Do you feel KSP is ready for 1.0?

[Hodo]

I said yes to this.

The reason is, they have succeeded in all of their goals for the games basic package. Now anything they add after this will be things that were suggested or added after the initial goals were written for the game. At this point the game is more than playable more complete then most games released out on the market for twice the price by much larger companies and this game is still in "beta".

For those who think the game isnt ready obviously dont understand that because they hit "release" status doesn't mean they are done with it. It just means they are no longer going to re-write the game code because of a minor issue.

[Commander Jebidiah]

Clouds shoshould only be added if there is a way to disable them as they kill some peoples computers/laptops, like mine

[Random Tank]

Why are people going all mad about the version numbers and all that? Seriously? It's just another update. Not the first and not the last one. It's not like after this one comes out they'll say "Ok our job here is done have fun with all those bugs we ain't fixing them because this one's finished because 1.0 thats why." That would kinda ruin their reputation, would it not?

While for us, people who have played the game for some amount of time, I agree this is just another number increase, it doesn't change what game we play... but for the new players, the ones that see the YouTubers playing this "new release" game, the ones that see it on steam with the "KSP: Now Officially Released!" banner, or the ones that have thought they might hold out on buying it until it's out, it won't look good. Yeah, they may be able to knock out a few of the big, annoying bugs that have been hanging around for a while now, but it's still not gonna play like a finished game, not for a while yet anyway; and this will hurt Squad, as people will play this "finished" game, see that it's still very buggy, and then won't recommend it to other people... Or, even worse, they'll start bashing the game for being too buggy, and then people will avoid it, and then they'll tell their friends to avoid it, and this is a really bad thing.

People are pinning a lot of hopes on Unity 5.0, but, by the same argument put against KSP going to "1.0", Unity 5 may introduce some new bugs, and we should wait for 5.1...

Note why I said I think they should wait for Unity 5; not for bugfixes, but for removing the main limitations (like part count and number of mods) from the game; building a 300 part ship (which isn't a lot) and finding it lags when I pilot it does not make me think finished game. I say hold out for U5 because it is probably the most significant update to Unity in a while... or perhaps ever; its new features can help optimize the game, something it sorely needs... any by checking the polls, probably the most sought after improvement to worked on too.

[wumpus]

Am I the only player who still has issues with the GUI? Right now I see few issues:

As a new player, adding struts was more likely to tear the rocket appart than add struts. Practice helped.

The GUI still doesn't want everything to be clicked (some stuff just gets hidden). Still not ready.

The career mode also appears designed for long-term players. Tricky contract language isn't good, but secret "don't overshoot your altitude by too far or you will lose your next contract" is worse.

Puting new users in the hardest mode (weight limits, manuever nodes locked, part count limits) is just bad. I recomend going back to "science mode" for new players.

All the rest is gravy. While I'd like the aero system fixed (but not enough to load Ferum), that and the other things on the list for beta are mere details. The point of this game is to launch little green men into space, and as long as you can do that Squad has delivered. I may have been lucky about the bugs (reverted after a short test on Win64, I will admit that my Linux port is roughly as buggy as win64). Squad would be wise to pull win64 support for 1.0 unless it actually works.

Acid test for 1.0: What gets in the way of a new player landing on the Mun? Does he spend all his time cursing the GUI? Does he spend endless hours grinding away the 18T limit (shouldn't be hours, but without watching any Scott Manley videos, who knows)? Or is it a more Kerbal experience of trying to get there and adding boosters? Fix that which gets in the way of "moar boosters", ship that which doesn't.

[FiiZzioN]

I'm really hoping the devs are reading this / other posts saying it really is a bad idea to go full release. This game is so far from being "feature complete" it's unreal. The "beta" wasn't even a beta, it just provided us with a clever pun, "Beta than Ever".

For this game to be anywhere near completion we need Unity 5, an actual working 64bit that doesn't crash every 5 minutes, and have every new feature beta tested so we know there are no bugs and it works properly. I don't know where or when squad learned what beta meant, but they obviously have the wrong idea about it. They really need to retract their "We're going full release" statement before it's too late. I find it hard to believe that even if they did take the statement back a while from now most fans would be totally cool with it. I know I'd be fine with the decision because for a full release, I expect all core features implemented and properly bug tested, and, finally, have a wonderful polish.

Once again, going "full release" while including brand new never-before-implemented-elements IS NOT the way to do it. Even if it is internally tested to hell and back there are gonna be bugs. And with the amount of new features being implemented, I expect an absolute load of unforeseen bugs.

