The game failed because...

[dprostock]

2 hours ago, Audaylon said:

Pardon my interuption of this salt mine...There were a lot of posts to go thru but it's a salt mine.

I love this game and think it was a huge success. 

I'm not the type of player that goes out of my way to download mods. 
Sure there were bugs.  And lots of them.  

I suggest just taking a break from the game if you feel bad about it.  
Otherwise check out my latest creation, the Monocopter.  I want to turn it into a sling shot.   Did I mention I love sandbox mode?

[KerikBalm]

11 hours ago, Audaylon said:

I love this game

I suspect that you aren't the only one. Opinions will vary

11 hours ago, Audaylon said:

and think it was a huge success.

By what standard? It is hard to think of an objective standard that makes sense by which this game is a success, much less a huge one.

After several years of delay, development is closing down while still in early access, with the game lacking the vast majority of the advertised features.

That is not a huge success 

[Infinite Aerospace]

4 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

I suspect that you aren't the only one. Opinions will vary

By what standard? It is hard to think of an objective standard that makes sense by which this game is a success, much less a huge one.

After several years of delay, development is closing down while still in early access, with the game lacking the vast majority of the advertised features.

That is not a huge success 

I think there's a degree of success here to be honest, but it's a hard case to make in an objective sense. I think I'll break down where I personally think the game does well, and where it doesn't:

 

1) Sound Design: - I can't think of a single person who hasn't had anything but praise for the sound design of the game, because it's brilliant. With my Corsair headset, I love the deep, visceral rumble of the rocket engines, specifically the solid rockets. The music as well, makes launch an event which is somewhere the first game was awful (and still is).

 

2) Terrain Implementation: - Kerbin looks so much better, like magnitudes better than it did in KSP1 and it's all down to terrain. There are mountain ranges on Kerbin now that are much more natural than what we found in the first game. The other planets too are much more varied and interesting in terms of terrain, the Mo-hole for example, the Dres canyon, the cracked surface of Eeloo, the high gloss ice flats of Minmus. You can't fault these improvements to be honest.

 

3) User Interface / Feature: - The UI in general is much better than the original, all the required information has been much better consolidated in the right sorta places for the user to see them at a glance, in terms of the map view I really like the visual representation of a bodies sphere of influence, and the SOI entry - exit. Again it just gives the right visual prompts to the user. Controversially I think the Part Manager is an improvement over the old system though I do think it should be possible to select individual parts, perhaps with ALT - Right Click or something.

 

4) Load times: - For a game that has EVE, proper scatter, and such baked into it, the load times are fantastic, whether that's the initial load time, or how long it takes to go from the vehicle assembly building to the launch pad, et cetera is spot on and kinda points to some of the work that was done in the coding side of things, spaghetti code be gone?

 

There's a few areas I feel the game doesn't do well:

 

1) Colour / Shading: - There's no way to get around this, the game is far, far too glossy and far too 'vivid' in terms of colouring. The result is a more cartoon feel which I'm not personally that fond of. I think KSP2 would look fantastic with TUFX.

 

2) Manoeuvre Node Planner: - I find the widget thing a bit clunky in comparison to the one in KSP1, it doesn't feel as smooth for me personally.

 

3) Performance: - I think performance, on the whole is pretty decent for my, on my system but it was dreadful at launch and that dramatically affected how the game was received. Though this is getting better with each new build of the game, I think it's improved somewhere around the area of 100% in the period between 0.1.0 and 0.2.1 so that's obviously some decent progress.

 

4) Life Support: - There's a few in here, that are obviously subjective as they're my personal taste on things. The omission of Life Support was surprising, why a space simulation game doesn't have some degree of life support is baffling for me. One of the biggest reason we (humans) have never attempted to go to Mars to date is ensuring the safety of the crew, life support is an enormous design constraint in real-world space flight and it helps convey the dangers present, and inherent to space travel.

 

I think the game would have been progressively improved, and performance would have improved and the rest would have been history.

Edited May 7 by Infinite Aerospace

[Dakitess]

Did you really put the "Terrain Implementation" along the Pros of this game ? Damn, it looks so aged, so outdated, so clunky, so weird, inhomogeneous, unaesthetic, etc. Especially with the harsh lightning which got quite improved by the last Blackrack efforts, but I find the terrain to be so 2015, technically speaking, and very not beautiful as an art decision (which is more personal opinion). The only way to get it "OK-Ish" is to compare it to Stock KSP1. But doing so, well, I won't elaborate further, it is nonsense to me as it's just the literal bare minimum.

