KSP2 is NOT bad, and it should not be canceled.

[EndeavourCmdr]

... and by 'canceled', I mean both literally by the publisher, and socially by the community.

Okay okay, I know, my take is probably a bit of the "underdog" here. But for a moment, I'd like us to be a bit objective.

Was the Early Access launch plagued by performance issues and unusably wobbly rockets? Yes, it was. But that was fixed. Sure, maybe not on a timeline that many were happy with, but as a software engineer, I can tell you that development is HARD.  That's not "apologetics", it's a fact. Unforeseen issues and technical challenges come up ALL THE TIME in development. You don't know what it is that you don't know until you hit those issues. Besides just development hitches, which are normal and expected, it does also seem quite likely that the timelines were being dictated by Take-Two, who as the publisher, has their own agenda (and very little understanding of actual software development).

Often times, these large publishers push development teams to hit release dates and patch windows which are just not feasible, and to make announcements that such things will be released in a certain period of time. But in reality, that's not how that works. Sure, Nate (and others) may have been pushed by T2 to say things like "x feature is coming in y months or so", when in reality that feature could realistically require a year (or more) to flesh out properly. So again and again, he (at their direction) makes statements, and those statements turn out to be impossible to deliver on time. And the team ends up crunching to hit those deadlines, which causes bugs to be introduced, and things to work all "janky".

I've also been on the Project/Program Manager side of development, so I am confident in saying these things. The developers truly care about getting working features out. For the dev team (Intercept), the product is something they (we) take pride in. We WANT it to work, and we WANT you to enjoy it. The PMs and Publishers, on the other hand, only care about quotas, deadlines, and margins. So it's pretty easy to see where the blame lays, regarding those bugs and "missed" (unrealistic) expectations that were set.

Now, with that out of the way, let's look at KSP2 as a whole.

Forget the "missing" features, because they are not "missing", they are "planned". Just because they are not there yet, does not change the quality of what we have. And what we have is a really nice, now well-performing, beautiful, user-friendly KSP2, with tech trees and progressions, a large number of parts to play with, and a lovely Kerbolar system to fly around in. Those things that are there, for the vast part, work as intended, and are a joy to use. I myself now have nearly 550 hours in game, and an enjoying the hell out of it. I play it almost daily, for a few hours at a time. I've not had any game-breaking bugs, or anything else that prevents me from honestly enjoying it, exactly as it is. Also, the game IS modable. Personally, I am using the K2D2, Flight Plan, Science Arkive, Micro Engineer, CommNext, and Orbital Survey mods, all under BepInEx and SpaceWarp.  And they too work nicely, providing an expanded experience to my game. With these mods, and the "For Science!" addition, we have PLENTY to do.

And so, I am not exactly sure why this game has such negative reviews...  

Do I want the Colonies, the Interstaller Update, and additional star systems to go explore in? Obviously! That stuff would all be really cool! But we didn't have those in KSP1 either; only mods allowed that to happen. Really, the only core feature that we do not have in KSP2 that was in the original is a career more, and that (if I recall correctly) was never going to be added into KSP2 anyhow, and thus is a moot point. So it seems, to me at least, that all these negative reviews (which are supposed to be of THE GAME) are not warranted.

From reading the reviews, it's not the state of the game itself which is/was being reviewed negatively, but rather, either the way that communication regarding progress was handled, or, peoples misunderstanding of what Early Access IS and means.

Regarding the first point - communication - that's understandably frustrating, but unfortunately, these communications were in large part dictated by what the publisher (T2) wanted said, and when and how they wanted it to be said. If false promises were made regarding release dates and timelines - that's the publisher. If communications were not as frequent as they otherwise should have been - that's also the publisher's decision. 

Secondly, is Early Access. Now, we can make all the arguments that we want, but what we paid for is exactly what we got. It's right there in the name! "Early. Access". We bought "Access" to play a game "Early". Which means "before it's ready". Obviously, it may (will) have bugs. YES, we ARE participating in their beta testing. YES, our feedback IS needed to incrementally improve the game. YES, there likely WILL be plenty of broken things, missing features, performance issues, and other challenges which can make the game less enjoyable to play. But that was our choice. WE chose to buy "Early. Access" to this game, because we didn't want to wait for it to be ready. We didn't want to wait for release, when all of the planned features were done, and polished, and the game ran like butter, and all that jazz. WE wanted to play it, and we wanted to play it NOW. Early. In "Early. Access.". We did NOT pay for a completed working product with all of it's planned features. We did pay to play the development builds of this game, early. And we got what we paid for. I am sorry if some of us had a different expectation of what "Early" "Access" means. But it's generally been a pretty clear term to most people involved with video games for a number of years now. Steam even attempts to make sure we know by requiring every game to require a disclaimer regarding "Early Access".

Quote

Early Access Game
Get instant access and start playing; get involved with this game as it develops.
Note: This Early Access game is not complete and may or may not change further. If you are not excited to play this game in its current state, then you should wait to see if the game progresses further in development. 

That's directly from Steam, and it's on every Early Access title's store page. We knew what we were buying. And if you didn't... somehow... after all of that...  well, I don't know what to tell you. It's pretty clear to most of us. But I digress.

Anyways, NEITHER of those two reasons (for the negative reviews) change the fact that we have (currently) a very enjoyable to play successor to KSP1. Plenty of YouTubers have been playing it for literally thousands of hours now, and have built their entire channels off of it. If the game "sucked" that much, they wouldn't waste their time. - let's just be real about that, okay?

So, if the game itself isn't the problem, why did it fail? In my opinion, the community. Us.

