How captivating is KSP2 at this point?

[Kerbart]

We’re all thrilled on how the game has progressed since EA. And while congratulations to the team are in place, that is a pretty low bar to pass. As a group on social media—and I suspect that extends to the Discord and Reddit communities—we’re biased about the game though.

The Steam Charts tell a more sobering story. After nearly 2 weeks, KSP2 usage has dropped to the level of KSP1. The rate at which the stats drop seems the same—if not steeper—as when after EA release the game had a similar number of recorded players (early March). It's tempting to blame the holiday season for that, but with more time available player count tends to go up and the KSP1 stats confirm that.

So, assuming the numbers don't lie and are indicative of the popularity of the game:

• A lot of players have downloaded KSP2. Either bought it or pulled it out of their mothballed archive. Interest in the game is still there, although only half of what it was at EA
• Over the course of 2 weeks, the player count dropped nearly ²/₃

So what does it tell us? Probably nothing we didn't know already:

• The game is better. Much better. But it's far from good,
• Science mode is much more exciting than sandbox, but in the end it's basically the same as in KSP1 but with better visuals and a challenging tech tree; it gets old quickly
• There's still a collection of Old Bugs that is annoying. Yes, some of the Rage Quitters are gone, and many are happy about the unnatural stiff rockets, but orbital lines still disappear, engines still spontaneously throttle up, the VAB is still a bug fest, and so on
• As to be expected, new features have brought new bugs, especially around re-entry heating to a point where many consider playing without it

A roadmap update will bring a boost in the stats. I'm sure T2 is delighted about that. The reason it took 10 months to get here is because of a lot of technical debt. There's still a lot left and not suprisingly it increased now. Given Intercept's promise to deliver the next update “much quicker,” I wonder where we end up with the stats. A roller coaster ride of new players joining and still casting the game aside, because objectively, it still leaves a lot to be desired from a stability point of view?

[Mitchz95]

I'd say the game is about 80% of the way to where KSP1 was. Still lots of bugs and QOL stuff to address, but the gameplay loop is pretty solid.

Hopefully the next major update will continue the upward trend in a meaningful way.

[rmaine]

I'd generally agree. Huge progress. For me it has jumped to being playable, which I did not consider it before. But no, it's not yet something I'll spend a lot of time with. Have gone to Mun and Minimus, but that might be about where I stop bothering for now.

[MechBFP]

I never showed up on the Steam stats because I always launch the exe directly, however I have stopped playing for now pending a patch because the amount of bugs and QoL issues at the moment are now becoming an issue once going interplanetary.

[HebaruSan]

2 hours ago, Kerbart said:

After nearly 2 weeks, KSP2 usage has dropped to the level of KSP1.

The lows have, but the highs are still bouncing noticeably higher, including right now as I type this:

It's an interesting pattern. I suppose it means that KSP2 is doing relatively better than KSP1 in the "peak" hours of Steam player activity? US versus rest of world?

2 hours ago, Kerbart said:

• Over the course of 2 weeks, the player count dropped nearly ²/₃

My excitement morphed to disappointment when I discovered this fraction was made from superscripts and subscripts.
There's a single ⅔ character in unicode!

Edited January 1 by HebaruSan

[Kerbart]

1 hour ago, HebaruSan said:

My excitement morphed to disappointment when I discovered this fraction was made from superscripts and subscripts.

There's a single ⅔ character in unicode!

I was lazy! I’ll admit, I even  have it on my personal keystrokes webpage, together with ⅗ and ⅞ but opted for a cheap typesetting trick instead. Shame! Shame! But I did use curly braces instead of straight quotes, so there’s that.

[Vl3d]

Well, I've crossed the 200 hours total time spent in KSP 2, so the game is worth my time. Surprisingly, it was not the exploration that got me hooked.. but actually building first stages of various sizes and tonnage to LKO and also designing more and more complex science return missions. So basically most of my enjoyment came from the VAB.