Terrain is very precisely what I was expected the most, because it would mean a LOT for this game, even gameplay wise, with proper collision, scenery, landscape to discover, etc etc, I've already repeated that so many time and now there no point to get to it again. Really, terrain and scenery is the key for a proper KSP2... Everything else fade out compared to what it can bring to the table. Look at the trailer again if you want to talk about it, I don't find much people sharing my opinion so I would gladly elaborate again, finally, if there is some people who want to debate that subject.

[Flush Foot]

Quote

Pros/Cons list from @Infinite Aerospace

Pros

1. Sound Design: I can agree that KSP 2's sounds + music are a good step forward
2. Terrain Implementation: Not sure I agree here, especially with the Minmus "flats" not being totally flat (or at least, I seem to remember high-speed driving a rover around the 'flats' and finding deformations that did not play nice.
3. User Interface / Feature:
   • The UI in general is much better than the original; I have gotten used to the placement of the new UI (all flight-related displays in one place, exceptions being the staging and G-indicator)
   • visual representation of a bodies sphere of influence: I do kind of like the representation of the other/embedded SOI, yes
   • SOI entry - exit: here, no... I do not like this. Very large / "obnoxious" and I always have to spend a minute trying to determine if "expanding rings" is entering or exiting the SOI when I am focused on that next body to get an idea of my trajectory through its space.
   • Part Manager is an improvement over the old system; it certainly has its place, but I'd go a step further than you and say 'Parts Manager should only be accessible via the app-bar, as with the Kerbal and Resource managers, leaving classic right-click menus as the default response to right-clicking a part'
4. Load times [spaghetti code be gone?]: Not sure we can definitively say the code is free of long, soft pasta noodles, but yes, it does load fairly quickly (at least, now that the save files don't quickly bloat into the GB-range)

 

Cons

1. Colour / Shading: I agree that it's far more shiny / cartoony [not the biggest fan, but I could handle it]
2. Manoeuvre Node Planner: I agree that it's less usable than in KSP 1... even if we ignored KSP 1 adding in the numerical/precise editor, KSP 1 at least had (1) the ability to push the maneuver to future orbits without first warping there and (2) could be 'intuitively and pre-emptively' placed in another SOI
3. Performance: I will only agree that "between 0.1.0 and 0.2.1 so that's obviously some decent progress"
4. Life Support: I know it makes sense to include some form of LS, but I still prefer to only include it via mods... I've only occasionally dabbled with the 'Snacks' mod where 'food' is important, but I haven't bothered with air/water/CO₂/etc. because then I'd probably feel I was being 'overwhelmed' by dependencies and resource-flows while "Snacks" is simpler... X-meals per Y-crew per Z-days planned duration, provide enough snackage to complete the mission, with/without resupply or soil-recycling (though I do wish Snacks would somehow "automatically" add the Science Lab 'snack processor' to Greenhouse-type parts from other mods as that just seems logical... either to directly create snacks from onboard ore or as a 'more efficient' soil-recycler)

[Siska]

2 hours ago, Infinite Aerospace said:

I think there's a degree of success here to be honest, but it's a hard case to make in an objective sense. I think I'll break down where I personally think the game does well, and where it doesn't:

 

What was really the only improvement, was the wings. That was something worth of a sequel. All else except loading times, you can get with mods on KSP1.

Also, all mentioned doesen't make life better playing the game, it is just cosmetics. As for UI, this is more personal preference than actual improvement.

[PopinFRESH]

26 minutes ago, Siska said:

What was really the only improvement, was the wings. That was something worth of a sequel. All else except loading times, you can get with mods on KSP1.

Also, all mentioned doesen't make life better playing the game, it is just cosmetics. As for UI, this is more personal preference than actual improvement.

You can get procedural parts (including wings, fuel tanks, etc.) with mods on KSP1 as well.... Just as an FYI.

[Bej Kerman]

26 minutes ago, PopinFRESH said:

You can get procedural parts (including wings, fuel tanks, etc.) with mods on KSP1 as well.... Just as an FYI.

