About suggestions...

[r4pt0r]

i think once .24 launches people will cool off for a few weeks at least, and the fervor wil build up again towards the end of the next update cycle. this is a pattern. the consumers just want to see real progress on the product they purchased.

edit: i do think that myself and more than a few others would like a post from harv, just confirming the intended* features for the next few updates. so we can get an inkling of what might* be coming

*they seem to enjoy a more fluid developement style so im not asking for promises, just intentions. if they reneg on a listed feature so what? plans change and thats ok.

Edited July 6, 2014 by r4pt0r

[Sky_walker]

I'm fine with long dev cycle - I prefer it to the updates every week or so. But certainly I'd love to see some concrete details on the development and a real progress in a dev notes. Right now we pretty much sit in blind and the only concrete thing we know of are company logos... made by the community. Oh, and the update name along with names of two major features.

I'm all cool with how they release updates, and I even: like it. I'm not a big fan of how they communicate. As for one person being hired for communicating with the community: I seen tons of games with much better communication with the community where there was noone, noone at all, hired to fulfil that role.

[vexx32]

if they reneg on a listed feature so what? plans change and thats ok.

They've done that before. I think they had to postpone docking a while back, due to some bugs or something. And lo, there was rage dominating the forums for some days. Some people are reasonable. Others are not.

And as far as I can see, people tend to be a lot calmer when less is revealed early. I've been here since 0.13... and as far as I've been able to see, everyone's a whole lot happier and less rowdy since the devs decided to stop telling everyone everything about what they want in the next version.

I mean, I do agree that it wouldn't be that bad of an idea to post a kind of "this is what we're hoping to achieve by next version" sort of thing, or "this is what we're currently road-testing in the QA or Experimentals", but not saying anything seems to leave people happier anyway, at least until they can figure out exactly how to write such a list up without making even the most unreasonable of people think those things are definitely without a doubt going to be in the listed version​.

[Sandworm]

I do not believe that Squad is deliberately keeping the community poorly informed. They are not evil. I think they are giving us as much information as they themselves have to give. What's happening beyond .24? I don't think they have a clue. It looks to me that they are lurching from one update to another with absolutely minimal strategic planning. As for which features will be in .24, someone knows but it isn't Squad. A couple people within Squad may have a reasonable idea of what will likely be ready in time, but the company as a whole is probably just as much in the dark.

As to the WNTS list, that serves two purposes. It does keep certain problems/repeat discussions from overwhelming the forums. That makes things more efficient here. But it also keeps those deficiencies out of Google search results. As this game is not yet "done" it would be unfair if every KSP-related search resulted in links to repeat bug reports. On the other hand minor deficiencies, if deemed unaddressable for months/years, become longstanding issues that potential customers should hear about prior to purchase.

Edited July 6, 2014 by Sandworm

[Ruedii]

I suspect that currently the issue is that they have a very solid roadmap for this part of the development, and that is why they haven't been taking too many community suggestions. They are currently so head-on focused on getting that carreer mode finished, they are neglecting anything else that doesn't involve getting a bunch of promotion for the game. I honestly don't blame them. Development goes in cycles like these, you have times you focus on a specific set of features, and then times you flush out the rest of the features. These are usually implemented in ticks and tocks, alternating, but I understand that Squad wanted to do a whole bunch of one type of release here so other than the big NASA pack release, that showed promise for adding to the future mission options, they decided to do a bunch of core-feature centric releases.

As of when they get back to flushing things out I wish they could put in some more larger parts. I'd also like to see all the parts rebalanced and restyled soon to take advantage of the features of the latest unity release.

As of some technical features, I'd like to see more advanced handling of terrains to take advantage of the features in modern computers. KSP is still using a basic height map for terrains, and loading them in big manually-managed blocks. By using a hybrid method with height maps, bump maps and parallax maps all in different LODs loaded via shaders in sparse texture mode, they could have it nearly completely handled GPU side. I'd also like to see better handling of texture memory.

Additionally, I'd like to see all the parts made lower polygon count with nice parallax maps and normal maps to make up the difference. This would provide better performance on newer systems. After all, nobody is going to run KSP on a OpenGL 2.x system or a Direct X 8 system anymore unless they are turning down the graphic settings all the way, in which case it won't look much worse.

