Update Excitement

[horndgmium]

I've been doing some browsing about what people think should be part of .24 or not. There are so many things that I want to be part of it, but also many that I don't. And then of course, I'm not sure if the devs are going to notice the things that we say we want or maybe put in things we don't.

Every time I start getting anxious for updates, I realize that each one so far has blown me away with new features that some genius in Mexico thought of that many of us couldn't even fathom before hand. So while I'm pretty in the dark about the features, I know, like every update thus far, that it's going to be amazing.

But that being said, does anyone actually even know any specifics?

[blspblackdeath]

And that’s exactly what I want to criticize about the communication politics of Squad recently.

While in ancient times (before the DLC meltdown) the communication with the community was the best I have ever seen.

Nowadays the devs yet the community manager rarely are watching the forums.

Lets look at the possibility of talking to the community:

- Squadcast (KSP-TV) should take place every friday. (For months none of the devs were on Squadcast at all while the guys who are on "can`t give any information right now")

- Dev-Blogs (last from Harvester 1st October 2013)

- Devnote Tuesdays (while working and almost on time, hardly any new information’s about the development)

And the worst of all I have not seen any screenshot of the devwork for month.

I don't know, am I the only one who feels more like a bit let down???

It's not about creating hype its about talking to your fans.

[Guest]

Well, aside from vernier engines, there isn't that much to show. Most of the work is under the hood, making improvements and polishing the budget system. Optimizing things is pretty hectic, somewhat boring and completely not exciting to watch.

[Red Iron Crown]

There's some good info in the 0.24.11 Gigathread.

So far, we know of the following are coming:

- UI refinements

- Contracts/Money/Recovery in Career mode

- New Vernier thrusters and OMS, which has been interpreted to mean LFO-powered attitude control and MP-powered engine

- Tweaks to Mainsail efficiency to give a reason to use it over the LFB

Likely some more that they're not revealing, there always seems to be a surprise or two.

[r4pt0r]

I wish Valve did a Tuesday dev-notes....

my problem is a month or two after an update i stop playing, for fear of getting into a game only to have it be incompatible with the next update. i convince myself that "this is the week the update comes out, i shouldnt play now" and so i stop. yet i lurk the forums daily.

i have not played ksp since march.

[corvustech]

Well, aside from vernier engines, there isn't that much to show. Most of the work is under the hood, making improvements and polishing the budget system. Optimizing things is pretty hectic, somewhat boring and completely not exciting to watch.

Not only that, but Kraken hunting means you want everyone you are paying to develop to be developing and not forum posting. Cap that with summer vacations and things will slow down. It's normal dev cycle.

[Caelib]

While KSP may be maturing into a near-Beta game, the pace of updates has slowed to the point to where it is hard to get excited about new content because we have no idea how it will work or when it will arrive.

I have been excited about .24 since December 2013, which is when the last major update was released (ARM doesn't count because it didn't add to career mode). We're fast-approaching the SIX MONTH mark for when the last major update was released -- when you compare that with the historical updates with an average of 1 - 3 months, the "waiting game" is frustrating for many of us.

The KSP Milestone Announcements have also vanished ... Squad used to post big announcements when Experimentals started, but ARM and .24 Try #1 never did -- we found out through the Dev Notes update that it had already started and then been delayed.

So ... how can this be improved-upon? I personally would like to see some more blog posts on how upcoming features ... screenshots and a work-in-progress functionality overview would be awesome. I know putting these things together takes time, but why not leverage KSP-TV and make Squadcast mean something again? Why not get the developers involved occassionally to demo a Dev Build of the game as "work in progress"?

[Red Iron Crown]

Why do you only consider updates that add to career mode as valid?

[HafCoJoe]

I think .24 should be focused in getting as much of the budget and missions done as possible. .25 is what I'm currently focused on - which I think should be focused in finishing all the partially complete things already added (I.E. IVA's, textures, and the like).

[Caelib]

Why do you only consider updates that add to career mode as valid?

