Lessons Learnt from KSP1 and KSP2

[starcaptain]

We can all still imagine what a great successor to Kerbal Space Program would look like.  Take-Two has now spent ~7 years and ~40 million dollars learning how not to make a sequel to a green space frog explody simulator.  I still fully believe in not only Nate Simpson's ambitions; unification with all the hopes of the average KSP-enjoyer; and a publisher can get the Minecraft-competitor franchise of cute lil' minions that teach kids STEM and sell spinoff products. Everyone could be happy. It's still possible.

What we need is not exactly a lessons-learned document. More like, a comprehensive list of the features that are wanted in sequel, cross-examined by which ones are most important gameplay-wise and engine-mechanics-wise. I agree with, for example, in ShadowZone's assessment that KSP2 had too much visual polish and not enough work under the hood, or Scott Manley's expectation that the engine would make it easy to customize planets (and this feature was regrettably not approached.)

Since I and no-one I know has 50 million dollars lying around, the best thing I think we can do is make such a document for a future developer, publisher, or whoever. The deliverable of such a discussion would be an easy-to-read paper, a game design document, that compiles:

• Things most enjoyed in KSP games as a whole, which are critical to the core gameplay loop
• Features most desired to be changed
• Features semi-solved by mods (that is, things that should should be knitted into the engine so its ambivalent if modders or devs make the end effect)
• Features already solved in the KSP1 engine (or knowhow from KSP1 that should be grafted in the future)
• Features requiring ground-up design

We can hope and envision that a new developer would do a better job of KSP3; or we could actually pound the pavement and just do their homework for them.
At least for me, writing something like that would give a sense of catharsis, after a decade of anticipation being let down by such trivial and pedantic circumstances as those which did-in KSP2.

• Kerbal Space Program core gameplay loop
  • Build-Test-Fly
  • Easy-to-use vehicle editors for spacecraft, aircraft, groundcraft
    • Analysis tools, such as center of lift
    • Gravity simulation(?)
    • UI should be very well built and understandable. Take notes from what KSP1 and KSP2 did well and poorly.
  • Communications & Deep space network
  • Science collection and technology unlocking
  • Crew resource management
  • Extravehicular Activity in orbit and on planet surfaces
    • Planting flags and grabbing samples
  • Navigation nodes
    • GUI, ease and stability and functionality of maneuvering for at least 5 nodes, maybe n-many
  • One or maybe two major mechanic additions, but leave the path open to either official development or modders; such as
    • Colonies
    • Resource Networks and ISRU
  • Variety of planets that each have a unique complication related to astrodynamics (gravity, atmospheric composition, size, etc) which makes navigation to each into something of a puzzle to be solved.
    • Engaging in this design practice should still encourage a variety of approaches, not bottleneck players from the ability access a given planet unless they have X-gimmick part in their vehicle.
    • Players should be rewarded by each place they visit with unique surface details and things to see or do. KSP2 started on the right track with this; though it doesn't always need to be alien precursors or bones.
• Desired changes--meaning the backend should make Mods possible, but not required for the developers to build themselves:
  • Planetary editability
    • Including real-world scale interplanetary distances and planetary sizes
    • Including axial tilt
  • Parts library ease of editing
  • Aerodynamics systems
  • Space center and building editability
    • Ploppable buildings and launchpads
  • relatively easy to customize GUI in Vehicle Editor, Part-Action Window and In-Flight interface.
  • Weather
  • Don't bother with precursor lore, ARGs or a complex backstory for the in-game universe.
  • Strongly consider gameplay impact and difficulty for crew perishables, life support, and maximum mission duration per weight for crewed flights.
• Gameplay features that should be lifted from KSP1 (don't reinvent the wheel, improve the existing)
  • Orbital transfer calculations
  • Planetary and personal scale, position and speed systems
  • Interactions with the ground, surface friction and wheels.
  • Aerodynamics systems, including facing side occlusion
  • Buoyancy systems
  • Heat and radiation systems
  • Robotics modules
• Gameplay features that need rebuild from the ground-up (they need integration and considerations from day-1)
  • Strongly reconsider game engine, not necessarily Unity [several posters suggested]
  • Multi-language support and localization
  • Handicap UI design and controls customization
    • Emphasis on variety of control input methods and device support
  • Multiplayer, including maximum number of players in a world
  • Interstellar travel and communication
    • Timewarp with continuous acceleration
    • Brachistochrone trajectories capable in maneuver nodes
    • Support for including multiple star systems
    • Relativistic effects not required(?)
  • Optimization of vehicle editing and flight performance so that big vessels do not cause lag
• Things hat should be excluded or be avoided. They are not value-added development.
  • Do not re-release KSP with a graphical update.
  • Ignoring veteran players or community input.
  • Do not add too much handholding. Part of the draw of KSP1 is its steeper learning curve, which encourages exploring and diversity of method, rather than railroading all players onto the same experience and leading them to think the game is shallower than it is.
  • Chill out on the tech trees. Many players never even use them and go down the Sandbox route from the start.
  • Buildings do not need physics simulation other than "destructed by high impact force". Can easily be assumed to be rigid and sufficiently strong for the world where they are.

