How captivating is KSP2 at this point?

[Kerbart]

45 minutes ago, Audaylon said:

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. 

No offense taken. I agree that what someone else thinks has little bearing on what your own opinion of the game is. My feeling is just that the trend (not the absolute number) of the Steam chart indicates what the general feeling of the audience is, and that can be a benchmark for "is it me or am I not the only one who thinks that..."

There's good reason to be happy about the state of the game; it's a whole lot better than at launch. And one can back that up with pointing to the many improvements.

There's also reason to have reservations about the state of the game. There's game play now, but barely; the worst of the worst bugs are fixed, but there are many left. And the stats suggest that those who have that opinion are far from alone.

In the end we both want the game to be great, aside from colorful parts that's the most important common ground there is to share!

[Sluggo]

Some might not like this, but when I saw that the tutorials were narrated by a kid instead of Scott Manley, I knew exactly what direction this game was going to take, and I'm not thrilled with it.

[CosmikDebris]

For me personally, since the Science update it has become the only game I'm playing.  Captivating is the right word! It reminds me of my early KSP1 days and I love it. I'm at work now thinking about the mission I have planned for tonight and I've even signed up these forums because I want MOAR!

[Meecrob]

Captivating? All they did was put all science behind a hotkey. I get that this is a work in progress and all, but nothing about KSP2 specifically is captivating vs KSP1. As a game, yeah its captivating, but this is a sequel, lol. These devs didn't think up the concept behind KSP.

[kdaviper]

7 hours ago, Meecrob said:

Captivating? All they did was put all science behind a hotkey. I get that this is a work in progress and all, but nothing about KSP2 specifically is captivating vs KSP1. As a game, yeah its captivating, but this is a sequel, lol. These devs didn't think up the concept behind KSP.

Yeah so they removed the Easter-egg hunting mechanic from ksp1 of searching your vehicle for all your individual science parts to check if there are experiments you can do.

At the very least they saved all of us the hassle of binding the experiments to a hotkey so that we can do the same thing the game now does for us.

[Meecrob]

2 hours ago, kdaviper said:

Yeah so they removed the Easter-egg hunting mechanic from ksp1 of searching your vehicle for all your individual science parts to check if there are experiments you can do.

At the very least they saved all of us the hassle of binding the experiments to a hotkey so that we can do the same thing the game now does for us.

Lol, well, I might be weird here, but I just put my science experiments in a central place where they can be easily found. Like in a cargo bay.  In any case, while you may prefer the new science system, it is definitely NOT "captivating"

Using a mod like Scansat to launch a mission somewhere you've never been before, with three polar orbit satellites 1/3rd out of phase so you can scan the planet 3 times faster and find the spot for the ore you need to refuel to go to your next destination could be considered "captivating," depending on your play-style. Pressing one button to do "all" science is literally the opposite of captivating.

[TablesRUs]

Personally, I still find the game to be too frustrating to warrant any significant time investment.

I share Kerbart's concerns regarding technical debt. It's always hard to judge this sort of thing without seeing the codebase, but the number and, more importantly, kinds of bugs that we continue see in the game are rather concerning. The amount of "spooky action at a distance" observed in the game raises real concerns about the design and maintainability of the codebase. Moreover, while the game is undoubtedly in better shape that it was at release, it is concerning that many of the same classes of foundational bugs that we saw in the first release persist today (or are merely less visible now, in many some cases due to "fixes" that were admitted to be stop-gap).

Writing a physics sandbox like KSP will inevitably be difficult; however, the sorts of UI inconsistencies, bizarre VAB behavior, and general bugginess that we see in the game are of a much different flavour than the numerical challenges that are central to this difficulty. This is quite worrying.

For instance, the unreasonable effectiveness of "save and reload" as a workaround for the game's other issues suggests that the codebase does not have effective infrastructure for managing state and invalidating cached computation. While ad-hoc management of state seems all-too-common in game codebases, KSP has enough intrinsic complexity that the developers do not have the luxury of being sloppy in this area. A systematic, mechanically-enforced approach to maintaining (and asserting the consistency of) state is essential to ensure the correctness, maintainability, and later extensibility of the codebase.

Moreover, addressing architectural deficiencies like this post facto can be extremely difficult. For this reason I am not optimistic that the developers' hopeful statements regarding the timing of the next update are realistic. Even worse, I worry that they will attempt to push to meet their optimistic timeline and in the process continue to build upon---and add additional debt to---an already-shaky foundation. They are no doubt in a hard situation as there are surely pressures coming from above to move the project forward. However, if they are serious about making a title that will remain viable for many years then they need to start making foundational repairs a priority, even if this requires refactoring and significant time.

Even more, there have been claims that the game has little-if-any automated test infrastructure. This is very worrying as a project like KSP simply cannot be undertaken confidently without a testsuite. Moreover, testing is not something one can "just implement". Rather, the project must be deliberately structured to be testable. This is not easy and, among other things, requires minimization and careful tracking of state.

Given the apparent condition of the game, I find it unlikely that they will be able to solidify the core of the game, put in place sufficient  testing infrastructure, and implement the systems that they have promised in less than the 10 months that it took to deliver "For Science!" as claimed. However, continuing to put effort towards feature work while the core of the game is in its current state is only going to cost them more time in the long-run.

Edited January 21 by TablesRUs
Note implications of testing

[cocoscacao]

Weirdly enough, science update got me stop playing the game. Not because the update was bad. Quite the opposite. I treated the game thus far as an experimental ground, without any ambitions to accomplish anything. Mainly due to the wobble. Now, when I can actually do something, a lot of minor bugs and missing QOL features are becoming obvious. I could revert to KSP 1, but that game became boring for me. I'm waiting for the colonies update.

[Mister Spock]

I'm not sure I'd call KSP2 "captivating," but I've really enjoyed my time with it so far, even with all the bugs and missing features. I had a great time with KSP1 back in the day, but for me there's no going back. KSP2 has an actual story of sorts (one I hope they continue to flesh out), it now has a satisfying science mode, it performs surprisingly well on my PC, it looks beautiful, docking is at least as good as it was in KSP1, it has good tutorials, and it presents new challenges, like pinpoint landings. There are even mods for the things I want most -- a new PreciseNode and AlarmClock, for example. I can't wait to see what they do with resources and colonies. 

That said, it does need time to bake. Yes, there are a lot of bugs, but none of them strike me as unsolvable. Yes, there are missing features, but they'll be here in time. I think this game has a bright future.

[Periple]

I just spent a couple of hours vibing, slowly cruising around Duna and putting together some craft. The scenery is much nicer than in KSP1 and I was really enjoying it. Chill gaming kerbal style!