Is Squad ditching the hardcore player?

[Skyrunner27]

I am starting to have a feeling of community discontent that I felt before the release of Simcity 2013. The community did not like the direction the devs were taking for releasing the reboot of the series. Here we have a game that has always been a silly space simulator, look at the none moving wiglets description. So far I have seen more people have a respect for space travel from the game than ever before. The thing is this game is working. If you want a game for "Hardcore players", a term I believe is made up because of an elitest attitude., then you can download orbiter design your own ship if you are "Hardcore" enough to make models.

[Specialist290]

Don't make the mistake of thinking that players are born into being "naive, stupid, filthy casuals" and "ultra, leet, MLG-pro, hardcore players;" one can easily become the other given enough time to become familiar with the game mechanics and what works and what doesn't. Don't make the mistake of thinking that a tutorial (and that is what the tech tree is) has to challenge a hardcore player.

This. On the one hand, I have the time and patience to enjoy about half of the games in Paradox Interactive's core library, which are known to lean heavily towards the simulationist aspect compared to things like Civilization and your typical RTS, as well as a number of other flight simulators and city-building / base management games. On the other hand, I also quite enjoy little games like Angry Birds when I have a little free time, and I'll also play the occasional mindless first-person shooter without any qualms whatsoever.

What I'm worried about is people on these forums using labels like "casual" and "hardcore" to polarize the KSP community into two more armed camps that constantly go at one another's throats for no other reason than sheer bloody-mindedness.

[satcharna]

Here we have a game that has always been a silly space simulator, look at the none moving wiglets description.

The part descriptions are a part of the issue, actually. I don't mind having a silly aspect to it, but the part descriptions are just plain daft, no matter which way you look at it. They don't explain anything, and they're not even particularly funny. "lel we fund it in junkyard is scince parts now kaykay?" doesn't work, because a simple "This is a part for doing science. By clicking it during various situations, you can unlock new parts!" works so much better.

[dlrk]

To be perfectly honest, Specialist, I don't have anything against casual players. If Squad were to at least make a statement that they will support or officially implement the hardcore features, I'd be happy. I just don't like the fact that a great deal of KSP's audience is being railroaded.

(and look what happened with SC 2013).

MS Flight. Simcity 2013. Star Wars Galaxies. All games wrecked by a desire to pursue a more casual audience exclusive of a more complex audience. The history is clear.

[boomerdog2000]

How on earth is this a kids game? You have to know orbital mechanics to get literally anywhere. If you're not using Kerbal Engineer or Mechjeb for the calculations you have to do some serious math to figure out if your craft will be able to make it out to most of the other planets.

[Seret]

So what are the OP's concerns? What's causing him to imply that the game is leaving behind the hardcore crowd? Why does he claim the FAR and Deadly Reentry crowd are being driven away? I don't understand any of this.

This. Dlrk, can you explain? Is this solely because the parts of Career Mode implemented in 0.22 were aimed at being instructional for new players? I don't see how adding a feature that's good for new players does anything to harm more experienced ones. After all, nothing was removed from the game for 0.22, it's no less hard than 0.21 was.

[dlrk]

My concern is mainly because of Squad's silence in the face of suggestions, complaints and concerns.

[Crush]

On a completely unrelated note I would like to ask: Is there still someone who thinks I was wrong when I predicted that career mode would split the whole KSP community and turn a large part of them against Squad, no matter what they do?

[nismobg]

To be honest, the idea of a "hardcore" player is silly, and even harmful to video game as a medium.

This statement can be posted only by a person who has never played a major AAA release catering to long term player base.

Hardcore gamers are the 1st to come and bring the casuals after.They are the ones giving constructive feed back, troubleshooting and most of the times testing without complaining. I will give you an example of really good space sim/game ruined bad before its even out, because it tries to cater to the casual base-> X:Rebirth just watch it burn , sadly.

[FEichinger]

Hello there

Look, guys, we all know that there's significant discontent with what people perceive as the target audience. As usual, there's a case to be made for pretty much every side to this. But here's the thing: Having complex mechanics and a conclusive system is not mutually exclusive with a goofy atmosphere. Having some funny flavour text doesn't take away anything from the fact that you're placing an advanced space station in orbit, or drilling for {insert resource} on a body.

Yes, there's a problem when features are implemented in a manner that does take away from this all and is purely based on the target audience. Or, to put it simple: "Nobody wants the game dumbed-down." There may be technical restrictions causing this, or it may indeed be a marketing decision - I don't know and, frankly, neither do you. You can make assumptions, but at the end of the day, it's just assumptions. The point I'm trying to make here is that this is all very fluid right now - Career Mode has just been started, the tech tree is just a tiny fraction and certainly doesn't make sense if you look at it as the be-all end-all of Career Mode - I get that, too. But all of this can - and most certainly will - change over time.