Edited June 2 by starcaptain
added a list

[Infinite Aerospace]

4 minutes ago, starcaptain said:

We can all still imagine what a great successor to Kerbal Space Program would look like.  Take-Two has now spent ~7 years and ~40 million dollars learning how not to make a sequel to a green space frog explody simulator.  I still fully believe in not only Nate Simpson's ambitions; unification with all the hopes of the average KSP-enjoyer; and a publisher can get the Minecraft-competitor franchise of cute lil' minions that teach kids STEM and sell spinoff products. Everyone could be happy. It's still possible.

What we need is not exactly a lessons-learned document. More like, a comprehensive list of the features that are wanted in sequel, cross-examined by which ones are most important gameplay-wise and engine-mechanics-wise. I agree with, for example, in ShadowZone's assessment that KSP2 had too much visual polish and not enough work under the hood, or Scott Manley's expectation that the engine would make it easy to customize planets (and this feature was regrettably not approached.)

Since I and no-one I know has 50 million dollars lying around, the best thing I think we can do is make such a document for a future developer, publisher, or whoever. The deliverable of such a discussion would be an easy-to-read paper, a game design document, that compiles:

• Things most enjoyed in KSP games as a whole, which are critical to the core gameplay loop
• Features most desired to be changed
• Features semi-solved by mods
• Features already solved in the KSP1 engine
• Features requiring ground-up design

We can hope and envision that a new developer would do a better job of KSP3; or we could actually pound the pavement and just do their homework for them.
At least for me, writing something like that would give a sense of catharsis, after a decade of anticipation being let down by such trivial and pedantic circumstances as those which did-in KSP2.

I'm posting this comment immediately here to reserve the space so that it could be updated periodically with a list.

Unreal Engine instead of Unity would be a good place to start.

Kerbal Space Program has the potential to be "the next Minecraft" though, they're not wrong in that assessment. The idea of expanding it into kids toys and what not is also not at all a dreadful idea, I could foresee something like a Kerbal construction toy being a popular thing. But it's gotta be made, from scratch, from the ground up by experienced engineers with access to input from the previous.

[Palshife]

9 minutes ago, Infinite Aerospace said:

Unreal Engine instead of Unity would be a good place to start.

I tend to think Godot would be a reasonable choice as well. Getting into a more open ecosystem would improve a lot of things in my opinion. It's received a lot of attention since Unitygate and it's very extensible.

[FreeThinker]

21 minutes ago, Infinite Aerospace said:

Unreal Engine instead of Unity would be a good place to start.

Kerbal Space Program has the potential to be "the next Minecraft" though, they're not wrong in that assessment. The idea of expanding it into kids toys and what not is also not at all a dreadful idea, I could foresee something like a Kerbal construction toy being a popular thing. But it's gotta be made, from scratch, from the ground up by experienced engineers with access to input from the previous.

I still think Unity is still a better for 3 reasons. Unity is more open for editing, the license is cheaper and Unity is  known with more programmers  (both former KSP developers and modders)

[herbal space program]

17 minutes ago, starcaptain said:

We can all still imagine what a great successor to Kerbal Space Program would look like. 

