[Discussion] Questionable design decisions

[PDCWolf]

Hi everyone. Most of the time, I try to voice my concerns to the devs directly, but I’ve realized that they don’t really listen. So now I want to talk to the general public to see if I’m not the only one who’s worried with how things are going.

You are not the only one. That's for sure. Now sit back and enjoy being called a troll.

So here’s the list of things that I find highly questionable and, actually, wrong:

1. My favorite, and a big one - lack of Delta-v indicator for ships and other important editor/in-flight info. According to devs, it would “ruin†the mystery of constructing stuff. In my opinion, the only thing it ruins is time. It wastes our own time that we could spend actually flying instead of re-building or calculating delta-v by hand. Also, here’s an inconsistency - there’s an actual delta-v indicator for maneuvers, and lots of detailed info about the planets. But why, why no more basic info?

"Solves part of the puzzle" said harvester, while telling everybody that he wanted something for people to get into orbiter knowing something when he started this project. Now he wants some kind of trial and error simulator it seems. Don't worry, fecal matter will probably hit the fan as soon as kEdu comes out and it has this kind of stuff.

I get why some of the players don’t care much about delta-v and efficiency. Because the base game doesn't tell them anything in the first place, and they don’t know the difference between playing with Delta-v displayed and without it! So they consider it as a normal thing. I haven’t used delta-v concept for a YEAR of playing KSP, until actually finding the formulas and started to calculate it by hand. Then quickly got Kerbal Engineer, since it’s PITA to calculate things by hand. It takes time, and I’m here to play the game. But now that I know what delta-v is, I can’t see how can I play without using it.

Not really, the ones that don't care are mostly the people doing SOKERBAL XD jokes. Even a dev said they hurt the game, but yeah, money first I guess.

2. Lack of reentry heat. Unfortunately, I think devs won’t ever implement it, at least not in a base game. And even if they would, as it was said, it would be done with something like “radiators†that diffuse heat, so they won’t “limit possible designs to take any shapes player might wantâ€Â. Apparently, there’s no such thing as inflatable heat shields and dynamic part creation.

Reentry heat was mentioned multiple times, There's no reason for it not to be implemented until now except for the constant focus changes. I began to believe it will never come because "it won't be fun", resources reference totally intended.

Also, reentry heat makes returning stuff back to Kerbal even more rewarding. And risks of losing Kerbals vs probe gives you even more choice here. But I’ll talk about probes a bit later.

3. Tech tree as a mean to introduce parts to the new players. This is just plain silly. Tech tree is not a tutorial, it’s a tech tree for a career mode. Tutorial (Training) is a separate thing in the main menu, hello? I get that it’s still WIP, but I’m talking about the whole concept that developers try to follow here. Harv actually SAID that it’s suppose to introduce parts to the new players, being a tutorial. But a tech tree is actually a part of the tycoon part of the game, so there should be different logic behind it, how it expands.

The tech tree deserves a book for itself to voice all the stuff wrong with it, a long one at that. Back-ass-ward logic, meant to be a tutorial but it teaches nothing, it just limits the parts. Manned flight first ("HEY, LET'S PRESENT THE TRIO TO THE NEW PLAYERS FIRST SO THAT THEY CAN KILL THEM FASTER").

4. Manned flights give too much advantages over the use of unmanned probes, while there’s little reason not to use kerbals. Also, lack of probe-sized experiments and few scientific equipment. Again, I get that it’s still WIP, but the concept that devs, according to their own words, would use here is that probes would be just cheaper to use than kerbals. But why should they give that much science? You can get so much of it by doing EVA reports from polar orbit by flying over different biomes. You still can’t scoop soil samples with unmanned modules. Or even take photographs and million of other readings. Astronauts in space are mostly there for servicing (mostly to control and repair). Electronics do most of the stuff. Here’s more. Kerbals don’t need to eat or breathe. But probes need to eat, electricity. I can go on here, but that should be enough to make a point.

"career is in development" is the common excuse for all this, but yeah, no solution or even a "yes, we know" has been given from the dev side.

5. No public roadmap. It’s bad for an early-access game (TotalBiscuit gave a good speech about this issue not some long time ago

). People have to be able to know what’s planned, and what isn’t. But whatever, you can keep people in the dark and be vague with most of the dev blogs. But it seems that they don’t even have their own internal road map. Even if there’s, they don’t stick to it, which defies the whole purpose of having one.

