The game failed because...

[Flush Foot]

6 hours ago, WelshSteW said:

They didn't have the skills to do what they wanted to do.

We should have realised this when they tried to put one of the best mods into KSP1, the alarm clock. They had everything they needed. They had a working version, with source code, and they still produced a version of it which was utter crap.

Uhh... Are you referring to when (I presume) Squad added a stock alarm clock function into KSP 1? [in a thread about IG / KSP 2's troubles]

[linuxgurugamer]

To ALL of you:

I would strongly suggest that you watch ShadowZone's video on yesterdays events (link below).  He does an excellent job of go over everything known at this point.  Overall summary:  We don't really know anything:

 

[Flush Foot]

Just now, linuxgurugamer said:

To ALL of you:

I would strongly suggest that you watch ShadowZone's video on yesterdays events (link below).  He does an excellent job of go over everything known at this point.  Overall summary:  We don't really know anything:

Yup! I watched it ~30 minutes after release yesterday (and am watching ObsidianAnt's "now")

[WelshSteW]

8 minutes ago, Flush Foot said:

Uhh... Are you referring to when (I presume) Squad added a stock alarm clock function into KSP 1? [in a thread about IG / KSP 2's troubles]

 

I am.

If that was done by a different team of devs then fair enough, I'm wrong to bring it up.

[Flush Foot]

Just now, WelshSteW said:

I am.

If that was done by a different team of devs then fair enough, I'm wrong to bring it up.

I could be wrong too, but I am pretty sure IG (and their predecessor Star Theory) never touched made changes to KSP 1's code.

[Infinite Aerospace]

On 5/1/2024 at 7:18 AM, MechBFP said:

Eh? Like 90% of this forum is criticizing the game. 
You probably just didn’t notice because it wasn’t laden with curse words and personal attacks. 

Yeah to be fair I find it hard to disagree with this. Most of the time, here and over on the Discord people being positive about the game are *way* rarer than people being negative about it. The whole attitude toward Kerbal Space Program II has been generally negative since the beginning of Early Access.

[FreeThinker]

The reason as I see it is simple, they went into Early Access way to early, they should have at least waited until the for science build became available as this release at least made the game playable, which could have prevented the many bad reviews which severely  handicapt it long term prospects.

Edited May 2 by FreeThinker

[Infinite Aerospace]

16 minutes ago, FreeThinker said:

The reason as I see it is simple, they went into Early Access way to early, they should have at least waited until the for science build became available as this release at least made the game playable, which could have prevented the many bad reviews which severely  handicapt it long term prospects.

There is another issue to cover, and it's not a one to discuss lightly or take as 'unimportant':

Communication

The one area that has been exposed time and time again of being really, really below where it should  be is that of communication. The vibe I get from this forum, from Discord, from the Facebook groups I'm a member of is one of broken trust.

The development team have been accused of over-promising and simultaneously under-delivering, then 9 times out of 10 have done nothing to quell those feelings in the community as a whole.

There's people who came back, when For Science! dropped and started playing the game again but again there was almost radio silence between the developers and their customers / testers. They promised better communication, that they'd do better and just, haven't and it saddens me to say that but, it's the raw truth.

I think if version 0.3.* had have been announced for June, for example, six months after For Science! and we'd seen a few patches between then and now, there'd have been a much more positive atmosphere surrounding the game in general.

People would finally have felt vindicated for taking the chance and picking it up in Early Access.

That said though, as a footnote we still don't really officially know what the score is, Colonies might be on the cusp of being announced and such. But again, communication is important. I for one hope that the Kerbal dream lives on, and Intercept are safe (for the most part) from the chopping block.

Ad Astra!

[FreeThinker]

37 minutes ago, Infinite Aerospace said:

There is another issue to cover, and it's not a one to discuss lightly or take as 'unimportant':

Communication

The one area that has been exposed time and time again of being really, really below where it should  be is that of communication. The vibe I get from this forum, from Discord, from the Facebook groups I'm a member of is one of broken trust.