KSP 1 doesn't get credit for what modders do.

[Flush Foot]

3 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

KSP 1 doesn't get credit for what modders do.

No, but @PopinFRESH was answering someone else saying "all / a lot of these other things could be brought into KSP 1 with mods", so saying 'mods for procedural bits are available' is not "out of line"

31 minutes ago, PopinFRESH said:

You can get procedural parts (including wings, fuel tanks, etc.) with mods on KSP1 as well.... Just as an FYI.

59 minutes ago, Siska said:

What was really the only improvement, was the wings. That was something worth of a sequel. All else except loading times, you can get with mods on KSP1.

Also, all mentioned doesen't make life better playing the game, it is just cosmetics. As for UI, this is more personal preference than actual improvement.

 

[Skorj]

21 hours ago, Audaylon said:

I love this game and think it was a huge success.

I'm making a note here: huge success.  I suppose it's hard to overstate your satisfaction.

5 hours ago, Infinite Aerospace said:

2) Terrain Implementation: - Kerbin looks so much better, like magnitudes better than it did in KSP1 and it's all down to terrain. There are mountain ranges on Kerbin now that are much more natural than what we found in the first game. The other planets too are much more varied and interesting in terms of terrain, the Mo-hole for example, the Dres canyon, the cracked surface of Eeloo, the high gloss ice flats of Minmus. You can't fault these improvements to be honest.

3) User Interface / Feature: - The UI in general is much better than the original, all the required information has been much better consolidated in the right sorta places for the user to see them at a glance, in terms of the map view I really like the visual representation of a bodies sphere of influence, and the SOI entry - exit. Again it just gives the right visual prompts to the user. Controversially I think the Part Manager is an improvement over the old system though I do think it should be possible to select individual parts, perhaps with ALT - Right Click or something.

...

4) Life Support: - There's a few in here, that are obviously subjective as they're my personal taste on things. The omission of Life Support was surprising, why a space simulation game doesn't have some degree of life support is baffling for me. One of the biggest reason we (humans) have never attempted to go to Mars to date is ensuring the safety of the crew, life support is an enormous design constraint in real-world space flight and it helps convey the dangers present, and inherent to space travel.

Other than Kerbin, I thought the terrain just looked bad compared to KSP1.  Take e.g the Mun: in KSP1 it looked like a 3D body I was orbiting, or approaching for landing.  From the ground it was obviously an older game, but I love older games so, yeah.  In KSP2 the Mun looked like an over-saturated photo of the moon pasted awkwardly into the display.  It's like they were trying to re-create watching the moon live on the broadcast feed on a 1960s TV.  I found it immersion-breaking.

I found the UI cluttered and just bad,  The font was unreadable.  In KSP1 I also had all the information I needed clustered together where I could see it at a glance.  Sure, that was due to KER (configured how I liked it), but it was much better than stock KSP2.  And everything was in large, easily readable fonts.

As far as life support - there was simply no way that was ever going to be stock, and I'm baffled why people thought it might be.  Nate made it clear from the start that KSP2 would be more accessible to the average gamer than KSP1.  He emphasized that from his very first video talking about KSP2 onwards.   KSP1 was already too hard for most people, they weren't going to add features that made it harder.  After all, KSP2 was never going to be made to provide additional hardcore content for we turbo-nerds with thousands of hours in the game.  You don't make a game for an audience of dozens of people.  

Edited May 7 by Skorj

[NexusHelium]

14 minutes ago, Skorj said:

In KSP2 the Mun looked like an over-saturated photo of the moon pasted awkwardly into the display.  It's like they were trying to re-create watching the moon live on the broadcast feed on a 1960s TV.  I found it immersion-breaking.

wait... wha... really?!

The planets from orbit are one of the main reasons I prefer the game to the original (including the Mun)

Could you elaborate on what you mean possibly so I can see where your coming from?

Edited May 7 by NexusHelium

[Fizzlebop Smith]

My own personal thought regarding the failure of this title. 

largely revolves around community engagement & follow through, but boils down to mismanagement.

They mismanaged community interactions, for sure. I know Jack excrements about the internal workings of the developement game, but I know what BS smells like & know you don't end up with the situation we had without internal prioritization being off.

