Anyone else not really care for the career stuff?

[sedativechunk]

Well I just tried out the 0.25 update last night and I love the space plane additions as well as the revamped explosions. But one thing though is the whole "career" stuff with funds and everything. Am I the only one that doesn't care about the currency system in the game and the whole space organization thing in general?

Personally I love acquiring science and using it to unlock parts. But at the same time, I like to launch my own missions and do my own things rather than be forced to abide to silly contracts and risking running out of funds. I'm all for them continuously updating the game but personally I would rather have more parts, more worlds to explore, and more science things rather than this whole contract/career business stuff. Also, KSP is extremely time consuming as it is, especially to launch interplanetary missions (like the Jool 5 challenge). I don't have all that time to just play this game all the time and waste time doing these silly contracts, especially ones that involves building convoluted rockets to try to get a certain part to a certain altitude and etc.

More so than anything, I want to see Saturn make it to the game with all it's awesome moons to explore (including Titan!). Make it happen Squad!

[Fiddlestyx]

I'm not really into Career mode, but I could be later. Glad it's there for those that need it though.

I would love for more parts, especially NASA stuff, but I know this isn't a NASA game.

[Excellent]

I would disagree

After playing this game for far too long new challenges are needed. Missions and only a limited amount of funds and parts to do it makes the game "hard" again. Getting into orbit is suddenly a challenge again if the game forces you to only a few parts. I can see how you wouldn't want to be confined but after you've built your super Jool space station, landed every rover design imaginable on Duna and constructed a super mother ship the game starts to get a bit stale. Thanks to career I cant do all that stuff unless I rationalize and think into the future which is really all this game is about

[Stratzenblitz75]

Same here, I don't really care about career mode, or for that matter, "science" mode all that much. The first time I played career mode with contracts, I got bored really quickly with the nonsensical contracts and just cheated in a bunch of funds and science and played the game my way. Haven't even attempted to play career mode "the way its meant to played" since then.

[Tail_TL]

I agree with you 101%. I'm trying to get myself in to Career mode from .24 and I'm still not a fan of it, I prefer Science Mode. And I really wish they would focus A little bit more on it. I.E Expending the Tech Tree and add More parts. I really do hope they start focusing on adding more to the Science stuff in the next couple of updates...

[Seshins]

I keep trying it with each new update, but there always just seems like there is something missing, some little thing to tie it all together to make it a true experience. Now im not saying career is bad at all, but for me personally it doesn't really grab me as much as i would like.

Im sure when 1.0 comes around that will be me though.

[Linear]

Have to agree, it's just too simple for people who've played the game for anything more than a couple months.

A lot of people think funds, missions etc make the game 'hard', others see it as annoyance of launching another simple mission. Either way, people are entitled to their own opinion. :-)

[Scarecrow88]

I had a quick look at career mode when they first introduced it, unlocked a couple of things at the second level, and decided that obtaining enough science to unlock the parts I actually wanted was too much of a faff, and haven't touched career mode since.

[eataTREE]

I started playing more or less right when .24 came out... yes, I'm a noob.

What I can't deal with about Sandbox is that there is nothing tracking your achievements/progress in exploring the solar system. It may be silly, but I have a psychological need for the positive reinforcement (Ooh, you have successfully explored Duna! Have a bunch of imaginary money and imaginary science and reputation points) that Career mode provides. Perhaps playing MMOs damaged my brain or something.

That being said, I hate the start of a new Career Mode game because I can't do anything I want to do because I lack the appropriate part. With the release of 0.25 I've starting giving myself 1000 starting science just so I can fly a mission other than "Jeb Takes A Dip In Booster Bay" out of the gate.

[Red Dwarf]

I couldn't tell you why, but Career mode always stressed me out. Starting a new career can be tough, and I always feel like doing all of the contracts in one mission, which never ever works. SO, I stick to my own mission profile in Science mode!

[PTNLemay]

At first I thought it's because it made the game too hard, but that's not really it... it's more that it requires more of your focus. It takes even more managing than usual. Which can be fun, but it becomes something that you can't just play casually on the side. When I have more spare time I'd love to fully explore career mode, but at the moment I'm so busy with real-life I most often just play around with stuff in sandbox.

On the plus side, the new difficulty settings can make career mode pretty easy by boosting the rewards and reducing the risks. Though... that does start to feel a bit cheaty, even if technically it is still more of a challenge than sand-box (where you just have everything given to you).

Edited October 9, 2014 by PTNLemay

[Tail_TL]

Have to agree, it's just too simple for people who've played the game for anything more than a couple months.

A lot of people think funds, missions etc make the game 'hard', others see it as annoyance of launching another simple mission. Either way, people are entitled to their own opinion. :-)

Thats how I should describe it as well... The Funds and Contracts are just annoying, their just in the way of creativity and are also in the way of making up your own "Space Program" with your own goals and stuff, and they don't make the game harder whatsoever.

[merendel]

I look at it more as career is looking to cater to a specific subset of the player base. Some people enjoy and to an extent need those constraints and guidance to really enjoy the game. Without it they get lost for what to do and loose interest. It still needs work but this is obviously an iterative process and just needs time to be finished.

Other people, as this thread so clearly illustrates, don't really care about the bits that career adds. Thats perfectly fine and valid. If you like the science but dont want to muck with contracts or funds there is science sandbox. Dont like science either? Sandbox is waiting for you to go nuts. Even this patch that was mostly focused on building up the career game mode added spaceplane parts to the sandbox game mode. I have no doubt that once they polish career up to an acceptable degree they will be back to adding more stuff thats useful for all game modes. Theres only so much dev time to go around.