The development team have been accused of over-promising and simultaneously under-delivering, then 9 times out of 10 have done nothing to quell those feelings in the community as a whole.

There's people who came back, when For Science! dropped and started playing the game again but again there was almost radio silence between the developers and their customers / testers. They promised better communication, that they'd do better and just, haven't and it saddens me to say that but, it's the raw truth.

I think if version 0.3.* had have been announced for June, for example, six months after For Science! and we'd seen a few patches between then and now, there'd have been a much more positive atmosphere surrounding the game in general.

People would finally have felt vindicated for taking the chance and picking it up in Early Access.

That said though, as a footnote we still don't really officially know what the score is, Colonies might be on the cusp of being announced and such. But again, communication is important. I for one hope that the Kerbal dream lives on, and Intercept are safe (for the most part) from the chopping block.

Ad Astra!

Yes I agree communication is important but only as a secondary reason as first impression are vital in love and in business. If you screw up your first date or job solicitation, its pretty much game over.  The only way to recover from that is some extreme dedication and good communication skills, both  seems to be lacking with the ksp2 team. but hopefully I'm mistaken and there is a good reason that prevent them to clarify this is all a big misunderstanding ... you can always hope right?

Edited May 2 by FreeThinker

[Infinite Aerospace]

4 minutes ago, FreeThinker said:

Yes I agree communication is important but only as a secondary reason as first impression are vital in love and in business. If you screw up your first date or job solicitation, its pretty much game over.  The only way to recover from that is some extreme dedication and good communication skills, both  seems to be lacking with the ksp2 team. but hopefully I', mistaken and there are ssome reason that prevent them to clarify this is all a big misunderstanding ... you can always hope right?

Nothing wrong with a bit of cautious hope. 

[kfsone]

I counter with: Un-indieing and a lack of leading.

Un-indieing: when previous talent moves upwards and chokes as a result.

Lack of leading: no goal and no coherency.

There are countless examples but the easiest is this: the HUD, and I'll give you two concrete examples from that, but I'm also going to be very terse because the true cause is systemic and not on individual UI dev's shoulders:

1- Lack of consistency between elements, lack of functional theme shows the lack of a style and theme guide, things that are antithetical to indie dev but do-or-die to a larger team;
2- Consistent broken state across widgets/screens/etc speaks to a lack of architecture, tooling, infrastructure, testing, and fundamental qa integration that distinguish an indie developer from ... a developer.

objections:
"ui: the game was in alpha they were experimenting"

Nope: A UI like this serves one purpose, to look good in screenshots by being busy. First there's no anchor for the experiment, and second it wouldn't be possible if the code, tool and workflow infrastructure were in place. Without them, any such experiment is invalidated.

"there are going to be bugs"

This is true of a dead body, but if you want to know why the body died you have to accept that if there are flies coming out of the mouth 30s after death, chances are it wasn't a blow to the head that killed them: flies don't hatch that quickly.

It's not actually, specifically, about the UI button-state, but that a bug of that kind, scope, and nature was released and remained. It's a kind of bug that causes other bugs, at every level of its code; and its fundamentally the most visible and testable kind of bug: it's a textbook case for the kind of code that even game developers like to have unit tests for, it's often the textbook case for integration testing, and it's commonly the de-facto onboarding example case for qa engineers.

Was it not observed during all the time it was present?
Was it not ticketed?
Was it not marked a blocker?
Was it not reproducible?
Was it not tested?
Was it not considered important?
Was it not assigned?
Was it not investigated?

"its too early in development for you to ..."

Nope: there's an expression "don't put the cart before the horse" (before meaning in-front of) but indie games are self-driving carts. If they have a horse then it is cargo, and they can put it in-front, to the side, on, in, under, or behind.

The day I knew KSP2 was dead was May 4th 2023. Darrin's post laid out for me that the development process was stillborn; I know that Darrin knows - but perhaps being new didn't want to admit to himself - having to ask the users for help like that is a final/post-mortem request. It is grasping at rock you *hope* might be attached to the cliff you're falling down.