Because this was the expectation set by Squad in their Dev blog a year ago (regarding Expansion Pack/DLC -- basically what ARM was):

Our one focus right now is to complete KSP, that is why career mode is the priority now. Once we get to what we can call a complete game, we’ll see where we go next from there.

http://kerbaldevteam.tumblr.com/post/47730955705/expansions-dlc-and-the-future-of-ksp

I am happy to give away piles of money on DLC and Expansions for this game, but I really want career mode to be finished first

Edited June 9, 2014 by Caelib

[Red Iron Crown]

Because this was the expectation set by Squad in their Dev blog a year ago (regarding Expansion Pack/DLC -- basically what ARM was):

Our one focus right now is to complete KSP, that is why career mode is the priority now. Once we get to what we can call a complete game, we’ll see where we go next from there.

http://kerbaldevteam.tumblr.com/post/47730955705/expansions-dlc-and-the-future-of-ksp

That's a good point. I can understand them setting that aside to work with NASA when the opportunity presented itself, though.

[corvustech]

Because this was the expectation set by Squad in their Dev blog a year ago (regarding Expansion Pack/DLC -- basically what ARM was

The Klaw gave me a way to rescue science that would have been lost. We also now have whole new ways to set up space stations and tons of new stuff in the unlock tree. I'm really not sure how that DOESN'T expand the career mode.

Also there is no such thing as DLC or Expansion packs when it updates something before it is ever released. That is just a revision change.

Unless you work for EA of course.

[Cmdr. Arn1e]

Yeah, we got the 'Klaw', and a whole load of new engines and fuel tanks with 23.5... so don't know what you mean when yous said "23.5 didn't add anything to career"...

I'm still pretty new to the game, only on my second major burnout (partly the fault of my own, not being able to figure out how to transport lots of feul to Jool...) and what I've seen already is just short of amazing... only other game I ever lost myself in so much was when I could afford the subscription to EVE online...!

Even though I would like to see maybe a screenshot of the 2 new engines (interns are meant to be sneaky and accidentally 'leak' stuff! Right, Hugo?!) I can do without screenshots of code... it's bad enough watching my friend doing a computing course writing code for a project on a cat hotel(!), without seeing lines and lines of it in multiple windows on a dev's screen >.<

I'm looking forward to what the future brings, and if I ever get bored the threads to old versions are stickied now, so I can always go and download one of them to challenge myself

[cantab]

my problem is a month or two after an update i stop playing, for fear of getting into a game only to have it be incompatible with the next update.

I don't get concerned about this. If I have to stick with .23.5 for a bit, I'll stick with .23.5 for a bit. Heck, I'll probably wait for a few days to let others test mod compatibility at least.

Regarding .24, I'm kinda hyped by the new Vernier and OMS engines, but then again that's something I could surely get with mods if I wanted anyway. I'm a shade apprehensive about any balance changes, just in case it breaks my launchers. And to be honest I'm not feeling interested in career, I'll probably just hack myself infinite cash or something. I'm minded to wait until .25 when I expect some balance improvements before taking career "seriously".

[LethalDose]

And that’s exactly what I want to criticize about the communication politics of Squad recently.

While in ancient times (before the DLC meltdown) the communication with the community was the best I have ever seen.

Nowadays the devs yet the community manager rarely are watching the forums.

Lets look at the possibility of talking to the community:

- Squadcast (KSP-TV) should take place every friday. (For months none of the devs were on Squadcast at all while the guys who are on "can`t give any information right now")

- Dev-Blogs (last from Harvester 1st October 2013)

- Devnote Tuesdays (while working and almost on time, hardly any new information’s about the development)

And the worst of all I have not seen any screenshot of the devwork for month.

I don't know, am I the only one who feels more like a bit let down???

It's not about creating hype its about talking to your fans.

Yep, their communication has been crap since I joined the Forums. It's really disappointing. SQUAD could make the early release model work for them, but given the current level of interaction they have with the community, it looks more like a cash grab.

Well, aside from vernier engines, there isn't that much to show. Most of the work is under the hood, making improvements and polishing the budget system. Optimizing things is pretty hectic, somewhat boring and completely not exciting to watch.

If they're "polishing the budget system", that means there's something to polish, which in turn indicates there's something to show. Even if it is "subject to change". But we just keep getting these vague "man are we working hard" updates.

While KSP may be maturing into a near-Beta game, the pace of updates has slowed to the point to where it is hard to get excited about new content because we have no idea how it will work or when it will arrive.

I have been excited about .24 since December 2013, which is when the last major update was released (ARM doesn't count because it didn't add to career mode). We're fast-approaching the SIX MONTH mark for when the last major update was released -- when you compare that with the historical updates with an average of 1 - 3 months, the "waiting game" is frustrating for many of us.

The KSP Milestone Announcements have also vanished ... Squad used to post big announcements when Experimentals started, but ARM and .24 Try #1 never did -- we found out through the Dev Notes update that it had already started and then been delayed.