We can all imagine what that would look like, but if my last few months on this forum have shown me anything, it's that we definitely don't all agree what that would look like. For my part, I thought KSP2  had actually made a lot of progress towards becoming a worthy sequel in the year since the initial EA release.  Most of the really bad physics bugs were gone or at least occurred much less frequently, and although performance was still not where it needed to be, it was considerably better than it had been at the outset. And I for one appreciated the new visuals and the new content, such as it was. All it really needed in my book was  more of that new content, more improvement in FPS, and the fixing of a number of stupid QOL issues that should never have been allowed to persist as long as they did. The game literally went from hair-rippingly unplayable to  fairly decent over the EA period, but it seems like by the time it got there everybody had lost interest already. Basically, I think they shot themselves in the foot by doing a general EA release when it was still in such bad shape, to the point where recovering community trust is going to be very difficult. Whatever their reasons for that were, I think in hindsight it was a terrible mistake from the standpoint of overall revenue potential for the title, and if they truly abandon it now, I  shudder to think how much good work will likely have gone down the toilet because of that mistake. Anyway, for me the core essential elements for a good successor would be:

1) No absolutely game-killing bugs in any release, ever. This was by far their worst mistake IMO.

2) A game engine that performs at least as well as that of KSP1, even with improved graphics at the back end. Maybe what they have now can never become that, or maybe they just need to find the right crew to handle that task.

3) Improvements on  various UI features vs. KSP1, like the VAB, PAW,  and maneuver planning.  I think they made some strides in that direction, but other stuff still desperately needed help. The dumb node behavior in map view, the constraints on planning ahead, and the non-existent multi-maneuver planner were all really annoying and probably really easy to fix as well. 

4) More content like the vastly improved planet terrain and all the individually rendered set piece mission goals. I really liked that part, and saw lots of potential for fun gameplay if there were just more of it. Especially more planets!

5) Some new mechanic, like resource-dependent colonies, to create a play basis for further exploration and expanding the Kerbal presence on other worlds.  Along with this should go more tangible results from doing science, like biome and/or resource distribution maps when you do different types of planetary scans. Successfully meshing this colony management mechanic with what the game was before is a big conceptual challenge on which they may have seriously stumbled, and we may never know to what extent. Meshing interstellar travel with in-system activities that take place on a vastly shorter timescale is a massive  conceptual challenge as well, to which we have basically no idea what their solution might have been.

 

[Infinite Aerospace]

38 minutes ago, FreeThinker said:

I still think Unity is still a better for 3 reasons. Unity is more open for editing, the license is cheaper and Unity is  known with more programmers  (both former KSP developers and modders)

There's a huge community of knowledge for Unity, but we all know Unreal is the better games engine.

[starcaptain]

16 minutes ago, Infinite Aerospace said:

There's a huge community of knowledge for Unity, but we all know Unreal is the better games engine.

I'm going to just make the note say "select game engine, strongly reconsider Unity".

 

22 minutes ago, herbal space program said:

...1) No absolutely game-killing bugs in any release, ever. This was by far their worst mistake IMO.

2) A game engine that performs at least as well as that of KSP1, even with improved graphics at the back end. Maybe what they have now can never become that, or maybe they just need to find the right crew to handle that task.

3) Improvements on  various UI features vs. KSP1, like the VAB, PAW,  and maneuver planning.  I think they made some strides in that direction, but other stuff still desperately needed help. The dumb node behavior in map view, the constraints on planning ahead, and the non-existent multi-maneuver planner were all really annoying and probably really easy to fix as well. 

4) More content like the vastly improved planet terrain and all the individually rendered set piece mission goals. I really liked that part, and saw lots of potential for fun gameplay if there were just more of it. Especially more planets!

5) Some new mechanic, like resource-dependent colonies, to create a play basis for further exploration and expanding the Kerbal presence on other worlds.  Along with this should go more tangible results from doing science, like biome and/or resource distribution maps when you do different types of planetary scans. Successfully meshing this colony management mechanic with what the game was before is a big conceptual challenge on which they may have seriously stumbled, and we may never know to what extent. Meshing interstellar travel with in-system activities that take place on a vastly shorter timescale is a massive  conceptual challenge as well, to which we have basically no idea what their solution might have been.

On 1) I'm not going to defend or explain why this was a problem in KSP2, the most we can do is outlay means by which it can be avoided for the future.

On 2) see the reply above.

On 3) I'll pin that as "relatively easy to customize GUI in Vehicle Editor, Part-Action Window and In-Flight interface." Maneuver Planning is a whole ball of wax probably deserving its own note of some kind.

On 4) I think your defense of KSP2 and expectations on this end is probably the best that KSP2 can hope for, for the foreseeable future. The best case scenario I can imagine is that T2 gives Intercept the chop, then hands off rolling out more content and bugfixes as you've just mentioned for the next half decade or something.