They can't give a road map if they are changing it as soon as a new money grabber comes at hand (Multiplayer, EDU, "Scope complete", whatever comes next).

6. “There’s a mod for it, stop asking for it†attitude. Devs don’t say that in our face literally, it’d be outrageous if they did, but you know what I’m talking about here, right?I love mods. But they’re not the base game. They’re not maintained by a paid developers. They have bugs, compatibility issues and brake with each update, and frequently get abandoned.

This is a problem with the community, and it happens on every moddable game. It's pretty much like saying "Yeah, we know the game is cr*p, here's a mod, play with it or shut up". Shows the conformism from the community, which also happens on every indie game for some reason.

And #6 brings me to my final words. The biggest problem with everything I’ve just talked about is that I’m 99% sure that it won’t change until the 1.0 release. It saddens me to say that the devs made me don’t care about what they do anymore, because of lots of their questionable (and wrong) actions. So while I still play with joy, I have to use mods, have to start over and over again every once in a while because of it, which is okay for an early-access game if you think of it. But now I just wait for them to finish. Not to see a finished product, but so that mods would stop break and I can have persistence peacefully.

It's a long post already, and I probably missed or forgot something, but I'll stop for now. What do you think?

Me? I agree with this, even if your reasons differ from mine. The rest of the forums probably think you are a troll.

[macegee]

What exactly do you mean by this? The amount of Delta-V your ship still has? Because adding up the few navigation point Delta-Vs to know the total amount you need is not that complicated. If it is the first one: a beginner won't need it. And for an expert it's just a good estimate, because obviously your real Delta-V depends on your pilot skills as well (i.e. when to accelerate, seperate stages, optimize your route etc.). If you really want to crunch the numbers, feel free to calculate it for yourself. But it is necessary to understand and play the game. This is not a NASA simulator, this game is supposed to be fun even when just calculating via rule-of-thumb.

Actually, as a beginner, if someone would've told me that in order to get in space I simply need a rocket with ~5000 meters of delta-v and TWR of 1.5+, and that won't explode during flight, and I had such indicators in the editor, it would've made things SO much easier.

It still does for me, after 1.5+ years of playing.

This is not that uncommon. Actually, many tycoon-like games only have a campaign to prepare for the multiplayer and "skirmish" matches. 2070 A.D. is a good example for that.

KSP is in its core still a sandbox game, and I consider that a good thing.

There's a tutorial section for that. Training missions. Why on earth should a tech tree in a career mode be a part of that? I can't understand such design decision.

Edited February 7, 2014 by macegee

[Dirty Bob]

What do you think?

Was there a public roadmap when you bought the game? No, there wasn't. They never offered one and you bought the game knowing this. Who's fault is this?

The rest of your points are purely opinion with the exception of 6 just being a rant.

I'm not "worried with how things are going". You know why? I've yet to find a single game that I didn't disagree with parts of the game design, yet the games always seem to live on. I'm not saying that I even disagree with everything you said. I'm just not going to act like the game will fall apart because of this.

Edited February 7, 2014 by Dirty Bob

[Brapness]

@PDCWolf: Has it occurred to you that it may be your unpleasant manner and black and white view of the community that makes people label you a troll. If you are going to criticize someone else's opinion, you should be good natured enough to take criticism of yours maturely.

[Kosmic Debris]

A couple of thoughts, just one guy's take.

There's a couple of balances being struck here. First, a healthy mod community is going to be (and is already) a very important aspect for the success of the game. Exactly where that line should be, i.e. what should be in the product and what should be left for a mod is a difficult design decision with real economic and community impact. It's not an easy choice, and of course it will change over time...but as the game is in pre-release have a little patience for it to sort out and respect that it's a difficult, complex decision. Personally, I think a good compromise would be a very rudimentary flight computer like the Apollo-era DSKY - you have to know what you want to do, but the computer could execute it. The maneuver nodes are a good graphical approach to this, but I'd like to see something a bit richer. And, as you note, MechJeb is there and will always improve for something more full-featured.