Review bombing the game, writing angry posts, lashing out at other community members, trash talking the development team and community managers, personal attacks against Nate Simpson, etc.... NONE of this lent itself towards a positive outcome for KSP2. What did we EXPECT would happen? We left a crap-ton of negative reviews on the "EARLY ACCESS" game on Steam, and absolutely demolished it in the discussions threads, both of which are the first place that perspective new buyers look, causing otherwise interested buyers to stay away, hurting sales numbers, and ultimately making the game fail. So yes, I will forever blame the community for causing this outcome. And it's not to point a finger and take out my frustration; it's so that hopefully, we look at ourselves a little closer, and realize that maybe our interactions have a larger impact than we thought. And maybe WE should take more care to support the games we care about, and those involved in making them.

Now, please let's be kind and respectful in any comments below. Let's act like adults, and show everyone (and each other) that we know how to be civil. If you disagree with what I've said, that's fine, I am happy to discuss our differences in opinions. But let's HAVE a discussion. A real one. Let's use as much objectivity as possible, and try to not let emotions get in the way?

Also, please do me a favor? If you DO agree, and you haven't already given Kerbal Space Program 2 a positive review (on Steam), go do that now. Show Kerbin some love. Show the developers your support. Show Take-Two that they are wrong.

NOTE: I am in no way affiliated with Take-Two Interactive, Private Division, or Intercept Games, other than just being a long time fan of the Kerbal Space Program series, and an (otherwise, except for the development cancelation) very satisfied player of a game I dearly enjoy.

Edited May 8 by EndeavourCmdr

[Kerbart]

Review bombing was sourced by a couple of factors, among them:

• Expectations raised by Intercept Games
• Expectations raised by the relative high quality of KSP1
• EA launch at full price
• IG's initial apparent attitude of "we don't care what you think and we're not in a rush to fix it. Besides, there's nothing to fix, the game is great!!"
• First update took forever and fixed very little. And then the pace went down even further.

Customers have very little recourse when they feel wronged. Especially when their grievances on social media (the forum, discord) are seemingly ignored. They're angry. Yes, it's not productive but what else can they do?

[EndeavourCmdr]

25 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

Review bombing was sourced by a couple of factors, among them:

• Expectations raised by Intercept Games
• Expectations raised by the relative high quality of KSP1
• EA launch at full price
• IG's initial apparent attitude of "we don't care what you think and we're not in a rush to fix it. Besides, there's nothing to fix, the game is great!!"
• First update took forever and fixed very little. And then the pace went down even further.

Customers have very little recourse when they feel wronged. Especially when their grievances on social media (the forum, discord) are seemingly ignored. They're angry. Yes, it's not productive but what else can they do?

You're absolutely right about having little recourse. And that is unfortunate. But we could have also just asked for a refund. But I'd like to address each of your points individually?

1. Expectations raised by Intercept Games: While there are plans to implement certain things in the future, I personally didn't feel like there were any false expectations made. I got exactly what I expected to get. Can you provide some specific examples of expectations that were set and not delivered upon?
2. Expectations raised by the relative high quality of KSP1: Sure, but KSP1 was not always like this. Though, Early Access wasn't technically around back then, but if it had been we might expect that it would have been around the time that KSP1 was no longer free, which was version 0.13.3 demo back in March of 2012. The latest version was 1.12.5 in January of 2023. It took 11 YEARS of active development to get KSP1 to where it is today. KSP2 only released in Early Access on Feb 23', just over a year ago.
3. EA launch at full price: A fair criticism, I agree. Most games do Early Access at some kind of reduced price - but not all. Look at Star Citizen, for example. Their "Early Access" costs $60 at the bare minimum, and in some cases is thousands of dollars, depending on the package you get, all for an incomplete, buggy game that may never release. Same as KSP2 was not that long ago. There are some MMOs that have done this too, for example, Ashes of Creation recently sold Alpha-2 access for about $350. So while it's somewhat rare for singleplayer titles, the pricing is not unheard of either.
4. IG's initial apparent attitude of "we don't care what you think and we're not in a rush to fix it. Besides, there's nothing to fix, the game is great!!": I never got this impression, especially the "we don't care what you think" part, but they may have a point about not being in a rush to fix it. It's far better to take your time and make sure you do something correctly than to try to rush it in, especially in a game with tens of thousands of lines of code, where a single change can introduce dozens of bugs in seemingly unrelated features. I'd always urge caution over speed myself as well. And I do agree, the game IS great. It is. It's not done, but what IS done, is enjoyable.
5. First update took forever and fixed very little. And then the pace went down even further.: True. I think T2 may have pushed the game to have been released in Early Access long before it was actually ready to do so. Publishers do this too often, sadly. So the team crunches to get out a minimum viable product, knowing that they really needed many more months to even come close to what they wanted to release to begin with. Communication could have been better, I agree. They might have the same "issue" that most of us developers do - assuming that your customer understands the process even a fraction as well as we do. Mostly, they don't, and we (as developers) need to be better at understanding that and communicating in a way that is clear to everyone, not just those with technical or industry knowledge.

Edited May 8 by EndeavourCmdr

[mc04]

lmao.

[moeggz]

1 hour ago, EndeavourCmdr said:

Often times, these large publishers push development teams to hit release dates and patch windows which are just not feasible

First off, I’m glad you like the game. Your view is valid. So is mine that the game is not currently (and with the news unlikely to ever be) fun. 
 

