What happened to increased communication?

[Kayser]

It feels like a case of corporate greed, where a once talented, passionate team are fed “industry standard best practice policies and processes” from above. The people who quit are replaced with less talented people, group dynamics suffer, as does throughput. Poor quality is met with more processes, control, and PowerPoint presentations. Every bugfix introduces new faults that have to be fixed. Management pushes for new features to feed a hungry marketing department, whilst the backlog of bugs continues to grow.

[Meecrob]

2 hours ago, Oak7603 said:

There's no point suggesting anything as it won't be listened to. This is only EA in that it was released before being ready. The rest of the typical EA process is being ignored. 

Yeah, its a painful blow to the gut isn't it? Betrayed by the one you thought was your friend in this sea of Activision/Blizzard and the mess going on with Sweet Baby, etc. The only reason I'm sticking around is to stick it to them. I know we collectively have a better idea of how the game should go forward and I'm gonna prove it to them. I know how to video edit and I don't have anything better to do until September when my college course starts up.

1 hour ago, Kayser said:

It feels like a case of corporate greed, where a once talented, passionate team are fed “industry standard best practice policies and processes” from above. The people who quit are replaced with less talented people, group dynamics suffer, as does throughput. Poor quality is met with more processes, control, and PowerPoint presentations. Every bugfix introduces new faults that have to be fixed. Management pushes for new features to feed a hungry marketing department, whilst the backlog of bugs continues to grow.

This one catches on Quick! I'll have to keep my eye on you.

[Fizzlebop Smith]

Well.. I am officially gutted. 

No anger though.. I feel a coldness creeping in for the game.

The title.. publisher...

I was unaware.of the dev blog debacle until now.

There were comments I made directly on topic and NOT hateful. Every comment talking about how  "fluff" content is a poor choice got ranked.

Early on when I seem all the lip service and people smashed me for asking for.more KSP1 features.

I saw a couple thread like "is this game worth it" "should I spend the money" get closed for mod review without any questionable posts.

 

I didn't want to buy into the idea that some platforms were echoes chambers of false positively.

Cheist that really irks me and PROVES they could care less about real suggestions from people that LOVE the title.

"Let's poop on em a little more my showing how little regard we have for their words. Muwahaha"

 

I am going to try crafting a really well worded response to this in my request for a refund.

Citing the deletion and targeting of naysayers as my reason.

I'm dipping for a bit. I love you all in the community.

[steveman0]

Wooo boy... I try to give the devs slack because, while they may be slow and quiet about what they do, they seemed to be putting in effort to do things carefully from a technical point of view.  But this whole situation... is pretty much a prime example of how not to do things taking an already bad community situation and cranking it up to 11.  I don't understand how anyone in the position responsible for this could have the slightest idea it was a good move.  Shameful really.  I'm not mad because I'm not as invested as many here, but it is very disappointing to see the direction of the whole EA phase turning worse.

[Superfluous J]

I've been where the moderators are right now and I feel for them. I would never moderate any forum after the experience I and my fellow moderators went through. All that vitriol just for doing our (unpaid!) jobs was ridiculous, and frankly I'm surprised ANYONE is willing to go through that.

Were I a moderator here, I'd have quit long ago.

[NH4Cl Enthusiast]

3 hours ago, Kayser said:

It feels like a case of corporate greed, where a once talented, passionate team are fed “industry standard best practice policies and processes” from above. The people who quit are replaced with less talented people, group dynamics suffer, as does throughput. Poor quality is met with more processes, control, and PowerPoint presentations. Every bugfix introduces new faults that have to be fixed. Management pushes for new features to feed a hungry marketing department, whilst the backlog of bugs continues to grow.

Honestly while this is often true, in this case I would not put too much blame on the publisher or even corporate greed. I mean if you look at all the things this studio has promised, failed to deliver and straight up lied about, in this one instance I think the people paying literal millions for it are equally liquided as we are. Sometimes the developers are just for whatever reason very bad and this is one of those times and I think unless they are called out for it, there will never be a good KSP2.

Someone on Reddit put it well by saying something along the lines that KSP2 is not a do-over of KSP1, it's more like a do-under of KSP1. Almost everything is just copied and almost everything they changed was for the worse. 

What the publisher could and should do is scrap the game as it is, get a new studio to re-develop a new game with a planned EA launch in about 3-4 years from now. This way they could still salvage the IP and if done well could have a profitable game. But sadly the safer option is just to milk whatever value is left and move on.

[Fizzlebop Smith]

The only thing I can think of thay justify such a heavy handed approach is if there was real risk of cancelation & curbing negative feedback is needed to keep the funds flowing.

