Is there any hope for KSP2?

[PopinFRESH]

Shocker, no mention of KSP2 at all.

EDIT: in the Q4'24 earnings call referenced earlier in the thread

Edited May 17 by PopinFRESH

[Kerbart]

7 hours ago, PopinFRESH said:

I'd hardly say what we've "received" points to "business as usual".

You probably missed the sarcasm in that post. Compared to no communication and hardly any updates before "the news" came out, did anything really change? No communication and no updates on the horizon. In other words, business as usual.

[NexusHelium]

14 hours ago, Infinite Aerospace said:

To be fair, I'm inclined to agree but with one distinction, I genuinely expect they'll be further on with Colonies at this point. I wouldn't be surprised if something mid-year, or at the very worst start of autumn was the target for version 0.3.X and I honestly think if it's anything like what they've described it could have represented a big turning point for the game.

I

Need

INTERSTELLAR  

[Scarecrow71]

1 hour ago, NexusHelium said:

I

Need

INTERSTELLAR  

Unfortunately, your only option appears to be KSP1 with mods.

[TLTay]

It appears to be over, but some people with certain psychological profiles often caused by complex parental abandonment or abuse issues are likely to continue to need to hold on to belief and feel supportive, even if only to prove to themselves that they are not like the person whose behavior caused their complex.

[anis]

In 2019, when they announced the release of KSP2 in 2020 (:)), they promised us a full release with all the awaited functionalities in the game from the start. Therefor, they began working on the colony, interstellar, exploration, and multiplayer updates simultaneously.

But now that KSP2 may be dead, where is this work headed? Will it serve any purpose? This is why I personally believe that they will continue the work on the game and release all those functionalities, even with years of delays and a reduced team.

[NexusHelium]

35 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

Unfortunately, your only option appears to be KSP1 with mods.

For now. But I must live up to my name somehow  

17 minutes ago, TLTay said:

It appears to be over, but some people with certain psychological profiles often caused by complex parental abandonment or abuse issues are likely to continue to need to hold on to belief and feel supportive, even if only to prove to themselves that they are not like the person whose behavior caused their complex.

I don't know where you get your information but that is just objectively not true.

A. Some people are just hopeful and happy people and

B. That's now psychology works

Edited May 17 by NexusHelium

[Scarecrow71]

1 minute ago, NexusHelium said:

For now. But I must live up to my name somehow  

I get the endless optimism, and it's a resource that's in very short supply these days.  But with no news since the WARN notice, and nothing on the call yesterday, and even the CM's being extremely silent, your optimism might be misplaced, my friend.  I commend you for sticking to your guns, but I will hate to see that dream shattered for you.

[Alpha_star]

For certain people who like to go to steamdb to check player counts, you can always click the "depots" button to check recent dev branch updates.

You can clearly see changes have been made to some of the branches just a few moments ago, so yeah development is clearly going on or at the very least the game hasn't been completely abandoned. Development is still ongoing so there's at least some means of hope.

I'd say the developers need to implement the official modloading tool into the game first so it would serve as a better base for mods, since they are important for improving the first game.

[NexusHelium]

10 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

I commend you for sticking to your guns, but I will hate to see that dream shattered for you.

Nah. I'll be completely fine if the game is cancelled and I actually expect it to some degree (what?! NexusHopium expecting failure?!) but I just like to expect the best while also accepting disappointment. One of the main reasons I don't prepare myself for disappointment in cases like this is because the worst case scenario (the game is cancelled and I have to back to KSP 1) is just not that bad on my part and chances are I won't be that dissapointed  

But it's still nicer to remain hopeful and optimistic, even if it is in vain.

Edited May 17 by NexusHelium

[anis]

47 minutes ago, NexusHelium said:

Nah. I'll be completely fine if the game is cancelled and I actually expect it to some degree (what?! NexusHopium expecting failure?!) but I just like to expect the best while also accepting disappointment. One of the main reasons I don't prepare myself for disappointment in cases like this is because the worst case scenario (the game is cancelled and I have to back to KSP 1) is just not that bad on my part and chances are I won't be that dissapointed  

But it's still nicer to remain hopeful and optimistic, even if it is in vain.

 

Exactly, I want to believe that someone is going to continue working on KSP2, even if this is too optimistic for some people

[Scarecrow71]

33 minutes ago, anis said:

Exactly, I want to believe that someone is going to continue working on KSP2, even if this is too optimistic for some people

We all want to believe someone will be working on KSP2.  And even though it doesn't seem it, I do have hope.  Just not a lot of it left in me after how long it's taken to get to this point.

