A proposition to Squad regarding their decision on the implementation of resources.

[Themohawkninja]

Seeing as it would appear that the majority of the community that has bothered to vote on the thread "http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/61714-Multiplayer-or-resources" value resources above multiplayer, and those resources are what have been scrapped, I would like to propose something to Squad:

In the event that your team holds its current decision that resources are not to be included in the game after reviewing the community's outcry over the decision, I ask that you release the version of KSP with the resource system as a separate download, so that the modders in the community can tie up any loose ends that may be remaining in the code and let the community decide whether or not the system is too complicated for players to handle.

Obviously, this is under the assumption that your team has been working on the resource system beyond the pictures that you have shown us, as I don't believe that you would make such a decision had you not continued working on the resource system unbeknownst to the community in-between 0.19 and 0.23.

I am not asking you to change the development of any part of KSP, but rather I ask that you release all of the hard work that you have already put into the resource system for the community's enjoyment and/or understanding of your decision.

Please take this into consideration and reply to this thread as soon as possible so that the community can know if you are willing to let us play a resource-included Kerbal Space Program build.

Thank you.

Edited December 15, 2013 by Themohawkninja

[Luis]

Nice idea. But it will absolutely never happen. KSP is not Open Source. There is no way Squad is going to fork the development so that the community can take it in a different direction from their vision for the game. And frankly I don't think they should, either.

[Themohawkninja]

Nice idea. But it will absolutely never happen. KSP is not Open Source. There is no way Squad is going to fork the development so that the community can take it in a different direction from their vision for the game. And frankly I don't think they should, either.

I'm not suggesting that the community "take it in a different direction", I am merely suggesting that they release the allegedly over-complicated resource system (since it was somewhat implied that they have worked on it in-between 0.19 and 0.23) to the community since the community wants it so badly.

Think of it as a restaurant deciding not to release a new dish that got a lot of hype, because they thought that nobody would actually like it, so the restaurant decides to release the recipe for everyone to make at their house. The restaurant never releases the dish on their menu, but all of their customers get to see whether or not the dish really was as bad as the restaurant thought it would be. The restaurants menu never changes, just as KSP development wouldn't change.

[TMS]

I had wondered something similar myself; whether the development of the system was such that it could be packaged as-is and tapped into by mods.

[Murph]

Ok, several major issues with this:

1) Squad have not said that resource mining cancelled, only that they won't be doing it the way they previously were looking at, which is something quite different.

2) There is no version of KSP with resource mining, it doesn't exist, not in a way that's even close to usable by customers. They quite clearly shelved the development on resource mining long before it had reached the point of having a usefully complete implementation.

[Smidge204]

So out of 339 people (as if this reply) who have bothered to respond to that poll, 287 said they'd prefer resources over multiplayer. (I can't help but notice there is no neutral option in that poll, BTW.) Apparently 287 people is representative of the entire player base.

Meanwhile, if you're comfortable with small samples being representative of the entire player base, then a comfortable majority of people who responded to this poll would be just fine without a resource system.

That's a nice molehill of poutrage you got there. Keep digging and maybe someday it'll at least look like a mountain, yeah? Let the devs to their job.

=Smidge=

[Themohawkninja]

So out of 339 people (as if this reply) who have bothered to respond to that poll, 287 said they'd prefer resources over multiplayer. (I can't help but notice there is no neutral option in that poll, BTW.) Apparently 287 people is representative of the entire player base.

Meanwhile, if you're comfortable with small samples being representative of the entire player base, then a comfortable majority of people who responded to this poll would be just fine without a resource system.

That's a nice molehill of poutrage you got there. Keep digging and maybe someday it'll at least look like a mountain, yeah? Let the devs to their job.

=Smidge=

I don't consider people that don't bother to participate on the forums or make their voices heard to be part of the community. Since you can't get their opinion, it only makes sense to ignore them.

Also, that poll you cited shows that the stated majority is interested in a resource system.

Edited December 15, 2013 by Themohawkninja

[Themohawkninja]

Ok, several major issues with this:

1) Squad have not said that resource mining cancelled, only that they won't be doing it the way they previously were looking at, which is something quite different.

Source please.

2) There is no version of KSP with resource mining, it doesn't exist, not in a way that's even close to usable by customers. They quite clearly shelved the development on resource mining long before it had reached the point of having a usefully complete implementation.

If they were developing it, then there has to be a version that they made to test the resource system on. How else would they determine that it is too complicated, and how did those 0.19 pictures come to exist if there wasn't a version of KSP that had a resource system in it?

[Dartonal]

Just because it's too complicated doesn't mean that it works. Their progress may be extremely buggy and be impossible to play because it's too confusing. Squad won't release the source because it's their work not a mod they were paid to make it, do you really think they would release it for free?

[Murph]

Source please.