[Sky_walker]

Is that topic a Sandbox players support group?

Cause it sure looks like one.

Thats how I should describe it as well... The Funds and Contracts are just annoying, their just in the way of creativity and are also in the way of making up your own "Space Program" with your own goals and stuff, and they don't make the game harder whatsoever.

Or Career is what makes KSP a "Space Program" game, not just space-themed virtual Lego bricks. But yea... your point of view is very... original.

I would love for more parts, especially NASA stuff, but I know this isn't a NASA game.

I for one would love to see parts from other space agencies, not just NASA, cause currently KSP looks like good... 75% NASA (in some parts they openly admit it, in other it's quite obvious once you seen the equivalent).

Edited October 9, 2014 by Sky_walker

[Liowen]

My question for you is this then should they only focus on sandbox mode then? Not to sound troll but sandbox is boring to a lot of people, and yet others only use it to test out designs (much like you would do in other sandbox games that require building things). I never thought I would like career mode either until I gave it a go, yeah it has issues but it is a great starting point for newer players than sandbox even if they do not do the contracts. The limited parts gives them an easier time to learn the basics before moving on to bigger missions, and once they have gotten a good idea of how it works they could migrate over to career + contracts or even sandbox. With sandbox the only real limitation is whatever you place on yourself, if SQUAD puts anything in sandbox limiting what, or how, you do things kind of defeats the sandbox nature of that mode.

Edited October 9, 2014 by Liowen

[Ketsa]

I play career but it is true the " silly contracts" are plain stupid :

Go test sepratron while flying at 500ms between 11000m and 12500m... can't even press the button in time.

FinePrint or another contracts addon is mandatory. The modders are way better than squad.

[Sky_walker]

I play career but it is true the " silly contracts" are plain stupid :

Go test sepratron while flying at 500ms between 11000m and 12500m... can't even press the button in time.

Don't fly stright up. Make a turn all the way to 30 degrees, this way you'll have proper speed and altitude.

But yea, some of the contracts are silly. Like testing stuff on a surface of jool.... or all of these super-specific tasks that are totally randomly generated with no logical reasons behind them. All these contracts for altitude + speed should be changed to the mix of [lower atmosphere / upper atmosphere / space above] + [subsonic / supersonic / hypersonic] or landed at extreme biomes [desert / polar / water] in case of Kerbin and similar bodies or [dark side / light side] in case of bodies with no atmosphere (for extremes in temperatures).

Or something like that... anything to make it feel at least slightly logical instead of as a totally arbitrary random generator.

[fairytalefox]

FinePrint or another contracts addon is mandatory. The modders are way better than squad.

So the career mode isn't bad by itself, it's just, hmm, not polished yet. I believe it will be. Eventually. Soon .

[airelibre]

For someone who likes earning money in games (like me), this is great. I've only just started on 0.24 recently and already have a few million funds. I enjoy trying to complete the contracts with the greatest profit possible, and I have plenty left over for my own projects.

One tip is to have a few probes orbiting as many planetary bodies as possible. I can't count how many times I get contracts like "Science from around Kerbin" and it's just a simple matter of switching to my space station for a quick crew report and cash injection.

[PTNLemay]

My question for you is this then should they only focus on sandbox mode then? Not to sound troll but sandbox is boring to a lot of people.

I don't think thread is meant to be taken as "WAH! I'm not having enough fun with career, stop working on it and advance other parts of the game. Parts I will more directly enjoy."

It's more a "Huh, even though I can see how cool these new features are, I personally won't be using them much. I wonder who else feels this way." thread.

It's an observation, not a complaint.

[Parallax]

So the career mode isn't bad by itself, it's just, hmm, not polished yet. I believe it will be. Eventually. Soon .

im sure you know what they say about polishing turds...

i play sandbox exclusively, i just dont see the point in grinding out progressively less crappy rockets so i can invent a ladder or a battery

[Death Engineering]

If you're looking for a refined and challenging career mode, look at Better Than Starting Manned. The modder has polished it well into late game for 0.25 already and you won't wind up doing implausible/impossible test contracts.

[Godot]

I for my part haven´t started a non career mode game since career mode was implemented.

However, I am not into unmodded gaming anymore.

FAR + Procedural Fairings, DRE, a mod that lets you recover stages (with enough chutes) even if they leave the 2.5 km range before landing, as well as a Lifesupport mod (predominately TAC LS) are a must for my gameplay (which is why I haven´t done all too much in 0.25 yet .... still waiting for some mods to update)

[Tortoise]

Somewhat the same here. I just don't care for the retarded contracts.

I made 3 milion in the first 2 days of career mode being introduced, after that I completely lost motivation.

I still play career though, at the same time it'd feel boring just to play sandbox and have everything locked. I kinda like the economy thing though

[Jon Tash]

In this update I won't play a career savegame, because I really don't see a big difference from the previous update. The strategies don't interest me, neither does the difficulty settings (I have mods for that). I feel that the career mode isn't going where I hoped it to be, I'm still waiting for the tycoon-ish things that Harvester talked about in a stream (about 1 or 2 years ago).

I'm looking forward for the 0.26 Devlog and the future of this game. I will be playing sandbox tough but less than before. Right now I'm back in Homeworld 2 mods.