[PDCWolf]

1 hour ago, Scarecrow71 said:

I get the endless optimism, and it's a resource that's in very short supply these days.  But with no news since the WARN notice, and nothing on the call yesterday, and even the CM's being extremely silent, your optimism might be misplaced, my friend.  I commend you for sticking to your guns, but I will hate to see that dream shattered for you.

The CMs are "extremely silent" because they're out of a job. If I tell you your job is going away next month, the last thing I would do is let you keep access to social media channels in any official capacity. That's just asking to get sabotaged by someone who might not care so much about NDAs and stuff and happens to be a bit over the edge on losing their job. It's a huge liability with literally no upside. The same goes for devs really. Anyone who got fired will not keep working until June, they get that paid time as yet another reduction of liability, because you don't want people who might be on the edge over losing their jobs to have any chance to sabotage the product or the studio's internal infrastructure.

The moment the WARN went out, anyone not absorbed into PD went home.

[herbal space program]

Well, since everybody else appears to be weighing in here, I'll reiterate my position that I think they will pare down their operation substantially, perhaps  integrating it into a different studio in the process, and then continue at least until they have some version of colonies out. I'll optimistically add that I don't think they'll call this 1.0 and head for the hills, but will rather wait for a while after that to see if any more of the 90% of KSP1 players who have remained on the sidelines until now buy in to EA. If there are enough, they'll keep at it, if not, they'll fix a few more bugs, slap a 1.0 sticker on it,  and hand it over to the modders. That way, they can somewhat preserve their reputation by producing a game that has at least some new content in it, and also try monetize what I think is probably  quite a bit of colonies-related work that has already been done.  If on the other hand they just pull the plug now,  they will have as many as half a million deeply dissatisfied customers who will largely avoid their products going forward, as well as a large amount of negative publicity from the gaming press that will impair the prospects of any future EA releases they might bankroll.

[NexusHelium]

1 hour ago, Scarecrow71 said:

Just not a lot of it left in me after how long it's taken to get to this point.

I got some more in the back if you want any  

[dprostock]

They failed the day they missed the first promised date to deliver the product in an advanced stage of development, they went over budget, they discovered that they did not have suitable developers, they had to go looking for people from the previous project and they fell down a slide by the hand of horrors committed by the management that did not know how to manage.

The proof was that they let the spaghetti rocket issue come out on the market simply because no one was watching anyone's work. Quality Control? What is that?

It was the same with the Colonies theme, maybe it looked nice in Blender or whatever they used, but it was quite another to turn it into Unity code and make it work. 

They were unable to codify a formula in a timely manner. 

They came up with something to recoup some of the expenses, but the operation was doomed because with those people it could take decades to achieve something more, if they could, at an immense cost, several times greater than Boeing's Orion project. On paper and with Powerpoint it was very nice for those who didn't know how to develop, but once someone sat down to code they realized that it was superior to their knowledge. 

If they don't say anything, it's to avoid acknowledging that they broke their teeth and must return the money. Most likely, they will package it into some BB- "tranche" and sell it fast at cost to get rid of it before it stinks like rotten fish.

And if you're wondering who stood up, your current situation is simple: Did anyone see "Margin Call"?  It's not a gionist's invention, it just happens in real life in every company. 

Well, they have them sitting in an office, looking out the window and waiting for the Company to recover the money somehow, so they can receive the compensation and try to reorder their future life in whatever profession it is. Maybe they'll get lucky and some studio will hire them to sell another damaged video game. 

Sounds very sci-fi? I know someone who was paid a year's salary to sit behind a desk every day playing "Solitaire" (yep, more than two decades ago) until the company could sell the product. It's just that the Guy knew too much. 

There's always some unwary or unbeliever, isn't there?

[Scarecrow71]

53 minutes ago, herbal space program said:

but will rather wait for a while after that to see if any more of the 90% of KSP1 players who have remained on the sidelines until now buy in to EA.

The problem with this is that it relies upon those people who own the game to give wonderful word-of-mouth over whatever it is they give us.  Did they fix the major bugs?  Is performance better?  Does colonies make sense, or is it just a band-aid slapped in there?  And unfortunately for the company, there's a lot of people that bought into this with multiplayer in mind (I am not one of those people, mind you) who, unless they get MP, won't ever give the game the time of day.  Something major needs to happen with the game in order to get the vast majority of KSP1 players on board (in my opinion, of course).

[Infinite Aerospace]

8 hours ago, Scarecrow71 said:

The problem with this is that it relies upon those people who own the game to give wonderful word-of-mouth over whatever it is they give us.  Did they fix the major bugs?  Is performance better?  Does colonies make sense, or is it just a band-aid slapped in there?  And unfortunately for the company, there's a lot of people that bought into this with multiplayer in mind (I am not one of those people, mind you) who, unless they get MP, won't ever give the game the time of day.  Something major needs to happen with the game in order to get the vast majority of KSP1 players on board (in my opinion, of course).