The KerbalKon closing video. It seemed pretty clear to me that what was said there was not that resource mining was completely cancelled. They reached a point where they decided that the design was "not fun", so have scrapped the design. It sounded very much like they still want to do something, just not what was previously planned, and sometime in the future.

If they were developing it, then there has to be a version that they made to test the resource system on. How else would they determine that it is too complicated, and how did those 0.19 pictures come to exist if there wasn't a version of KSP that had a resource system in it?

You don't need a complete implementation to reach the decision or conclusion that it's looking too complicated. From what was said in the KerbalKon video, my understanding is that they shelved the work long before it was complete, long before there was anything even close to suitable for any form of external release.

[Themohawkninja]

Just because it's too complicated doesn't mean that it works. Their progress may be extremely buggy and be impossible to play because it's too confusing. Squad won't release the source because it's their work not a mod they were paid to make it, do you really think they would release it for free?

I'm not using the premise of it's alleged over-complexity to come to the conclusion that it works, I am using the premise that there are pictures that suggest that it was being worked on and the continued work that was implied on the Twitch stream.

Secondly, I don't see why they wouldn't release their work since people mod the game already, and lastly, as long as you have already purchased the game, why wouldn't they release it for free? You bought the game with free access to all updates, so why not get free access to scrapped builds of the game?

[Themohawkninja]

The KerbalKon closing video. It seemed pretty clear to me that what was said there was not that resource mining was completely cancelled. They reached a point where they decided that the design was "not fun", so have scrapped the design. It sounded very much like they still want to do something, just not what was previously planned, and sometime in the future.

Well, considering that they are quite aware of how much we have wanted resources, why didn't they explicitly state that resources weren't out of the question, but just the way they were going to implement it was out of the question?

You don't need a complete implementation to reach the decision or conclusion that it's looking too complicated. From what was said in the KerbalKon video, my understanding is that they shelved the work long before it was complete, long before there was anything even close to suitable for any form of external release.

Either way it's an assumption, which is why I ask that the devs reply to my thread ASAP so we can get the real answer.

Edited December 16, 2013 by vexx32
Fixed your formatting for you :)

[Dunbaratu]

I don't consider people that don't bother to participate on the forums or make their voices heard to be part of the community. Since you can't get their opinion, it only makes sense to ignore them.

Wow there are so many problems with what you're saying here:

1. I don't consider an informal non-binding poll made by a normal user on the forum (not by SQUAD itself), with poorly thought out choices (note the lack of a neutral answer so you can't tell if you actually have the majority opinion or just the majority of people who wouldn't have answered that they're okay with either way) to be something I have to respond to to express my opinion to SQUAD. What you're saying here is exactly the equivalent of claiming a person who hung up on a telephone call by a pollster must have done so because they don't vote in elections. There's an enormous difference between the developers asking for feedback and then ignoring it (which is how you dishonestly characterized this) versus the developers ignoring (or perhaps not even noticing) an informal poll by a third-party that they themselves didn't ask for and didn't organize.

2. In the context of Squad constantly telling people over and over that multiplayer is utterly impossible without a re-write from scratch, you cannot differentiate how many people responding to that poll were avoiding saying "multiplayer" not because they don't want multiplayer, but because they are trying to be practical and think that it would be a debacle to try it, because they believe what SQUAD had been telling them. When a poll asks "would you rather have [impossible thing] or [possible thing]" a lot of people are going to answer with [possible thing] NOT because they like it more, but because they're trying to set more achievable goals. If it turns out that SQUAD has recently found a way to make multiplayer practical, and has changed their stance on that, then that should also invalidate any poll taken back when their official word was still that it was impossible. The fact that the respondents believed one of the two choices was impractical would have greatly skewed their answers.

[Themohawkninja]

Wow there are so many problems with what you're saying here:

1. I don't consider an informal non-binding poll made by a normal user on the forum (not by SQUAD itself), with poorly thought out choices (note the lack of a neutral answer so you can't tell if you actually have the majority opinion or just the majority of people who wouldn't have answered that they're okay with either way) to be something I have to respond to to express my opinion to SQUAD. What you're saying here is exactly the equivalent of claiming a person who hung up on a telephone call by a pollster must have done so because they don't vote in elections. There's an enormous difference between the developers asking for feedback and then ignoring it (which is how you dishonestly characterized this) versus the developers ignoring (or perhaps not even noticing) an informal poll by a third-party that they themselves didn't ask for and didn't organize.

Well, should Squad listen to its community? What you just stated seems to imply that you don't believe so. I am perfectly aware of the fact that it is an informal poll made by a third party, and I know for a fact that Squad has no right to pay attention to it, and I also am fully aware of the fact that it doesn't totally represent the full majority of everyone who plays the game. That being said, you don't criticize any poll of any kind just because it didn't ask everyone, because you know for a fact that such a task is outright impossible. Therefore you must look at the data presented to you and make an educated guess from there.