There was definitely a disproportionate amount of effort focusing on visual effects VS strong foundation of code.

I could care less about a title taking 10 years to leave EA .  There are many communities that do not engage with game developers. KSP is not one of those communities

I cannot help but feel if there were more technical dev blogs, timely KERB reports, a willingness to let the CM engage the community in a more meaningful way... that We would have forgiven much and united behind the KSP2 banner. 

It felt the information we did get was disconnected, disingenuous and in most extreme situations outright deceptive. 

Community love & hate can flip back and forth with the drop of a single patch. Trust Is a much more difficult quantity generate. 

 

Edited May 7 by Fizzlebop Smith

[Skorj]

12 minutes ago, NexusHelium said:

wait... wha... really?!

The planets from orbit are one of the main reasons I prefer the game to the original (especially the Mun)

Could you elaborate on what you mean possibly so I can see where your coming from?

Back at ya.  I thought Kerbin looked better, and Duna looked OK, but most of the rest of the planets and moons just seemed off to me.  The Mun as I said looked like a 1960s live TV broadcast, way overlit (like the lack of dynamic range in those TV cameras), and awkwardly photorealistic in a game where that wasn't the usual art choice.  It was like in South Park where the pictures on the walls were actual photographs looking very odd in a cartoon.  

The rest seems to diverge from the "slightly cartoony" look KSP2 seemed to be going for in either direction -- either again going for photorealistic, or the other way into oversaturated colors -- with too much detail at 30+ km.  While the landscapes in KSP1 were overly bland and low-detail up close (to the point of being the game's main visual weakness IMO), I love it's "slightly realistic" art style from orbit. 

Eh, it's all subjective though.  (Other then the stock KSP1 landscapes up close, which are objectively low-detail.)

[herbal space program]

10 minutes ago, Skorj said:

While the landscapes in KSP1 were overly bland and low-detail up close (to the point of being the game's main visual weakness IMO)

For me that was  a really significant improvement over KSP1. The terrain in KSP1 was just so bland and boring that it never felt like there was any point in exploring any of the bodies in more depth. It was just more of the same in every direction.  In KSP2 OTOH, there was some actual complexity to the terrain that made driving around in a rover a whole lot more interesting than it ever was in KSP1. I was genuinely jazzed about that after playing through some of the  landmark-tagging missions in FS, anticipating that there would be a whole lot more of that kind of engaging terrain detail in the final version.

[TickleMyMary]

3 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

KSP 1 doesn't get credit for what modders do.

It does in my opinion... I load the game up and what I'm after is right there, how it got there doesn't matter because IT IS in the game I play.

Lay off the lemons, sausage.

[Flush Foot]

2 minutes ago, herbal space program said:

The terrain in KSP1 was just so bland and boring that it never felt like there was any point in exploring any of the bodies in more depth.

Except for the fact that KSP 1 had (it sure felt like, anyways) 2x more biomes than in KSP 2 (and thus more chances at sweet, sweet science-points!)

[KerikBalm]

3 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

KSP 1 doesn't get credit for what modders do.

Many ksp1 modders were hired, late into KSP2's development, many to essentially make their ksp1 mods as stock in KSP2.

I am not giving KSP2 much credit for just incorporating popular ksp1 mods. Some credit, but not much. 

[herbal space program]

13 minutes ago, Flush Foot said:

Except for the fact that KSP 1 had (it sure felt like, anyways) 2x more biomes than in KSP 2 (and thus more chances at sweet, sweet science-points!)

A fair point, but that is something that could readily be tweaked without much in the way of additional development. I think the large disparity between the rewards for run-of-the-mill science and those for the marquee missions was also not particularly well-conceived, but again that could easily be adjusted without writing a lot of new code.

[Fizzlebop Smith]

47 minutes ago, herbal space program said:

A fair point, but that is something that could readily be tweaked without much in the way of additional development. I think the large disparity between the rewards for run-of-the-mill science and those for the marquee missions was also not particularly well-conceived, but again that could easily be adjusted without writing a lot of new code.

That was one of my biggest gripes when FS dropped. Science disparity over Mission.

Somewhat mitigated a bit later on with certain science unlocks.. but by an large the early aspect of exploration gameply is essentially placed behind a wall.

Select appropriate next stage booster or fail to maintain the curve &get locked out... seems to run completely counter to the style of play fostered by the first.