The point at which features are actually finalised and end up falling short for absolutely no good reason at all, heck, I'll join you all in screaming and screaming loudly. But right now? That's not the case and it doesn't even look like it will be the case - to me at any rate.

For now, I'm not going to close this thread. I will, however, ask you all to remain nice to each other and more importantly to the very people you're expecting to implement what you ask for. For now, there's always mods to finetune the game to your precise liking.

FEichinger

[satcharna]

How on earth is this a kids game? You have to know orbital mechanics to get literally anywhere. If you're not using Kerbal Engineer or Mechjeb for the calculations you have to do some serious math to figure out if your craft will be able to make it out to most of the other planets.

You don't have to use any mod. I've done multiple-body landings and returns around Jool without mods at all, and without doing any math, simply by estimating how much fuel would be spent. The real problem is that the game tells you none of this. A proper tutorial about estimating fuel usage, or even a built-in delta-v counter for the staging setup, would help a lot more than simply limiting parts to what most people could get to Mun or Duna with.

[Skyrunner27]

What I'm worried about is people on these forums using labels like "casual" and "hardcore" to polarize the KSP community into two more armed camps that constantly go at one another's throats for no other reason than sheer bloody-mindedness.

This is exactly why I hate the claims of "Hardcore" and "casual" bias in game development. I mean the OP talked about using mods does my stock campaign make me "hardcore". Even more dose someones realtime campaign even "Hardercoreer"

[Specialist290]

To be perfectly honest, Specialist, I don't have anything against casual players. If Squad were to at least make a statement that they will support or officially implement the hardcore features, I'd be happy. I just don't like the fact that a great deal of KSP's audience is being railroaded.

(and look what happened with SC 2013).

Fair enough.

MS Flight. Simcity 2013. Star Wars Galaxies. All games wrecked by a desire to pursue a more casual audience exclusive of a more complex audience. The history is clear.

And I can counterpoint with Master of Orion III -- a game that ruined a popular franchise by delving so far into mindless complexity that it completely turned off both new players and fans of the previous games. Granted, this was only one of a number of issues that game had, but it was a pretty major one.

I'm not saying that more complexity in a game is a bad thing, but you have to find a happy medium. If you try to appeal exclusively to one extreme or another, you're going to end up with a flop. I have issues of my own with the way the current tech tree and science system works, so I can understand your concerns, but I'm hoping that Squad will find a way to integrate it into a more complete and robust campaign system that will provide sufficient measures of challenge and engagement for all players regardless of skill level.

Edited October 19, 2013 by Specialist290

[boomerdog2000]

What silence? They are focusing on a completely different subject right now. Planning out an entire career mode is a completely different line of thought and programming than an improved aerodynamic model, with significantly more gain to the community at large. They are not silent on the topic if they have said "not right now."

[Exposure]

MS Flight. Simcity 2013. Star Wars Galaxies. All games wrecked by a desire to pursue a more casual audience exclusive of a more complex audience. The history is clear.

Having actually played SimCity 2013, its major issue was not from the fact it tried to cater casuals. (And even then I'm doubting that since cities can get pretty complicated as you grow and start relying on other cities to the point disaster dominoes can ensue very easily if you don't bother planning things out.)

While the other things are much more debatable, IMO this is not what is happening to KSP, and honestly unless we go weeks without Squad making any sort of announcement or posting what they're going to do with career mode I think it's a bit early to start calling doom with the initial version of career mode we got.

I mean, I don't think they're going to miss the constant refrain of posts I've noticed that tends to be on the lines of "The tech tree doesn't really cater to veterans as stated" and/or "career mode in general doesn't really cater to newbies as stated"

Edited October 19, 2013 by Exposure

[dlrk]

Boomer, they're being completely silent about the career mode concerns. Right now, the top post on the forum should be posted by Squad and be a response to the feedback on career mode.

Exposure, I've played SC as well, and it's main issue was that it tried to appeal to the causal crowd, and made some very bad decisions in the process, the biggest on being the "Everyone builds tiny cities and plays online!"

[Sof]

People are complaining about the science "goo" canisters being "unhardcore"?

Did you people never read the descriptions for the parts before now? Do you not realise you are flying green men around with googly eyes and massive heads? This game is a funny take on space programs hiding a rather complex physics simulator behind it.

The reason they went for the career mode now instead of making re-entry heat has been explained many times in the weekly updates and various other squad sources. They want to have the ground work in place for all aspects of their game before they can keep building on it.