Executing those missions is somewhat painful - from bad dV data to bad maneuver node control, buggy RCS which makes docking a PAIN.. which means that for me KSP2 is up to the level of KSP1 Science Mode but just below designing multi-vehicle missions which require orbital assembly and refueling.

Besides bugfixes and QoL improvements, what I feel is missing:

- more edge, spice, adult humor

- many more discoverables & asteroids-comets

- better terrain and environment graphics + weather visuals

- better science utility and planetary discovery and survey progression

- CommNet missions which require launching satellite constellations to have unoccluded signal in a SOI

- extra survival gameplay mechanisms like radiation

- being resource constrained and a resource collection game loop

- previous and next points are closely related to delivery routes

- more reasons to build vehicles other than rockets, probes, pods and landers

- the orbital colony system + EVA construction to make building in space easier and faster.

Only when the game will have all this will it really be just above KSP 1's level. And only after that does it make sense to talk about interstellar exploration.

Edited January 1 by Vl3d

[Guest]

On 1/1/2024 at 10:30 PM, Vl3d said:

Only when the game will have all this will it really be just above KSP 1's level. And only after that does it make sense to talk about interstellar exploration.

I’m certain that stock KSP2 is never going to be all that! It’s sad if you’ll never be able to enjoy it for what it is rather than suffer because it’s not what you want it to be.

[Mikki]

I am thrilled. I have researched the speeds in general and temparature limits of the parts and the devs have accuratly mirrored reallife metals and their capabilitys. Obviously the only parts made out of titanium are certain parachute shells and the nerv engines (maybe fairings aswell), most other parts are made of steel and aluminium alloys.

I am happy to see that it is no more possible to reach fantastic velocitys without damaging the craft, atmospheres seem to reflect true drag and friction, surface modelling is just amazing, no goofy planets anymore, clouds are top.

Heatshields are very nice, i love to estimate the required amount of ablative material.

Science game is a true challenge even for seasoned players, i took a break after going to Eve, it is quite a stress on the brain. 

 

Edited January 3 by Mikki
typo, another one

[cocoscacao]

I grew tired of KSP 1 long ago... soooo, having an inferior version doesn't help much. But I expected this... However, waiting for 0.3 is a lot more enjoyable when I do sit down to play.

Edited January 3 by cocoscacao

[RayneCloud]

To me? Just as much as the first game. The real foundation of building space craft and flinging them out in to the great unknown is still there. Does it need a lot of work? Yup, sure does it's not even remotely perfect, but KSP 1 wasn't either. It was a decade long grand adventure to build KSP in to what 1.12.5 became. It was a long hard road full of challenges and set backs but KSP 1 became one of the single greatest space games ever made and I believe KSP 2 can and is shooting for the stars in the same way and doing just fine after the last update. If they can hit the next milestones (reasonably quick, that being once a quarter or so) then I think in a year after several major updates where we're building colonies and slinging ships in to interstellar space without the smack in the face that is broken modded builds... it'll become even more captivating than KSP 1. 

Edited January 3 by RayneCloud

[Scarecrow71]

On 1/1/2024 at 7:01 AM, Kerbart said:

The Steam Charts tell a more sobering story. After nearly 2 weeks, KSP2 usage has dropped to the level of KSP1. The rate at which the stats drop seems the same—if not steeper—as when after EA release the game had a similar number of recorded players (early March). It's tempting to blame the holiday season for that, but with more time available player count tends to go up and the KSP1 stats confirm that.

So, assuming the numbers don't lie and are indicative of the popularity of the game:

• A lot of players have downloaded KSP2. Either bought it or pulled it out of their mothballed archive. Interest in the game is still there, although only half of what it was at EA
• Over the course of 2 weeks, the player count dropped nearly ²/₃

This is an overly-used argument as to the state of the game.  And it's pretty darned unfair to hang an opinion about a game based on a singular website's metrics when we have beaten to death the fact that if you don't play on Steam, or you launch the game other than through the Steam launcher, you don't get tracked in the stats.  The numbers aren't accurate because data is missing.