I think (opinion) that the biggest mistake Intercept made with Kerbal Space Program II was how their Early Access roadmap was arranged, and in what development order the game followed. From launch until present, we have a 'refined' version of box standard Kerbal Space Program, same system, more or less same generic parts, same engines, et cetera just 'refined'.

 

Where I think it's wrong is, the more complex roadmap items, Colonies being the stand-out one due to the sheer scale and number of new mechanics involved is the sorta thing that should maybe have been first. With Kerbal Space Program II being more a 'colony simulator' first and foremost, then the game we all know would be layered over that over time.

 

That way would have got the core mechanics, and interface of Colonies in-place as the foundation and built the game up around that. It would also have offered veteran Kerbal players something a bit different, rather than the Kerbal sandbox experience we've all played to death.

[DunaManiac]

37 minutes ago, Infinite Aerospace said:

I think (opinion) that the biggest mistake Intercept made with Kerbal Space Program II was how their Early Access roadmap was arranged, and in what development order the game followed. From launch until present, we have a 'refined' version of box standard Kerbal Space Program, same system, more or less same generic parts, same engines, et cetera just 'refined'.

 

Where I think it's wrong is, the more complex roadmap items, Colonies being the stand-out one due to the sheer scale and number of new mechanics involved is the sorta thing that should maybe have been first. With Kerbal Space Program II being more a 'colony simulator' first and foremost, then the game we all know would be layered over that over time.

 

That way would have got the core mechanics, and interface of Colonies in-place as the foundation and built the game up around that. It would also have offered veteran Kerbal players something a bit different, rather than the Kerbal sandbox experience we've all played to death.

I would agree: I think this was essentially HarvestR's criticism of KSP2: KSP2 should have had colonies as the base and everything else built around, otherwise you invite unfavorable comparisons with KSP1 and create the expectation that in order for KSP2 to be successful it would have to match KSP1's performance. All of which KSP2 suffered heavily from.

If KSP2 came out as a full release with all the promised features as planned that wouldn't be as much of a problem: there would be lots of new features to explore.

[Fizzlebop Smith]

Even if the game gets an update... and PD supports it up to an official 1.0.

My Biggest belief in why the game is dead: This repurposed bovine waste right here has RUINED the sentiment of the modding community for the game. Even if the it were to continue (I feel) the treatment of developers and community has forever soured those that would be willing to extensively mod the game.
Without That type of ongoing support for the game.. it has no hope of ever really being anywhere near the success of the first.

I know that a younger generation unaware of this fiasco can come along and start to Mod, but it would never have that group of people lurking around to help out who were instrumental in laying the foundation for mod support. It would never have a change to reach that robust and beautiful degree of  *something* which occurred when so many brilliant and passionate people were willing to work together on so many things.

 

Edited May 18 by Fizzlebop Smith

[MechBFP]

3 hours ago, Fizzlebop Smith said:

Even if the game gets an update... and PD supports it up to an official 1.0.

My Biggest belief in why the game is dead: This repurposed bovine waste right here has RUINED the sentiment of the modding community for the game. Even if the it were to continue (I feel) the treatment of developers and community has forever soured those that would be willing to extensively mod the game.
Without That type of ongoing support for the game.. it has no hope of ever really being anywhere near the success of the first.

I know that a younger generation unaware of this fiasco can come along and start to Mod, but it would never have that group of people lurking around to help out who were instrumental in laying the foundation for mod support. It would never have a change to reach that robust and beautiful degree of  *something* which occurred when so many brilliant and passionate people were willing to work together on so many things.

 

I'll wait till the end of July to see how things shake out, but this is pretty likely to be the case given what we know so far.

[Stevie_D]

June twenty... eighth... is it, that the current devs contracts run to, until they leave for their final day of work? Yeah,... sheesh. If the earnings call didn't produce anything and the best Take 2 and PD can do is put out an idle "nothing to see here" from their overlord Zelnik, then I don't hold out hope to hear anything official until start of July now. If there is a newly formed skeleton team being installed at PD HQ, then they'll want everything transferred over and make sure they're up and running before boasting about their "streamlining" process.

I don't think the higher ups know about or even care about what little reputation this game had is now going down the toilet into sewer levels. The steam review damage won't recover from another month or so of this. 92% negative reviews over the last 30 days is going to start hitting its overall score soon (which at Mixed was already bad). Those recent reviews already account for -10%- of the overall reviews made.
 

[FreeThinker]