Second, it's supposed to be a game - and that balance between game and simulator has always been a dangerous one. Microsoft Flight Simulator died to some extent because it was too much of a simulator...and Microsoft Flight died because it was too much of a game. It would be easy for the designers to fail one way or the other...so in this pre-release phase they're trying things out again. Patience and feedback are the way to handle this, as you're doing.

The Kerbaled spaceflight thing is kind of a pet peeve of mine; I personally feel that KSP is heading too much in the direction of being an educational tool and focusing on science...while I believe the real value (in the real world) is learning to live and work in space. The fact that there is nothing useful to do in KSP other than "science" irks me as it mirrors real life - I'm all for science in space and the very real and practical benefits...but I believe strongly there's useful work to be done as we reach out to other planets. Big, bold goals are missing in KSP...as they are in our real-life space programs. I'm thankful for the community members that come up with and execute on big projects - it's inspiring.

The public roadmap thing I get completely. I don't think anyone's confused that this is a commercial project - so the need to a) protect features until release and avoid making and breaking commitments is key. I learned the hard way that a very cool feature that takes a ton of time to come up with and implement...can be copied in a week or less if it leaks early. It sucks.

So in a nutshell - all valid concerns and it's good to get them out and discussed.

[r4pt0r]

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/12/23/kerbal-space-program-dev-on-random-solar-systems-the-joy-of-failure-and-the-cult-of-steam/

Some players are interested in a delta-V indicator [which would show you exactly how much thrust a rocket has, basically]. What do you think?

Falange: I wanted it sometimes, and I un-wanted it other times. In the end, it takes away a gameplay element because it takes some of the guesswork and some of the trial and error and figuring out for yourself what the delta-V is. It might take some of the magic away. One of the great things about KSP is doing just what Chad was doing just now [Editor's note: this was Thursday afternoon, and Chad Jenkins was in the process of livesteaming his creation of a flying rocket-powered surfboard, killing two-dozen Kerbals in the process]. That ridiculous contraption he was doing, just trying to see if he could make it to the water, just shooting it on a rocket. If you make it too technical, it’s certainly possible to calculate it. But it’s like giving the answer to a puzzle sometimes, and I don’t know if we want that. The same applies to showing how much burn time you have remaining. I think there’s always this element of tension of trying to calculate in your head how much fuel you have left and if you’re going to make it. It’s like filling out the crossword puzzle for you.

i agree with the devs. my most fun mission was a manned ike return mission where i returned to kerbin with only 2units of fuel left. nerve wracking and very rewarding to make it.

and i think the devs are better off without a public road map. im not for multiplayer myself, but once they saw it was possible they decided to change their plans and started that whole operation.

[PDCWolf]

I'm not "worried with how things are going". You know why? I've yet to find a single game that I didn't disagree with parts of the game design, yet the games always seem to live on. I'm not saying that I even disagree with everything you said. I'm just not going to act like the game will fall apart because of this.

Not really agreeing or disagreeing with you, but I think "living on" is not a good way to judge a game's progress (neither is sales for me). I mean, look at minecraft, that thing lives on and has a lot of sales, now go and ask to the people that played when the game was in "indev" and got promises from notch personally.

@PDCWolf: Has it occurred to you that it may be your unpleasant manner and black and white view of the community that makes people label you a troll. If you are going to criticize someone else's opinion, you should be good natured enough to take criticism of yours maturely.

"black and white view of the community" yeah, the one I talked about on the "what's the community to squad" thread, right? that's totally black and white. Unpleasant manner? Sure, I can take that one, what I can't understand is how a few samples of sarcasm can make people so crazy as to really skip through an entire post just because of a few words. About being called troll, I don't really care.

[r4pt0r]

but in the end minecraft was notches game and he was allowed to change his mind on what features he wants in the game or not.

[Clockwork_werewolf]

I mean, look at minecraft, that thing lives on and has a lot of sales, now go and ask to the people that played when the game was in "indev" and got promises from notch personally.

Interesting considering I was one of those people. I never got promises from notch personally but I do feel bad about some of the stated additions that never came about. I would have much rather not know what was going to be added before it was added. A new item is a nice surprise, a feature not added is depressing. This supports the no road map idea. I actually got annoyed when notch stopped working on the game, the people who took over may have been technically adept but they had no imagination. They added creature like the witch, which did nothing new unlike notches Enderman (yea slender-man copy but fun game-play).