On 1/1/2024 at 7:01 AM, Kerbart said:

The game is better. Much better. But it's far from good,

Strictly your opinion.  I agree that it is better; I disagree that it's far from good.  I'm liking it, and I think it's good.  Can it be better?  Yes.  But that doesn't mean it isn't good.

On 1/1/2024 at 7:01 AM, Kerbart said:

Science mode is much more exciting than sandbox, but in the end it's basically the same as in KSP1 but with better visuals and a challenging tech tree; it gets old quickly

I cannot argue with you here.  While the collection has been streamlined, it's still "Click this button to get the stuff".

On 1/1/2024 at 7:01 AM, Kerbart said:

There's still a collection of Old Bugs that is annoying. Yes, some of the Rage Quitters are gone, and many are happy about the unnatural stiff rockets, but orbital lines still disappear, engines still spontaneously throttle up, the VAB is still a bug fest, and so on

Again, no argument from me.  Some of the bugs that were squashed came back, which is concerning.

On 1/1/2024 at 7:01 AM, Kerbart said:

As to be expected, new features have brought new bugs, especially around re-entry heating to a point where many consider playing without it

I have found that I have to turn heat way down and use heat shields far bigger than necessary to prevent overheating upon re-entry.  The big issue with this is parts heating up while they are inside fairings and/or otherwise shielded from heat.

On 1/1/2024 at 7:01 AM, Kerbart said:

A roadmap update will bring a boost in the stats. I'm sure T2 is delighted about that. The reason it took 10 months to get here is because of a lot of technical debt. There's still a lot left and not suprisingly it increased now. Given Intercept's promise to deliver the next update “much quicker,” I wonder where we end up with the stats. A roller coaster ride of new players joining and still casting the game aside, because objectively, it still leaves a lot to be desired from a stability point of view?

Again, we cannot rely upon the stats of active players to tell us the story of whether or not the game is good or should be played.

[HebaruSan]

1 hour ago, Scarecrow71 said:

it's pretty darned unfair to hang an opinion about a game based on a singular website's metrics when we have beaten to death the fact that if you don't play on Steam, or you launch the game other than through the Steam launcher, you don't get tracked in the stats.  The numbers aren't accurate because data is missing.

Again, we cannot rely upon the stats of active players to tell us the story of whether or not the game is good or should be played.

That's true for absolute numbers, but less so for relative/comparative numbers (and "beat[ing it] to death" with repetition doesn't change that). If someone wants to argue that there were exactly 4000 people playing KSP2 at the peak on December 30 because that's what steamdb.info says, then obviously that's just silly, because it only reflects an unknown fraction of the true number.

However, we have no reason to think a KSP1 player is more or less likely than a KSP2 player to launch via Steam, so those numbers probably give an accurate-enough picture of how many are playing each game in relative terms (~1.6 KSP2 players for each KSP1 player at peak, about 1-to-1 at trough).  Similarly, there's no reason to assume the percentage of players who play via Steam varies over the course of the day or a week, so the trendlines probably reflect real changes in the size of the player base (down about 60% since the huge bump for 0.2.0.0's release).

I would never argue that the player numbers establish that a game is popular or unpopular, but it would be really hard for them not to reflect big differences or changes in real world numbers.

Edited January 3 by HebaruSan

[Mickel]

I restart my KSP1 career at the beginning of each year, with harder settings than the previous - the main one being significantly reducing the science payoff to force me out of the Kerbal system this time.  Yesterday was that day.  It gave me a contrast to KSP2.

I spent much longer in KSP1 than I do in a KSP2 session, eking out enough upgrades and science to get me around Mun.  Much of it was tedious - crew reports over random spots to make coin to upgrade the dirt patch launch site or lofting engines to some pre-determined speed and altitude for some test.  But here's the thing... the sense of progress was more satisfying than I've got from KSP2 thus far.

On the other hand... I sent Lucas Kerman and a Science Jnr to the ice on Minmus in KSP2.  Hopped around three biomes, gathered up 1,100 odd science points and returned (probably could have picked up another couple of biomes while I was there, but for now at least, the shots are free).  The environment (boots echoing as he walked), the music, the sound...

