at fault here unless you take straight up not believing anything they say or show as the norm. Sadly I can't express what I believe the marketing campaign was without risking another ban.

4 hours ago, Vl3d said:

The game would be fine if it wasn't so buggy.

0.1.5 is really pretty solid, most people playing it are happy and would gladly tell you the game works, which is a huge achievement. Yet that achievement has only pulled 200 concurrent players and dropping.

The game is playable, and works wonders compared to release, and even compared to the previous patch, so you'll realize bugs aren't the problem. They were at some point, sure, but most glaringly foundational stuff can be considered fixed and the people are not coming back. Why? Exactly what I said before.

The game is stuck on a bad foundation, it's also known by now that there's a lot of easily disagreeable design decisions, there's also features confirmed not coming (robotics, life support), and of course, discounting all of that, the game is still lacking a lot of stuff you can find on the first. That is why people aren't coming back. You could make the current game bug-perfect and they still wouldn't come back.

 

 

[Lisias]

52 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

0.1.5 is really pretty solid, most people playing it are happy and would gladly tell you the game works, which is a huge achievement. Yet that achievement has only pulled 200 concurrent players and dropping.

But, still, the Reviews on Steam on the last 4 days are depressing.

Of course this patch would not revert the whole Mostly Negative recent reviews in a week, but I was really expecting the Positive reviews to outnumber the Negative ones way more than they did. As a matter of fact, I was expecting the negative reviews to keep at the same pace, while the positive ones would be rising way more.

So few new reviews suggest people are not boring to come back to revise the reviews (what's, frankly, is expected) as well no new reviews are happening (suggesting very few new players).

 

51 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

The game is stuck on a bad foundation, it's also known by now that there's a lot of easily disagreeable design decisions, there's also features confirmed not coming (robotics, life support), and of course, discounting all of that, the game is still lacking a lot of stuff you can find on the first. That is why people aren't coming back. You could make the current game bug-perfect and they still wouldn't come back.

Well, this is surely the reason I didn't and almost surely will not buy KSP2.

Edited November 3, 2023 by Lisias
Brute force post merging

[cocoscacao]

2 hours ago, Lisias said:

Makes sense. So I checked the hypothesis using, well, Doom 1 to se if the metaphor sticks

I meant doom 1,not doom 2016

[Lisias]

Just now, cocoscacao said:

I meant doom 1,not doom 2016

Check the post again, I'm comparing Doom 2016 with Doom 1993 (1).

[cocoscacao]

1 minute ago, Lisias said:

Check the post again, I'm comparing Doom 2016 with Doom 1993 (1).

I did. Those are two different games. Better example would be half life 1 and black mesa (standalone) mod/game

[Lisias]

1 hour ago, cocoscacao said:

I did. Those are two different games. Better example would be half life 1 and black mesa (standalone) mod/game

Ah, now I see. I used Doom 2016 because I was intending to make a correlation between KSP2 and KSP¹.

But, yeah, thinking on it twice, there're better comparisons possible.

— — POST EDIT — — 

Unfortunately, there's no data for Half-Life (1) on Steam - not exactly a surprise, this is a offline game, without any kind of integration to Steam, as it appears.

The nearest next thing that I could think off was Black Mesa definitive edition, and Half Life 2.

https://steamcharts.com/cmp/362890,220#All

Both fairing pretty well, by the way, with Black Mesa (unsurprisingly) doing way better.

Edited November 3, 2023 by Lisias
post edit

[NH4Cl Enthusiast]

12 hours ago, regex said:

Well no, you'd be taking away another gameplay element, the sandbox, the ability to build and fly things. They've given us just enough sim to support the game, but the game is the most important part; the sim is not intended to intrude into the game unless it's considered actually interesting for the game by the designers. And since not every game has to be for everyone you add in modding "support" (or in KSP's case, you just don't get in the way of modders, or don't care if they bypass your obfuscation) so that people can turn it into the sim they want to play.

You state this as if it's some kind of a fact, but you're twisting really hard on the definition of what you consider to be game elements and what you consider to be simulation elements. I can just as well make your exact argument but switch around the words sim and game and it works just the same and has the same argumentative impact as what you said. The sim is the most important part and there's just enough game there to support it.  The game is not supposed to intrude on the sim unless it's considered to be interesting. 