I do understand your point about "living on" not being a good indicator though. I think a better judge is to see how many people are still buying it and how often they like it enough to join things like this forum. I think most of Minecrafts new players are 3 year olds who are now allowed to play it. I get the impression this is not what is happening with KSP

[Fett2oo5]

1. Adding basic craft stats to the game - I agree with adding craft stats into the stock game. The thing I've loved the most about this game is learning. Reenforcing terms and math I've used in the past, learning of new terms and procedures, and learning to plan out missions before they leave. Because of this I think it would be great for a new player to learn what Delta-V is, and how it is used. Having it as optional is obviously ideal, perhaps even unlock-able after a criteria is met.

We all know that people play KSP differently, some just like to build, some just like to fly, some like to plan missions, some want to conquer the system. I believe a majority of people that will pick up the game will not be prepared with the knowledge to conquer the system and easily travel to other worlds. They will be experimenting with builds and missions.

If the option were there to display craft stats, like mass, TWR, and Delta-V they could begin to learn WHY their craft or mission didn't work. Providing a problem and/or situation to solve; rather than a "mystery" to solve, AND THEN a problem to solve.

To this end, I believe craft stats would be a good addition to the stock game. An indispensable utility for the pros, and a learning tool for the beginners.

2. Re-entry Heat. I agree with the devs on this topic. However I can understand why some players would like to have it in game. How about the ability to select re-entry heat to be turned on or off in the settings? Like selecting a difficulty level.

3. Tech tree/Tutorials - I agree there should be a few more tutorials in the beginning of the game, there are many tools and procedures that are left to the player to "run into" and then not know what to do.

The tech tree could be reworked a little to be more well rounded, and science a little harder to get. As of now you can build 1 to two craft and easily unlock a majority of the tech tree with just a few missions. You are able to unlock all of(pretty close to all) the techtree with out even making it to another planet. I believe the science requirements and when you unlock parts of it should reflect the kind and amount of parts available. Either tweak the science or add more parts.

4. Unmanned/Manned - I believe this can be address with a tech tree adjustment.

5. Publicizing development schedule - Letting the public know your full direction, schedule, and priorities for stages of development would be a bad thing for the entire community.

6. There's a mod for that - From what I understand Squad is not that big, and from what I assume can't afford to be big. So the amount of Devs available to dedicate to aspects of the game is limited. Because of this I don't expect them to be able to keep up with player demand for more options, more parts, more features, and all the other creative ideas that the public comes up with. I actually like that mods are allowed to be applied, and that the community creates their own additions to the game. You get to, well, modify the game as you wish. If you want to fully cheat, you can, if you just want a little more information about your craft you can. It creates a level of player involvement with their game, you can choose to have pure stock, just one or two mods, or a plethora of mods.

Edited February 7, 2014 by Fett2oo5

[Dispatcher]

I like the fact that Squad is mod friendly; even supportive to an extent. I do understand what you wrote about a dV indicator; which is why I use Kerbal Engineer. If such an indicator was incorporated by Squad into KSP, I'd actually like to see it become part of the tech tree; somewhere in the second half of the tree. Even then, I'd rather that it be something that we can choose to use or not (as are the KE parts), once we unlock it.

Given Squad's tendency to embrace (eventually) some reasonable amount of realism, I would not be surprised to find in future updates: more realistic aerodynamics and "deadly reentry", along with heat shields. Perhaps the devs will even require us to feed, water, shelter and supply oxygen to space bound Kerbals in the future, but that's speculation. Imagine radiation and solar flares; did we think to add that shelter module to our space station or interplanetary ship?

The game is fun and seems to get better as the updates roll in, so I tend to think Squad will continue in that direction.

[regex]

1. I think the devs and some of the community could be met halfway with a wet and dry mass indicator for each stage. Delta-V is easy to calculate from there.

2. I, too, want to see reentry heat in the game.

3. Tech tree could use some work but don't ask for it to be "human realistic". This is a cartoony game about little green men, let's keep it that way.

4. I much prefer manned flights because they're more challenging and carry a risk. Probes are quite easy to build and much lighter, and thus less challenging. For this reason, Kerbaled flights should always generate greater benefits. While probes could use some love, bringing a Kerbal along should always be much more advantageous in terms of reward.