So it is, for me.  And when reaching other bodies provides that sense of achievement, rather than just another task ticked off, it will be even better.

[chefsbrian]

6 hours ago, Mickel said:

I spent much longer in KSP1 than I do in a KSP2 session, eking out enough upgrades and science to get me around Mun.  Much of it was tedious - crew reports over random spots to make coin to upgrade the dirt patch launch site or lofting engines to some pre-determined speed and altitude for some test.  But here's the thing... the sense of progress was more satisfying than I've got from KSP2 thus far.

I personally feel that much of this comes from the multiple options and goals presented to the player, particularly in a full career mode. Funds, Science, and a variety of contracts suddenly means you have four immediate and mechanics driven mission types - Contracts for Funds, Contracts for Science (Exploration or testing contracts), 'Support' missions for either of the prior options (Whatever a player might do to make a difficult goal easier, like putting a fuel dump in orbit, lab station over the mun, etc), and free form flights like doing a grand tour for the fun of it, or grabbing an asteroid because you never did it. With all mission types, your constrained in scale and selection by cost and KSC upgrades if still applicable, so any decision you make will be based around using or gaining those resources. You may chose to spend a play session running fund rewarding missions because you're saving up for a Jool mission mothership that needs a lotta expensive engines or a lot of launches for all the parts and fuel. You might be doing a low tech mun rush because you want to knock a bunch of early science out to avoid boring contracts. Whats important and compelling about the system is that you have options, many of them, at any point. Don't wanna run fund missions right now? Maybe you can scrap the jool mothership and do a probe flyby mission instead. Feeling a bit bored of mystery goo returns? You can throw a science lab in orbit, maybe take a space station contract for it and build out some permanent trickle of science off the back of processing basic experiments, and get paid for it to cover a cool mission somewhere else.

Right now, your only real choice in KSP2 is to take the same couple science parts to the same places, unlocking a fairly straight forward track. There's not really any alternative progression systems, nothing else for you to do if the next minmus biome sounds a bit boring right now - so you just don't play KSP2 tonight, and that break is usually the death of a save for most people in most games

That being said, its not because of some critical crippling failure of the game, the other stuffs just straight up not in yet. Part of the problem is that the only other mechanical loop we've been offered is so far down the progression line - Resources is the funds analog of this game, providing a complete alternative to scientific exploration missions, and last we saw of it, providing mechanical reason to not launch a gigachad ship every time to do all the things. Colonies without resources are simply a creative base building system: really fun the first two times, but not gonna hold water on its own as they'll simply be set dressing until they can do something more than launch free ships. Interstellar has the same problem, it on paper opens up a huge range of new spaces and ways for you to just run science experiments again. Resources are the lynch pin that's gonna have to pull everything together from disparate sandboxes with a linear progression, to an actual multifaceted game. 

[PDCWolf]

Right now, the entire selling point of KSP2 is potential, like for any EA. As much as people like to cry and whine that EAs shouldn't be bought over promised features or roadmaps, that's how it is and it is not gonna change any time soon. Both companies and players know that. And potential for the game will fall further and further as new stuff comes out and said potential is realized or wasted.

The aggregate review flow shows a smidge of an uptick in purchasers, meaning 0.2 FS! actually got a couple people to buy the game, and some people to come back and play it again, but they still haven't broken half a million steam sales, 10% of the original. However that same data shows that, even for an update that gates progress behind long-term gameplay, retention is also very low.  The current statistics show that ~50% of the people that came back are already out after 2 weeks. For what's supposed to be a long term mechanic, a mainline feature in the roadmap, that's really bad.

The reasons should be obvious, as KSP2 still fails to offer anything but a barebones remix of the KSP1 experience under a, very hard to defend as "better", coat of paint. If you can hide the whole of science behind a flashing button, you really can't expect it to be an enthralling mechanic that keeps people going, and that's exactly what came out. Science. Is. Bad. And now the numbers prove it too. The faster we all accept that and the team shows whether they plan to address it or that's what we're stuck with as we move on to the next thing, the better.