On 5) I think if there was a KSP3, "mod support" would mean part and ground-interaction infrastructure in the engine so that modders could do a lot of the work for these kinds of things even if it never gets rolled out as an official release. That, I think, is a better plan than making it a 'necessary to ship' feature of the core game. The approach for colonies and resource networks should be somethi, ng that can be approached (at least to some degree) either officially or by modders; not pinning hopes all in one direction.

[RUD Everyday]

KSP 3 will be like Minecraft Story Mode

[Skorj]

4 hours ago, starcaptain said:

• Gameplay features that need rebuild from the ground-up (they need integration and considerations from day-1)
  • Strongly reconsider game engine, not necessarily Unity [several posters suggested]
  • Multi-language support and localization
  • Handicap UI design and controls customization
  • Multiplayer, including maximum number of players in a world
  • Interstellar travel and communication
    • Timewarp with continuous acceleration
    • Brachistochrone trajectories capable in maneuver nodes
  • Optimization of vehicle editing and flight performance so that big vessels do not cause lag
  • Weather

K^2's the expert on the game physics, but it's obvious now that (1) Unreal is the better engine, and (2) you want to do something different than game engine physics for orbits.  Only objects inside the "physics bubble" should have any involvement with the game engine physics, everything else should be "on rails" and require no or almost-no CPU even at high timewarp.  This allows for thousands of colonies and commsats and whatever.

Writing the codebase to make localization easy is just basic development best-practices, not so much a lesson learned here.

Doing the basic accessibility checklist is just basic development best-practices, not so much a lesson learned here.  However, robust support for flight control devices is a good take-away here.  This is definitely a game where device support is accessibility.  Even small indie teams making sim games have no excuse when it comes to this these days.

Good multiplayer support (proper lag hiding) for a physics-heavy game is apparently beyond what a small or medium team can reasonably accomplish, however the special case of "each player in their own physics bubble" is definitely doable for a large player count, as is Kerbals just ruining around on a planet surface or colony together. So designing the game with those easier cases in mind would be wise.

Doing interstellar with the same physics is a dubious game design choice IMO.  But supporting low-g high-timewarp burns is a must.  IMO, it's OK to lose fidelity on how the rocket wobbles at high timwarp, and if you just want to keep the maneuver fidelity high by treating the ship as a rigid body, then its easy enough.

IMO, weather can be mod territory.  In general I'd de-emphasize anything that's mostly about making Kerbin look pretty.  For a game about colonies and such, we shouldn't even be looking at Kerbin very often.

[Uuky]

One thing missing in KSP1 was a real crew management feature  blended with milestones, tech tree and crafting..

Spoiler

In games like Rimworld or Xcom, the management of the characters really fosters attachment by all they do (and not do). 

And it can be done in a really interesting way in KSP.

Game progression should be driven by a choosen set of milestones, let's call them programs.

Each program has an end goal (like bring back 10kg of samples from the Mun). and sub-programs like (develop and test a space station hab module).

For a program you'll assign Kerbals. You'll need enginneers, scientific guys, pilots, and, why not, some staff fetching  snacks, building parts, assisting research, training pilot, sewing chutes and so on. 

But what kerbals to assign?

Kerbals should have traits and skills.

Traits helps to develop skills. For example Bob can have a trait "slow reflexes". It makes he will need a lot more time to develop piloting skils and won't be able to reach the max perk. However he has " Chemistry expert" trait. He will be able to develop scientific skill in the field of chemistry faster. And then help to reach some chemistry related achievement in a program faster

Tim C Kerman has "good mechanic". Then he would be more at his place crafting parts. But he can also become a good flight engineer able to repair while on mission.

Then comes in the type of activity. A kerbal piloting only plane,s will be very good with planes. But if it flies only small planes, he won't be that good on big planes (resulting in penalties) or on command pods.

Then comes training facilities to help with that. 

But what will do the Kerbals?

A program starts by developing some parts, some technologies and so on. The player may need to reach some intermediate milestones (like testing a prototype, analyzes rocks gathered on Duna) to unlock a technology in the tree(exemple: rover arms can only be discovered after a rover prototype has been tested). Parts will need to be build, experienced "builder" kerbals will make the process faster.

