K.E.R.B. Report Update

[The Aziz]

Just now, Scarecrow71 said:

doesn't mean it's not important to the rest of us.

If it was it would be upvoted to space.

[Spicat]

11 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

And that's the problem with archiving things without an explanation.  Just because it's not important to you doesn't mean it's not important to the rest of us.

You can also do the same. Like I said I'm not the only one doing that.

Ultimately, we try our best that the bug reports that people complain about are being properly represented (but I'm a simple user in this case so it's to people to upvote). But letting bug reports unarchived is not a solution to people not finding the bug report they want to upvote, quite the opposite even.

Edited April 3 by Spicat

[The Aziz]

I don't see why it's such a big deal.

If one has a problem, and it's found in the archive - report the problem anyway, it allows attachments and all sort of things, add a link to archived thread, rejoice.

[Dakota]

18 minutes ago, Flush Foot said:

That was the realization I came to when posting here too... @Dakota @Nerdy_Mike, any chance of hiding that cursed "faux bug reports" selector?

yes, i'll get this fixed.

[Superfluous J]

1 hour ago, The Aziz said:

Am I the only one without problems with search? At least, major problems?

I'll admit I've stopped reporting bugs because they take time to write and twice now my search showed the bug was not reported, so I put the time in, reported it, and then my report was tacked on the end of the existing bug.

[Flush Foot]

40 minutes ago, Superfluous J said:

I'll admit I've stopped reporting bugs because they take time to write and twice now my search showed the bug was not reported, so I put the time in, reported it, and then my report was tacked on the end of the existing bug.

Even if a report already exists, if we want to provide game/ship files, Bug Report is our only option (short of uploading to OneDrive and posting a link) so I say “keep sending in reports” even if you find a match (especially if you think your experience might contribute some new data for the devs) and just provide a link to your ‘I think this fits with Bug-link’

[PDCWolf]

19 hours ago, steveman0 said:

 it isn't safe to assume they do have 6 years worth of usable development work.

They've actively, literally, contradicted this by saying work was continued between the restructuring. Plus it's literally the same upper management minus Paul Furio who got fired early on, so it's either them practicing corporate diplomacy (with themselves?) or development really wasn't interrupted. Hope one day we get a proper post mortem and a case for devs and publishers to look at and learn from.

19 hours ago, steveman0 said:

 Is it really that useful to make a post that is just "no significant news this week"?

It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. They work super slowly > they can't show progress because there's none > there's nothing solid to talk about (and they don't want to talk about plans either because they know they'll be held up to their words, the horror). > they need to space posts more > those posts are still empty because (start cycle again here).

21 hours ago, Spicat said:

impossible for bug reports that don't have enough information or that we just can't reproduce (like dependant on specs for instance).

Basic bug-reporting feedback right there that you should be telling the authors of reports. In github you get your issues properly tagged if they can't be reproduced, or are believed to be hardware related, or whatever. Reports being archived without saying a single word is a big no no, no matter what single excuse you could write for doing it. Even a "not important" provides at least some closure and safety that the thing was at least read.

Not only is the faith in QA testing for this project under the ground, but the bug tracker that had to be fought for "happens" to be ignored and users are made to wait ~1 month to see if top voted issues are even being looked at. Because even those barely have developer interaction, only to be met with "can't reproduce lol". The whole bug reporting-to-feedback process (let alone a "hot" fix that's cold by 2 months at the minimum) is laughably bad and should be set as an example to every dev running a bug tracker on how exactly to not do things.

18 hours ago, mc04 said:

as for ongoing work, discussions of that always seem to center around fixing bugs/adding features/"optimization" and little to nothing about what they might do to mitigate the consequences of the choice to replicate ksp1's physics system and the limitations it imposes. given the response to the flaccid noodle rockets and the general trend of simplifying/cutting anything viewed as complex or problematic, idk if they even plan to do anything about it. especially since real fixes would likely mean rebuilding large parts of the simulation.

Great way of putting it into words. We're 1+ years into the project and these very basic doubts still linger. Even if they work at the pace of a DMV, they should have a vision they want to pursue and a reason for wanting to repeat all the same mistakes KSP1 made. For all the hate KSP1 received in these forums once 2 dropped, from some people, they're really doing a very basic rerun with a fresh coat of paint and a bigger price tag.

18 hours ago, The Aziz said:

Looks like all of this is true. Dakota says he reads our feedback,

Doesn't matter, there's still a missing part to close the loop. It's the same issue the old "mail us the bug" reporting system had. You have no idea what they're doing, if they're doing anything at all, with your report.

