Are "science points" too generic? Does the game become a grind?

[AlamoVampire]

<blithering nonsense that totally missed the point>

This game is in its Alpha stage, pure and simple. Allmhuran is claiming and it seems you are as well, that this game is NOT in Alpha State. This game is missing MASSIVE portions of it that Squad has said they intend to have in the FINAL product. They themselves have openly stated we are in ALPHA. For you and Allmhuran to claim that this is in any state OTHER than Alpha is flawed. You ALSO seem to think that I have said they do not listen to us. I never once stated that. I stated and shall state this again, as you and Allmhuran seem to clearly be incapable of seeing the point: They have <SQUAD> have stated we are IN ALPHA. THAT is the TRUTH, THAT is the LAW in this land. live with that, or leave. Will they listen to us? YES. Will they DO what we ASK/SUGGEST? MAYBE, but not ALL of it. We are THEIR testers, this is THEIR PROGRAM. They can call this Apple Orange Prawn Juice and we will, no MUST accept that. They say we are in Alpha, we are in Alpha. Now, accept that or not. If you do not, and continue to call this a NON ALPHA, you will continue to be wrong.

Oh, and to end this flawed logic of you two, this is from the WIKIPEDIA:

Kerbal Space Program (commonly abbreviated to KSP) is a sandbox-style space flight simulator with gameplay elements currently in development for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. The first public alpha was released on June 24, 2011 and updates have been continually released since. KSP has support for mods, all of which are hosted on an official modding website. It is currently sold on the official KSP Store or, since March 20, 2013, through Steam.

[KasperVld]

I am going to leave one warning here, and only one, to keep this discussion civil. There is absolutely no need to refer to an argument as nonsense or to make things personal. Discuss with arguments instead.

[Superfluous J]

Why do you think this forum section even exists?

"Suggestion and Development discussion"

If what you say is true why SQUAD would bother asking us what do we think about the game and how we would improve it?

This forum section exists so the people who have played a version of the game can make suggestions about it. We are simply incapable of making informed suggestions about a version of the game we have not played. It has been pointed out before how people were understandably but naively upset about the "end flight" button being removed. They didn't have all the information and thought it was a stupid design decision on squad's part. Turns out, Squad actually knew what they were doing and implemented a better feature that I think is far better than the End Flight button ever was.

Another example, the new SAS functionality. Everybody before release was so happy about it, but shortly after release (when they had tested it themselves) problems were found. Squad listened to these informed suggestions and released an update to correct them.

That's how it works. They give us stuff, we test it and provide feedback. They listen to the feedback and give us more stuff. We can't provide feedback that is of any use until we've tested something though. That's not how it works.

[NeilC]

Yeah, you introduce economics, and now the grinding process is twice the lenght, forcefully. <...>

Hypocrisy at its finest.

PDCWolf, I am still waiting for you to make a constructive suggestion here. So far all your posts are negative: you don't like the direction the game is going, you don't like the tech tree, you don't like grinding, you don't like the proposed economics because they will lead to more grinding, and above all you've made it very clear you think this game and its developers are retarded. That's not just hard to read, it's pointless to read.

You also want more transparency about the releases and the vision for the final game. Fair point, but I think you need to realize that your tone makes it very hard to hear this as constructive criticism. It's buried in so much negativity, it's much easier to just dismiss you as a malcontent.

I saw your post on rocket diameters. It was good, well presented, and not dripping in sarcastic whining. It was much easier to read than your contributions to this thread.

Do you have any similar ideas for the tech tree? What would you do differently? What WOULD you like to see to give the game more depth?

[Zaeo]

You have to start SOMEWHERE

If Somewhere means a R&D Tech tree, so be it, From there, you can improve the tech-tree.

Personally, I'd have liked to have separate research points for each task, but that would make the system quite complex and difficult to grasp for new players.

What if you had to "Research" and not just unlock stuff with points? As in, Require points, but also require research time. This could allow astronaut allocation to research teams to increase the rate of research. You may end up with excess science, but this allows a progression time. Money to pay for research/astronauts also keeps the grind in line from capping the tech tree in 3 flights. So even if you had science and free researchers, and an empty queue, you could not research stuff if you could not afford it.

This could tie in the kerbal personality as well, where stupidity makes a good astronaut, but a lack there-of makes a good researcher.*not true to real world, but its a game...*

[Chrisd857]

You have to start SOMEWHERE

^This.

From this dev blog, some people have been overly reactive about adding a small bump to the left-hand side of this graph. 0.22-0.26ish to career will probably be like 0.13-0.18 was for flight, construction, and everything else. It will get better, and it may even become awesome. Please, have patience.

[boomerdog2000]

What if you had to "Research" and not just unlock stuff with points? As in, Require points, but also require research time. This could allow astronaut allocation to research teams to increase the rate of research. You may end up with excess science, but this allows a progression time.