Further I'd rather say that especially KSP2 is barely even a game, it's some kind of crossbreed between a cartoon world doll simulator and a physics simulator. 

[regex]

7 hours ago, NH4Cl Enthusiast said:

Further I'd rather say that especially KSP2 is barely even a game, it's some kind of crossbreed between a cartoon world doll simulator and a physics simulator. 

Yeah I suppose it's pretty subjective and we don't have any real game elements yet, but based on developer communications and the previous game we're not getting further elements that I would classify as "sim", stuff like life support, radiation, or heavy accounting and planning.

[GluttonyReaper]

8 hours ago, NH4Cl Enthusiast said:

You state this as if it's some kind of a fact, but you're twisting really hard on the definition of what you consider to be game elements and what you consider to be simulation elements. I can just as well make your exact argument but switch around the words sim and game and it works just the same and has the same argumentative impact as what you said. The sim is the most important part and there's just enough game there to support it.  The game is not supposed to intrude on the sim unless it's considered to be interesting. 

Further I'd rather say that especially KSP2 is barely even a game, it's some kind of crossbreed between a cartoon world doll simulator and a physics simulator. 

I really don't know where people are getting this idea that KSP2 (or 1, for that matter)  was ever supposed to be a simulator above all else. The only part of KSP that has ever been remotely simulator-esque is the orbital mechanics, and even that is set up to highly value Fun, hence why we have a massively shrunken solar system with made-up brightly coloured planets. Everything else is set up to be incredibly abstract and often just ignores reality entirely. Aerodynamics? If it's pointy at the top and draggy at the back, it'll probably fly. Rocketry? Here's some super heavy parts that you can slap together, no need to worry about ullage engines or limited ignitions. Mining? Drill up any old rocks, do some processing, and then shove them through your engines, no problem.

KSP1 and 2 have both historically traded realism for fun whenever given the opportunity, it's only ever really been mods that have tried to pull the game over that 'simulator' line. Reality has been a great source of inspiration obviously, but the KSP2 team seem to committed to actually making a fun gaming experience rather than a hardcore simulator.

Edited November 3, 2023 by GluttonyReaper

[Scarecrow71]

I just watched ShadowZone's interview with Nate, and I've got some comments on a few specific things Nate said and/or talked about.  Feel free to not read this if you are tired of hot takes!

The Work Takes The Amount Of Time It Takes (3:45)
This is a direct quote from Nate at the stated time.  I cannot disagree that work takes time, and you cannot rush something if you want it to be both good and correct.  Unfortunately, there is a multi-year gap in how long things actually took to complete.  Promises of full launch in 2020, 2021, and 2022, followed by the announcement of EA in early 2023.  And that EA launch was - and in some cases, still is - riddled with errors and bugs and unplayable sections of code.  We haven't even gotten the first roadmap feature yet (released; it has been announced for December).

I'm not arguing here that the work took time.  I - all of us, really - want this to be done right.  But the question as to why it took so long remains.  That is an answer we would all really love to get.  Why on Kerbin did it take 4 years to release this as EA?

Code Replication From KSP1 to KSP2 (12:00)
Nate talked about how he believed - without being able to fully confirm, considering he is not an engineer and does not have access to the actual code - that there was no replication of code from KSP1 to KSP2, even in the face of ShadowZone mentioning that he saw the same bug in KSP2 that he saw in KSP1 about how the manipulation tool was still going along the extended leg's axis and not along how the part was actually fitted on the rocket.  Granted, this may be an issue with one of the third-party middleware libraries, but it still exists.  As soon as SZ was done mentioning this, Nate immediately stated that, if the tech cost was low and at the right point, he would fully support re-using code and systems from KSP1 in KSP2.  He then followed this up by stating that, while he doesn't know for sure, it wouldn't surprise him if the engineers did in fact copy/paste from KSP1.

We have been told this entire time that no systems or code have been re-used from KSP1 to KSP2.  But Nate's statements about copy/paste and doing it if the cost was low enough are cause for concern.  Couple this with the fact that we are seeing some bugs in KSP2 that were around in KSP1, and, well, I cannot believe that no systems were copied.  Although possible, it is highly improbable to actually code the same bugs in 2 different pieces of software that are not copied from one another.  Again, possible, but not probable.

