Mostly Positive On STEAM - What Happened On Nov 21st 2023 - Did I miss an update, an event, a convention?

[Buzz313th]

So great news..  Hopefully T2 and IG will get more money during Xmas for KSP2 development because reviews have gone from "Mostly Negative", to "Mostly Positive" in less than one week.  This should help sell the game as casual STEAM users are looking for gift giving ideas.  Great news I say for the KSP2 die hard fans, or all fans for that matter as more sales means more development effort from IG.

 

STEAM Reviews have skyrocketed positive starting on November 21st 2023 and continue to trend in the same direction every day.   Most of the positive reviews in the last week are players with incredibly low time, less than 5 hours for the most part.  https://imgur.com/a/aSCubNc  And strangely enough, the unbelievably high uptick in STEAM Positive reviews has not changed the metrics of KSP2 concurrent users, which is still at a abysmal low level of 150-180 average.  You would think that we would see almost twice as many players playing the title?   Strange. 

It feels as if I have missed some event, maybe an update, an announcement that could have been the catalyst for this quick and aggressive change of customer opinion.    

What did I miss that would cause such a quick spike?   

 

Cheers and Thanks

Edited November 28, 2023 by Buzz313th

[Kerbart]

Quite a lot. An announcement at the Soace Day convention about the For Science update (December), immediately followed by rolling out the 0.1.5 update which is another step evolving towards a playable version of the game.

 

you REALLY missed all of that??

[Buzz313th]

9 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

Quite a lot. An announcement at the Soace Day convention about the For Science update (December), immediately followed by rolling out the 0.1.5 update which is another step evolving towards a playable version of the game.

 

you REALLY missed all of that??

When was the first mention of "For Science" and when did 0.1.5 come out?   Wasn't that well before Nov 21st 2023?

And yes, I miss most of the announcements, conventions, marketing events..  I uninstalled KSP2 a while ago.  Waiting for development maturity and product value before I install it again.  I hear bits and pieces of the KSP2 news from a friend.   

The uptick in Positive reviews made me a bit excited, thought I missed a patch.   Do you know of anything that happened slightly before Nov 21st 2023?

Edited November 28, 2023 by Buzz313th

[The Aziz]

Starship flew on the 18th. Maybe after that some popular internet figure decided to give it a shot and it gathered an audience.

Also it's worth mentioning that the mostly positive are for recent reviews.

All time still unfortunately sits at mixed.

Edited November 28, 2023 by The Aziz

[Buzz313th]

2 minutes ago, The Aziz said:

Starship flew on the 18th. Maybe after that some popular internet figure decided to give it a shot and it gathered an audience.

That makes perfect sense tbh.

Cheers

[Bej Kerman]

22 minutes ago, The Aziz said:

All time still unfortunately sits at mixed.

Despite Hello Games' efforts, the all-time reviews for NMS still sit at 77%. Which is good but far from the recent 96%. It'll probably be a while before the all-time reviews are back in the blue.

[LoSBoL]

Steam award nominations happend, 'complete your task by reviewing, or updating your review of a game you nominated.'

People love tasks to get 'achievements'.

[Buzz313th]

2 minutes ago, LoSBoL said:

Steam award nominations happend, 'complete your task by reviewing, or updating your review of a game you nominated.'

People love tasks to get 'achievements'.

^^ Another very insightful comment on the topic..

 

[GGG-GoodGuyGreg]

Maybe the game suddenly got updated and is much better?

I don’t know yet because I’m waiting for the Science update for like 10 months now, before I ever pick up the game again. 

[Periple]

This is super good news!

KSP2 also has one big advantage over NMS: the reviews are for EA. When the game gets released, they will reset. It has every opportunity to be a 90%+ game!

[The Aziz]

0.1.5 was a month ago (and it did made the game objectively slightly better), the recent bump in reviews is a week old.

[Buzz313th]

32 minutes ago, LoSBoL said:

Steam award nominations happend, 'complete your task by reviewing, or updating your review of a game you nominated.'

People love tasks to get 'achievements'.

Makes perfect sense.  

[Dakota]

3 hours ago, LoSBoL said:

Steam award nominations happend, 'complete your task by reviewing, or updating your review of a game you nominated.'

People love tasks to get 'achievements'.

This is what we attribute it to. We were surprised as well, we didn't expect to see an influx of new/changed reviews until the For Science! release.

[Alpha_star]

Because science and patcch 5 was announced on that day. People are positive when they receive more good information on things they care about.

[NexusHelium]

22 hours ago, GGG-GoodGuyGreg said:

I don’t know yet because I’m waiting for the Science update for like 10 months now, before I ever pick up the game again. 

That's a fair reasoning but I would recommend playing 0.1.5 at least once. Once you pick it up and see the new graphics... (At least for me) It's hard to put down.

In my opinion, the game is relatively playable now. I am also very happy that KSP2 is finally getting the hope (I would say respect but that's still debatable by most people) it deserves! This game truly does have HUGE potential.

Edited November 29, 2023 by NexusHelium

[Bej Kerman]

1 minute ago, NexusHelium said:

In my opinion, the game is relatively playable now.

Worst bug I've encountered so far is having a vessel I was trying to dock with ping away at several meters a second when I got near the docking tolerance range. Compared to KSP 1 where I had bugs making it impossible to undock (which for my intents and purposes is even worse) I'd say the bugs are relatively tame now.

[NexusHelium]

Just now, Bej Kerman said:

I'd say the bugs are relatively tame now.

Not to mention the lag has a general workaround as well.

[PDCWolf]

I just finished examining this phenomena, and yes, It's completely the Steam Awards.

Around 162 of the 209 new reviews are nonsensical, presenting unrelated text, memes, thumbs up, or even the bare minimum to qualify: a single character. Others included in this category straight up attack other reviewers, or tell you to buy the game now and wait because it is not good.

104 reviews come from "suspicious" accounts: They haven't reviewed other games, don't own other games, or are extremely new accounts that haven't even changed the default PFP.

Finally, 89 of those 209 reviews haven't gone above the set 5 hour threshold. Most people reviewing the game already owned it, they're not new purchasers and have in fact almost not even played the game in the 9 months it's been out.

The thing is with so little players it really takes just 200 reviews to completely flip the score.

Edited November 30, 2023 by PDCWolf

[Meecrob]

19 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

The thing is with so little players it really takes just 200 reviews to completely flip the score.

Yeah, kinda like how in a couple hours, Concorde went from the safest to least safe commercial transport ever.

Edit: I do honestly hope this update goes well, I'm not just here to rain on the parade. I'll believe it when I  see it though.

Edited December 1, 2023 by Meecrob

[Superfluous J]

9 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

with so little players it really takes just 200 reviews to completely flip the score

With so few reviews, it's easy to skew the results in ANY direction.