5. Eh... I'm not worried about it. To me KSP seems to be an organic growth that the devs add to. They're also a small team working on their first project and I'd hate to see them waste time drawing out roadmaps.

6. I have no idea where you get this attitude.

[rkman]

I have not much of an issue with the fact that certain features are not yet in the game, even though some of those would improve the game's playability an accessibility for the large not-so-geeky segment of ksp's player base.

Based on recent statements by Squad/Harvester though, i am worried that some of those features will not be in the final game (though they might be in the educational version of the game), most notably rocket design tools such as a delta-v indicator.

[macegee]

"Solves part of the puzzle" said harvester, while telling everybody that he wanted something for people to get into orbiter knowing something when he started this project. Now he wants some kind of trial and error simulator it seems. Don't worry, fecal matter will probably hit the fan as soon as kEdu comes out and it has this kind of stuff.

Indeed, it's interesting to see what KSP Edu will actually bring. And how would they keep up with vanilla game updates. And how much would they charge for it. Especially knowing that there's a lot of mods with such functions that are free.

I also don't understand why would they give KSP Edu for free only to those who have more than one copy of KSP. Who needs more than one copy of a game for himself anyway?

Not really, the ones that don't care are mostly the people doing SOKERBAL XD jokes. Even a dev said they hurt the game, but yeah, money first I guess.

Yeah, actually, there was a note to that Bac9's blog post saying that his thoughts are not representing SQUAD's thoughts. It was deleted afterwards, but still, we get the idea that it actually didn't represent it. And now Bac9 isn't part of the SQUAD anymore.

"career is in development" is the common excuse for all this, but yeah, no solution or even a "yes, we know" has been given from the dev side.

While it's true that it's still WIP, SQUAD is clearly not that good at communicating with players. Last KerbalKon was a good example of that. And most of the dev blogs are vague.

Me? I agree with this, even if your reasons differ from mine. The rest of the forums probably think you are a troll.

I'm not even a native English speaker, so didn't really want any of my words to sound at least a bit trollish. Hope it won't derail the conversation. There's been a lot of good ideas already, will try to answer to as many of them as I can.

[pxi]

I disagree with the notion that Squad are not listening to the players. Watching the devstream, MaxMaps seems to be aware of a lot of the controversial issues, at least insofar as mentioning them in the stream. Whether or not the devs agree with one side or another on any of these issues is another matter, but listening does not seem to be the issue.

As far as having a roadmap, I'd agree with this in principle, but in fairness to Squad, KSP as a game is a bit outside of the box in terms of gameplay to begin with. This isn't like an FPS where there are thousands of similar games that you can point at and say, "we'll have x, y and z, but not f and j." There seems to be very little in the way of other games that Squad can reference for a featureset. Frankly I'm inclined to give Squad a pass on the roadmap.

Incidentally I'm aware of TotalBiscuit's video on early-access games. Generally I agree with his stance. For me, this is one of three early-access games I've paid for. In this particular case, it was my opinion that (with mods) the game was already complete enough to warrent purchase, and that frankly the game is doing something different enough that I wanted to encourage development of the game. As it turns out, I've paid roughly €0.0197005516154452 per hour of gameplay for the privilage. Even if development stopped tomorrow, I couldn't really feel like I was ripped off.

As far as the mods go, like many who play KSP, I'd have a list of mods I'd love to see become stock. I have doubts that the community would ever reach consensus about what mods should have that distinction however. As it stands, I suspect the popularity of various mods informs Squad's decisions quite a bit. Pragmatically, I prefer the situation where I can add interesting features I want right now, even if it necessitates enduring issues when the game is updated etc. I also have to question if a feature is so important to someone, a mod exists that fulfils that purpose, which they then refuse to use because it is not part of stock - exactly how important is that feature to the person?

[Max Grant]

Here's an interesting perspective on this, that I will leave here and never speak of again.

I am a professional IT systems programmer. I recognize the kind of work Squad are about.

Many of the complaints about the game seem to assume that the resources of all computers are infinite, and that their capabilities are too. In reality, many of the problems squad faces are due to the limits of the technology, or even the limits of our science.

The end process of this simulator is not a real-world product. Therefore, it's not a real-world simulator. Expecting it to be one is silly. It's a fictional game world. I enjoy it on its own merits.