 

Even if this were the case.. we could get one post like

"hey folks, the future is looking foggy. We know you are not happy but in the hope of generating some positivity to take to the boss...whay DO you enjoy? What is your favorite aspect of KSP2 so far?"

Like almost anything showing genuine effort would have us (me at least) rallying behind them clapping like giddy children.

There is significantly too much investment for a redo... plus there are many industry instances where changing of hands creates major setbacks.

They can do what they want, it's their IP & their company. 

Is what it is and just sucks.

[GGG-GoodGuyGreg]

1 hour ago, Fizzlebop Smith said:

Even if this were the case.. we could get one post like

"hey folks, the future is looking foggy. We know you are not happy but in the hope of generating some positivity to take to the boss...whay DO you enjoy? What is your favorite aspect of KSP2 so far?"

 

Never going to happen, even if that’s the case. 

The things is, each day I’m more and more convinced that I’m not in the main target group for KSP2, and that they’re really not or no longer chasing long time experienced players KSP1, as such people can easily see through empty marketing claims and I bet some handful of them are smart enough to easily put together and maintain a more worthy sequel (for those ksp1 power players) based on user feedback. 

All the communication to me reads, at most, an internal agenda unless they are close to pulling the plug. 

[PDCWolf]

2 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

I've been where the moderators are right now and I feel for them. I would never moderate any forum after the experience I and my fellow moderators went through. All that vitriol just for doing our (unpaid!) jobs was ridiculous, and frankly I'm surprised ANYONE is willing to go through that.

Were I a moderator here, I'd have quit long ago.

I was the live-chat moderator for the biggest site in south america. Then I became the in-game and forum moderator for the biggest videogame community in south america. After that, I worked for a youtuber's Discord server.

My opinion of moderation can't be shared because it goes against the praise-only rules.

[cocoscacao]

3 hours ago, Fizzlebop Smith said:

Citing the deletion and targeting of naysayers as my reason.

They don't do that. There were plenty of naysaying comments, especially during early days, while the game was at its worst. Many comments were deleted, positive or negative, as long as they turned into bickering, or off topic subjects... I imagine snipping specific parts takes way too much effort, when you have a lot of comments 

[MechBFP]

There is definitely some rabble rousing going on here. It’s a single thread, and stuff like that happens as people are only human and ain’t psychic or omnipotent. 

[Scarecrow71]

4 minutes ago, MechBFP said:

people are only human and ain’t psychic

I don't know, man.  Some of the end users I deal with on a daily basis seem to think I'm more than capable of reading their minds to figure out what it is they want.

To get back on topic:  The situation at hand isn't the best.  Heck, it ain't even close to being in the same sport.  But there ain't a whole lot we can do about it, apart from sending PM's to the mods to ask what the frak.  What that leads to is anyone's guess.

[steveman0]

4 hours ago, NH4Cl Enthusiast said:

Honestly while this is often true, in this case I would not put too much blame on the publisher or even corporate greed. I mean if you look at all the things this studio has promised, failed to deliver and straight up lied about, in this one instance I think the people paying literal millions for it are equally liquided as we are. Sometimes the developers are just for whatever reason very bad and this is one of those times and I think unless they are called out for it, there will never be a good KSP2.

Someone on Reddit put it well by saying something along the lines that KSP2 is not a do-over of KSP1, it's more like a do-under of KSP1. Almost everything is just copied and almost everything they changed was for the worse. 

What the publisher could and should do is scrap the game as it is, get a new studio to re-develop a new game with a planned EA launch in about 3-4 years from now. This way they could still salvage the IP and if done well could have a profitable game. But sadly the safer option is just to milk whatever value is left and move on.

I don't think this is a fair representation of the situation. From a technical standpoint, the team appears to be doing exceptionally well, albeit moving a bit slowly. The For Science update was incredibly well-executed and very well received. While there have been some noted complaints of missing or incomplete gameplay aspects, the technical execution was nearly flawless with only a few minor issues refined in 0.2.1. They nailed a lot of the core gameplay aspects, improved performance yet again, and knocked out more bugs in the process while introducing virtually none.

What you are describing sounds more like what may have happened with Star Theory and led to the current situation the team is in currently where they are having to devote a lot of time and effort to cleanup past mistakes to get the code base into a good state... but that does appear to be happening.

Darren shared on discord some of what they do for testing and it is the full suite of best practices for the industry and likely a major contributing factor to both the smooth release of For Science and part of why development seems slow.  It's because it is by some view of it. Given the long-term development plans for the game, heavy focus on testing is a very smart move as it ensures the work they are doing now will continue to work through the long development life of the title. I suspect a lot of effort is still needed to clean up past mistakes and is why many of the older standing bugs have not been resolved yet... because they are doing it right to ensure unit and regression testing will prevent reemergence through future updates. I suspect this all comes from a change approach in the development process, likely when moving from Star Theory to IG.