If they do push along with this utterly stupid move, I can't defend them against what they brought upon themselves. All the negative reviews will smash this game like never before, and they'll be completely deserved.

So, please, for all that is holy, DO NOT DO THIS, YOU ARE MAKING AN ABSOLUTE HUGE MISTAKE!

Edit: I didn't even mention optimization... don't even get me started about the abysmal work in that department. I would say squad is just playing a trick on us, but I've had to deal with the ....ty optimization since I started playing. Once again, it really would be nice to play a version of KSP that has actual polish... Sadly, I don't see this happening, and it'll be one more thing that people who review and rate games can .... on.

Edited January 24, 2015 by FiiZzioN

[iFlyAllTheTime]

Just imagine for a second we were still in the Version 90 scheme and said - ok... version .91 is about Mining and Aero, 0.92 about performance, .93 bugsquash, 94 again performance... people would have gone mad and demanded 1.0.

Now with 1.0 in place squad can "relax" and focus on other important tasks that dont neccessarily include adding new parts or features.

A poll that has lasted only for six hours and is reflective only of the forum users, hardly makes a statistical case, but I don't see a reasonable number going mad and "demanding" 1.0

I'll keep an eye on this to see if it sways the other way.

Edited January 24, 2015 by iFlyAllTheTime

[Tiberion]

I'm requoting the post below because it's a good list of things that are not addressed yet, one of the many things that needs a round of polish that should be happening in a proper BETA CLEANUP PHASE for this game, one that has been in constant alpha development for 4 years now. So many things have been put off until after alpha to be finished later.

Here are some other things that need attention before any release I'd want to consider "finished"

Parachutes - pretty much unchanged since their original implementation. If they ship as-is, someone needs to buy stupid_chris a few drinks. (He makes Real Chutes and has wrestled with the weird parachute system more than anyone)

IVAs - no excuses, they all need to be done. Nothing says Unfinished Game like missing art assets.

64 Bit for Windows - Its unstable. Worse, its unstable in a way that is unpredictable. What works one time might not another. You can't work around it, you certainly cannot mod around it. It's not Squad's fault that Unity 64 bit is so unstable (it's new) but it is in their control if they release it. Maybe Unity 5 will fix it. I sort of doubt it. The other option is to stop publishing it until it IS ready. Which means we all have to live on 32 bit again. Which leads to...

Optimization - This means reducing the games processor and memory input through programming tweaks and art asset and loading adjustments, so that it takes less memory and CPU cycles to run the game. This is often the major goal in beta phases, to make the game run well on as many peoples' computers as possible. It would be important even on 64 bit, but for the 32 bit version which many of us run now, it needs to happen very much.

Modding Interface - KSP is very moddable because many of its systems have been opened to modding as they were designed and added to the game. This brought with it some bugs, many of which still exist. So as the game grew, new features have been installed without as much modding access to speed up development. This came with the promise that they'd circle back and add it later. Well, its later now, and there is a large amount of work to do on the backend to polish the modding tools. We don't yet know how the big changes already planned will change mods within the game. The new Aero system could completely break FAR (and with it any mod that uses it, like most of the Realism mods) which means we'd have a big 1.0 release without some of the biggest and best mods even working (and it wouldn't be a matter of just waiting for the mod authors to fix it) - There could be an entire updates worth of work on this alone, easily.

Bugfixing - KSP is supposed to be buggy still. Its been in Alpha development the whole time so far. In Alpha you don't spend large amounts of time fixing bugs in your code because that could could be replaced at any time the very next update cycle. Given that KSP has been a public alpha, they have spent time each release on *some* bugfixes, especially related to whatever new thing they just added. But by and large there is a big list of things that were pushed until "Later" to be fixed. Again, "Later" is now. If we could spent one update on modding issues, we could spend 2 on bugfixes. This is the other major part of a Beta Phase, the phase we seem to be outright skipping in its entirety.

The next release, as described in harvester's post is already surely one of, if not THE biggest KSP updates thus far. Just getting that much done is going to be an accomplishment. It is not reasonable to expect that any of the other things listed here can be done alongside this huge update. There's easily 3 or 4 more updates worth of things that definitely need to be finished. To call the game released and toss it out into the public before then frankly wastes several years of work getting it ready.

It's like running a marathon and then stopping 50 feet in front of the finish line to take a picture.