I also rarely visit the intentions of another artist, which is what this also is. It is a work of gaming art. At some point, people need to understand that things like this aren't actually a democracy. The guy making the work has to please himself first or he can't continue making it, because if it isn't the work he wants to make, not even tremendous amounts of money can force him to keep working on it if he hates it.

If you're that out of shape about how the game works, it costs you virtually nothing you don't already have to write your own game.

[KasperVld]

I moved this thread to the Development Discussion board, because I think it's more suited there considering the direction it's taking

[nholzric]

1. No stock dV indicator: I agree. I understand the whole "mystery" thing, but some of us spend a lot of effort calculating it out of game anyway. For such an intuitive feature, the "mystery" is not worth the pain of doing it over and over out-of-game.

2. No reentry heat: I'll bet many people (including me) get tremendous performance gains by doing ridiculous aerobraking. RIDICULOUS. AEROBRAKING. But, I think this is a feature, not a bug. Ridiculous rocket design (from an IRL perspective), ridiculous aerobraking, ridiculously Kerbal. I'm glad there's a mod for those with more hard-core tendencies.

3. Tutorialish tech tree: I've been playing KSP for several years and I like the tech tree. Yeah it's not logical from a IRL perspective, but I enjoy how it casts many of the parts I haven't used in Sandbox in a long time in a new light. I *hope* the new contracts feature - in conjunction with the tech tree - continues to flesh out the reason *WHY* for using most/all of the stock parts and going doing Kerbaly stuff.

4. Manned vs probes: Meh, WIP mate.

5. No public roadmap: Someone wrote something about "forum riots". LOL Yeah, a lot of the charm from early-access games comes from the excitement of new releases and a lot of the excitement comes from not knowing what exactly is next. Plus, I have to believe that you make better decisions in game development by being adaptable - that you learn valuable things as the game is built. So a roadmap would be more frustrating and a kill-joy than anything.

6. Don't ask for mod material: Meh. I think they've done a reasonable job of incorporating some mods into vanilla. I'm sure everyone has a different list of mods that should be incorporated. I don't use many mods myself, but I also find it fun starting over after each update release. I probably would have been done with KSP a long time ago if it weren't for new games each release. Welcome to early-access!

Thanks for the post, even though I disagree with most of it. It was fun to think through these things. Good luck, and have fun!

[Kerbart]

Public roadmap?

Two words: Adam. Osborne.

[macegee]

I'm just not sure why you are trying to control a successful game. If you want to change something then make a mod. You are welcome to but don't try and change my game without asking me and all the other people who play it (including NASA apparently). I have given my money to the Dev and this is what gives them the right to choose its path for right or wrong.

I say again, I'm actually here to talk to other players about it, and _do_not_ ask devs to change anything. I just want opinions, that's it. Everything I'm talking about was suggested before. But there're forum rules that state "do not suggest this and that" and "do not necro old posts".

You want to hear what Maxmaps told me when I asked him about delta-v and other info pages some months ago? Here you go:

Answer #1 from Maxmaps from 08.08.2013:

Hi!

We're looking for a way to fit this info into the game without cluttering the UI, unsure if we will, but it'd certainly be cool to have!

Answer #2 from Maxmaps from 14.08.2013:

We know the stock game needs this information for eventual higher difficulties in career mode and the like. As I said, we're looking for a way to implement this without them causing UI clutter, since we're looking at things like Protractor and Kerbal Engineer, which while incredibly useful could use a pass in user friendlyness or two. Rest assured that the information they provide will be in the stock game at some point, but right now they're very much in a drawing board state.

And then we all know what Harvester thinks of it now - we don't get no delta-v indicators. But that's what I do when I have anything to say to the devs - I go and send an e-mail. Now I want to hear your thoughts of such decisions such as this one, to cut another feature.

I'm tired by now, will return to those posts I didn't answer yet next time.

[boony]

They can't give a road map if they are changing it as soon as a new money grabber comes at hand (Multiplayer, EDU, "Scope complete", whatever comes next).

This post helps me a lot understanding what's going on with the roadmap. Especially the whole multiplayer thing seemed very strange, as devs said there will be none not long ago and now are already putting coding efforts into it. I think this also explains the most causes like for "dev dont hear to the community", "its in a mod so stop complaining". Everyone in this forum has already paid for the game and so we aren't in their main target audience anymore. If you think of the slow progress the development makes, it is obvious that there are new money ressources to search for to keep the dev team together.