So ... how can this be improved-upon? I personally would like to see some more blog posts on how upcoming features ... screenshots and a work-in-progress functionality overview would be awesome. I know putting these things together takes time, but why not leverage KSP-TV and make Squadcast mean something again? Why not get the developers involved occassionally to demo a Dev Build of the game as "work in progress"?

As other people have stated, the asteroids are justifiably a major addition to career mode. But even so, we are getting several months beyond that update without any real information about what's coming in 0.24. Yeah, it's got budgets and contracts, and (shocker) the contracts were pointless without the budgets.

And that's it.

IMO there really doesn't seem to be much engagement with the community, and I think it's to the detriment of the game.

[deadshot462]

What I miss was the list of "planned features" for a specific update that were posted at the beginning of each update cycle.

Harv would post this list in black font then highlight in green each feature that was finalized. Anyone who was here around 0.13-0.18 will remember that.

Here's an old example: http://archive.today/EmO4

Nowadays the list of features is vague or non-existent. If a feature gets pushed back, then that's what happens but it seems that right now it's a random set of features that come and go as development progresses.

[chaos_forge]

I've been lurking the forums since v0.8, and I agree that the dev communication with the community is not what it once was. On the other hand, I can see why they wouldn't want to. There have been several ****storms on the forums due to misuderstandings/miscommunication between the fans and devs. And the bigger the community gets, the more people there will be who demand bigger, faster, AND more stable updates, and the more people there will be who take everything the devs say as an unbreakable promise. People are still mad about the resources thing, for Christ's sake!

However, I feel like more communication from the devs could have helped alleviate this. Instead of a short, cryptic announcement from HarvesteR, maybe a longish dev blog showing us, "this is the idea we had for resources, this is how we implemented it, and this is why it sucked". But then again, this is just the speculation of a random bystander, I have no experience managing a community. This probably isn't a problem that has a solution as simple or easy as just "be more open".

Even if they don't talk about tentative features, I do think that the devs could definitely talk more about already implemented features. A lot of the dev blogs were talking about features that had already been implemented for the next update, the interview by Scott Manley prior to the release of .23.5 (which I can't find right now) was also in that vein, and I found it excellent. I think these sort of already-implemented features could stand to be talked about more by the devs, even if they don't talk about planned features. I for one would love to see how they went about implementing Asteroids, for instance, I'm sure there were a lot of unforseen complications . . .

Anyways, that's just my two cents.

Edited June 9, 2014 by chaos_forge

[Khorso]

From what I see of Harv's comments on Contracts (see below), that clearly is a huge feature, worthy of hogging a patch all to itself and still being a major change in gameplay.

I missed what everyone refers to as the 'glory days' of communication, and without having that to compare to--though the archive share was neat, thanks deadshot462--I have to say that I am pleased with the communication. We do get the DevNotes weekly, and perusing the forum post (In 'The Daily Kerbal') associated with the dev-notes yields even more info.

For example, just this past week both danRosas [here] and Harv [via Rowsdower here; personally here] responded to us inquiring minds on that topic, and gave extra info. Rowsdower is a champion at taking our input to the Dev Team and back as well [example].

The way I see it, the info we receive/want gets consolidated into DevNote Tuesdays well. It's naturally less than the earlier days, but Harv explained that well as to why in a blog post: ["A rant about development asymptotes"]. Under-the-hood stuff doesn't exactly count as exciting 'news'. That's part of the 'Development Asymptote' though. (For those with time and curiosity, check out more of his blog here)

The game we have is very playable already- mod parts and plugins expand that vastly in the mean-time. Is more communication necessary? The confusion and frustration around 0.23.5 certainly shows the ugly side of stretched 'promises'. Quality over quantity counts for communication as much as it does for game content- they are still forthcoming on clearing confusion, as shown above.

In sum, I think SQUAD is being very wise about their restrained approach to managing 'update excitement'. I've gotten my money's worth for this game ten times over and then some- and given all that I've shared above, I personally am floored at how responsive they are at even this stage of development.

-Khorso

Edited June 9, 2014 by Khorso

[Javster]

Well, aside from vernier engines, there isn't that much to show. Most of the work is under the hood, making improvements and polishing the budget system. Optimizing things is pretty hectic, somewhat boring and completely not exciting to watch.

I try to get involved in the development of the game (by that I mean quickly grasp the crumbs they spread once in a blue Mun) and I haven't heard about these engines. Shows that there are no official/obvious sources available.