On this quote I can agree with you. Doesn’t matter if it’s dev or publisher, the misleading communication to the community will lead to a breakdown in trust. And the publisher gave a 70ish member team longer than the indie devs got, and got less accomplished. After multiple delays. I’m with you that personal attacks and harassment is wrong, but let’s not act like the world is as black and white as dev=good and publisher=bad.

 

1 hour ago, EndeavourCmdr said:

Forget the "missing" features, because they are not "missing", they are "planned".

They are currently missing, whatever your thoughts on nearly a week of radio silence after the news may be. The features we were told would be in the game in 2020 still aren’t. There is yet to be any new gameplay mechanic or feature that the first game didn’t have, outside of procedural parts and multiple craft in the VAB.

 

1 hour ago, EndeavourCmdr said:

From reading the reviews, it's not the state of the game itself which is/was being reviewed negatively, but rather, either the way that communication regarding progress was handled, or, peoples misunderstanding of what Early Access IS and means.

Couldn’t disagree more. For the first time it is being reviewed as is and not based on hope for the future. Even “recommended” reviews say in their review that they wouldn’t recommend the game as is. Is KSP2 unplayable garbage? No not at all. But it’s a more expensive and buggier version of the previous game with a facelift. With the available comparison I don’t think negative reviews are surprising.

An EA game is a risk, and we knew that buying it. But I don’t know of any EA game that fails to finish its roadmap that gets good reviews. That’s not an unfair reason to negatively rate the game.

1 hour ago, EndeavourCmdr said:

Plenty of YouTubers have been playing it for literally thousands of hours now, and have built their entire channels off of it. If the game "sucked" that much, they wouldn't waste their time. - let's just be real about that, okay?

What’s the view comparisons to KSP1 videos? I don’t think this is a binary indication of a game being “fun” and an imperfect gradient but if we do look at it as a gradient it seems to be way less community engagement/ total fun than the predecessor.  Sequels that are less good than their prior entry (even if not outright terrible as I agree there is some fun in KSP2) are usually not rated highly.

 

1 hour ago, EndeavourCmdr said:

So, if the game itself isn't the problem, why did it fail? In my opinion, the community. Us.

This seems like straight forward victim blaming. It’s not the one unable to keep timelines and promises who is at fault, it’s the person who believed in those timelines. All of us who spent money on this game, we are why it failed. Not that it’s literally the only EA game I can even think of to only have one content update over more than a year, but the fans who noticed and complained. Is that really what you’re trying to say? Please explain further because that line of reasoning doesn’t make sense to me.

 

1 hour ago, EndeavourCmdr said:

We left a crap-ton of negative reviews on the "EARLY ACCESS" game on Steam, and absolutely demolished it in the discussions threads, both of which are the first place that perspective new buyers look, causing otherwise interested buyers to stay away, hurting sales numbers, and ultimately making the game fail

These reviews are for precisely that reason. Someone not online who wants to buy this game should know that it seems highly likely development has ceased. If the publisher didn’t want this to happen they should have clearly communicated sometime in the last week. As it stands, a warning to future buyers is justified. 
 

And, idk how bad reviews for a game with no studio is how the game fails, and not the fact that the game now has no studio. Again I think you’re putting the cart in front of the horse.

1 hour ago, EndeavourCmdr said:

And maybe WE should take more care to support the games we care about, and those involved in making them.

I never buy EA games. At least not for years. When this game came out I said that if it all went up in flames I would rather have been the fool who lost $50 and tried everything I could to support the game and have it still fail than have been a bystander. (Probably makes me an easy mark, but don’t worry there’s no other franchise I care about to this degree won’t be happening again)

I bought the game knowing the risk. I did not review the game for months as the only honest review would be negative. I have been actively trying to give feedback on this game since day one. I may be grumpy sometimes but please show me where I have ever cursed out or attacked the devs or a fellow community member. Again I’m not perfect, I’m not saying I am but I genuinely don’t think I could be characterized as a hater. I’ve been passionate but (mostly) respectful. I apologize for all slip ups. But what more could I have done other than bought it, given a really long time before leaving a negative review, and trying to actively give all feedback I could? (Outside of bug reporting. I didn’t have interest in doing that and also paying for the product, so I’ll give you that.)

 

But My point being is I’m giving you all of these views as an active contributor with the opposite view. I don’t think your a shill, so I hope this has fulfilled your request for honest engagement and why I personally disagree with your view that the community is at fault.

Edited May 8 by moeggz
Spelling

[moeggz]

59 minutes ago, EndeavourCmdr said:

It took 11 YEARS of active development to get KSP1 to where it is today. KSP2 only released in Early Access on Feb 23', just over a year ago.

Comparing how long it took from initial paid offering of KSP1 till its last post 1.0 bug fix after multiple full DLCs to the time since the EA launch of KSP2 is not fair. As you are well aware KSP1 was not in development for a long amount of time before .12 (less than a year) while KSP2 has at minimum 4 years of development time before 0.1.

Edited May 8 by moeggz

[EndeavourCmdr]

47 minutes ago, moeggz said:

Comparing how long it took from initial paid offering of KSP1 till its last post 1.0 bug fix after multiple full DLCs to the time since the EA launch of KSP2 is not fair. As you are well aware KSP1 was not in development for a long amount of time before .12 (less than a year) while KSP2 has at minimum 4 years of development time before 0.1.

