Features you are not looking forward to/dreading.

[Joshington]

I read on the wiki that future updates on aerodynamics will make asparagus staging less useful. Hopefully that's a long ways from now.

[Joshington]

... Stockification of even more parts created by the community without a polish to adapt existing designs.

Yeah, I noticed that the textures of pretty much all the new parts are different from the other stock parts. I like the new parts, but I was SQUAD changed the textures a little bit so it's less obvious.

[Sigma117]

I'm hoping we get another overhaul in textures later on, it'd certainly help define the lower tech and higher tech things in the (planned?) tech tree.

[rkman]

I do not dread any of the yet-to-be implemented features, on the contrary: i'm very much looking forward to starting to play the game when it is finished.

For the time being i'm just dabbling in KSP, not really "playing the game" - because it is not yet finished.

[Brotoro]

Reentry heat damage. Sure, one needs to deal with it in real life, but it will place strict limitations on the wild and crazy and entertaining designs that I see many people using (and enjoy seeing).

[Eric S]

I am not looking forward to reentry heat because there will be no more sudden aerobraking. Hopefully, there'd be some heat shields meant for large, oddly shaped craft.

The devs have said that they plan on implementing reentry heat that doesn't require heat shields. Given that an LEO deorbit comes in over three times faster than an LKO deorbit does, I'd say that they've got plenty of room for that to happen. Deadly reentry went through a phase where it wasn't at all deadly because they were trying to keep things realistic.

I read on the wiki that future updates on aerodynamics will make asparagus staging less useful. Hopefully that's a long ways from now.

Won't happen, at least not because of that. They could balance the prices of engines so that one large engine is more cost effective than several small engines, but without including part failure or limiting fuel lines, even more realistic aerodynamics won't eat away at enough of asparagus staging's advantages to make it less useful than traditional stack staging.

The reasons you don't see NASA doing asparagus staging is because it would be too many parts that if they failed would mean the end of the mission. From what I've read on launch problems, turbo pumps, which asparagus staging would have to excess, are the single most likely part to fail. Only human error seems to account for more launch failures, and that only because some launchers are designed to be able to handle a single turbo pump failure.

The benefits of asparagus staging would also be reduced in reality because you'd be ditching lighter engines and lighter empty tanks. Asparagus staging in KSP is the natural result of engines with lower TWR, fuel tanks with higher dry mass, and totally reliable very high flow fuel pumps. KSP's aerodynamics actually play a very small role in that.

[Kromey]

What I do dread is the inevitable change in the culture of the community that making KSP more "serious" will bring. I predict that the community will become split into career and sandbox camps. The sandbox folks will continue to launch magnificently ridiculous asparagus monsters, invent hilariously horrible ways to abuse Kerbals, and brag about their epic fails. IOW, continuing what we're doing now. The career folks OTOH will be all about perfectionism, cost consciousness, Kerbal longevity, etc.. The former will come to consider the latter as stuck-up prigs who don't know how to have fun, the latter will come to consider the former as ignorant hillbillies lowering the reputation of KSP in the entire internet gaming society.

I don't think this will happen. There's already lots of players -- myself included -- who take a "more serious" approach to KSP than e.g. those who build Kerbal-flinging catapults just 'cuz. We already play as if we're in Career Mode, save that we don't have budgetary (or other) constraints -- yet. For example, I always send probes first, use them to safely map out landing areas, practice things like low-gee cras-- er, landings, and take great pride in the fact that I've only ever had two fatal missions (while simultaneously feeling quite sad that I've killed 4 of those cute little green guys). Yet I love watching the convoluted contraptions others build, and enjoy watching a good mission failure as much as those guys building the catapults.

This supposed "division" already exists, and yet the community isn't at all divided. At least not in the fractious manner you predict. The only truly fractious division we have -- and I expect we'll ever have -- is the MechJeb versus the anti-MechJeb crowds.

On-topic: I'm looking forward to improved aerodynamics (although like someone else mentioned, I don't think it will be the death sentence for asparagus staging everyone else seems to think it will be -- fuel pumps are why NASA doesn't use them, not supposed aerodynamic inefficiencies), especially since I already put nosecones on all my rockets because they're supposed to be there, even if currently it does make them less effective. I'm also looking forward to life support (although in my mind any part with a crew complement should be able to support that many Kerbals for a day or two, meaning missions within Kerbal's SOI aren't really affected, but adding a bit of an extra challenge to interplanetary missions -- if it ends up being too much different from that, I may switch this one to the "dread" column...) and re-entry heat.

The one feature I would truly dread, should it ever be added, is random malfunctions on a mission. Think Apollo 13- and Gravity-style failures, not the Kraken and other bugs. While on the one hand it could be a fun challenge to deal with something unexpected like that, KSP lacks the low-level detail to enable us to properly plan for and react to failures of that sort (other than detonating the self-destruct, of course). And I think adding that low-level detail would make KSP inaccessible to all but the most real-life rocket scientists, while the rest of us have to go back to Orbiter or something. (Sure, you could have "Part Y has failed", and respond with a spacewalk and repair similar to how Kerbals can already repair busted rover wheels -- but now you're just adding tedium for the sake of tedium!)

[rosenkranz]

KSP's aerodynamics actually play a very small role in that.

Oh, I don't know about that. Since using FAR, it's not that asparagus staging is less helpful so much as less necessary. With FAR and fairings over your payload (thank God for pFairings) you can get to LKO in under 3500dV vs 4500dV stock.

At 3500dv, I really don't need boosters until the payload gets up over 60t (using 3.75m and 5m tanks and engines). I can't imagine needing asparagus staging until my payload weighs in above 125 tons when i need more than two boosters.

Now using 2.5m tanks and engines or clusters might be a different story.