After reading through most of this thread, and the poll results, it appears as though NO is the consensus.

I'm going to try to lay out the reasons the community believes that the entry into public access is happening much to quickly, in no particular order.

Unity 5.

Unity 5 will bring many new features, the features that the Kommunity has the most interest in will be optimization and PysX 3.3 (Multithreading?). Many players, myself included, believe that 1.0 should use Unity 5 and wait until it is fully released, or do another Beta with the Unty 5 Beta.

Marketing, Reviews and Publicity.

One thing I have sen in my own experience of reading gaming news/blogs sites about KSP is people in the comments saying they don't want to pay for an early access game, because they want a fully fiinished and polished product. If 1.0 is on-par with the 2 previous releases, it would be good enough for the Kommunity, but not potential buyers who are unfamiliar with the quality of early access releases. That would lead to reveiws such as, "I have waited for the full release of this game for more than a year. I was quite dissapointed with the quality of this game, as it does not feel complete, the art assets are not uniform, the career mode is somewhat hard to understand and it crashes often on my computer." There have probably been reviews like this, but Squad has had the 'Early Access' shield to deflect these critcisms by saying that things will be fixed in the next update. Potential buyers would be turned off, thinking (incorrectly) that this is something of a final update. While the continous post 1.0 development has worked for some games (minecraft), I don't think it would work that well for KSP and Squad.

Widely requested features.

These are some features that I have seen requested and have not been mentioned in the Beyond Beta blog post, and I have seen mods made for that are widely used.

Planet overhaul, more Planets.

There are to sides to the Planet debate, those that want the current system to get an art overhaul, and those that want the addition of Planets. IMO, both would be good. On the overhaul side, if clouds will be added, it would be best to do clouds and Planet overhaul at the same time, mods that have been made for EVE and TextureReplacer are examples of overhauls. On the new Planet(s) side, GP2 is the most requested planet, and there are 10+ mod packs for the Kopernicus mod, and most of them have a Gas Giant beyond Jool.

Stock Revamp.

With the integration of Porkjet's excellent space plane parts, the other parts look dated and low quality. Ven has addressed most of the stock parts in his Ven's Stock Revamp mod, which while not admired by all, is a significant increse in quality over the current parts. NecroBones has also created a texture replacement for stock tanks that makes them look much better. The assets issue is not becoming of a game entering 1.0, and I suggest that all of the parts be remade by hiring a skilled modder.

Realism.

The most hotly debated topic, realism appears to be getting addressed with the Aero overhaul. However there are many other Realism features that have been requested, though the top ones are re-entry heating, ISP scaling, and some sort of antenna/communication overhaul. Re-entry heating has been on the to-do list for a while and will hopefully be included in the next update alongside the now atmos. Antenna/Comms are less popular, but something along the lines of AntennaRange or RemoteTech, the latter being a lite version. Thrust varying with atmospheric density, rather than ISP varying, has been largely requested by the realism community as well.

Career mode overhaul.

In my play throughs of career mode since .23, I have found that repeatable science is much more fun than one-and-done experiments, like the way that the Goo Container and Materials Science bay parts have been made.

Science experiments inspired by real science experiments, as found in Dmagic Orbital Science mod, have made career mode seem more realistic, and more meaningful. The addition of FinePrint to the game was a good way of adding content without just lumping it into the game.

Suggestions.

These are my own suggestions, and likely will not reflect those of the general Kommunity.

Have at least 2 updates before 1.0, one a public release similar to previous ones, for the Kommunity to test the new features. The 2nd, a test release using Unity 5 Beta. IMO, GP2 can wait until 1.1+ but the all the assets need an overhaul. Career mode definitely needs an overhaul, and I suggest that Squad would refer to the suggestions sub-forum, and popular science/career mods, Like DMagic Orbital Science, SCANsat, Station Science, Mission Controller 2, etc.

Summary.

KSP is not ready for 1.0. The art assets need to be brought up to the standard of bac9's space centre, Porkjet's parts, and the many good texture packs for TextureReplacer. Career mode needs to be fully polished, to where you can play through career mode start to finish without getting extremely bored. I am saying this as a concerned player of KSP, and not trying to tell the Devs how to do what they have showed they have been mostly good at before.

[WOODY01]

Personally I think the game is ready except for optimazation and x64 support. I can see new players with somewhat descent rigs being upset about the game only utilizing a small portion of their system's potential.