True, about KSP1 having only been in development exactly only one year prior to 0.13.3. But, that said, even 0.13.3 was still a bloody buggy mess. Really, it didn't even get reentry effects until 19.0, though that was still the same year (2012). That said, despite the features moving faster, the game was LOADED with bugs. So, while it is definitely possible to include more features much faster, it's also likely that those features are broken and buggy. While it might seem there are many similarities between the two games, saying "Well, KSP1 was developed in THIS amount of time, so, why did KSP2 take so long?", isn't actually a valid or fair comparison. We have absolutely no idea what the code base looked like. We have no idea what kind of processes were in place. So it is absolutely possible that the KSP1 core is a complete mess of things duct taped together just to get them to work. Technology and hardware has also changed since then. APIs have changed. It's very difficult to directly compare the development between the two projects, despite their shared name and features (or planned features).

[VlonaldKerman]

1 hour ago, EndeavourCmdr said:

Was the Early Access launch plagued by performance issues and unusably wobbly rockets? Yes, it was. But that was fixed. Sure, maybe not on a timeline that many were happy with, but as a software engineer, I can tell you that development is HARD <...> Unforeseen issues and technical challenges come up ALL THE TIME in development. You don't know what it is that you don't know until you hit those issues 

<...>

Often times, these large publishers push development teams to hit release dates and patch windows which are just not feasible, and to make announcements that such things will be released in a certain period of time. But in reality, that's not how that works.

I think there's a "frog in boiling water" phenomenon playing out here. Remember, the game was announced in 2019, slated for a full release in 2020. Throughout its development, devs portrayed each successive delay as simply a "delay" because "excuse." This lead many to believe that at in 2019, the game was in a state that one could reasonably say was a year away from release. Even if it was seemingly two years, or even three, there is simply no explanation for how the game could be in its current state, given this information! This is why many feel "mislead." It is also probably a contributing factor in the project's cancellation- does this often happen to competent dev teams, in your experience?

Only three years ago, when the game was delayed, the community unanimously agreed, "take your time, do it right." Our collective headspace was one in which the game would be released in the coming years. Fast forward to now, and we were popping champagne at the devs adding a tech tree and reentry physics into a buggy mess! That's quite the fall, and I'm sure it doesn't play well internally, either.

1 hour ago, EndeavourCmdr said:

Sure, Nate (and others) may have been pushed by T2 to say things like "x feature is coming in y months or so", when in reality that feature could realistically require a year (or more) to flesh out properly. So again and again, he (at their direction) makes statements, and those statements turn out to be impossible to deliver on time. And the team ends up crunching to hit those deadlines, which causes bugs to be introduced, and things to work all "janky".

Take Two know that the difference between KSP 2 and modded KSP 1 (KSP 2 was pitched to them) is, ideally, quality of life, stability, and performance. Implementing a modded KSP 1 experience with these three aspects required a ground-up redesign of the game, which is why they decided to go through the rigamarole of starting from scratch. Therefore, the features which actually matter, both to the community, and to whoever is assessing the progress of development inside, ought to be the core internal engineering challenges which the devs face. There is no hard evidence that they have solved any of these problems to a satisfactory extent, four years in. One can easily imagine a bloated, tangled mess of a source code which is probably easier to trash and redo than to fix, and that is simply a bridge too far for corporate. In fact, given the inexplicable events I described above, it is likely that this is the second time they've ended up in the same place, with few or no core problems solved more than 50%, and an indecipherable mess standing in their way.

In short, their problems with feature rollout are FAR, FAR worse than, "we said it would take four months, it took eight." We're already at, "we said it would take a year, it's already taken 5, it'll probably take at least 3 more." And the specifics of what is taking so long may well be horrifying.

1 hour ago, EndeavourCmdr said:

Forget the "missing" features, because they are not "missing", they are "planned". Just because they are not there yet, does not change the quality of what we have.

The question is not whether or not they are planned. The question is, will they ever not be missing, without another restart in many areas? And if so, at what cost?

1 hour ago, EndeavourCmdr said:

And what we have is a really nice, now well-performing, beautiful, user-friendly KSP2, with tech trees and progressions, a large number of parts to play with, and a lovely Kerbolar system to fly around in. Those things that are there, for the vast part, work as intended, and are a joy to use.

Again, this is good, but none of these features require any of the substantial innovations which prompted the game to be made in the first place. When you take what we have, and you subtract what they could have done much more quickly and cheaply but updating KSP 1 and charging those millions of players DLC, you are left with probably less than nothing.

By no metric does this qualify as a "success", especially from a business standpoint.

1 hour ago, EndeavourCmdr said:

Do I want the Colonies, the Interstaller Update, and additional star systems to go explore in? Obviously! That stuff would all be really cool! But we didn't have those in KSP1 either; only mods allowed that to happen. Really, the only core feature that we do not have in KSP2 that was in the original is a career more, and that (if I recall correctly) was never going to be added into KSP2 anyhow, and thus is a moot point. So it seems, to me at least, that all these negative reviews (which are supposed to be of THE GAME) are not warranted.

If you already have a bowl of pasta, and there is free cheese on the table, and I give you a new pasta with cheese and charge you $50, I would expect you to leave a negative review. Otherwise, maybe I need to start an Italian restaurant!

1 hour ago, EndeavourCmdr said:

Regarding the first point - communication - that's understandably frustrating, but unfortunately, these communications were in large part dictated by what the publisher (T2) wanted said, and when and how they wanted it to be said. If false promises were made regarding release dates and timelines - that's the publisher. If communications were not as frequent as they otherwise should have been - that's also the publisher's decision. 

In all likelyhood, the behind-the-curtain of the game is in a poor state, which would explain the lack of communication. After the phiasco that was KSP 2's development thus far, any semi-competent publisher would want to fight the fire. I doubt that there is any honest communication they could give us which would alleviate our concerns.