So, the reply would be a resounding no.

As for the "but I don't use the launcher" fallacy, even if you consider Steam as half the total playerbase of the game (it should be closer to 75% considering Epic and launcher-dissidents), the statistics and trends will still hold with a very high confidence. At an estimated 500.000 buyers, we only need a population of 12k to establish trends with a 99% confidence level. Steam offers a population size of 25k, meaning we can establish 99.9% confidence over a population a magnitude bigger than the real one, with a 1% margin of error. As much as you hate player number posts, they are and will always be right so long as Steam remains the main distribution platform for PC games.

[Audaylon]

I don't care when or if my neighbor plays a single player steam game.  I never understand these posts.  There are millions of video games. 

[chefsbrian]

22 hours ago, Audaylon said:

I don't care when or if my neighbor plays a single player steam game.  I never understand these posts.  There are millions of video games. 

Its more a gauge of wider public sentiment towards a game, at least when it has a comparable sequel. Its not about the absolute numbers so much as it is the trend, since most people don't take the time to review or post thoughts publicly or privately. They either like it and keep playing, or dislike it and don't keep playing. So when an update drops and you see a spike, that gives you an idea of interested audience that's still following updates and wants to play. And when you see a drop, that's some level of audience that stopped playing. If the immediate drop is back to or below pre-update numbers, that indicates that the update hasn't caused any more of the interested audience reason to keep playing it.

That said, its also a popular metric for internet arguments in general because its an extremely interpreted one, so its easy to present it in warped ways with 'assumptions' and 'relative comparisons' to other games to try and make a situation look better or worse, and its difficult to 'prove' an argument like that wrong, all you can really say is that you disagree with the assumptions and comparisons.

[feradose.]

I have been playing the game for hours and hours since For Science! released. I don't think I'll be bored any time soon, even with the tech tree almost completed. The planets all deserve visit, they are crafted gorgeously even if gameplay on them is sparse and consists of reach-land-stare-leave. The game is prettier, but the reach/land/leave part has not changed at all since the first game, apart from better user experience and cooler stock graphics. The stare part of the game is brilliant, though. Now all we need is more activities on planets! And I adore U-Dunk-It's design for that. Biome specific science will be amazing, especially if a mod like Bon Voyage is made vanilla so that rovers have a purpose.

[GluttonyReaper]

On 1/5/2024 at 1:12 PM, PDCWolf said:

The aggregate review flow shows a smidge of an uptick in purchasers, meaning 0.2 FS! actually got a couple people to buy the game, and some people to come back and play it again, but they still haven't broken half a million steam sales, 10% of the original. However that same data shows that, even for an update that gates progress behind long-term gameplay, retention is also very low.  The current statistics show that ~50% of the people that came back are already out after 2 weeks. For what's supposed to be a long term mechanic, a mainline feature in the roadmap, that's really bad.

The reasons should be obvious, as KSP2 still fails to offer anything but a barebones remix of the KSP1 experience under a, very hard to defend as "better", coat of paint.

Obviously I can't comment on the quality of Science, but this is pretty the much main thing that's keeping me from picking up KSP2 - sure it looks like it's technically a better game than KSP1, but there's yet to be anything that really sticks out a "standout" feature that actually pushes me over the line. Streamlined systems and quality-of-life stuff like procedural wings and thrust-on-rails (while presumably a lot of work, and I'm happy they exist!) are obviously improvements, but they're not exactly enough to convince me spend £45 on the game when I already own KSP1. The only thing which really sticks out is the (vastly) improved graphics which, while essential for a game like this, can't really carry the whole thing.

(I should also clarify that buying KSP2 would involve buying a new machine that can actually run it... so I may be a little biased in that regard)

In general it feels like what we've seen so far isn't anything that couldn't have been implemented in KSP1 if it had continued development (game design wise at least), and any of the interesting features like colonies, resources, interstellar, etc. are so abstractly described that it's difficult to get excited for them. I had really hoped that a fresh start with a more professional team would have lead to all the stuff great about KSP1 being distilled down, and everything else being replaced entirely with something more game-like. Instead it feels like there's been a lot of time spent faithfully recreating KSP1, warts and all... just to continue where the first game left off, running into a lot of similar issues unsurprisingly.