I don't think I like the idea of the research taking time. It seems like it would become tedious and you'd end up just timewarping until your research was done.

[allmhuran]

So we agree, career mode isn't for you.

Right, because it's a tutorial.

if you want super uber hard mode, go restrict yourself in sandbox.

Per my OP, I wasn't simply looking for something to make the game more difficult. I was looking for something to give me goals, objectives, things to do, some *reason* to launch a ship to the Jool system. When people said they were looking forward to career mode, this is the kind of thing they cited. The tech tree is not this, it's a tutorial.

I meant to say what I said.

Well, Felipe says it's a tutorial, so I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here and assuming you mean to say the same.

No, you actually don't. I don't give a flying -rainbow- what you think is lunacy

I'm sure you don't. Heck, some people run around with their underpants over their heads, I doubt they give a flying rainbow about anything at all!

Because you seemed to be implying that "sandbox complete" meant "feature complete". If you weren't then I have no idea what point you were making.

The last declaration of state was that the game is "Sandbox Complete", not that the game is "Alpha".

Maybe we both have trouble reading because you'll note I said I don't necessarily agree with his point (that you shouldn't be posting about it).

Then don't assume his position in order to score insult points?

This is fun! I can't wait to see which way you go next.

[AlamoVampire]

I don't think I like the idea of the research taking time. It seems like it would become tedious and you'd end up just timewarping until your research was done.

I think it should take time and the only TW that could affect it should be physical tw at the risk of loss of quality

[boomerdog2000]

But what are you going to have the player DO during that time? I'm alright with it taking time if the player has other things to work on during that time.

[Kerbol Prime]

*sigh* After looking at all the tech tree/career discussions buzzing around the forums, I find the new R&D quite controversial.

As for me, I support Squad. I trust that they'll continue to develope the tree.

[allmhuran]

allmhuran. you sir are about as wrong as wrong gets. this game is in Alpha State. SQUAD has said as much. What they say GOES. PERIOD. Oh, and courtesy wikipedia:

So Allmhuran, would you like to continue to be wrong and say we AND SQUAD are wrong about this being in Alpha? Or, will you finally accept the truth that this is ALPHA, and again, what SQUAD calls this, is the LAW and is TRUE.

Boy, the amount of spittle on your monitor screen must be making it hard for you to see what you're typing at this point.

1) Squad last said "Sandbox Complete"

2) No, what Squad calls it is not, in fact, the "law and true". What an odd suggestion. That would seem to imply that if Squad came along today and said "The game is pre-alpha" then it would be. If they said "the game is beta", well, suddenly it would be that. Imagine if they said "the game is final release as of yesterday". I wonder if you'd suddenly be ecstatic, because we were finally at v 1.0 (woohoo, celebration!), or said because the final release didn't have in it certain things that you wanted? (awww).

The wikipedia page on this subject contradicts what you claim alpha to be. But it also makes the claim that "The alpha phase usually ends with a feature freeze" which is the part about the old definition of "alpha" that is completely meaningless these days. If that were true then, say, Tribes Ascend was alpha all the way up to the point where the devs stopped adding new features to it... about 3 months ago. Stacraft 2 is, apparently, *still* in alpha 2 years after its boxed release, because new features are constantly added to battle.net 2.0 as well as the game itself.

[PDCWolf]

^This.

From this dev blog, some people have been overly reactive about adding a small bump to the left-hand side of this graph. 0.22-0.26ish to career will probably be like 0.13-0.18 was for flight, construction, and everything else. It will get better, and it may even become awesome. Please, have patience.

Developer asymptotes are an excuse. They don't exist. Really, the game is on alpha and they already have no idea on how to make something better or expand upon a feature? Mere lies.

I'm not saying that it is wrong that they want to take on another branch of development, what I'm saying is wrong is the order in which they make stuff.

Somebody on the last page said "I want to hear your suggestions" and here they are:

-Stop moving onto career, if you want to introduce new players, make use of the scenario tool you created, which works already with the tutorials you half-created.

-Finish any other feature that will make you change the tech tree first. Like resources, better atmosphere, better spaceplane parts, planet discovery, and all those nice things you mentioned or promised.

-Once you have that done and you can say "ok, no more parts, no more planets, the atmosphere works OK now, etc, we have all we need" then make the career mode based on that, so that you don't have to change the tech tree or whatever you include later-on with every update to match the new content and overhauls.

-Make the dev cycles shorter by removing testing. Focus on features, not on perfection. The game is an alpha and we understand that it may be buggy, so there's no need to spend a half of a cycle testing the game.