Then you can have several teams of Kerbals, for science, engineering, mission etc... And why not several assembly lines. 

Some programs will require experienced Kerbals, and you must have them by carefully growing Kerbal's skills (and not always krashing kerbals to test the elasticity of a celestial body).

 

 

[MarcAbaddon]

I think the Unity vs Unreal engine discussion is somewhat pointless. None of the engines is natively set-up to handle things like:

• Conservation of energy/stable orbits when multiple physics parts loaded, that interact with each other but should exert net zero force
• Gracefully handle the many coordinate system changes required to cover interstellar distances
• Orbital mechanics

Floppy rockets are mostly an issue with the joint model. There'd be better way to handle that in Unity, too. I don't really believe the Unreal Engine would have averted the issues with KSP 2 in any way, and besides the game likely to look prettier in the end I think there is little real advantage to use Unreal instead. With Unity generally being easier to mod, I don't mind sticking with it.

[WatchClarkBand]

1 hour ago, MarcAbaddon said:

I think the Unity vs Unreal engine discussion is somewhat pointless.

I agree, I find these discussions to be like any other "is Fender better than Gibson" or "is Toyota better than Honda" arguments. Both engines have their strengths and weaknesses, but importantly, both are built with assumptions that the game world will be an infinitely flat surface where "up" is a vector that points in the same direction everywhere. This alone makes any off-the-shelf game engine a thing that must be worked around to get the transforms and physics correct. That said, trying to do a custom game engine for a game like KSP would require, in itself, at least another dozen engineers and would add no less than two years to the development time.

[Scarecrow71]

The biggest lesson I learned is to never get involved in early access again.

[theJesuit]

14 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

The biggest lesson I learned is to never get involved in early access again.

Not from a big developer, maybe from a small indie group where there is proven community dialogue.

There should never be Early Access from a big developer.

[PDCWolf]

5 minutes ago, Scarecrow71 said:

The biggest lesson I learned is to never get involved in early access again.

Bad lesson.

Don't get involved in Early Access when it involves big publishers.  A real studio needing early access would be overjoyed and communicative regarding feedback and progress respectively, devs in those projects hang around the community having useful discussions and develop their product knowing how much the customer is worth. On the contrary, these clowns just wanted to farm exposure on every update with a marketing campaign to try and get more sales, whilst they had a rigid vision with zero room for wiggle, and clearly had no regards with misleading about their progress or their future.

On the other hand, your own responsibility lies on being critical and analytic. DO NOT huff the hopium, do not exhale copium. Positivity does literally nothing for a project other than keeping you tied to it when the red flags start to show up. Early Access is a business, and contrary to what people too deep to accept they got scammed say (or that undervalue their time and money), you do buy games based on what they can be and not what they are, so be careful with your money, and know when to step out.

Also it should be pretty clear that no Early Access game (and even most full release ones) aren't worth anywhere near $50.

----

As for the OP, I'd really note down:

1. Most people aren't happy with just the same game with a coat of paint. Lift up what's good, re-do it professionally, but also add up new things.
2. Unity is insufficient, this is why people don't want it. You'd need to rebuild enough systems around it (multithreading, physics joints, rigidbody physics). I don't know about Unreal but those are things to consider.
3. Do not ignore veterans. Most of the community has been playing for a decade. If you release your product and there's nothing new for them to do, yeah, you just alienated a good chunk of the playerbase.
4. Don't dumb down stuff. Part of the charm was the learning curve. Try-Fail-Improve doesn't work if you remove the first 2.
5. Deeper features > more features. 
6. Learn how to make a UI. An indie dev making a bad UI is one thing, professionals being unable to make something usable is laughable.
7. For the love of god just stop with the tech trees. Again, an indie not getting it right is one thing, professionals having no idea how to balance one is another.
8. Precursor spacefaring race "lore" is not innovative, or even fun. It's the most overused, predictable cliche in almost every space game.
9. Colonies do not need physics. Destruction is one thing but why both SQUAD and IG decided that ground buildings need physics simulated is beyond me.
10. Think long and hard on why players would want to go interstellar after the first time they do so. Interstellar flight is so far the ultimate challenge for space exploration, so what are players supposed to do after that?
11. Life Support is obligatory, as is any other form of danger for real spaceflight.
12. Between 11 and 5, those systems need to be interconnected to allow not just engineering challenges, but multiple solutions. If every system just resolves to "add part to not die" then it's not fun.