I'm not faulting his post or Darrin. For someone with my background, it was equivalent to your boss at the nuclear plant coming in sweating, shivering, and retching while saying "nothing to worry about, just a bit of radiation sickness".

 

[kfsone]

1 hour ago, FreeThinker said:

The reason as I see it is simple, they went into Early Access way to early, they should have at least waited until the for science build became available as this release at least made the game playable, which could have prevented the many bad reviews which severely  handicapt it long term prospects.

None of those latter aspects are important. The fact is, KSP2 was developed in a way that wasn't viable for anything but a very small indie team. Of course "there will be bugs" but KSP2 hadn't even achieved KSP1-alpha quality at this point, and a lot of the bug-fixes in the last couple releases were workarounds. BugA in SystemB causes BugC which makes X happen where you explode if you try to leave an atmosphere.

- Fixed bug where you explode trying to leave an atmosphere

and a couple days later the known issues adds "we're aware of a bug where you may explode after leaving an atmosphere"

The exploding and X weren't actual bugs they were just tells, and 6 months later it turns out that the workaround that was added causes ....

And this itself is not the problem but a reveal of the mechanics of the team and their processes that is the software development equivalent of holding your breath until the monsters go away...

Edited May 2 by kfsone

[Flush Foot]

22 minutes ago, kfsone said:

The day I knew KSP2 was dead was May 4th 2023. Darrin's post laid out for me that the development process was stillborn

This post?

[moeggz]

Ah yes the famous one where the dev said (paraphrased) I talked to Dakota and apparently we can’t just ban people for voicing criticism that isn’t in my precise format. But just know I don’t have to read any criticism that isn’t that!

A full business day without any clarification beyond an empty corpo speak tweet. I wish all the individuals affected by the layoffs the best and that they can find work to provide for their families. But after the way the fans of this game have been mistreated for so long KSP2 deserves the reviews it’s getting over this mess.

 

the full quote, as I’m aware I’m interpreting it about as negatively as I can.

The poster in that dev update said:

I’ve chatted with Dakota and the others on the Community team… and they don’t ban people for hitting us with hard criticism.  You bought the game, and you are VERY entitled go full rage-mode on the boards when you run into an issue.But, at the same time: we don’t have to read it

Definitely reads like he either wanted or was surprised that those with harsh criticism aren’t banned.

Edited May 2 by moeggz

[kfsone]

43 minutes ago, Flush Foot said:

This post?

Yeah. But also sort of no: I consciously stepped outside my player headspace when I read it, rather than as a player or a forumite or a reddit post by a rando.

[Westinghouse]

1 hour ago, moeggz said:

Ah yes the famous one where the dev said (paraphrased) I talked to Dakota and apparently we can’t just ban people for voicing criticism that isn’t in my precise format. But just know I don’t have to read any criticism that isn’t that!

That QA guy really sounded like he didn't know what was in store for him joining the KSP2 team.

I also think it's kind of bizarre that they let him interact with the community to such an extent - surely he was revealing himself to be ignorant of the problems at hand by being so outspoken. We were all in favour of more communication, but not if it was misleading or plain ignorant. I'm pretty sure he was the origin of that rather disingenuous'working as intended' conclusion for the maneuver node SOI bug.

The fact that they appeared to have only hired an internal QA team AFTER the release date really does indicate that they never planned on EA and were in truth forced into it by the publisher. Private Division apparently have (or had) their own QA division based in Las Vegas, and they were apparently at a loss to debug the game when handed to them by Intercept, it was just in such a mess.

[never_do]

From my point of view the "Hype" fell apart when we got the "heat devblog". Before they told us heating was disabled because of VFX. Then we realized they were still in the concept phase for heat.

That was brutal to read because it ment that things which should have been done about 3 years ago where not even started.

And that is a management problem. If you have no idea what game you want to do you will most probably fail.

They were never honest about the state of the game OR the concept of the game. They actually had nothing after years of "development" and that was the reason why it failed. They had no idea what they want to actually do.