The above and the steep learning curve, poor tutorials, and random contracts without any sense of progression is what will lead to frustrated players and critics giving bad reviews.

I personally love the game modded and would like to see a very successful release to increase the likelyhood of continued updates and sequels.

[SmashBrown]

Here's something to consider in judging whether the next release of KSP should be v1.0: how many mods players play with. And how few players play and would keep playing KSP stock without any mods.

I'm well into the double digits of mods and there's more I'd add except they conflict with my current career play. Sure, some of them are really simple (like DefaultThrottle), but a lot of them are complex. And there are at least 10 or so I wouldn't play KSP without.

The only games I've played that are as heavily modded as KSP are Europa Barbarorum, a total conversion of Rome Total War (for the original v1, now based off of Medieval II Total War for v2) that turns a poor unhistorical game in a fantastic accurate one, and Silent Hunter 5, a completely broken and abandoned game made into something first workable and then fantastic by a strong community of modders and players. As with KSP, I wouldn't play the base unmodded games. This level of modding indicates a game lacking in its subject representation or otherwise very limited.

I personally think stock KSP is nowhere near the level of bad that unmodded Rome Total War and Silent Hunter 5 are. It's a great game--for something that's barely beta. Because the devs enabled and documented how to mod KSP, a lot of modders have given it the polish to make it fantastic. But the shear breadth and depth of serious mods that many players consider essential indicates stock KSP still needs a lot of work, more than can be put into one release.

What he said +1

[Tiberion]

Personally I think the game is ready except for optimazation and x64 support. I can see new players with somewhat descent rigs being upset about the game only utilizing a small portion of their system's potential.

The above and the steep learning curve, poor tutorials, and random contracts without any sense of progression is what will lead to frustrated players and critics giving bad reviews.

I personally love the game modded and would like to see a very successful release to increase the likelyhood of continued updates and sequels.

Oh man, tutorials and proper documentation for pretty much everything. There is next to none of this right now, at least in a shape ready for "prime time'

Talk about a huge Can of Worms...

[I_Killed_Jeb]

My understanding was that KSP was planning moving to Unity 4.x something, not planning on Unity 5 for the foreseeable future. If I misread, or if new information has come to light... MY BAD. But it doesn't change my opinion that 1.0 is up to Squad, not to the players. No need to get all upset over it.

My tautology still stands. You playing games for 30 years (good for you!!!!111!!) imparts no effect on what a "complete" game is.

Obviously this is starting to get out of hand (personal attacks and all) so I will duck out.

To be clear, what you said was - "I know I made no logical statement but I'm going stand by it"

[Draemora]

Imo, squad should make one more final optimisation/bug check with all of the new features being added.

[rynak]

I have an idea: Let's do ONE "beta" that is about..... cramming a lot of unbalanced features into it..... then afterwards, go "release" and cram even more features into it....

What could possibly go wrong....

Here's a hint: Stop using terms like "beta" or "release" and just stick to arbitrary version numbers (like mozilla: you can have a new major version for every update - cool eh?) - it will make your announcements sound a bit more honest, rather than obvious marketing.

Edited January 25, 2015 by rynak

[Astraph]

No, no, no and one more time no. The game is much, much more complete than the versions I remember from my first games (0.19), but still - nope. It's nowhere close to being a full version. There are simply too many features that need rebalancing (career mode difficulty, contracts), tweaking (aerodynamics is just a tip of the iceberg) or simply reworking (if you're not planning to make 64 bit stable, why add it in the first place?). I was hoping we'd see at least 3-4 beta updates, which would concentrate on tweaking stuff and (perhaps) incorporating some mods like Fine Print or SpacePlane+ had been.

Should Squad develop their own resource system then well... They'd be just wasting time which was already invested by RoverDude in Karbonite and all its spin-offs. I can hardly think of anything this mod (or Kethane) hadn't thought of earlier. Same goes for basically... Everything. Science has DOrbitalScience & StationScience. Aerodynamics and aircraft - FAR & B9. New planets - OPM. Schizo, five-minutes-into-the-future tech - NearFuture. I don't think at least attempting to integrate these mods into stock KSP would cost Squad that much - I personally would be happy to see my stuff become stock even without being paid by the Squad.

I really hope moving to 1.00 is just a marketing move to attract people unwilling to play Early Access games (all in all, KSP is still far less buggy than early Paradox games upon their release... Anyone remembers HoI1 or CK1?), and development will continue with 1.01 and so on without slowing down significantly. Damn, this game still has hell of potential.