I could probably think of more but I need to go to work.

[Superfluous J]

2 hours ago, Scarecrow71 said:

The biggest lesson I learned is to never get involved in early access again.

When SpaceBase DF-9 burned me, I decided to learn a different lesson from it, because in today's gaming world it's hard to actually avoid Early Access altogether.

The lesson I learned then (and stick to today, and think it's a major reason I don't hate everything gaming related) is to purchase a game based on how it is right now, not how anybody says it will be in the future.

Then EA becomes a huge boon for you, because you bought a game you wanted then, and thought was worth the cost then, and at the VERY WORST you got that game and no more.

This whole "I'm going to invest in the future of this game" thing is bull, as we've all seen demonstrated in KSP2. You're not an investor. Your opinion doesn't matter. They don't owe you anything and thinking they do is just going to lead to sadness and increased investment in antacid.

Oh and regarding Small indie publishers with great communication with their community, I'll be frank and say that doesn't matter one whip either. It's nice, and I prefer it to not having it, but in the end a small indie publisher with great communication with the community can take the money and run just as easily as anybody else.

Edited May 28 by Superfluous J

[Scarecrow71]

21 minutes ago, Superfluous J said:

Then EA becomes a huge boon for you, because you bought a game you wanted then, and thought was worth the cost then, and at the VERY WORST you got that game and no more.

While your logic is sound, it is flawed with KSP2.  I bought EA on launch day not based on what it would be, but what we were told it was.  We knew it didn't have a lot of the features, but it was still KSP, and we were still supposed to be able to fly rockets and planes and visit the other planets.

23 minutes ago, Superfluous J said:

Your opinion doesn't matter. They don't owe you anything and thinking they do is just going to lead to sadness and increased investment in antacid.

Except that the premise of EA is that our voice gets heard, and that the devs do interact with us.  It is literally in the terms, so to defend them not living up to their end is mind-boggling.

[Superfluous J]

1 hour ago, Scarecrow71 said:

Except that the premise of EA is that our voice gets heard, and that the devs do interact with us.  It is literally in the terms, so to defend them not living up to their end is mind-boggling.

I think this is one the major disparities between what I'll call the 2 major factions* on this forum.

One group thinks the developers owe us a lot and their not delivering on that is a major fault.

The other group technically agrees with that but has been burned so many times that they don't expect anything from other people, and just accept that they won't get what they want.

*It may be that there are 3 factions, and the faction I think I'm in is actually just me, and there's a whole other faction that actually thinks everything went swimmingly.

[TMS]

7 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

I think this is one the major disparities between what I'll call the 2 major factions* on this forum.

One group thinks the developers owe us a lot and their not delivering on that is a major fault.

The other group technically agrees with that but has been burned so many times that they don't expect anything from other people, and just accept that they won't get what they want.

*It may be that there are 3 factions, and the faction I think I'm in is actually just me, and there's a whole other faction that actually thinks everything went swimmingly.

Chiming in to let you know that I agree with this and everything you said in your previous post, particularly regarding the "muh investment" claims.  Coincidentally, SpacebaseDF9 was also the bit of my learning curve that went vertical. 

I make the same assumption (you're buying what the thing is presently, not what the thing is promised to be) but estimated that KSP2 was overpriced for what it was/is and felt that it never got to the point of being worth purchasing (or actually investing in a supercomputer to play it).

[Scarecrow71]

10 hours ago, Superfluous J said:

I think this is one the major disparities between what I'll call the 2 major factions* on this forum.

One group thinks the developers owe us a lot and their not delivering on that is a major fault.

The other group technically agrees with that but has been burned so many times that they don't expect anything from other people, and just accept that they won't get what they want.

*It may be that there are 3 factions, and the faction I think I'm in is actually just me, and there's a whole other faction that actually thinks everything went swimmingly.

Wrong.  We don't think the developers "owe us a lot".  We think the developers at a minimum owed us better communication as to what was going on, how development was going, and what they were doing to fix the bugs that were present in the game.  We begged and begged for more communication, got told that more communication was coming, and then we got nothing.  It is entirely NOT wrong of us to expect what we were told we were going to get, and that is certainly not feeling like we were "owed a lot".