As of gameplay, I'd like to see more planets have Biomes and more Biomes on the planets that already have them. I'd really like to see "Island" "Plateau" "Highland Plains" "Highland Hills" "Grassland Plains" and "Grassland Hills" on Kerbin, As well as things like "Beaches" and "Shoreline Cliffs" instead of just "Shores" and "Oceans" "Lakes" and "Rivers" instead of just "Water." There should probably also be a set of "wetlands" or "swamps" (which could have a thin layer of water over them.) Plus there are "Desert Plains" "Desert Dunes" and "Desert Hills." Particularly nice would be if many of the easter eggs had their own special biome in the immediate area. Using a 8bit palleted bitmap as a specifier, the biome system can use 256 different biomes per a planet.

Edited July 7, 2014 by Ruedii
Added gameplay features wanted

[Sky_walker]

I suspect that currently the issue is that they have a very solid roadmap for this part of the development,

Last time I checked they had a very fluid roadmap with new, unexpected things added every patch and other things being moved around, even huge things that could very well be done after the game gets released in 1.0 (eg. Multiplayer).

I'd also like to see all the parts rebalanced and restyled soon to take advantage of the features of the latest unity release.

(...more...)

This topic is not a place to post your personal suggestions or what you think priorities should be.

I do not believe that Squad is deliberately keeping the community poorly informed. They are not evil.

Vast majority of people aren't. Heck: Even EA isn't evil... and yet even EA manages to communicate their planned releases and patches MUCH better than SQUAD does. Which is pathetic considering how bad record does the EA have in terms of communicating with the community.

As for which features will be in .24, someone knows but it isn't Squad. A couple people within Squad may have a reasonable idea of what will likely be ready in time, but the company as a whole is probably just as much in the dark.

Considering that they're running experimental for over a week now: They have a very good idea of what will be released in 0.24 for sure, what is very likely to be release, and what they might skip.

They've done that before. I think they had to postpone docking a while back, due to some bugs or something. And lo, there was rage dominating the forums for some days. Some people are reasonable. Others are not.

The old rule of development says: Underpromise, overdeliver.

But there is a difference between that and keeping everyone pretty much in blind. As said - vast majority of half-decent developers got a very good idea of what will make it to the upcoming patch by the time of getting it into a QA stage.

But heck - let's for a moment ignore the matter of features we don't know about that might or might not hit the patch - focus on what we know for sure: Contracts will be released, and we know for sure that there is a guy hired for the communication with fan base - why he doesn't publish any materials on how that thing will even work (on a highly conceptual level) is beyond me.

Edited July 7, 2014 by Sky_walker

[MR4Y]

But heck - let's for a moment ignore the matter of features we don't know about that might or might not hit the patch - focus on what we know for sure: Contracts will be released, and we know for sure that there is a guy hired for the communication with fan base - why he doesn't publish any materials on how that thing will even work (on a highly conceptual level) is beyond me.

My speculation is that neither of the parts (SQUAD and the person hired) have any idea on how to approach the task at all and are trying to come up with an utopian way of pleasing everybody. As a matter of fact, we've been told that said person was hired...But, given the way SQUAD announces things, we shouldn't even be sure if that person was hired or, in a more skeptic opinion, if that person even exists to begin with.

[Rowsdower]

But heck - let's for a moment ignore the matter of features we don't know about that might or might not hit the patch - focus on what we know for sure: Contracts will be released, and we know for sure that there is a guy hired for the communication with fan base - why he doesn't publish any materials on how that thing will even work (on a highly conceptual level) is beyond me.

If only they had some sort of community manager. Hmm...

But seriously though, you will be hearing about everything coming in First Contract with much greater depth, just not this second. There are still approvals to be made and schedules to be kept. The logos are out, so we're close. The finish line's in sight, but not quite there yet. The materials you ask for, like FAQs, gameplay videos and such, are being finished up as testing for First Contract starts winding down. We want to make sure that everything is set in stone before that sort of info is released, so you'll be seeing it in a more coordinated fashion than our previous update.

[LethalDose]

We want to make sure that everything is set in stone before that sort of info is released, so you'll be seeing it in a more coordinated fashion than our previous update.

Well, if this is true, then it's good news because we've been asking for this kind of coordinated communication.

However, it's been more than 3 months since the last update now. If this kind of development cycle continues and the game has to be scope complete by the end of the year, can we only expect one or two more features to be added to the game? We kind of have to assume multiplayer is going to be one of those...

It's just that we're getting so far along and hearing basically nothing from the devs, it's causing us, or at least me to start to be very nervous that we're only going to hear about what comprises "scope complete" after it's too late to have any input. And if that's the case, statements like "we are always listening for feedback from the players" (from the KSP's front page) seems misleading.

Which comes back to the point of this thread: We're talking, but getting frustrated because we can't see any indication that the devs are listening.