Number of Engineers (18:00)
At around this point in the interview, ShadowZone started asking about the number of engineers that were employed.  He was trying to get Nate to give just a ballpark number (more than 20?  less than 50?), and Nate got really defensive over it.  Nate mentioned that he should have gotten the number because of how many times he was asked the question that day, but you could see that Nate did not want to engage with this question at all.  In my estimation/opinion, the topic of the number of guys/gals working on this game as engineers is a really sore spot that Nate wants no part of.

This question goes along with his statement of "The work takes the amount of time it takes".  No, you aren't an engineer.  No, you probably aren't in charge of them.  But how can you be the Creative Director, and have worked on this game for multiple years, and simply not know how many engineers are coding this thing?  I may not know of everyone in the company I work for, but I can tell you exactly how many people are on the teams I directly work with on a daily basis.

Biomes (19:50)
Well, it's confirmed that we'll have biomes in the game.  Nate made mention of the layering of biomes when drawn while discussing a totally different question about performance, but it's right there.  Biomes.  This means that Science is probably going to be exactly like it was in KSP1.  Yep, we'll have to travel to Kerbin's Tropics or Eve's Poles and get Science in a specific spot.  Sigh.

Edited November 3, 2023 by Scarecrow71

[MechBFP]

59 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

But the question as to why it took so long remains. 

He already said in the Matt Lowne interview that they underestimated the amount of work. Doesn't matter if you choose to believe it, that is the answer.

[NH4Cl Enthusiast]

1 hour ago, GluttonyReaper said:

I really don't know where people are getting this idea that KSP2 (or 1, for that matter)  was ever supposed to be a simulator above all else. The only part of KSP that has ever been remotely simulator-esque is the orbital mechanics, and even that is set up to highly value Fun, hence why we have a massively shrunken solar system with made-up brightly coloured planets. Everything else is set up to be incredibly abstract and often just ignores reality entirely. Aerodynamics? If it's pointy at the top and draggy at the back, it'll probably fly. Rocketry? Here's some super heavy parts that you can slap together, no need to worry about ullage engines or limited ignitions. Mining? Drill up any old rocks, do some processing, and then shove them through your engines, no problem.

KSP1 and 2 have both historically traded realism for fun whenever given the opportunity, it's only ever really been mods that have tried to pull the game over that 'simulator' line. Reality has been a great source of inspiration obviously, but the KSP2 team seem to committed to actually making a fun gaming experience rather than a hardcore simulator.

I haven't seen anybody saying it's supposed to be a simulation above all else. What it's supposed to be is a fun game to play and what is fun for some is not for others.

But what you're doing is the same as Regex where you're just arbitrarily assigning some elements as simulation elements and some as game elements with zero definitions of either and then making a statement about which way it is as if that's somehow a universal fact.  I can just as easily swap your argument around and say that KSP is clearly a simplified physics, rocketry and orbital mechanics simulation and everything else is created for no other purpose but to make engaging with the simulation as fun as possible. My version holds the same weight as yours, which is none at all. 

Of course the simulation is simple, no argument there and of course fun should be first too, but what I'm opposing here is people presenting poorly constructed opinions as if they're somehow a universal fact.

I'll ask this: If you remove any decision from your average play session which is not directly connected to either the workings of the physics simulation or aesthetics, how much is left? Especially with KSP2. I'm not even trying to argue my point with this, but just as thought exercise I think it's useful. 

[Vl3d]

Please allow me to rant:

Regarding the ShadowZone interview, I very much appreciate it, but we keep focusing on the same problems with the internals of the technical development and ignoring the very important aspects of gameplay decisions and mechanics. We know very little about how this game is improving on KSP 1 gameplay and how the new features work in detail.

Gameplay features are presented as "aspirational", but when we get down to the nitty gritty, all the systems are very bare bones. I've been asking constantly about really important stuff like CommNet, KerbNet, buoyancy, radiation, RPG mechanics for years and the few straightforward answers have been "we're not implementing life support" and "delivery routes will be timers at first". I think players deserve to know more about how the decisions to change, improve or keep the KSP1 gameplay are taken.

