The 10,000 Hour Rule.

[karolus10]

EDIT: in the same way 10 000 hours spent somewhere has potentential to be used elsewhere

Agree, as much as I like KSP I would consider playing for 10k hours an massive waste of time... that's all.

[Death Engineering]

Well, I'm about 4,000h in.. stopped using the Steam launcher at ~3000h so not exactly sure. From my perspective, things like launcher designs/delta V needs have become instinctual. I'll use subassemblies for complex landers and probes, but I pretty much design a purpose-built lifter for every payload.

Edit: To be fair, a lot of time is spent completing silly challenges (see my sig) and documenting the crews' adventures.

Edited June 1, 2014 by Death Engineering

[WinkAllKerb'']

Agree, as much as I like KSP I would consider playing for 10k hours an massive waste of time... that's all.

yup or also: i feel like playin' KSP since forever and will continue to play it forever anyone can feel the blank the way he want

[MarvinKitFox]

10000 hours? Not very likely.

Assuming you play 4 hours per day, with no breaks, it would take you 8.5 years to accumulate that.

Realistically, anything over about 500 hours is wasted time.

That is enough time to do everything possible in three different ways each, invent silly challenges and beat them, and start repeating.

The "10-000 hour" rule only counts if you are actually pushing yourself, and learning from it.

Personally, it took me 20 hours of fumbling to get my skill up to doing a duna return mission, and 120 hours to manage an Eve return mission.

After that, its time for the "silly challenges" phase.

Current sillyness: A speed challenge of BTSM career completion.

[Wallygator]

it's that dude who has played 9,999 hours and 59 minutes and during that last 59 seconds decides to chuck it in... I want his/her opinion.

[Jouni]

The 10000-hour rule of thumb basically comes from the typical human lifespan.

Practice yields diminishing returns. The difference between 5000 hours and 10000 hours of practice is roughly the same as the difference between 10000 hours and 20000 hours. Given that we can expect to live around 50 years as fully functional adults, it makes sense to assume that one becomes an expert in something after 5-10 years of determined practice. Lowering the standards would make the word 'expert' meaningless, while substantially higher standards would mean that we'd have to spend almost as much time becoming an expert as being one.

[rwazar]

...

Realistically, anything over about 500 hours is wasted time.

That is enough time to do everything possible in three different ways each, invent silly challenges and beat them, and start repeating.

The "10-000 hour" rule only counts if you are actually pushing yourself, and learning from it.

Personally, it took me 20 hours of fumbling to get my skill up to doing a duna return mission, and 120 hours to manage an Eve return mission.

After that, its time for the "silly challenges" phase.

Current sillyness: A speed challenge of BTSM career completion.

I don't know... I would have to respectfully disagree. Just as we are all unique individuals most of us will approach a lot of this game differently.

It may or may not come to a surprise to you but I have just over 530 hours in and have yet to do any manned missions outside of the Mun or Minmus. Honestly I haven't tried yet but since the release of Career mode I find myself deleting saves, changing mods, starting over, rinse repeat before actually having the proper tech to head out that far.

I think there are just soo many facets to this game that there are near infinite ways to accomplish missions or I must really just be a complete moron... either that or I enjoy torturing myself

[KvickFlygarn87]

If you play 10000 hours of Battlefield 4, you get brain cancer. That's how bad a community it has.

[woot]

A. The 10k hour phenomenon is a Malcolm Gladwell thing, and he's not known for being accurate.

B. Even Gladwell describes it as being something that experts generally have done, not that anyone who does it becomes an expert. Big difference.

[karolus10]

If you play 10000 hours of Battlefield 4, you get brain cancer. That's how bad a community it has.

I would agree with that, but seriously, If someone is ready to take a challenge to spend 10'000 hours for improving your proficiency at KSP you will had enough time to learn (from books + some occasional playing from time to time so you still can tell that you play this game after all) basics of some real-life rocket science or computer programming if you want to make some mods or software of your own... I guess that in this specific case You could acquire some actual skills after being inspired/motivated by KSP.

But playing same game for nearly a decade worth of free time of average adult will not do any good... games are wonderful but it's only only one of plenty things to do (moderated use) during free time and variety is always good.

Also I think (my personal opinion) that playing a game with longer breaks (especially for KSP, as it may feel more fresh after you come back as it's still in development as well as You can came up with new ideas over time) is better than playing same game constantly as you may overdone and stop having fun anymore.

Edited June 1, 2014 by karolus10

[Red Iron Crown]

When you come down to it, any time spent playing a video game could be better spent doing something productive, so all time spent playing KSP is "wasted".

I don't care, I've happily spent around 1500 hours playing KSP and will happily spend more. I don't consider myself an expert, I know some things but still learn new things all the time.

[WinkAllKerb'']

Playing a video game (doing something whatever) is productive for anyone brain and neuronal scheme regardless of time spent. And neuronal scheme are a kind of investement on the future, easy.

EDIT: thoose neurons need more strut each other, ksc pls

Edited June 1, 2014 by WinkAllKerb''

[Guest]

If you play 10000 hours of Battlefield 4, you get brain cancer. That's how bad a community it has.

Still a Better community than COD

[KvickFlygarn87]

Still a Better community than COD

Haha, true.

[samstarman5]

It depends if you also did that 10,000 hours all at once. I prefer to take breaks from time to time, try something new or something old to keep things fresh. If you focus too much on one thing for such a length of time, you may become a master at it, but you will also either become overly obsessed with it, or so burnt out that you won't even enjoy a lot of games in the same genre. That just isn't healthy.

[Greenspan]

Yes, 10,000 hours is roughy equivalent to 5 years of a 9-5 job. That's a lot of time. With that much time you could have easily gone to college and earned a Masters in Aerospace Engineering, probably a little more productive.

Also, during your bachelor degree you'd probably have a lot of free time to work on earning hours towards becoming a expert in Battlefield, I know I did. LOL

[LaytheAerospace]

Yes, 10,000 hours is roughy equivalent to 5 years of a 9-5 job. That's a lot of time. With that much time you could have easily gone to college and earned a Masters in Aerospace Engineering, probably a little more productive.

Five years for a Master's? Overachiever. How are people supposed to get enough KSP time in if they take more than 12 credits per semester?

[dharak1]

I have 2759 hours and I sure don't feel a quarter way to mastering KSP.

[Greenspan]

Five years for a Master's? Overachiever. How are people supposed to get enough KSP time in if they take more than 12 credits per semester?

Hey 12 credits is only 12 hours a week. 20 credits is the equivalent to a part time job, right? Damn lazy college kids!

[flyboy67109]

I don't know. I know people who've had the same job for 10 years (~20,000 hours) and are still bad at it.

Shhhh! Don't say it so loud! My boss might hear you.

[LaytheAerospace]

Hey 12 credits is only 12 hours a week. 20 credits is the equivalent to a part time job, right? Damn lazy college kids!

But isn't being lazy the whole point of college? I never had so much free time! Didn't wake up until 3:00 PM most days.

Seriously, though, I did ~15 hour semesters, and had tons of free time still. It's too bad KSP didn't exist back then.