[FlowerChild]

I have an idea: Let's do ONE "beta" that is about..... cramming a lot of unbalanced features into it..... then afterwards, go "release" and cram even more features into it....

Yeah, and IMO, there hasn't even been ONE beta release. I think what might be driving a lot of this is the logical fallacy that 0.9 was actually a beta release when it wasn't in anything but name.

Before 0.9 came out Harvester made a post ( http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/content/313-Beta-Than-Ever-The-Future-of-KSP ) in which he twisted around the meaning of "beta" to mean "scope complete" instead of "feature complete", and then went on to try and justify (at length) how continuing to cram new systems into a game somehow fit the definition.

I remember rolling my eyes at that at the time, thinking it was just for the community's "benefit", and that he couldn't possibly believe what he was saying there, but apparently they did. Somehow, it looks like Squad has managed to convince themselves that they've already had a "beta" release, and thus it makes sense to move on to a full public release now. It's like they've just checked off a box somewhere that says "yup, we've had a beta, we can move onto release!" without really evaluating the veracity of that statement.

But the reality of the situation is that double speak aside, KSP has never had a beta, and will now be going full release without the benefit of the testing involved in a beta period.

The one thing I could see potentially bailing the game out of this mess while still sticking to their statement of the next version being the official release, is if this time they open up experimentals to absolutely everyone to make sure that it gets hammered on as much as possible to track down any lingering bugs before it gets put out the door, and be willing to leave it in experimentals for as long as necessary to make sure it's stable and balanced to a reasonable degree.

Edited January 25, 2015 by FlowerChild

[Robotengineer]

I think the conclusion is that there are just to many things to get done before 1.0, and that there need to be more Beta versions. I would like to see an official response from a Squad dev related to this thread.

[gutza1]

I think that KSP is definitely NOT ready for 1.0. To address this, I have started a petition on change.org. Link here.

[Jarin]

I think the conclusion is that there are just to many things to get done before 1.0, and that there need to be more Beta versions. I would like to see an official response from a Squad dev related to this thread.

Really not... the best choice of theirs, for them to drop this bombshell on Friday, then go away for the weekend.

Edit: Change.org? Really? I think the game's not ready for release without more testing, but you are the reason that so many people have trouble taking that site seriously for actual issues.

[GusTurbo]

I'm requoting the post below because it's a good list of things that are not addressed yet, one of the many things that needs a round of polish that should be happening in a proper BETA CLEANUP PHASE for this game, one that has been in constant alpha development for 4 years now. So many things have been put off until after alpha to be finished later.

Here are some other things that need attention before any release I'd want to consider "finished"

Parachutes - pretty much unchanged since their original implementation. If they ship as-is, someone needs to buy stupid_chris a few drinks. (He makes Real Chutes and has wrestled with the weird parachute system more than anyone)

IVAs - no excuses, they all need to be done. Nothing says Unfinished Game like missing art assets.

64 Bit for Windows - Its unstable. Worse, its unstable in a way that is unpredictable. What works one time might not another. You can't work around it, you certainly cannot mod around it. It's not Squad's fault that Unity 64 bit is so unstable (it's new) but it is in their control if they release it. Maybe Unity 5 will fix it. I sort of doubt it. The other option is to stop publishing it until it IS ready. Which means we all have to live on 32 bit again. Which leads to...

Optimization - This means reducing the games processor and memory input through programming tweaks and art asset and loading adjustments, so that it takes less memory and CPU cycles to run the game. This is often the major goal in beta phases, to make the game run well on as many peoples' computers as possible. It would be important even on 64 bit, but for the 32 bit version which many of us run now, it needs to happen very much.

Modding Interface - KSP is very moddable because many of its systems have been opened to modding as they were designed and added to the game. This brought with it some bugs, many of which still exist. So as the game grew, new features have been installed without as much modding access to speed up development. This came with the promise that they'd circle back and add it later. Well, its later now, and there is a large amount of work to do on the backend to polish the modding tools. We don't yet know how the big changes already planned will change mods within the game. The new Aero system could completely break FAR (and with it any mod that uses it, like most of the Realism mods) which means we'd have a big 1.0 release without some of the biggest and best mods even working (and it wouldn't be a matter of just waiting for the mod authors to fix it) - There could be an entire updates worth of work on this alone, easily.