What they didn't want to do was only work on the sandbox mode until 0.8 and then realise they couldn't find a way to shoehorn career mode in as none of the parts or abilities are compatible with R&D and some sort of economy.

However, I don't see how any of this would alienate a hardcore player. Don't like the career mode? Don't play it. The tutorial isn't in place yet, the tech tree is version 0.01. It is simply a first trial run of the final product. They are releasing that now because there is a lot of work to be done on it and that is the first piece to put into place. How else are they going to restrict the unlocking of parts, and how else would they test this before the game is complete if they don't try now?

Re-entry heat, in order to fit into the game, would require many different heat shield parts, that would continuously have to be redesigned as new parts got made. There would have to be tutorials put into place and the right shields unlocked at the right time in the tech tree as it would be very hard to just guestimate your way back down.

Thus they wait for things like resources and re-entry because, even though we know the game can do that in its current state, Squad are looking ahead to the release of the next update, the next year of updates and the final game. They are the ones making the game. If they know that adding "hardcore" features in now just causes headaches later, why shouldn't they wait?

The hardcore crowd got along perfectly fine before with mods to suit their tastes.

[satcharna]

Having actually played SimCity 2013, its major issue was not from the fact it tried to cater casuals. (And even then I'm doubting that since cities can get pretty complicated as you grow and start relying on other cities to the point disaster dominoes can ensue very easily if you don't bother planning things out.)

Actually, most of its issues could be poured down to casualization. The cities are tiny because large cities were, and I'm quoting Maxis here, "too hard", so EA told them to limit the city size. The result was tiny cities, with hardly any actual gameplay.

The fact that EA's meddling with DRM meant that the game got stuck with server-side saving that doesn't work is another problem entirely, but one that isn't comparable to what's going on with KSP, as Squad are thankfully not doing DRM at the moment.

[Lheim]

So what are the OP's concerns? What's causing him to imply that the game is leaving behind the hardcore crowd? Why does he claim the FAR and Deadly Reentry crowd are being driven away? I don't understand any of this.

Nor do I.

I think he's reacting to the semi-easy implementation of the tech tree.

The guy is forgetting newbies, the guy is forgetting that once you max the tech tree the solar system is STILL THERE and you're essentially back in sandbox mode. The guy's forgetting that this is a game in the middle of development.

This guy is a type of internet game GUY you see all over the place - the people who'd complain that if a game that didn't previously have tutorials got them, they were 'catering to the casual nubs'.

[Exposure]

Actually, most of its issues could be poured down to casualization. The cities are tiny because large cities were, and I'm quoting Maxis here, "too hard", so EA told them to limit the city size. The result was tiny cities, with hardly any actual gameplay.

If that's what you think whoever's been telling you about SC never actually got very far in playing the game.

The 2kmx2km limit is honestly far more punishing than it is "helpful".

[Alguien]

the rocket parts found lying by the side of the road.

To be fair, i am sure that descriptions were said to be placeholders back in the day. And personally i am with satcharna, the descriptions aren't really helpful at all (could said the same about the community "ADD MORE BOSTERS!" thing too)

[Seret]

My concern is mainly because of Squad's silence in the face of suggestions, complaints and concerns.

Complaints about what? 0.22? It's been how many days since release? They work really hard in the run up to release, they're probably taking a well-earned break and/or doing some team-building. Chill.

[dlrk]

Lheim, do me a favor, don't speculate about the kind of guy I am(and why you capitalized guy, I have no idea, and I'm not going to speculate). My concern derives from the fact that Squad is plowing ahead and not responding to feedback. That's it. Tutorials would be a great idea, and I wouldn't object in the least.

My concern is Squad's silence in the face of feedback. That's it. I really do not appreciate the personal attack.

[Lheim]

If that's what you think whoever's been telling you about SC never actually got very far in playing the game.

The 2kmx2km limit is honestly far more punishing than it is "helpful".

Yep. No, no, Simcity's problems come down to the developers assuming players just wouldn't notice their shoddy work or the lack of a game in the toy.

[Sof]

Actually, most of its issues could be poured down to casualization. The cities are tiny because large cities were, and I'm quoting Maxis here, "too hard", so EA told them to limit the city size. The result was tiny cities, with hardly any actual gameplay.

The fact that EA's meddling with DRM meant that the game got stuck with server-side saving that doesn't work is another problem entirely, but one that isn't comparable to what's going on with KSP, as Squad are thankfully not doing DRM at the moment.

SC13 went bad because of the DRM sure, but the smaller city sizes had nothing to do with dumbing down. The real reason behind the smaller sizes was due to the increased complexity of the various resources they were moving around. Larger cities would make the minimum requirements exceed most PCs.

Since, in order to build the best city possible, you now need just as much planning over several different cities that work together.