That said, I would also note that there doesn't seem to be much pressure from the KSP2 team to actually sell the game at this point. Other than the initial EA push (which seemed to be a bit of mess), hype and marketing still seems to be contained to existing community rather than trying to bring loads of new players in. Perhaps they're aware of how bare-bones things are at the moment, and are waiting until there's more to show closer to a 1.0 release before really pushing it out there.

Edited January 11 by GluttonyReaper

[PDCWolf]

On 1/5/2024 at 6:14 PM, Audaylon said:

I don't care when or if my neighbor plays a single player steam game.  I never understand these posts.  There are millions of video games. 

And what metric do you use to gauge the success and retention of something? Because that's exactly what drives further investment be it on a particular feature or the product at all. Why do you think every game nowadays has a skin store, a battlepass, and some even a casino?

For Science! already has ~2000 people playing it went almost under yesterday, might be today, KSP1 is back to being the most played of the two. In the end, KSP2 doesn't exist in a vacuum, it has a cheaper, and clearly once again more endearing, competitor, which thankfully keeps it in check when it comes to justifying the up to 5 times bigger pricetag.

2 hours ago, GluttonyReaper said:

Obviously I can't comment on the quality of Science, but this is pretty the much main thing that's keeping me from picking up KSP2 - sure it looks like it's technically a better game than KSP1, but there's yet to be anything that really sticks out a "standout" feature that actually pushes me over the line. Streamlined systems and quality-of-life stuff like procedural wings and thrust-on-rails (while presumably a lot of work, and I'm happy they exist!) are obviously improvements, but they're not exactly enough to convince me spend £45 on the game when I already own KSP1. The only thing which really sticks out is the (vastly) improved graphics which, while essential for a game like this, can't really carry the whole thing.

(I should also clarify that buying KSP2 would involve buying a new machine that can actually run it... so I may be a little biased in that regard)

In general it feels like what we've seen so far isn't anything that couldn't have been implemented in KSP1 if it had continued development (game design wise at least), and any of the interesting features like colonies, resources, interstellar, etc. are so abstractly described that it's difficult to get excited for them. I had really hoped that a fresh start with a more professional team would have lead to all the stuff great about KSP1 being distilled down, and everything else being replaced entirely with something more game-like. Instead it feels like there's been a lot of time spent faithfully recreating KSP1, warts and all... just to continue where the first game left off, running into a lot of similar issues unsurprisingly.

That said, I would also note that there doesn't seem to be much from the KSP2 team to actually sell the game at this point. Other than the initial EA push (which seemed to be a bit of mess), hype and marketing still seems to be contained to existing community rather than trying to bring loads of new players in. Perhaps they're aware of how bare-bones things are at the moment, and are waiting until there's more to show closer to a 1.0 release before really pushing it out there.

It's barely a remix for now. It's KSP1 but done differently, with most differences hard to appreciate and under the hood, and only believed to be there because no mechanic takes advantage of them (other than loading times, which is a discussion worth its own thread). And for those "improvements" that are out there... orbital decay is back, that's all I've gotta say really. For people that dreamed about a new, professionally made physics engine? The game was over from day 1 when they told us it was gonna be Unity again, and later on we learned they're still using the same middleware and a lot of recycled, looked-at-but-allegedly-not-copypasted components from KSP1.

As for the graphics, I really don't feel as positive. For me the overly plasticky look on the parts, the overtly saturated terrain and the disney movie smoke is much more offensive than KSP1s mess of clashing styles that at least somewhat tended to realistic enough if you had a ton of suspension of disbelief.

Thrust on rails is absolutely broken for now, as is anything that includes thrust during a change of scene.