[regex]

But seriously though, you will be hearing about everything coming in First Contract with much greater depth, just not this second. There are still approvals to be made and schedules to be kept. The logos are out, so we're close. The finish line's in sight, but not quite there yet. The materials you ask for, like FAQs, gameplay videos and such, are being finished up as testing for First Contract starts winding down. We want to make sure that everything is set in stone before that sort of info is released, so you'll be seeing it in a more coordinated fashion than our previous update.

The problem with this development model (SQUAD's, not "early access" in general) is that there is barely any information on anything that is going to change or anything that has been done until the absolute last minute. Barely any. We get some vague "things are being worked on" statements and that's it. It's a bad model IMO; it would be better to just drop the pretense of a "dev blog" altogether.

It's almost as if you guys are afraid to say anything concrete about new features despite being perfectly able to renege on those features if needed.

Either that or everyone at SQUAD is so overworked and stressed that no one has any time to write a proper dev blog anymore...

[r4pt0r]

The problem with this development model (SQUAD's, not "early access" in general) is that there is barely any information on anything that is going to change or anything that has been done until the absolute last minute. Barely any. We get some vague "things are being worked on" statements and that's it. It's a bad model IMO; it would be better to just drop the pretense of a "dev blog" altogether.

It's almost as if you guys are afraid to say anything concrete about new features despite being perfectly able to renege on those features if needed.

Either that or everyone at SQUAD is so overworked and stressed that no one has any time to write a proper dev blog anymore...

I too would enjoy meatier(meteor?) devnotes. also it seems like half the team is always working on the animation video for the update, not the update itself. unless when they say animation they are referring to in-game animations, in which case please be specify.

[Sky_walker]

But, given the way SQUAD announces things, we shouldn't even be sure if that person was hired or, in a more skeptic opinion, if that person even exists to begin with.

You summoned him!

But seriously though, you will be hearing about everything coming in First Contract with much greater depth, just not this second.

Truth to be said - in most of the games I actively track: they post details about upcoming large patches before they even enter the equivalent of your experimentals phase. Even EA kept people up to date with their first large Battlefield 4 update before it went in a testing phase, and I knew by far more about that BF4 update back then than I know about KSP 0.24 right now. Which is even more funny considering that I didn't even bought BF4 and read the info on one of the gaming websites.

There are still approvals to be made and schedules to be kept. The logos are out, so we're close. The finish line's in sight, but not quite there yet. The materials you ask for, like FAQs, gameplay videos and such, are being finished up as testing for First Contract starts winding down. We want to make sure that everything is set in stone before that sort of info is released, so you'll be seeing it in a more coordinated fashion than our previous update.

As far as I understand - SQUAD delayed 0.24 to finish off the contracts, cause they decided that releasing budgets alone was nonsense. This means that you should have enough material to make a lengthy post about how budgets will work for well over a month now.

And considering that contracts are another huge feature that's coming in 0.24 - you should have a very good idea how it'll work, even if details are still a subject of change (kind reminder: noone, in entire topic, asked you to describe every tiny detail of contracts or budgets, so I don't see a problem with releasing a functionality description that omits details you're still talking about with testers, even if it means pointing that out in a specific fragments of the article, or putting huge [redacted] signs all over it)

However if SQUAD does not know how their major, key feature for upcoming update will work after a months spent developing the patch then there's something fundamentally wrong with their development methods.

I work for years in a software development industry and for me something like that would be totally unthinkable. Perhaps SQUAD should hire some independent reviewer to take a look into their development methods? Perhaps purchasing and reading some books on a topic would be beneficial? Heck: to be honest, if you need cash for any of these: I'd gladly support you.

In either of these two cases - there's clearly a problem. Either with the way you Rowsdower, and all the other developers communicate with the community or (in a worse case) with the way SQUAD leads it's development.

Edited July 8, 2014 by Sky_walker

[Javster]

The problem with this development model (SQUAD's, not "early access" in general) is that there is barely any information on anything that is going to change or anything that has been done until the absolute last minute. Barely any. We get some vague "things are being worked on" statements and that's it. It's a bad model IMO; it would be better to just drop the pretense of a "dev blog" altogether.

It's almost as if you guys are afraid to say anything concrete about new features despite being perfectly able to renege on those features if needed.

Either that or everyone at SQUAD is so overworked and stressed that no one has any time to write a proper dev blog anymore...

I agree, if they're not going to write much, they should just drop the dev notes and everyone should make their own twitter account or something for small updates.