Don't get this post as offending - i only want to explain (maybe just to myself) why things are processing the way they do. I don't claim anything and think that every one cent of my money taken to buy the game was already worth it.

[Rowsdower]

The temperature's starting to get a little hot in here. While there's been a lot of constructive thoughts, let's calm down on some of the overt negativity. Thanks.

Onto the subject at hand, it's up to the devs to determine what features make it into the game. While there may not be things that necessarily fit your vision, rest assured the devs are listening to the desires of the community. We support the modding community's freedom to give you the gameplay you desire as our development progresses. Please recognize it is not possible for us to implement every single thought and idea requested by the community. As for what will be implemented and when? That's subject to change, thus why it's necessary to talk about them with great forethought.

[SkyHook]

1. Baffling decision on Harvester's part. He underestimates Kerbals and what they have done in the game so far. There is no lore attached to the game, but our lore is this: Kerbals have discovered the entire solar system, have built complex architecture as a support to their space program, and have precise, reliable rocket parts. They are not idiots and are capable of calculation.

2. It DOES limit design, but I'm a guy that enjoys the challenge of the hardmode mods out there, so it wouldn't bother me too much. The reward would be worth it. Besides, most celestial bodies lack an atmosphere anyway. There's a strong case both for and against this one.

3. The techtree is nonsensical. I don't understand how discovering the surface of minmus leads to the development of the wing (or some other part). I have always been a proponent of the fact that the tech tree should be unlocked as a result of R&D, no science. That actually makes sense. R&D will be funded with successful missions that extract science.

4. I actually think that Kerbals should do more. They can walk around and activate things if you run out of power, but that's it (in sandbox). Unmanned craft should be used for monotonous or dangerous missions, but there is no consequence to killing kerbals. That's another issue entirely, however.

5. Meh, Squad is a small team. They do what they can, and a public roadmap would cause more problems than it solves. I think a kickstarter is in order, however. That would allow for more hires (and faster development, another issue of KSP).

6. Very bad logic on the part of Squad. Keep in mind that some mods are outside of the scope of the game, and others may be added, just not now.

I will add a number 7 to this list.

7. Things take too long! Squad is a small team but lumping 6 features into one update creates unrest and a feeling that the game is taking forever to develop. Squad is on pace for a 5-year dev cycle. If you ask me, that's a bit too long for an indie game.

[Monger]

Actually, as a beginner, if someone would've told me that in order to get in space I simply need a rocket with ~5000 meters of delta-v and TWR of 1.5+, and that won't explode during flight, and I had such indicators in the editor, it would've made things SO much easier.

Yes, it would. And this is a game about discovery and learning. The question is: what will happen if you give players with the correct solution from the start on? It's a bit like a hint system in a point & Click adventure: from a design point of view, it definitely has pros and cons. It might improve the gameflow, but it also might make the game less challenging.

There is often a very thin (and very personal) line between challenging and frustrating. You could argue that your frustration is caused by a broken design, or that you are not the person which KSP is meant for. It's a matter of taste, and enough people would disagree with you.

There's a tutorial section for that. Training missions. Why on earth should a tech tree in a career mode be a part of that? I can't understand such design decision.

From a design point of view, separate tutorials are breaking the game flow. They break the current progress, and they force the player to follow one instruction after another, instead of letting him explore the next step in his own time and pace. Most games today try to avoid them, and rather incorporate them in the normal campaign. You could argue that every game that requires constant learning is basically one long tutorial.

As I said: this is actually quite common. And KSP needs much more than just a few tutorials to be fully understood.

[nholzric]

7. Things take too long! Squad is a small team but lumping 6 features into one update creates unrest and a feeling that the game is taking forever to develop. Squad is on pace for a 5-year dev cycle. If you ask me, that's a bit too long for an indie game.

I'll disagree with you on this one - with my own opinion of course. I feel like I have just enough time to play until I get bored with KSP, set it down for a few months and then there's another release and bam! "It's like a whole new game..."!

If you're right about the pace being close to a 5-year dev cycle, that does sound a little slow. Maybe Squad has just tailored their pace to people exactly like me with apologies to everyone else.