Also it's hard to get excited when you get a 6-month gap between updates.

I posted something about how this is large-complete-game standard, but it's at an alpha level.

EDIT: here's the link http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/81328-Can-too-slow-of-development-kill-KSP?p=1198230&viewfull=1#post1198230

However, I feel like more communication from the devs could have helped alleviate this. Instead of a short, cryptic announcement from HarvesteR, maybe a longish dev blog showing us, "this is the idea we had for resources, this is how we implemented it, and this is why it sucked". But then again, this is just the speculation of a random bystander, I have no experience managing a community. This probably isn't a problem that has a solution as simple or easy as just "be more open".

That's a good point. We still know nothing about resources except "it wasn't fun"

They could have found a flaw in their code and been ashamed to admit it for all we know. The same way they deleted posts about multiplayer when they were proved wrong.

For all we know, they could be doing nothing. How do we know they're actually doing work, and not selling a game based on a promise of updates? Could that be why we don't get release dates?

Edited June 9, 2014 by Rowsdower
Multiple posts in a row

[Felsmak]

These days, I'm about as excited for new updates as I am for the Milky Way's eventual collision with the Andromeda Galaxy.

[cantab]

Also it's hard to get excited when you get a 6-month gap between updates

Despite the half version number, .23.5 was effectively a major update. It wasn't meant to be, hence not being .24, but Squad found that just adding the NASA parts and the asteroids wasn't enough, that they needed to make some more significant changes for the mission to work out.

That's a good point. We still know nothing about resources except "it wasn't fun"

We know what the planned resources "flowchart" was - a whole network of make-this-from-that using primarily fictional substances like "propellium" and "blutonium".

[Red Iron Crown]

I try to get involved in the development of the game (by that I mean quickly grasp the crumbs they spread once in a blue Mun) and I haven't heard about these engines. Shows that there are no official/obvious sources available.

It's in the dev notes from two weeks ago, Hugo mentions working on the models for Verniers and OMS.

[AlternNocturn]

Alright guys, simmer down now. I believe Squad's stated that we're entitled to free game updates, not updates about the updates. A year ago we got full dev streams detailing every inch of every update, but now we don't. We get Devblogs. So what? The update will come out and you'll all forget that you were mad.

That's a good point. We still know nothing about resources except "it wasn't fun"

They could have found a flaw in their code and been ashamed to admit it for all we know. The same way they deleted posts about multiplayer when they were proved wrong.

For all we know, they could be doing nothing. How do we know they're actually doing work, and not selling a game based on a promise of updates? Could that be why we don't get release dates?

"It wasn't fun" is game developer speak for "It sucked and you would've hated us if we released it." You could say the originally planned 0.24 "wasn't fun." Guessing they had to take it out and now they just haven't found time to re-implement it in a way that is better.

We don't get release dates anymore. We used to but they stopped doing it because the community reacted poorly to delays, like the one for 0.24. It's the old community's fault really.

Edited June 9, 2014 by AlternNocturn

[Russoft]

When I bought this game, I bought it "as-is". The game is in development with no obligation on Squad's part to do anything further.

[Franklin]

Yep, their communication has been crap since I joined the Forums. It's really disappointing. SQUAD could make the early release model work for them, but given the current level of interaction they have with the community, it looks more like a cash grab.

IMO there really doesn't seem to be much engagement with the community, and I think it's to the detriment of the game.

Not to play Devil's advocate, but it's really not. If Squad didn't know which direction to take the game, community interaction would be paramount. If the game was not at all known, and they needed to get the word out, community interaction would be paramount. If they were considering a major game-changing re-gear, and weren't sure how the players would respond to it, community interaction would be paramount.

But as it is, they know where they want to take the game right now, they have a roadmap, the game's very popular and well-lit, it's been a best-seller on Steam for ages, so there's no loss in spotlight there, and there's been no huge shift in direction that the players haven't been down for yet (Curse notwithstanding), so that's not an issue, either.

And the fact is, they're a small team. As your fanbase expands, the amount of time your programmers have to tell said fanbase what they're doing dwindles. We aren't their project coordinator, so them even doing their Tuesday blurbs is above and beyond reasonable expectation.

I mean what do you expect from major developers like EA and Ubisoft? You'd be lucky if their games even had a forum, much less anyone on staff to look at it. Squad's far more vocal and responsive than far larger developers.