The problem does not appear to me that they are doing a poor job at the technical level, the opposite in that regard. The root problem is as this whole thread has been created for is that they, for whatever reason, don't want to speak to any of this and are keeping everyone in the dark about just about all work that is actually happening.

[Meecrob]

2 hours ago, steveman0 said:

While there have been some noted complaints of missing or incomplete gameplay aspects, the technical execution was nearly flawless with only a few minor issues refined in 0.2.1.

Unfortunately not. In regular play, you may not encounter many bugs, but I made an 11 minute cinematic and about 1/4 of the time or 50 hours was spent dealing with bugs. This game cannot load the same save more than like 5 times before the craft comes out all krakened. Its clear this game has not been playtested to any reasonable standard. I have a hunch the QA team is a revolving door, since it must be demoralizing to be forced to put out a product that does not meet your personal standards.

Edited April 11 by Meecrob

[Scarecrow71]

31 minutes ago, steveman0 said:

improved performance yet again

I'm still waiting to see any of the performance improvements people keep talking about.  Since launch, with a 2060 Super, I get maximum 40 FPS.  And if my ships even approach 100 parts, that FPS drops.  In fact, I had a 300+ part ship I sent to Tylo for the last story mission, and at launch I was lucky to get 5 FPS.  That jumped to a whole 10 IN LKO after dropping to 250 parts.  I have yet to see any increase in performance.  Yes, I'm using a mid-range graphics card.  Which shouldn't mean anything considering every patch keeps telling us how much performance is improved.  Again, I have yet to see an iota of increase in performance since launch.  If anything, they've optimized the code for high-end cards and decreased performance for anything mid-range or worse.

31 minutes ago, steveman0 said:

knocked out more bugs in the process while introducing virtually none.

Every patch has introduced new bugs.  And while they keep saying they are knocking out bugs, the worst ones that have been around since launch day haven't gone anywhere.  In fact, missing orbital lines returned after the last 2 patches dropped.

31 minutes ago, steveman0 said:

Darren shared on discord some of what they do for testing

How nice of him to share it here too.  Oh, wait - he didn't.  Thanks to the organization for continuing to ignore the forums unless it's to delete threads/posts they don't want to see.

31 minutes ago, steveman0 said:

The problem does not appear to me that they are doing a poor job at the technical level

Again, we have bugs that have been present since launch day.  The core gameplay loop is not entirely fixed, the game is still unplayable for some (and for others it's playable but buggy), and we've seen new content once (no, I'm not counting grid-fins) in the last 14 months.  They hired 2 of the best from the KSP1 modding community, and they can't even give us information on colonies.  They are certainly, and at a minimum, doing a poor job at the technical level.

Edited April 11 by Scarecrow71

[Kerbart]

4 hours ago, Fizzlebop Smith said:

"hey folks, the future is looking foggy. We know you are not happy but in the hope of generating some positivity to take to the boss...whay DO you enjoy? What is your favorite aspect of KSP2 so far?"

Quitting the game requires far less mouse-clicks than KSP1. And it's also a feature I use a lot more than in KSP1. Good anticipation and implementation.

So there's that.

[Meecrob]

1 hour ago, Kerbart said:

Quitting the game requires far less mouse-clicks than KSP1. And it's also a feature I use a lot more than in KSP1. Good anticipation and implementation.

So there's that.

Wait yours doesn't CTD after too long?

[Icegrx]

On 4/8/2024 at 9:55 PM, Icegrx said:

I’m not mad, I’m disappointed 

I’m no longer disappointed, and now I’m mad. 

“How to wreck a communities trust 101”

A company wouldn’t treat their investors like this, nor should they treat early adopters like this. 

Im out for awhile. Might check in monthly 
 

[MechBFP]

8 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

If anything, they've optimized the code for high-end cards and decreased performance for anything mid-range or worse.

Only if you are running on high graphics. If you have a minimum spec card then run the game on minimum settings and you will see the improvement. Even those running ancient GTX cards have seen massive improvements.  
And I do recall telling you this before, so not sure why you keep bringing this up when the cause of your issue here is  the direct result of your own choice in refusing to run on appropriate settings for your hardware.

Maybe when the game hits 1.0 they can optimize things better for low end cards even  when running on high settings, but that is certainly not a priority now. 

[Meecrob]

1 hour ago, Icegrx said:

I’m no longer disappointed, and now I’m mad. 

“How to wreck a communities trust 101”

A company wouldn’t treat their investors like this, nor should they treat early adopters like this. 

Im out for awhile. Might check in monthly 
 

I don't blame you one bit. We have had our disagreements, but its sad to see you so frustrated you have to step away. Hope you find some inner peace!