[Ryaja]

6 hours ago, Infinite Aerospace said:

There is another issue to cover, and it's not a one to discuss lightly or take as 'unimportant':

Communication

The one area that has been exposed time and time again of being really, really below where it should  be is that of communication. The vibe I get from this forum, from Discord, from the Facebook groups I'm a member of is one of broken trust.

The development team have been accused of over-promising and simultaneously under-delivering, then 9 times out of 10 have done nothing to quell those feelings in the community as a whole.

There's people who came back, when For Science! dropped and started playing the game again but again there was almost radio silence between the developers and their customers / testers. They promised better communication, that they'd do better and just, haven't and it saddens me to say that but, it's the raw truth.

I think if version 0.3.* had have been announced for June, for example, six months after For Science! and we'd seen a few patches between then and now, there'd have been a much more positive atmosphere surrounding the game in general.

People would finally have felt vindicated for taking the chance and picking it up in Early Access.

That said though, as a footnote we still don't really officially know what the score is, Colonies might be on the cusp of being announced and such. But again, communication is important. I for one hope that the Kerbal dream lives on, and Intercept are safe (for the most part) from the chopping block.

Ad Astra!

@Dakota liked this so we know at least one person on the team is still active here but still no information from anyone...

[moeggz]

4 hours ago, Westinghouse said:

We were all in favour of more communication, but not if it was misleading or plain ignorant.

Yeah. He responded to me saying that I was very incorrect across the board for saying that science would be at least 1/2 a year after launch (it was) and that new features would probably take years (seemingly highly probable now.)

Never apologized or acknowledged that he misspoke/misunderstood me/heck even just was too optimistic. He even asked that nothing he says be posted to other platforms because it “happened once and was taken out of context.”

I don’t know how it was taken out of context, I gave an entire screenshot of the exchange and confirmed (via a question and an emoji salute response from him) that he was talking to me. At the time of posting I posted it with a positive title and said it was reason for me to be a little hopeful. 
 

But I later used it to hold IG to his words and that I guess is taking it out of context? 
 

No it was an example of misleading communication which is a reason for the breakdown in trust. If you can’t back up your words don’t say them, like say that you for sure have all the funding and there’s no chance of having the plug pulled.

I still hope this game somehow makes it through this, and again wish no ill will to any developer. Losing a job is way worse that not getting a game you want, for all that are effected (even devs that unintentionally misled) I hope you are able to find work quickly. I’m ranting a bit about this game but I do always want to have that caveat. I’m ranting at the situation, the game, and the studio as a whole, not trying to attack anyone and recognize that the devs are having a way way worse week than us fans.

Ill honor his wishes and not name him or link to it, but it’s not too hard if you search my username on discord and scroll all the way down to like my 6th message ever in the discord to verify I’m saying the truth.

24 minutes ago, Ryaja said:

liked this so we know at least one person on the team is still active here but still no information from anyone...

The silence is deafening. And quite disrespectful to the CM team to have the non descript KSP profile tweet and post to discord their “update” and not their CMs. 

[Skorj]

10 hours ago, kfsone said:

It's not actually, specifically, about the UI button-state, but that a bug of that kind, scope, and nature was released and remained. It's a kind of bug that causes other bugs, at every level of its code; and its fundamentally the most visible and testable kind of bug: it's a textbook case for the kind of code that even game developers like to have unit tests for, it's often the textbook case for integration testing, and it's commonly the de-facto onboarding example case for qa engineers.

Yeah, it was clear to me from my 90 minutes before refunding that the team didn't know any sort of modern best practices.  With UI examples, you can at least make a slight excuse that UI test automation is hard (especially early on when the UI is constantly being changed).  But the bugs in the maneuver node?  The simple fact that maneuver node bugs made it into the internal daily build, let alone any sort of release candidate, said it all. 