2 hours ago, EndeavourCmdr said:

Anyways, NEITHER of those two reasons (for the negative reviews) change the fact that we have (currently) a very enjoyable to play successor to KSP1. Plenty of YouTubers have been playing it for literally thousands of hours now, and have built their entire channels off of it. If the game "sucked" that much, they wouldn't waste their time. - let's just be real about that, okay?

Allow me to introduce you to my friends "Madden" and "Call of Duty".

2 hours ago, EndeavourCmdr said:

We did pay to play the development builds of this game, early. And we got what we paid for. I am sorry if some of us had a different expectation of what "Early" "Access" means. But it's generally been a pretty clear term to most people involved with video games for a number of years now. Steam even attempts to make sure we know by requiring every game to require a disclaimer regarding "Early Access".

Quote

Early Access Game
Get instant access and start playing; get involved with this game as it develops.
Note: This Early Access game is not complete and may or may not change further. If you are not excited to play this game in its current state, then you should wait to see if the game progresses further in development. 

That's directly from Steam, and it's on every Early Access title's store page. We knew what we were buying. And if you didn't... somehow... after all of that...  well, I don't know what to tell you. It's pretty clear to most of us. But I digress.

<...>

So, if the game itself isn't the problem, why did it fail? In my opinion, the community. Us.

I actually think its the opposite.

Consider the review bombers. At least they bought the game! According to https://steamdb.info/app/954850/charts/ anywhere between 240-564k people bought the game, compared to 5+ million sold of KSP 1. Considering that the KSP fanbase is disproportionately filled with passionate fans who have a tolerance for bugs, many of whom have programming experience themselves, this is probably a dissapointing figure. Moreover, this number hasn't moved much since release. Nobody's buying the game. And I'm glad you're enjoying it and playing it, but you are a part of a vast minority. As of the writing of this post, there are only 199 people in the game on Steam, with the 24-hour peak being 378.

If the KSP community, as a whole, was full of people who bought the game and left negative Steam reviews, KSP 2 would have much better figures (units sold, namely) to justify its continued development. 

Apparently there were about 70 people working on the game in some capacity (including out of office). At any given moment, there was probably one dev for every 20 active players. KSP 2 has received millions in funding from a major publisher with a bottom line. Want to play in the big leagues? You need more than 300 concurrent players. Even by Early Access standards, these are pathetic numbers for a cult-favorite IP with millions of fans.

2 hours ago, EndeavourCmdr said:

We left a crap-ton of negative reviews on the "EARLY ACCESS" game on Steam, and absolutely demolished it in the discussions threads, both of which are the first place that perspective new buyers look, causing otherwise interested buyers to stay away, hurting sales numbers, and ultimately making the game fail. So yes, I will forever blame the community for causing this outcome.

"Early Access" is not a blank cheque for having tons of bugs and sparse features. Consider Manor Lords, developed by a single dude. Or any successful EA title. If I sell you "print("hello world")" for $10 because all the missing features are planned, I'm ripping you off. And, to that point, when a consumer is wondering, "Is this game worth buying" they mostly (rightly) care about the following things:

• What is in the game
• Price
• How long will it take before the game is finished
• Will it ever get finished?

Very little is in the game compared to KSP 1 with free mods. Even less was in the game when it received most of its reviews. The game has taken at least 5 years, and will probably take many more. These facts, combined with several other red flags which I've outlined elsewhere ad nauseum, signal that the odds of the game ever being completed have always been less than 100%. I think a dispassionate look would probably yield a figure closer to 50%, at any given moment. And finally, there is absolutely no excuse for an alpha build (make no mistake, that's what it is and has been) to be $50. Many people understandably expected more from a $50 experience- the price sends a message in itself. Especially to loyal fans who want to trust their beloved franchise.

 

Finally, with regards to expectations set-

The devs have repeatedly made misleading, even demonstrably false statements about the nature of the game. I've thought about making a grand compilation of these, and I tried to do so in conjunction with the community here: https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/217291-actual-quotes-for-substantiated-arguments-thread/ however the thread was shut down. You can read the thread, and the reasoning for shutting it down, and decide for yourself. Although, if I had to guess, if I compiled every demonstrably false statement (let alone misleading ones), I would probably end up with 10x what's in that thread. There are several interviews on Youtube from 2019-2023 in which Nate Simpson and others make claims about internal builds of the game and other things which are flat out impossible, and it was certainly very dishonest to continuously delay under the pretenses of "COVID" and "we're taking our time to do it right" which was the line for a while. Remember, there was never going to even be an early access, until some time in 2023.

I contend that even taking into account material which was released immediately before the EA launch and post-launch, there has been dishonesty at multiple levels. I'm not going to say malicious dishonesty, because I don't know enough.

Even supposing, though, that they never truly told a lie, and the state of the EA was clear at the time when people were buying it, it is NOT a fair or "honest" business practice to claim a product will be ready for YEARS, and then announce with little warning that only a prototype will be ready, and days before it goes on-market, reveal that it is barely functional.

The EA seller - EA tester relationship is built on trust. Trust that the concerns of the community are being heeded, and trust that the game will eventually be completed. These issues are magnified when the EA is $50, and the company behind the game is a huge one who isn't going to actually run out of money like a small studio might.

No rational person would trust that the development of KSP 2 will continue successfully and to the end, while delivering on all of what was promised. Even if you like the devs, and think they care about the game, which I do, their track record is simply not there. And when the communication is as described? You can forget it. \

That's what killed KSP 2. A long, expensive, fraught, unpredictable, dysfunctional development period for a product with a niche market. A total, justified, breakdown of trust between the Dev team and the once enthusiastic, engaged community. Low hundreds of active players. No end in sight. A lack of the technical progress which constituted the impetus for the game's creation in the first place. Not the community, capitalism, greedy executives, or 1,200 bad reviews on a game whose predecessor sold millions of copies, a full 15 months after the products release, and AFTER the announcement that the studio was already shut down.