Just because you can't get everyone's opinion doesn't mean you ignore the opinions of the people that did respond.

2. In the context of Squad constantly telling people over and over that multiplayer is utterly impossible without a re-write from scratch, you cannot differentiate how many people responding to that poll were avoiding saying "multiplayer" not because they don't want multiplayer, but because they are trying to be practical and think that it would be a debacle to try it, because they believe what SQUAD had been telling them. When a poll asks "would you rather have [impossible thing] or [possible thing]" a lot of people are going to answer with [possible thing] NOT because they like it more, but because they're trying to set more achievable goals. If it turns out that SQUAD has recently found a way to make multiplayer practical, and has changed their stance on that, then that should also invalidate any poll taken back when their official word was still that it was impossible. The fact that the respondents believed one of the two choices was impractical would have greatly skewed their answers.

Seeing as both a resource system, and multiplayer have been proven to be possible with working mods as proof-of-concepts, you don't have much of a point here.

[LethalDose]

The community manager stated that he's going to address the issue on Monday.

[Dunbaratu]

Well, should Squad listen to its community? What you just stated seems to imply that you don't believe so.

No it doesn't. Next time try reading what I wrote. I am asserting that "its community" and "the set of users who happened to notice a single poll buried in a high traffic forum that had no official support and was just put there by some ordinary user" are not the same set of people.

That being said, you don't criticize any poll of any kind just because it didn't ask everyone, because you know for a fact that such a task is outright impossible. Therefore you must look at the data presented to you and make an educated guess from there.

And part of doing that is being honest about the bias in the selection. The science of how to get a *representative* sample to poll is not simple. And I already mentioned several factors that bias the sampling in the poll here.

Seeing as both a resource system, and multiplayer have been proven to be possible with working mods as proof-of-concepts, you don't have much of a point here.

That would only be true if:

1 - Both those mods worked equally well. They don't. KMP has serious problems that seem to support the idea that it's harder to implement muliutplayer than resources. A player who had tried both would know that one of those two mods is working a lot better than the other one is, thus introducing the same bias in the answers to the poll that I already mentioned.

2 - Both those mods had existed in the community for a very long time so everyone interested had a chance to try both at the time the poll was taken. They hadn't yet.

The fact remains that your insistence on presuming the poll is representative of the pure opinions of the community as a whole is a very bad assumption given the conditions under which it was taken.

Edited December 16, 2013 by Steven Mading

[Murph]

The fact remains that your insistence on presuming the poll is representative of the pure opinions of the community as a whole is a very bad assumption given the conditions under which it was taken.

I agree, the poll in question is fundamentally flawed, to the point of being useless as evidence. It's missing several options which are mandatory if it's to be at all representative. Namely: 1) Both resources and multiplayer. 2) Neither. 3) Don't care, as long as they keep pushing KSP forwards.

So, it's useless before you even consider that it probably doesn't actually represent the community due to lack of people participating in it. The overall climate which currently exists amongst those who feel strongly for resource mining is also likely to significantly skew the results from reality.

The poll is meaningless.

[Themohawkninja]

Then why don't more people point out that they would rather have multiplayer than resources? The only data that exists states otherwise, regardless of the fact that it is skewed. Therefore the poll, while skewed, is the only data that we have to base anything off of.

[Capt Snuggler]

Just because it's too complicated doesn't mean that it works. Their progress may be extremely buggy and be impossible to play because it's too confusing. Squad won't release the source because it's their work not a mod they were paid to make it, do you really think they would release it for free?

don't know about you but i paid for my copy of KSP.

*BUT*

could some one please clarify what is meant by "resources"? is it O2, CO2, Snacks and garbage? or fuel elements? (kethaine or similar?)

[Themohawkninja]

don't know about you but i paid for my copy of KSP.

*BUT*

could some one please clarify what is meant by "resources"? is it O2, CO2, Snacks and garbage? or fuel elements? (kethaine or similar?)

It's something a bit more complicated than that.

http://i.imgur.com/08hdJyj.png

EDIT: I have forgotten how to post pictures with the img tag, so just copy-and-paste that into your address bar.

[TimMartland]

Dude, resources are simply postponed indefinitely. They are in the list of 'to be added' but are not currently being worked on or planned for the next update. If you do think that resources is cancelled, I invite you to look at KSP wiki, which cites it as a 'Planned Feature'

As to the notion of the devs releasing what they had, what they had was small amounts if dysfunctional and incomplete code and a small amount of concept suggestions and designs (Such as the infamous resource flow diagram) which would be all but useless to anyone if released.