Bugfixing - KSP is supposed to be buggy still. Its been in Alpha development the whole time so far. In Alpha you don't spend large amounts of time fixing bugs in your code because that could could be replaced at any time the very next update cycle. Given that KSP has been a public alpha, they have spent time each release on *some* bugfixes, especially related to whatever new thing they just added. But by and large there is a big list of things that were pushed until "Later" to be fixed. Again, "Later" is now. If we could spent one update on modding issues, we could spend 2 on bugfixes. This is the other major part of a Beta Phase, the phase we seem to be outright skipping in its entirety.

The next release, as described in harvester's post is already surely one of, if not THE biggest KSP updates thus far. Just getting that much done is going to be an accomplishment. It is not reasonable to expect that any of the other things listed here can be done alongside this huge update. There's easily 3 or 4 more updates worth of things that definitely need to be finished. To call the game released and toss it out into the public before then frankly wastes several years of work getting it ready.

It's like running a marathon and then stopping 50 feet in front of the finish line to take a picture.

I think this post sums it up perfectly.

[Cooly568]

See, I think KSP is complete in the Developer's vision, this is what they set out to do, and they completed it.

KSP isn't changing at all, it'll still keep going on and on, because of us, I really like what MaxMaps said, and that's trust us, and if there was one developer I'd trust, it'd be Squad.

Just add in the darn MK2 IVA already.

Or forever hold your beta.

[Stargate525]

Really not... the best choice of theirs, for them to drop this bombshell on Friday, then go away for the weekend.

This is their modus operandi, though:

-Multiplayer, announced on Friday

-This, announced on Friday

-Expansions potential, announced on Friday

They don't learn, and they don't listen.

[FlowerChild]

if there was one developer I'd trust, it'd be Squad.

Why though?

I'm not sure if they were deceiving themselves or just us with this whole "we're beta/scope-complete but we're still adding features" thing, but they were deceiving someone, as that's clearly a false and self-contradicting statement. They also made statements implying that this was a beta period that would consist of multiple releases, and now that turns out not to be the case either.

And really, I feel compelled to package that with an apology to Squad, as I absolutely love their game, and don't like saying it, BUT: they haven't exactly been behaving in a trustworthy manner as of late.

Edited January 25, 2015 by FlowerChild

[metl]

Due to many of the asinine arguments presented for not going to 1.0 (some were good, but not many) I am changing my vote to yes, I think they are ready. My initial reaction was no, but that was due to fear of the unknown. What comes after 1.0? Will they continue to work on it or toss it aside like so many other early Access titles have done? The fear of that happening was quite motivating and is more prevalent on this board than many probably want to admit. But Squad has given us no reason to assume they are washing their hands of it. It that were the case, we would not have gotten an ambitious list of what is coming down the pipe. We would have just signed on one day and *POOF* 1.0! Maxmaps has responded in this thread and on Twitter with some good PR. Enough to convince me to trust them as I always have. It would seem that once 0.90 was released, it became apparent that the work needed to round it all out wasn't as far away as they initially thought it would be, and since they built the game (not just modding it,) they know the inner workings enough to hammer it all out in one final push. I have full faith in Squad's ability to do this. I have bought many games for way too much money over the years that over-promised and under-delivered. I was unsure of KSP but the demo sold me and I bought 0.18. I have yet to be let down and am now going to enjoy the rest of the ride.

Thank you Maxmaps for easing fears.

[rynak]

The one thing I could see potentially bailing the game out of this mess while still sticking to their statement of the next version being the official release, is if this time they open up experimentals to absolutely everyone to make sure that it gets hammered on as much as possible to track down any lingering bugs before it gets put out the door, and be willing to leave it in experimentals for as long as necessary to make sure it's stable and balanced to a reasonable degree.

Well, that would basically simply turn experimental snapshots into unofficial 0.91, 0.92 and so on, and yes it would be reasonable. The problem i see is them probably not allocating enough time, to do all this bugfixing and optimization AND at the same time implement all those new features, then balance, bugfix and optimize them too.... i mean, they wouldn't be announcing 1.0 as the next version now already, if they were planning for it to take half a year. What would be the point of that? No, they're in crunch mode to make it "feature complete" at the last minute.... bugfixing or optimization won't have high priority. And with the new features requiring more textures, the 32bit 1.0 version will be out-of-memory happy - more so than 0.90.

[GusTurbo]

I think it's important to separate objections to the Devs' vision of the game and objections based on time/workload issues. For example, for me, it just doesn't seem like they can add all of those new features and fix all of the important bugs at the same time. There is just too much content.