Of course, this are just suggestions, and since they are directed towards the game's core development they are going to sound arrogant as hell, but make of them what you want. You have an undeniable truth before your eyes, making the career mode now is going to be a maintenance hell. That is unless the game is completed, which I want to believe it isn't.

Edited October 15, 2013 by PDCWolf

[NeilC]

Of course, this are just suggestions, and since they are directed towards the game's core development they are going to sound arrogant as hell, but make of them what you want. You have an undeniable truth before your eyes, making the career mode now is going to be a maintenance hell. That is unless the game is completed, which I want to believe it isn't.

Thanks for saying something clear and positive, with only a little bit of needless Squad-bashing to wade through.

Can you explain why you think it will be hell to maintain the tech tree? If they've designed it properly it should be very easy to change, add, or rearrange nodes just by editing a text file containing the node definitions. Parts probably have a node reference in their .cfg files - change the number, the part gets displayed in a new node. We're talking 3-4 man-hours of work for each release, in my opinion. The hard part was implementing the system itself and all the GUI tools to draw it and interact with it, which has to be done some time.

Balancing the tech tree, though - that's hard. Deciding which changes to make with that half-day of work will take a LOT of testing. Why is it so terrible to design that system now, so they can start the testing and balancing process for the core flight parts? I doubt those will change much before release, and things like resource parts are likely to be in a separate branch of the tree - they can be tacked on later.

Of course, this is my opinion and I could be wrong about their implementation. Maybe it will be hard to maintain and suck up man-weeks per update, in which case implementing it now is probably a bad decision on Squad's part. I wouldn't want to sound arrogant by stating that things I know nothing about are undeniable truths, or anything like that.

[AlamoVampire]

allmhuran, i do not think you or I shall see eye to eye on this, and to that end, I shall now go and bid you adieu.

[TheCanadianVendingMachine]

Allmhuran, if sandbox isn't complete, what would make it so?

[allmhuran]

Hm, not sure I understand the question. Squad has said the game is in a state called "Sandbox complete", this happened around .20 IIRC, not sure when exactly it was.

[Person012345]

Right, because it's a tutorial.

Wrong, because you want something else.

Per my OP, I wasn't simply looking for something to make the game more difficult. I was looking for something to give me goals, objectives, things to do, some *reason* to launch a ship to the Jool system. When people said they were looking forward to career mode, this is the kind of thing they cited. The tech tree is not this, it's a tutorial.

Saying the same thing over and over doesn't make it right. You want a context sensitive system that would likely be a pita to implement and is completely unnecessary and for it to be harder. Again, mods will help you.

Well, Felipe says it's a tutorial, so I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here and assuming you mean to say the same.

Source? And no, his statements that's experienced players should be able to blow through if they exploit the game does not mean tutorial. Again, stop being so arrogant. Again, just because they didn't balance it specifically for you doesn't make it a tutorial. If he actually said literally "it's a tutorial" then go ahead and let me see it and I'll concede the point.

The last declaration of state was that the game is "Sandbox Complete", not that the game is "Alpha".

The two states are not contradictory per the definition he gave. It says it is under heavy development and sandbox complete. This would still make it an alpha by said definition (which you gave no alternative to and just randomly stated was wrong with no backup).

Then don't assume his position in order to score insult points?

This is fun! I can't wait to see which way you go next.

I was making a separate point. I wasn't defending his position. I clarified part of his position, because you seemed to misunderstand it IIRC, stated I didn't necessarily agree with all of his point and made a separate point that was tangentially related. I really shouldn't have to be saying this.

Edited October 15, 2013 by Person012345

[TheCanadianVendingMachine]

Well, allmhuran, the sandbox mode is complete. Nothing can be added to it. Now, Sandbox mode doesn't include planets, parts, or anything of the such

[PDCWolf]

Thanks for saying something clear and positive, with only a little bit of needless Squad-bashing to wade through.

Can you explain why you think it will be hell to maintain the tech tree? If they've designed it properly it should be very easy to change, add, or rearrange nodes just by editing a text file containing the node definitions. Parts probably have a node reference in their .cfg files - change the number, the part gets displayed in a new node. We're talking 3-4 man-hours of work for each release, in my opinion. The hard part was implementing the system itself and all the GUI tools to draw it and interact with it, which has to be done some time.

Balancing the tech tree, though - that's hard. Deciding which changes to make with that half-day of work will take a LOT of testing. Why is it so terrible to design that system now, so they can start the testing and balancing process for the core flight parts? I doubt those will change much before release, and things like resource parts are likely to be in a separate branch of the tree - they can be tacked on later.

Of course, this is my opinion and I could be wrong about their implementation. Maybe it will be hard to maintain and suck up man-weeks per update, in which case implementing it now is probably a bad decision on Squad's part. I wouldn't want to sound arrogant by stating that things I know nothing about are undeniable truths, or anything like that.