 

[cocoscacao]

5 hours ago, EndeavourCmdr said:

plagued by performance issues and unusably wobbly rockets? Yes, it was. But that was fixed.

Ehr... Performance is still an issue if you have many vessels. Looking the game from v1 perspective, it's obvious you'll need to support far more "active vessels" than in KSP 1. Wobble was not fixed. Wobble was temporarily patched for FS! update. Official comment on that is here.

Judging by other dev chats, it sounds like this game started actual development in 2022.

Edited May 8 by cocoscacao

[steveman0]

While I get many opinions on the matters of communication as that was completely botched/misleading, looking objectively at what was provided ignoring any timelines purely on the quality of what was released was poor at first but quality ramped up greatly for FS!  There has been certainly a lot of unfair feedback, some of it from people who openly admitted didn't own the game.  Given time, I think the high quality work of FS! would show with continued patching and drown out all of the misleading criticism based on echo chamber feedback that isn't grounded in actual play experience.  If they continue to develop it, of course.

[cocoscacao]

2 minutes ago, steveman0 said:

but quality ramped up greatly for FS!

How? An example, please?

[steveman0]

6 hours ago, cocoscacao said:

How? An example, please?

The simple fact they released an extremely polished patch that was very well received. The only notable bug, if you can call it that, associated with the release I recall having any issue with was the timers on science resetting when crossing biome boundaries. This was fixed in a bug fix patch soon after.

[cocoscacao]

Just now, steveman0 said:

The simple fact they released an extremely polished patch that was very well received.

I'll quote myself...

9 hours ago, cocoscacao said:

Ehr... Performance is still an issue if you have many vessels. Looking the game from v1 perspective, it's obvious you'll need to support far more "active vessels" than in KSP 1. Wobble was not fixed. Wobble was temporarily patched for FS! update. Official comment on that is here.

Judging by other dev chats, it sounds like this game started actual development in 2022.

[PopinFRESH]

2 minutes ago, steveman0 said:

The simple fact they released an extremely polished patch that was very well received. The only notable bug, if you can call it that, associated with the release I recall having any issue with was the timers on science resetting when crossing biome boundaries. This was fixed in a bug fix patch soon after.

Did you miss Nate posting proudly the massive spike in bug reports after the FS update? That seems counter to what you're saying.

[EndeavourCmdr]

1 hour ago, PopinFRESH said:

Did you miss Nate posting proudly the massive spike in bug reports after the FS update? That seems counter to what you're saying.

Really, this doesn't mean much. I would be absolutely shocked if there WASN'T an uptick in bug reports after a large feature update. That goes for any software product ever created. KSP is not unique in this regard. New features come with new bugs, and there is absolutely no possible to way catch them all before release day. And last we heard, some of those bug fixes are coming in the 0.2.2.0 update (soon),

Also, I know a lot of people complained about update frequency, but....  in the last year since the For Science update, KSP2 got 11 updates and had 2441 bug fixes. That's hardly slacking! That's nearly 1 update per month for the last year - which in game development, is a crazy fast update schedule. 

Edited May 8 by EndeavourCmdr

[PopinFRESH]

1 hour ago, EndeavourCmdr said:

Really, this doesn't mean much. I would be absolutely shocked if there WASN'T an uptick in bug reports after a large feature update. That goes for any software product ever created. KSP is not unique in this regard. New features come with new bugs, and there is absolutely no possible to way catch them all before release day. <snip> 

Pretty much the point I was making in response to

2 hours ago, steveman0 said:

...released an extremely polished patch...

Sure it was an improvement and there was some actual content finally after a year of development; but it is far from what I would refer to as "extremely polished".

[T1mo98]

KSP2 is still completely unplayable for me with how buggy, unoptimized and just awkward the VAB builder is, plus the lack of part variants and 1.825m parts.

It will probably never get fixed or added to either.

No reason to play it instead of just modding KSP1.

 

[steveman0]

4 hours ago, cocoscacao said:

I'll quote myself...

Re: performance - this improved greatly with the patch and there were no notable regressions that I'm aware of. Polished.

Re: wobble - for practical purposes for gameplay, wobble was fixed. While there might be a more optimal under the hood improvement, from a gameplay perspective it is as good as fixed. This was welcomed with a lot of praise for the patch. Polished.

4 hours ago, PopinFRESH said:

Did you miss Nate posting proudly the massive spike in bug reports after the FS update? That seems counter to what you're saying.

How many of these were legitimately new and not reposts of bugs that happened to be found again by new players due to the uptick in purchases after the patch? Honestly not aware of anything squarely on the FS update itself that was notably broken. Besides the science issue noted earlier, heating needing some tweaks is the only other thing I recall getting much attention and they're not gamebreaking.

1 hour ago, PopinFRESH said:

Sure it was an improvement and there was some actual content finally after a year of development; but it is far from what I would refer to as "extremely polished".

Obviously there's more work to be done, but the point is the specific aspects that were worked on for the patch were very well done. It isn't fair to call the patch bad because there are other aspects of the game that weren't touched in it. The patch was extremely polished. The point is the level of quality of their most recent work has been objectively good despite the earlier failures. They stepped up and that should be respected.