That's where you start, before you even have a second planet or a VAB or anything.  You get fuel burn and maneuver planning working, and you write very robust test automation around it so it can never regress.  Both because it's the core mechanic of the whole game, and because it's so easy to write tests for. The fact that there were any easily-found game breaking bugs, and the team just lived with them?  I can't even.  I can't even begin to even.

[kerbiloid]

The humanitarians (designers) had defeated the technicians (programmers) from the very beginning.

Kerbal smiles, Kerbal reshaping, Kerbal styles...

These were rather important improvements, yes...

[Skorj]

17 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

The humanitarians (designers) had defeated the technicians (programmers) from the very beginning.

Kerbal smiles, Kerbal reshaping, Kerbal styles...

These were rather important improvements, yes...

I don't imagine there was any sort of competition.  Rather, I'd say the art people delivered on their end, while the code people ... didn't. 

[Infinite Aerospace]

6 hours ago, Ryaja said:

@Dakota liked this so we know at least one person on the team is still active here but still no information from anyone...

Question is, what part peaked their interest?

[NH4Cl Enthusiast]

3 hours ago, Skorj said:

That's where you start, before you even have a second planet or a VAB or anything.  You get fuel burn and maneuver planning working, and you write very robust test automation around it so it can never regress.  Both because it's the core mechanic of the whole game, and because it's so easy to write tests for. The fact that there were any easily-found game breaking bugs, and the team just lived with them?  I can't even.  I can't even begin to even.

The whole maneuver planner was always a huge red flag for me. Disclaimer first though as I don't know exactly what the maneuver planner was doing and I have played very little so I'm basing this entirely on how it looks, a couple of hours of gameplay and what other people have said about it so I'm 100% willing to admit being totally wrong is someone proves this is not the case. But if it works the way I think it does, it proves the devs building it had absolutely no idea why it was originally built the way it was (in KSP1) and what it was supposed to be doing. It looks as if they just took what was in KSP1 and started bolting on a functionality that doesn't belong in that tool with the grandiose idea of making it better. In the end they didn't understand why it doesn't work because they didn't understand the basics of what they were supposed to build.

[KerikBalm]

12 hours ago, never_do said:

From my point of view the "Hype" fell apart when we got the "heat devblog". Before they told us heating was disabled because of VFX. Then we realized they were still in the concept phase for heat.

That was brutal to read because it ment that things which should have been done about 3 years ago where not even started.

^This^

The reasons KSP2 failed:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerbal_Space_Program_2#Development

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerbal_Space_Program_2#Reception

https://kerbal-space-program-2.fandom.com/wiki/Version_History

They announced in 2019, for release in early 2020 (before lockdowns, don't blame Covid-19) - its unclear when development started. Then they delayed to Q3 2021 (so 1.5 year delay).

Then Startheory got canned, and 1/3 of its team continued on the project, and new people were hired.

Then from Q3 2021, they delayed until Q1 2023

The Q1 2023 Early Access came out, not version 1.0, it was buggy, with poor performance. No career mode, no reentry heating, nothing new relative to KSP (other than graphics), with bugs breaking core gameplay elements.

4 months went by,  with only a few bug fixes, and a few "new" parts (some of which were just carry-overs from KSP1)

Another 4 months went by, and they finally fixed some performance issues, and added some new parts - fixed some bugs, but many remained

2 months went by: Science mode added, and reentry heating finally made it in game

>4 months went by: IG is closing, and it seems very likely that development will stop in about 2 months

KSP2 failed because the dev team failed to make reasonable progress. We're 4 years after the initially planned release, and its still not even close to ready for version 1.0, and still in a much worse state than KSP1 was at 1.0

6 hours ago, Skorj said:

I don't imagine there was any sort of competition.  Rather, I'd say the art people delivered on their end, while the code people ... didn't. 

There was always a competition for resources. The head of development should have seen the technical deficiency, and allocated more resources and focus on improving the technical side.. Art was outpacing the actual game. The art was great for marketing and hype, until it came time to let people actually play the game. Then it came crashing down.

Very reminscent of No Man's Sky, except I don't think KSP2 can be saved.