18 hours ago, The Aziz said:

posted few megathreads on things like tutorials, interface, missions etc.

On which everybody complained about readability and what we got in return was "replace font 2 hard" and some color changes on the navball which is still a mess. Great feedback loop, at least that issue had some closure and we know we need mods to fix that.

18 hours ago, The Aziz said:

And the feedback page is indeed present in the launcher

So you get another black hole place where you don't even know where your feedback goes.

18 hours ago, Dakota said:

I've admitted before that the K.E.R.B. is not a perfect system. Upon launch last year, there were like 5 avenues for bug reports and no workflow for actually processing them for internal use.

The system we have today was built as a stopgap between then and some point in the future when we can either do K.E.R.B 2.0 or some other new system.

It has its problems, but the high quality bug reports submitted have helped production a TON during the bug fixing process. I hear your concerns and am working on it!

 

also yes the search sucks, can't do much about that...

The K.E.R.B. is so vital and wanted because it's what's missing to close the loop: feedback on feedback. It's the only time we get to hear about what devs are actually working on, without marketeer language, without hypebeasting, and so on.

[Presto200]

I would appreciate a simple "heard" post by CMs on major threads on the forums and this could include bug reports too of course. (and obviously more than a heard would feel great also). I would love if they started doing major polls somehow that would allow the community to vote for what they want (example: if resources and delivery routes should come before interstellar) this would only be necessary/helpful for major parts of development, you couldn't do this for every tiny thing obviously because then nothing would get done. 

[Flush Foot]

37 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

Reports being archived without saying a single word is a big no no, no matter what single excuse you could write for doing it

If the platform was more capable, I would like to see even a "system-generated" message that says "New version of game has been released / This report has been inactive for <x amount of time>; auto-archiving this report pending future related reporting" when those older / less-upvoted reports get moved to a farm upstate.

[steveman0]

48 minutes ago, PDCWolf said:

They've actively, literally, contradicted this by saying work was continued between the restructuring. Plus it's literally the same upper management minus Paul Furio who got fired early on, so it's either them practicing corporate diplomacy (with themselves?) or development really wasn't interrupted. Hope one day we get a proper post mortem and a case for devs and publishers to look at and learn from.

At a minimum, studios changed by my understanding. Even with the same staff, we can't know what legal copyright/licensing grounds required them to rewrite substantial pieces of the codebase. Even if "work continued", there was likely significant, costly disruption and we won't know until KSP 2 goes on to be a huge success and we get a documentary on the early chaos  

[PDCWolf]

Just now, steveman0 said:

At a minimum, studios changed by my understanding. Even with the same staff, we can't know what legal copyright/licensing grounds required them to rewrite substantial pieces of the codebase. Even if "work continued", there was likely significant, costly disruption and we won't know until KSP 2 goes on to be a huge success and we get a documentary on the early chaos  

The disruption was shown in the way of the first delay. I'm not denying that maybe something big happened, it's them that contradict that.

[Icegrx]

So, it’s been about a month now since our last K.E.R.B. Report. Do we have an ETA? 

[The Aziz]

Not a month since this very report update :')

between now and the 22nd or something a patch may appear and the counter will be reset again, to a month after a patch. Just like it always was.

Edited April 13 by The Aziz

[Scarecrow71]

2 hours ago, The Aziz said:

Not a month since this very report update :')

between now and the 22nd or something a patch may appear and the counter will be reset again, to a month after a patch. Just like it always was.

Mike confirmed on Discord earlier this week that he is working on their internal calendar, and it won't be until after he gets that done that we'll get an update.  Whether that's a patch or a KERB or what we don't know.  And I made multiple posts about it:

So I'm not sure where you are getting it that sometime in the next 10 or so days we may get something.  The last KERB dropped on 3/11, one month from then was 4/11, I speculated we would get one 4/12, but both Mike and Darrin confirmed that was inaccurate and they don't know when the next monthly cycle for KERBs will start.

[The Aziz]

This announcement thread started on 22nd. That date in 9 days will put the next one over a month after anything KERB related.

So by what you're saying, it was a biweekly cycle (untrue because of patches that reset the timer) turned into a monthly cycle (that will probably also be untrue because of patches that will reset the timer) with a gap that takes longer than a month.

I'm the one who doesn't care much about these particular updates since they bring nothing new, but goddamn it's been almost 4 months since the last patch.

[Scarecrow71]

13 minutes ago, The Aziz said:

This announcement thread started on 22nd. That date in 9 days will put the next one over a month after anything KERB related.