And don't get me wrong, I think the developer blogs and chats are great, we need more of them - but what I'm saying is that they tend to focus on reimplementation of features that already existed in KSP1 in a similar way, instead of showing the character of true innovation that many of the KSP1 mods brought to the table. There's so much good work and so many good ideas that I feel are not getting attention because they're a departure from KSP1.

Edited November 3, 2023 by Vl3d

[whatsEJstandfor]

1 hour ago, Scarecrow71 said:

But the question as to why it took so long remains.

I really really really liked that he gave a very specific example (mirroring procedural wings) and walked through why it can go from being a simple one-liner bug, to a multitude of new bugs, back to just appearing as one line in the patch notes. 

From the sounds of it, time estimates from now on (or I guess as of several months ago) are going to be more accurate, because the people making those estimates will be familiar enough with the systems involved that they'll be able to foresee cases like the above one in advance.

[Periple]

I think it’s clear by now that they’ve made the conscious decision to extend rather than innovate: core gameplay is the same but with QoL improvements and better visuals, extended to some new areas, namely colonies, resources, and interstellar technology and locations.

I’m not sure how useful it is to speculate about systems or features they clearly have no intention to design and implement.

[Vl3d]

I'll just leave this here from 4 years ago. You can watch both interviews and compare the subject matter talked about.

 

[GluttonyReaper]

10 minutes ago, NH4Cl Enthusiast said:

But what you're doing is the same as Regex where you're just arbitrarily assigning some elements as simulation elements and some as game elements with zero definitions of either and then making a statement about which way it is as if that's somehow a universal fact.  I can just as easily swap your argument around and say that KSP is clearly a simplified physics, rocketry and orbital mechanics simulation and everything else is created for no other purpose but to make engaging with the simulation as fun as possible. My version holds the same weight as yours, which is none at all.

Of course the simulation is simple, no argument there and of course fun should be first too, but what I'm opposing here is people presenting poorly constructed opinions as if they're somehow a universal fact.

True, that's fair, I'm probably being pretty unclear with my terminology here. I'm not saying that any elements are purely "simulation" or "game" and can be easily categorised as such, I'm saying that most of the features we've seen all blatantly lean heavily towards the "game" side to my eyes. "Simulation" aspects I would define as anything that exists to mimic reality, with a higher degree of simulation being closer to reality. "Game" aspects are... trickier to define, to the say the least (I also don't think it's the best term either - it's not like KSP would cease to be a game if it didn't have enough "game aspects"). I'd say it's anything which exists to engage the player in an arbitrary way that keeps them playing, which I appreciate is a loose definition.

Importantly, "simulation" and "game" aren't necessarily always opposites - in fact, to a point, they can complement each other quite nicely, which is exactly what made KSP attractive in the first place, taking orbital mechanics in a direction that was actually fun to utilise. I guess the key here is intent, which obviously I can only speculate at, that separates your proposed interpretation over mine. It appears to me though that the evolution of most core features involved developing them as "game" and "simulation" aspects, then continuing to develop the "game" aspects once the "simulation" aspects became counter to them. I think that the presence of mostly "game"-ish features that don't really connect to "simulation" at all is fairly strong evidence of that (i.e. career mode features), whereas if it were the other way around, I think we would see a lot more almost-pure "simulation" features (e.g. part degradation, life support, etc.).

Side note: This is all somewhat muddied by the fact that KSP1 arguably tries and fails to prioritise these "game" features, despite spending almost half it's pre-1.0 development on them - I don't think things like contracts and Kerbal professions ever really worked to be the engaging features they were intended to be fundamentally, which lead to a lot of people (me included) dropping them entirely for sandbox mode.

1 hour ago, NH4Cl Enthusiast said:

I'll ask this: If you remove any decision from your average play session which is not directly connected to either the workings of the physics simulation or aesthetics, how much is left? Especially with KSP2. I'm not even trying to argue my point with this, but just as thought exercise I think it's useful. 

I've probably already covered this above, but obviously the issue here is that you can't separate "game" from "simulation" for most features, so pretty much everything outside of career/exploration mode is directly connected to the core physics. And if KSP2 is better designed than KSP1, then exploration mode features should be connected just as much ideally, but that's another can of worms.