As for selling the future of the game, they're completely uncompromising in the bad sense of the word, as in they're really against making any sort of compromising statement because they clearly lack any faith in being able to take any plan they publicize to completion. Some may say it's a lesson learned from the mess that was the pre-launch campaign, I'm more inclined to believe it's lack of capacity, but that's entirely my personal view... If the science systems they hyped for months are just a lazy remix of KSP1 whilst still keeping all the bad stuff... What hope would anyone have for anything further, specially when the devs themselves don't even have what it takes to make a single promise about it? At least people are clearly getting bored of the main progression system after a couple weeks, that's enough of a message for themselves and the dev team, I'd hope.

 

[Audaylon]

1 hour ago, PDCWolf said:

And what metric do you use to gauge the success and retention of something?

It just seems you're angry at my neighbor now that he doesn't play KSP 2 in his free time. 

[Kerbart]

1 hour ago, PDCWolf said:

For Science! already has ~2000 people playing it went almost under yesterday, might be today, KSP1 is back to being the most played of the two. In the end, KSP2 doesn't exist in a vacuum, it has a cheaper, and clearly once again more endearing, competitor, which thankfully keeps it in check when it comes to justifying the up to 5 times bigger pricetag.

Based on the lack of innovative content and the trend early on, that's what I feared would happen, and it does. As you say, hopefully this will be an incentive for the team to know that interest in the game will go up when they deliver something new, and will stay up if it's really new. And it will decline when it's same old, rehashed.

You can see the price tag back in the steam chart too, by the way. The wave pattern is cleary synced to free time in the US timezone, with the top when most US players are playing, and bottom when they're not and the numbers are made from "the rest of the world." Assuming buying power/disposable income is stronger in the US, the willingness to fork over $50 (or the equivalent adjust to local price levels) is a lot less outside. That's at least my theory why the fluctuations in the KSP2 graph are bigger than for the KSP1 graph.

Quote

As for the graphics, I really don't feel as positive. For me the overly plasticky look on the parts, the overtly saturated terrain and the disney movie smoke is much more offensive than KSP1s mess of clashing styles that at least somewhat tended to realistic enough if you had a ton of suspension of disbelief.

I don't mind the looks but the 2-color scheme doesn't work for me. Give me back SAS rings with yellow-black warning bands, batteries that look like batteries and in general parts with metallic bits whose color doesn't get overwritten by the color scheme.

Quote

If the science systems they hyped for months are just a lazy remix of KSP1 whilst still keeping all the bad stuff... What hope would anyone have for anything further, specially when the devs themselves don't even have what it takes to make a single promise about it? At least people are clearly getting bored of the main progression system after a couple weeks, that's enough of a message for themselves and the dev team, I'd hope.

I don't want to use the word lazy, because (to paraphrase Oddball), “those are, like, negative vibes, bro.” The streamlining is not a bad thing as it takes some of the drudgery out of science, but unless we see an expansion in the future it certainly feels minimalist. I liked the Breaking Ground science where you set up a seismometer and then slam something into the surface. I was hoping for more of that. A sentinel and a DART mission, orbital surveys to find monuments, that mind of stuff.

Let's hope that colonies will bring some truly new things to the table. I suspect it'll be a lot less innovative than we hope for. But at least the game is noticeably improving now.

[Mikki]

I am actually taking a break. Science mode is a huge challenge and needs quite some effort to accomplish. It is very good at this point. I cant wait until the next missions, given some time to do them.

[Audaylon]

On 1/11/2024 at 11:25 AM, Kerbart said:

I don't mind the looks but the 2-color scheme doesn't work for me. Give me back SAS rings with yellow-black warning bands, batteries that look like batteries and in general parts with metallic bits whose color doesn't get overwritten by the color scheme.

Hey Mr. Kerbart, I hope you don't dislike me too much from my previous comments but I mean no disrespect.  I just disagree with w/e steam player count says as I firmly believe its a nonissue.  But I love this comment about the batteries, as I noticed just the other day that color scheme does over write what batteries used to look like.  AND the little led doesn't blink.  I'm sure we have plenty common ground.