[Kerbart]

23 hours ago, EndeavourCmdr said:

You're absolutely right about having little recourse. And that is unfortunate. But we could have also just asked for a refund. But I'd like to address each of your points individually?

1. Expectations raised by Intercept Games: While there are plans to implement certain things in the future, I personally didn't feel like there were any false expectations made. I got exactly what I expected to get. Can you provide some specific examples of expectations that were set and not delivered upon?

This is where I played Nate's game: choose your words wisely. I didn't say promises made because you're absolutely right, if you dissect the communication from Intercept there's very little to fault in that aspect. But oh, there were videos ("pre alpha footage"), and suggestions ("we intend to...") and all kind of "under development" pieces that, while it was never said it was in the game, it was certainly suggested and I have worked long enough in marketing to know that such a thing is far, far, far away from accidental.

We have so much fun playing the game. Yeah, laughing at how things don't work, blow up unexpected, or laughing at the bet Dev A lost this time with Dev B on how long this session would last before a CTD. We didn't mean to suggest the game itself  is fun to play and we're sorry if that's how you interpreted it, that was never our intention. Sure.

You can say certain things that "accidentally" get interpreted as something else, and when it comes back to bite you, you can safely say we never promised that. All true. But you also can't prevent the community from being ticked off when those deliberate misinterpretations start to haunt you.

[kerbiloid]

On 5/8/2024 at 5:44 AM, EndeavourCmdr said:

Forget the "missing" features, because they are not "missing", they are "planned".

The features already existing in KSP-1 are not planned, they are "removed until asap".

[EndeavourCmdr]

16 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

The features already existing in KSP-1 are not planned, they are "removed until asap".

KSP1 and KSP2 are not the same game. This is not an accurate comparison, and does not indicate a good understanding of software development. While KSP2 is a "spiritual successor" to KSP1, it is not KSP1 just updated. I'd be shocked if any more than 2-3 percent of the original code is even in KSP2. When you start a new software project, especially considering the massive technological rewrites done for 2, you have to basically start from scratch. Sure, there might be some object libraries or something that you may be able to use in some capacity, but ANY version 2 that I've ever seen of a software project was nearly indistinguishable from the previous iteration. And again, it's not the same game. Nor the same studio. Intercept Games did not just take possession of the KSP1 code and "add/remove stuff" from it. If it was used at all, it was used only as a reference to get an idea for how certain things were put together. It the same IP, the same overall concept, the same basic features (and planned features), etc, but its not KSP1. Not one bit. It's its own game.

Edited May 9 by EndeavourCmdr

[kerbiloid]

9 minutes ago, EndeavourCmdr said:

KSP1 and KSP2 are not the same game.

KSP2 was to be the New KSP, KSP on steroids.

It has the same community, same very specific gameplay and idea, almost same graphics. Most of gamers are same.

It was not another game, it was a coming replacement of the existing one.

And they had entire KSP-1 source code and assets to, first of all, make a KSP 1/2: Clean Code Edition, having at least same functionality as the KSP-1 already had, then infinitely develop it up.

But KSP-1 had a fatal disadvantage, known as "Was made not by us."

[TLTay]

It doesn't matter. Only the money matters.

Money spent up to this point is irrelevant. Whether the game is good or not is irrelevant.

It's a simple assessment of whether the game is expected to make more money going forward than it's expected to cost going forward. (Ok, it's not simple, but that's what the finance team is for).

Early access was a means of recouping money on a failed product. Do the realistic sales figures at the end of several more years of funding a 70 employee team exceed the cost? That's the only question that matters.

[Scarecrow71]

On 5/7/2024 at 7:44 PM, EndeavourCmdr said:

Was the Early Access launch plagued by performance issues and unusably wobbly rockets? Yes, it was. But that was fixed. Sure, maybe not on a timeline that many were happy with, but as a software engineer, I can tell you that development is HARD.  That's not "apologetics", it's a fact. Unforeseen issues and technical challenges come up ALL THE TIME in development. You don't know what it is that you don't know until you hit those issues. Besides just development hitches, which are normal and expected, it does also seem quite likely that the timelines were being dictated by Take-Two, who as the publisher, has their own agenda (and very little understanding of actual software development).

And they only "fixed" wobbly rockets after the community complained enough about them.  Don't forget that we were literally told that the wobbly rockets were a design decision, in spite of us telling them that they weren't fun at all.  It was part of Kerbal DNA, if I remember the quote correctly.  That isn't hard development; that's lousy and unfounded development.

On 5/7/2024 at 7:44 PM, EndeavourCmdr said:

Often times, these large publishers push development teams to hit release dates and patch windows which are just not feasible, and to make announcements that such things will be released in a certain period of time. But in reality, that's not how that works. Sure, Nate (and others) may have been pushed by T2 to say things like "x feature is coming in y months or so", when in reality that feature could realistically require a year (or more) to flesh out properly. So again and again, he (at their direction) makes statements, and those statements turn out to be impossible to deliver on time. And the team ends up crunching to hit those deadlines, which causes bugs to be introduced, and things to work all "janky".

Don't forget that those timelines should have been more than reachable after multiple years of development.  Yes, there was a studio change in...2019, if I am correct?  But still, 4 years after that and they can't even fix core foundational issues?  That's not a timeline issue - that's a "we don't know what we're doing" issue.  There is no reason, short of incompetence, that the developers couldn't reach any development milestones.

On 5/7/2024 at 7:44 PM, EndeavourCmdr said:

I've also been on the Project/Program Manager side of development, so I am confident in saying these things. The developers truly care about getting working features out. For the dev team (Intercept), the product is something they (we) take pride in. We WANT it to work, and we WANT you to enjoy it. The PMs and Publishers, on the other hand, only care about quotas, deadlines, and margins. So it's pretty easy to see where the blame lays, regarding those bugs and "missed" (unrealistic) expectations that were set.