[Superfluous J]

8 hours ago, Scarecrow71 said:

Wrong.  We don't think the developers "owe us a lot".  We think the developers at a minimum owed us better communication as to what was going on, how development was going, and what they were doing to fix the bugs that were present in the game.  We begged and begged for more communication, got told that more communication was coming, and then we got nothing.  It is entirely NOT wrong of us to expect what we were told we were going to get, and that is certainly not feeling like we were "owed a lot".

Fair. I won't edit the OP but will happily change it to "owed more than we were given"

[dprostock]

Comunication....

 

[Superfluous J]

On 5/27/2024 at 9:28 PM, Scarecrow71 said:

Except that the premise of EA is that our voice gets heard, and that the devs do interact with us.  It is literally in the terms, so to defend them not living up to their end is mind-boggling.

I'm going to bookmark this post so I'll never have to say this again.

I'm not defending anybody. I'm stating a fact. 

[starcaptain]

On 5/27/2024 at 4:17 PM, PDCWolf said:

 

----

As for the OP, I'd really note down:

1. Most people aren't happy with just the same game with a coat of paint. Lift up what's good, re-do it professionally, but also add up new things.
2. Unity is insufficient, this is why people don't want it. You'd need to rebuild enough systems around it (multithreading, physics joints, rigidbody physics). I don't know about Unreal but those are things to consider.
3. Do not ignore veterans. Most of the community has been playing for a decade. If you release your product and there's nothing new for them to do, yeah, you just alienated a good chunk of the playerbase.
4. Don't dumb down stuff. Part of the charm was the learning curve. Try-Fail-Improve doesn't work if you remove the first 2.
5. Deeper features > more features. 
6. Learn how to make a UI. An indie dev making a bad UI is one thing, professionals being unable to make something usable is laughable.
7. For the love of god just stop with the tech trees. Again, an indie not getting it right is one thing, professionals having no idea how to balance one is another.
8. Precursor spacefaring race "lore" is not innovative, or even fun. It's the most overused, predictable cliche in almost every space game.
9. Colonies do not need physics. Destruction is one thing but why both SQUAD and IG decided that ground buildings need physics simulated is beyond me.
10. Think long and hard on why players would want to go interstellar after the first time they do so. Interstellar flight is so far the ultimate challenge for space exploration, so what are players supposed to do after that?
11. Life Support is obligatory, as is any other form of danger for real spaceflight.
12. Between 11 and 5, those systems need to be interconnected to allow not just engineering challenges, but multiple solutions. If every system just resolves to "add part to not die" then it's not fun.

I could probably think of more but I need to go to work.

1) would fit into a preface for an executive summary for anyone who was wondering what they might be getting themselves into by looking at the Kerbal IP.

2) I don't know anything about engines so I'd leave the point empty beyond what i mentioned: think about it carefully. 

I'll see about merging these thoughts with the OP post later.

 

 

[Fizzlebop Smith]

On 5/27/2024 at 6:04 PM, Superfluous J said:

When SpaceBase DF-9 burned me, I decided to learn a different lesson from it, because in today's gaming world it's hard to actually avoid Early Access altogether.

The lesson I learned then (and stick to today, and think it's a major reason I don't hate everything gaming related) is to purchase a game based on how it is right now, not how anybody says it will be in the future.

Then EA becomes a huge boon for you, because you bought a game you wanted then, and thought was worth the cost then, and at the VERY WORST you got that game and no more.

This whole "I'm going to invest in the future of this game" thing is bull, as we've all seen demonstrated in KSP2. You're not an investor. Your opinion doesn't matter. They don't owe you anything and thinking they do is just going to lead to sadness and increased investment in antacid.

Oh and regarding Small indie publishers with great communication with their community, I'll be frank and say that doesn't matter one whip either. It's nice, and I prefer it to not having it, but in the end a small indie publisher with great communication with the community can take the money and run just as easily as anybody else.

This is very true, but has seemed to somewhat soften the blow in the past. When you get some kind of closing statement or farewell .. closure or situation allowing me to empathize.

I have seen a couple other EA go out where you could tell the developers were gutted...

I don't know.. just feels better than choking silence.

As to whatbis "owed"... I feel that is derived from the expectation established at the time of EA launch. Where the developers places an official statement on their store page with regard to how they will be treating Early Access.

I don't feel I am owed anything, but feel there is definitely an expectation they should strive to own

 

 

Edited May 31 by Fizzlebop Smith