There is a slider that can adjust rewards, but it easily creates imbalance once you reach certain gains. If more effort we taken to balance that exploration gameplay loop.. I think you would have had more people content to play during that long period between updates.

[Bej Kerman]

2 hours ago, TickleMyMary said:

It does in my opinion... I load the game up and what I'm after is right there, how it got there doesn't matter because IT IS in the game I play.

"The game I play" is usually an uncohesive buggy mess depending on how close you're trying to get to what KSP 2 promised. There's a reason Squad gave up on KSP 1 despite KSP 2's setbacks.

2 hours ago, TickleMyMary said:

Lay off the lemons, sausage.

[Ryaja]

21 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

"The game I play" is usually an uncohesive buggy mess depending on how close you're trying to get to what KSP 2 promised. There's a reason Squad gave up on KSP 1 despite KSP 2's setbacks.

All the conversations about KSP2 I've seen lately are "I know of like the game" "NOoOOo!!! I'vE hAD buGS So It iS ObjEctIvLY BaD" it's not helping.

[TickleMyMary]

14 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

There's a reason Squad gave up on KSP 1

Yeah, they "gave up" on the game being developed for over 10 years... Where as everyone else calls it "The end of the development cycle"

15 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

"The game I play" is usually an uncohesive buggy mess depending on how close you're trying to get to what KSP 2 promised.

Is it though? You keep saying it, yet, it has kept an extremely healthy playerbase for over a decade. I never experienced more bugs and frustrations than I did with KSP2 and that has been development for half the time of KSP1 already.

Also, why would I be trying to get to "what KSP2 promised"?  I play KSP1 for the game it is and the community that supports it... It's all there and I can play it now! That said, I'm having quite a hard time loading up those promises in KSP2 because they're not there and never will be... For a KSP fan you sure seem to hate KSP.

[T1mo98]

The biggest reason it failed for me was them changing things from KSP1 that didn't need changing.

I'm big into building rockets, less big into long and intricate mission, and to me the biggest hindrance to my enjoyment of the game was all the stuff they changed in the VAB.

Fairings:
I cannot get used to the new way to build fairings. It's buggy, takes way too many clicks to use and refuses to let me close them whenever I tried to use them as interstages or the like. 
Also I cannot seem to find a way to disable angle snapping on them so I cannot make smooth gradients because it always snaps to 90 degrees when I get to close.
This more than anything has been an absolute dealbreaker.
Having it open on mouse-hover also works far worse than in KSP1.

Staging:
It's also buggy, sometimes I just doesn't react to my mouse clicks or doesn't swap stages when I'm trying to move them around.
The readability is also just way, way worse. Having the actual stages float with your mouse when you move is infinitely better than the red and green dotted lines that KSP2 has. 
I have no idea why they'd change this.

Parts Manager:
It has a place in the game, but NOT as the right-click menu.
When I right-click on a part, I want the options for just that part (and it's symmetries), not the entire part list. I slows down performance and massively clutters up the screen.
It's also annoying having to close it every single time manually.

Camera Controls:
I prefer the controls of KSP1, but that's just a matter of knowing them by heart after 2k hours playtime. The issue with KSP2 camera controls are just that they're so buggy, with my camera randomly re-centering on my craft whenever I don't want to.

Craft Saving:
I thought the old system was simpler and more streamlined in usage. I massively prefer individual craft files categorized by folders instead of cramming multiple crafts into a single workspace.

Part Variants:
I sorely miss part variants, especially the Bare engines because they make building good looking rockets so, so much easier and in general make rockets look better when combined with Engine Plates.

1.875m Parts:
By far the best parts to build good looking rockets with imo. The gap between 1.25m and 2.5m is just too big and these parts fit perfectly in between. I hate that they didn't add this size into the game.

[Bej Kerman]

1 hour ago, TickleMyMary said:

Is it though? You keep saying it, yet, it has kept an extremely healthy playerbase for over a decade.

Yeah, some people also like Sonic 06 and ET for the Atari.

[TickleMyMary]

2 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

Yeah, some people also like Sonic 06 and ET for the Atari.

Well... Go on... What's your point?

And... Some people play KSP2, it just happens that it is much less than the playerbase of KSP1 on a daily basis.