So by what you're saying, it was a biweekly cycle (untrue because of patches that reset the timer) turned into a monthly cycle (that will probably also be untrue because of patches that will reset the timer) with a gap that takes longer than a month.

I'm the one who doesn't care much about these particular updates since they bring nothing new, but goddamn it's been almost 4 months since the last patch.

And I couldn't be more clear as to what was stated in the Discord.  KERB is going monthly, but we don't know when the next monthly cycle will start because Mike is working on the internal calendar.  Patches are anybody's guess as nobody has stated anything about when they are coming.

[The Aziz]

Which means we're in a void for a lot longer than a month.

Last patch: January. Last KERB: March 11. Last colony sneakpeek: march 15. KERB schedule change with no ETA of the first one: march 22.

[Scarecrow71]

1 hour ago, The Aziz said:

Which means we're in a void for a lot longer than a month.

Last patch: January. Last KERB: March 11. Last colony sneakpeek: march 15. KERB schedule change with no ETA of the first one: march 22.

Exactly.  I had to go get clarification on Discord as to what they meant by a monthly cadence for KERB reports.  I assumed it was 1 month since the last one dropped, but they came out and said that it could be anytime within a given month.  My thought at this point is that we might get one in April, but it's more likely May for their "restart" of the KERBs.  Then we should get one in June, but more than likely it'll be the end of June.  Which means we will always end up going 2 or more months between them.

Patches?  Don't get me started.  We've had 1 major content update and 6 total patches in 14 months.  The only content update was December 2023, and the only patch since then was in January 2024.  So it's already been 3 months since the last patch, with no communication on what they are even working on in the last month.  I'm not trying to be all "the sky is falling" here, but it isn't looking very good right now.  I sincerely hope they prove me wrong.  And until the next patch drops, I'm not even firing up KSP2; I completed the story missions, and there isn't anything left to give me direction in the game.  Not yet, anyhow.

Edited April 13 by Scarecrow71

[The Aziz]

32 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

with no communication on what they are even working on in the last month

Ah ah ah

The reports kinda show what's happening, as some of the progress statuses change over time. Unfortunately, (and this is my fourth time saying this) they don't replace the "fixed" or other bugs that did not get a visual status change, with others below top20 user voted. Simple example, lil chonker science reward has been fixed not long after 0.2.1 was out. I don't need to see it close to the top every single time, I ALREADY KNOW IT'S FIXED. Remove it from the list, add something else in its place. A bug has been reproducible but no further progress (fix being implemented/being tested/whatever) was made since last report? Remove it, add something else.

[Flush Foot]

7 minutes ago, The Aziz said:

bug has been reproducible but no further progress

Unless they specifically want/need to get people to help them try to make it ‘clearer’ to them.

[Scarecrow71]

11 minutes ago, The Aziz said:

Ah ah ah

The reports kinda show what's happening, as some of the progress statuses change over time. Unfortunately, (and this is my fourth time saying this) they don't replace the "fixed" or other bugs that did not get a visual status change, with others below top20 user voted. Simple example, lil chonker science reward has been fixed not long after 0.2.1 was out. I don't need to see it close to the top every single time, I ALREADY KNOW IT'S FIXED. Remove it from the list, add something else in its place. A bug has been reproducible but no further progress (fix being implemented/being tested/whatever) was made since last report? Remove it, add something else.

Ah, re-read my statement.  No communication on what they are working on in the last month.  It's been more than a month since the last KERB dropped, and no communication.

[Icegrx]

7 hours ago, The Aziz said:

Not a month since this very report update :')

between now and the 22nd or something a patch may appear and the counter will be reset again, to a month after a patch. Just like it always was.

Gotcha, wasn’t sure If the counter started since the last K.E.R.B, or if it started from this update. 

[Flush Foot]

2 minutes ago, Icegrx said:

Gotcha, wasn’t sure If the counter started since the last K.E.R.B, or if it started from this update. 

If only such expectations were communicated with us

[The Aziz]

1 hour ago, Flush Foot said:

Unless they specifically want/need to get people to help them try to make it ‘clearer’ to them.

"Need more info/data" is a thing. I think it was when they couldn't reproduce the flickering planets at high warp (which, oddly, only required landing on a tidally locked moon and applying timewarp lol)

[Temporal Wolf]

Disappointing that it's been 6 weeks since the last KERB and the change to "monthly" KERBs... in the same way that we're 3 months since the last patch with a stated 6-7 week patch cadence (two sprint?).

Y'all doing yourselves no favors setting up expectations and then not meeting them.