We are on update 0.22 now. Well, almost.

Tomorrow, update 0.23 comes and brings resources -a man can dream- so you have an entire new set of parts and game mechanics to adjust the entire tech tree to.

update 0.24 brings a space plane revamp -yes, it is needed- and you have the same problem.

update 0.25 brings new aerodynamics. You have to rebalance everything, every part and node.

Now repeat until 1.0 Which following logical steps is 75 updates away. Anyways, I'm being really optimistic with update times and feature progression. If we get to see resources before humans landing on mars we'll be really lucky.

[allmhuran]

Well, allmhuran, the sandbox mode is complete. Nothing can be added to it. Now, Sandbox mode doesn't include planets, parts, or anything of the such

Sorry, I'm not sure exactly what we're talking about here. Is this related to the tech tree somehow?

[NeilC]

<...> update 0.23 comes and brings resources <...> update 0.24 brings a space plane revamp <...> update 0.25 brings new aerodynamics. You have to rebalance everything, every part and node.

"Balancing" the tree in terms of actual developer work to make the changes is likely pretty trivial - a couple hours in the text editor. No big deal to do this with every release. I'm really not seeing why you think it's such an onerous amount of overhead.

"Balancing" the tree in terms of figuring out what changes to make is a long process that has to be done some time. Mostly, it requires playtesting to see what players are doing with the tech tree, and how they're (ab)using it in unexpected ways. The sooner playtesting begins on that the better, IMHO - you can't really balance a tree that nobody has played with.

Why do resources need to impact the stock part balancing? Why can't the new resource system, with its new tech tree branch, be added later and balanced to the existing tree at that point?

Why does a "space plane revamp" need to change the cost/order/balance of plane parts? If it did have to, wouldn't you appreciate the effort since you find the current system lacking?

Why would more realistic aerodynamic forces on your wings affect anything about the tech tree?

Do you have any personal experience or resource you can link to that makes you believe the One True Path to a perfect game is to implement everything all at once, and then balance it all at once? Have games failed because they didn't adopt your preferred approach? Which ones? What went wrong? Tell me more.

[Person012345]

Now repeat until 1.0 Which following logical steps is 75 updates away.

This is not how development increments work.

[allmhuran]

just because they didn't balance it specifically for you doesn't make it a tutorial.

Certainly not. The fact that it was intended as a way to more gradually introduce parts to new players is what makes it a tutorial. And as I have already said, once I learned that this was the intent, I conceded that my original criticisms no longer applied.

In case you haven't been following, here's how the thread has evolved:

My original position: "The implementation of science in 0.22 doesn't seem to do what people on the forum have been talking about as "career mode", rather it seems like an XP system. Does this lead to an "XP grind"? I think it does, we can look at the long history of MMOs as evidence. This doesn't seem to add end goals or challenges as such"

Then AlamoVampire posted a link to this video. The part you want to listen to is the part at 7 minutes 15 seconds. Here you go:

http://youtu.be/CupGRIL2h64?t=7m15s

When I saw this I said "Ahhh, this is not the career mode you've been looking for". It's a tutorial. And if that is its intended purpose, then the mechanic is probably fine.

But while I was saying this, a select few people decided to jump in and say really entertaining and irrelevant things, such as:

- RAAAAGH ALPHA"

- "You can't talk about upcoming features and suggest ideas in the forum titled features and ideas! You can only discuss features that have already been release and which you've actually played and that, therefore, have already had dozens or hundreds of hours of work poured into them and which are therefore hard to change!" (This one is my absolute favourite, I nearly spilled my drink laughing when I read that)

- "RAAAGH ALPHA"

- etc.

And since then, I have had a wonderful time pointing out the nonsense of such statements.

[Person012345]

Then AlamoVampire posted a link to this video. The part you want to listen to is the part at 7 minutes 15 seconds. Here you go:

http://youtu.be/CupGRIL2h64?t=7m15s

That doesn't say "it's a tutorial". I don't take it as implying that even. Rather he's saying that the lower stages are simple and super easy in order to introduce new players to the game and not become too much of a grind. Rather than making the whole thing into a tutorial, it largely nullifies the whine of those who complain about getting pods before probes. It was always pretty obvious to me that we would be able to unlock the basic techs very very easily anyway. That doesn't tell me anything new.

I'm not going to pretend I know exactly how it will be, I am waiting to actually try it. When I play I'll let you know, as a relatively experienced player, how long it takes me to non-exploitatively get through the tech tree. If it takes me less than 10 or so, I might agree that it's too easy to the point of being a tutorial. Otherwise if it's more than that I will then wait until they add in other mechanics like money and so on that should theoretically make the whole thing more difficult before deciding. But right now I see no grounds for you calling the entire thing a tutorial.