1 hour ago, MechBFP said:

Maybe when the game hits 1.0 they can optimize things better for low end cards even  when running on high settings, but that is certainly not a priority now. 

While I agree with the spirit of what you are saying, I do very much hope we don't have to wait for 1.0 for more optimizations.

Edited April 11 by Meecrob

[steveman0]

1 hour ago, Meecrob said:

Unfortunately not. In regular play, you may not encounter many bugs, but I made an 11 minute cinematic and about 1/4 of the time or 50 hours was spent dealing with bugs. This game cannot load the same save more than like 5 times before the craft comes out all krakened. Its clear this game has not been playtested to any reasonable standard. I have a hunch the QA team is a revolving door, since it must be demoralizing to be forced to put out a product that does not meet your personal standards.

I think you need to go back and reread my original post. I didn't say there are no bugs left to fix. They are, objectively, moving in the right direction and are taking a technical approach that should ensure they will continue to do so. Part of the point of the post was to highlight this appears to be due to a rather dramatic shift in how they are doing things now versus the past suggesting significant improvement in the technical team. It's dishonest to use the past mistakes as a judgement of current performance.

[Dakota]

(in context of the forum responses to last week's dev blog and the resulting moderation actions)

I replied to @moeggz over on Discord, but I'll also just say here - I'm talking with the moderation team here.

I do not think that thread was handled well, but I also think the moderator(s) were given a very difficult task considering the many concurrent topic points people were discussing. Just remember that the moderators here are all volunteers and actively spend their time day-to-day working to make this community a better place.

Just to clear somethings up: 1) the moderation team (here or anywhere else) have never been "instructed" to keep things positive. I would hope that last year is proof of that. 2) The IG Community team does not take any direct moderation actions and only very rarely weighs in to moderation decisions. 3) The moderator(s) did not delete any of my comments in the thread, as some have stated they did.

I think everyone involved is feeling a bit uneasy afterwards, so I'll take responsibility. I should have stepped in and handled it, moving discussion to the proper places, and addressing concerns that were brought up by you all. I did not see any of your responses as malicious or trolling - just frustrated - which is completely fair. Everyone who participates here cares about Kerbal - we know that, so we're working to address your frustrations in a very direct way right now.

I know that that's not as solid of a guarantee as many of you are looking for, but we've got a lot of plans - and I'll point towards what I said last June when community frustration became a massive discussion point (much of which is still relevant):

Quote

My hope is that, in the future, you can look back on these past few months and see how much progress we've made towards changing your mind.

I think we made a substantial leap with For Science! and we're working to do the same with Coloines - both in-game and out.

Appreciate ya all,

Dakota

[moeggz]

@DakotaThank you for passing along our thoughts. We only ask that on topic, within rules, comments are not removed without justification. 
 

That thread had gotten messy and I sympathize with the thankless job of mods, I just wanted to say that more care should be taken that fair comments aren’t casualties of legitimate thread cleanup. 
 

It was so messy and so many comments removed it had seemed that one of your comments was removed as well, it wasn’t and I apologize for spreading that misunderstanding and seeing it be picked up. The relative position of your comment had just moved so much in the thread that I had missed it, so I do apologize for that. Thank you for listening to feedback, even the negative and for acting on and sharing the concerns I and others raised.

[Meecrob]

4 hours ago, steveman0 said:

I think you need to go back and reread my original post. I didn't say there are no bugs left to fix. They are, objectively, moving in the right direction and are taking a technical approach that should ensure they will continue to do so. Part of the point of the post was to highlight this appears to be due to a rather dramatic shift in how they are doing things now versus the past suggesting significant improvement in the technical team. It's dishonest to use the past mistakes as a judgement of current performance.

My apologies kind sir. I do completely agree with you on that one, I should have been more clear. All I'm saying is that while there has been an improvement, they aren't quite out of the woods yet. I wish them all the best in  a speedy 0.3.0 release!

Edited April 11 by Meecrob

[Dakota]

1 minute ago, moeggz said:

@DakotaThank you for passing along our thoughts. We only ask that on topic, within rules, comments are not removed without justification. 
 

That thread had gotten messy and I sympathize with the thankless job of mods, I just wanted to say that more care should be taken that fair comments aren’t casualties of legitimate thread cleanup. 
 

It was so messy and so many comments removed it had seemed that one of your comments was removed as well, it wasn’t and I apologize for spreading that misunderstanding and seeing it be picked up. The relative position of your comment had just moved so much in the thread that I had missed it, so I do apologize for that. Thank you for listening to feedback, even the negative and for acting on and sharing the concerns I and others raised.

It's definitely hard to address misunderstandings like that once they've spread, so I appreciate the apology. Thanks to you (and others) for coming to me with your concerns about the thread.