Yep, they care about getting working features out.  But they certainly didn't care about making sure the core systems were working before pushing some features out.  And even if they did care about features, they certainly weren't prepared to craft them, were they?  How long did it take heat management to hit the scene?  And weren't there issues with parts overheating inside of fairings?  I guess I need to restate my first sentence:  they care about getting features out.  Whether or not they cared about them working is another story.

On 5/7/2024 at 7:44 PM, EndeavourCmdr said:

Forget the "missing" features, because they are not "missing", they are "planned". Just because they are not there yet, does not change the quality of what we have. And what we have is a really nice, now well-performing, beautiful, user-friendly KSP2, with tech trees and progressions, a large number of parts to play with, and a lovely Kerbolar system to fly around in. Those things that are there, for the vast part, work as intended, and are a joy to use. I myself now have nearly 550 hours in game, and an enjoying the hell out of it. I play it almost daily, for a few hours at a time. I've not had any game-breaking bugs, or anything else that prevents me from honestly enjoying it, exactly as it is. Also, the game IS modable. Personally, I am using the K2D2, Flight Plan, Science Arkive, Micro Engineer, CommNext, and Orbital Survey mods, all under BepInEx and SpaceWarp.  And they too work nicely, providing an expanded experience to my game. With these mods, and the "For Science!" addition, we have PLENTY to do.

You are right - what we have does not change the quality of the game.  And the quality of the game is poor.  It's a buggy mess, and performance is still a major issue.  Got a craft with over 100 parts?  Perhaps multiple craft in orbit at the same time?  Sorry, you don't get good performance, then.  I still haven't seen anything north of 20 FPS on my mid-range equipment.

User-friendly is subjective.  Some people like the UI, some don't.  Some people can find what they want easily enough, others can't.  And that's not even taking into account the stuff that doesn't work, like maneuver nodes, or orbital lines, or even SAS.  A lot of people have to fight with the controls to get anything to work.

As far as progression goes...pfft.  The story missions are far too rigid, there aren't enough of them, and once you finish the main story, there is ZERO reason to keep playing that career.  Oh, you found all the monuments and got all those science points?  Great.  But we're out of missions to give you, and the developers have stated that they aren't going to change that.  So, no replayability here!

I agree that the game is moddable.  I use(d) mods in KSP2.  I wrote one.  But the game shouldn't have to rely upon mods to be playable; it should be playable out of the box without any help from the modding community.  Mods should enhance gameplay, not fix it.

On 5/7/2024 at 7:44 PM, EndeavourCmdr said:

And so, I am not exactly sure why this game has such negative reviews...  

Bugs.  Lack of communication.  No replayability.  Missing core features.  Should I go on?

On 5/7/2024 at 7:44 PM, EndeavourCmdr said:

Regarding the first point - communication - that's understandably frustrating, but unfortunately, these communications were in large part dictated by what the publisher (T2) wanted said, and when and how they wanted it to be said. If false promises were made regarding release dates and timelines - that's the publisher. If communications were not as frequent as they otherwise should have been - that's also the publisher's decision. 

The issue on communication isn't what is being said, but rather the entire lack of being told anything.  EA is supposed to be a back-and-forth between the developers and the community, and while we provided feedback, we got next to nothing in return.  That's what the issue is.

On 5/7/2024 at 7:44 PM, EndeavourCmdr said:

Now, please let's be kind and respectful in any comments below. Let's act like adults, and show everyone (and each other) that we know how to be civil. If you disagree with what I've said, that's fine, I am happy to discuss our differences in opinions. But let's HAVE a discussion. A real one. Let's use as much objectivity as possible, and try to not let emotions get in the way?

Quite possibly the only part of your post I agree with.  We've been at each others' throats over this, and we really should be banding together to show our support for the IP.  We all want the same thing - a great playable sequel to a great game.

[herbal space program]

1 hour ago, TLTay said:

Do the realistic sales figures at the end of several more years of funding a 70 employee team exceed the cost? That's the only question that matters.

Maybe they've come to the conclusion that they don't need that 70-person team anymore, because the a lot of the relatively easy-to-implement content they were working on is there already, but the core simulation code is still a disaster. In that case, it's not a question of how many people you employ on the project, but rather who (if anyone) you can find to take on the problem of fixing it.  The people in that role at IG were apparently both unequal to that task and in denial (or worse, engaging in deception) about how serious of a problem they had on their hands wrt bugs and performance.  It might be that if they scour their no doubt deep bench of recently acquired technical geeks, TT can find that special individual who can handle this unglamorous but essential foundation work, and let them and a small team of subordinates toil away in their cave for a number of months without fanfare to see if they can clean up the mess left behind by the apparently empty Aloha shirts who were in charge of this at IG. That would not cost them so much to do, and I do believe that if they could get to some more or less properly functioning version of the colonies/interstellar part, they might find a whole bunch of previously reluctant takers coming out of the woodwork to pony up their portraits of Ulysses S.  Grant. Of course that's a big if, and there's also the peril that colonies/interstellar will fall flat because it will turn off a lot of the fanbase by abandoning the core hook of KSP (building and flying spacecraft) in favor of a more Factorio-like model of resource extraction and automation. Anyway, who knows? But I stand by my assertion that they are not constrained only to the options of continuing with this big, expensive team or scrapping the whole thing.

Edited May 9 by herbal space program