Resources will get here dude, be patient. Also multiplayer is announced for the next 6 months, which I am super excited about despite the sweeping generalisations and assumptions made by the argument 'X people voted for MP, Y for resources. As X>Y everyone is dying for resources and no one wants MP'

[Themohawkninja]

Dude, resources are simply postponed indefinitely. They are in the list of 'to be added' but are not currently being worked on or planned for the next update. If you do think that resources is cancelled, I invite you to look at KSP wiki, which cites it as a 'Planned Feature'

Don't trust the wiki. It's never updated to be perfectly accurate as it's user-edited.

As to the notion of the devs releasing what they had, what they had was small amounts if dysfunctional and incomplete code and a small amount of concept suggestions and designs (Such as the infamous resource flow diagram) which would be all but useless to anyone if released.

Which is a possibility. This threads secondary purpose is to find out just how complete the code is.

Resources will get here dude, be patient. Also multiplayer is announced for the next 6 months, which I am super excited about despite the sweeping generalisations and assumptions made by the argument 'X people voted for MP, Y for resources. As X>Y everyone is dying for resources and no one wants MP'

I didn't know people were making that big of an assumption. The data says otherwise, anyways.

[Capt Snuggler]

It's something a bit more complicated than that.

http://i.imgur.com/08hdJyj.png

EDIT: I have forgotten how to post pictures with the img tag, so just copy-and-paste that into your address bar.

right well that does look/sound cool! it's such a tough call! but i think i would have to say multi-player comes in second after a fuller richer game.

I think life support resources are absolutely necessary, even though they are not mentioned there, i guess that means they're ruled out too.

well I for one feel a little sad. while multi-player would be fun for messing about, I never thought of it as being major feature.

I only see multi-player as a tacked on little bonus where you can invite a friend to join your game(universe) and fly about with you. maybe drive your rover and collect science or help build your space station, nothing more.

Without resources in KSP, I think were all going to miss out in a really great, rewarding element and the developers are doing them selves a disservice. KSP will not be all it can be.

***just read some more recent posts. namely:

Dude, resources are simply postponed indefinitely. They are in the list of 'to be added' but are not currently being worked on or planned for the next update. If you do think that resources is cancelled, I invite you to look at KSP wiki, which cites it as a 'Planned Feature''

and

As I said, resources are coming. But multiplayer is coming sooner!

I agree. resources are shelved for now. there is still along way to go...

Edited December 16, 2013 by Capt Snuggler

[TimMartland]

Don't trust the wiki. It's never updated to be perfectly accurate as it's user-edited.

Which is a possibility. This threads secondary purpose is to find out just how complete the code is.

I didn't know people were making that big of an assumption. The data says otherwise, anyways.

1. The wiki is written surprisingly accurately, I think you will find. The section I referred to us probably te most scoured of all of them and is compiled of all the complete dredgings of what SQUAD releases. Also, they have AT NO POINT said that resources are cancelled in any way.

2. I agree it would be nice to find out what they have done, but given the short amount of time it was seemingly in the pipeline and the speed at which the issue was dropped It seems most probable that nothing truly functional and release worthy came of it

3. The data is innacurate and incomplete. The majority may well go with resources, but that does not make multiplayer any less significant.

As I said, resources are coming. But multiplayer is coming sooner!

As a side note, looking over this thread it seems 90% of replies say (albeit fairly elaborately)'You got something wrong dude' and a large amount of space is you tackling such criticisms. Your suggestion has 'some' merit, but is kinda flawed and based on several assumptions. Maybe you should try talking a step back, rationalising your point and proposing it again, as at its heart it has a point but its methodology is relatively incorrect,

[Themohawkninja]

1. The wiki is written surprisingly accurately, I think you will find. The section I referred to us probably te most scoured of all of them and is compiled of all the complete dredgings of what SQUAD releases. Also, they have AT NO POINT said that resources are cancelled in any way.

2. I agree it would be nice to find out what they have done, but given the short amount of time it was seemingly in the pipeline and the speed at which the issue was dropped It seems most probable that nothing truly functional and release worthy came of it

3. The data is innacurate and incomplete. The majority may well go with resources, but that does not make multiplayer any less significant.

As I said, resources are coming. But multiplayer is coming sooner!

As a side note, looking over this thread it seems 90% of replies say (albeit fairly elaborately)'You got something wrong dude' and a large amount of space is you tackling such criticisms. Your suggestion has 'some' merit, but is kinda flawed and based on several assumptions. Maybe you should try talking a step back, rationalising your point and proposing it again, as at its heart it has a point but its methodology is relatively incorrect,

Unfortunately, it's hard to rationalize a point whose only data is what is being criticized.

I doubt bringing up the fact that the poll has hundreds of votes (which is plenty as far as science in concerned, which only needs at least 30), and isn't very close at all to 50/50 would help much, since I would immediately get the criticism of the implied skewing.