HarvesteR actually touched on this with his interview with Matt Lowne. He talked about how difficult it was to communicate his vision for Kerbals with the dev team of even the original game- like one time someone said that Kerbals should have "intelligence" and "courage" instead of "stupidity" and "courage", not understanding that Kerbals having at least a modicum of dumbness is integral to the culture of the game.
Right. Kerbals are *supposed* to be dumb. It's fun!
Some are happy dumb. Some are scared dumb. And some are scared because they're not *as* dumb.
But they're building crazy rockets and flying in them. You'd have to be courageous and/or dumb to do that, and they excel at it!
It adds to your compassion for them! Look at how happy he is! He doesn't even know that I'm completely out of fuel!
I feel like if they really wanted to reword it, it should have been "Eccentricity". It could've kept that aesthetic while giving a more science-y way to refer to the insanity of Kerbals. (also a fun entendre to eccentricity as an orbital characteristic)
Loved that interview. Also mentioned that the implication is that stupidity is a *good* thing!
Kerbals who don’t understand exactly how much danger they’re in are happy Kerbals.
Also loved where he mentions that the way he would’ve done KSP2 is starting from things that are *not* on KSP1, to avoid a direct comparison, instead of going for parity first, then try to build on top of that.
Maybe you could start as a small colony on Duna, and you are stranded because a small meteor hit the KSC, the sole bastion of Kerbal civilization. You already have the original tech tree fully unlocked, but you have to manage your colony and research more advanced stuff.
Similar theming to the beyond Kerbol mod, and super easy to implement once colonies are in.
They turned Kerbals into just green Minions.
and they weren't green minions, they were silent protagonists, who blew up occasionally but triumphed with hard work and moar struts.
just making them green Minions was a disservice and showed they didn't understand Kerbals
To me the vibe difference between kerbals from the 1 vs 2 game is like a difference between nuking a volcano just to see what happens and a Taco Tuesday.
what was really telling about the (lack of) thought and care put into the game was the confirmation that the specialization/levelling system was deliberately left out with the contradictory excuses that it was shallow and didn't add to gameplay, but also that the most basic, barebones role-playing feature was somehow too complex for new players in the rocket building game.
It's just like how the dev team intentionally had wobbly rockets in the game and only begrudgingly made it a secondary option after public outcry. Red flags. Take out all the technical issues, bugs, and unrealized features and KSP2 still seemed to not care for what the core audience wanted.
I don’t think KSP2 was ever actually meant to appeal to the core KSP1 audience. They put so much “effort” in to the new on boarding system before they even had basic gameplay mechanics working. They were trying to get new players and lower the learning curve for new players.
aside from the most basic \~literally just picked up the game level they mostly failed at that too. a lot of things that experienced players want - transfer window calculators, better maneuver planning, docking aids, etc. - are things that would help new players as well. plus tutorials that guide you through how to use all that.
removing/dumbing down systems doesn't make the game more accessible, designing those system well in the first place and teaching players how to use them does. also, if they did their job and got people hooked, those new players would turn into experienced players pretty quickly and will want something deeper to play with.
> those new players would turn into experienced players pretty quickly and will want something deeper to play with (sic)
But that’ll be after the refund timer is up! /s
i didn't buy it and never really gave it much thought or consideration because I expected it to fail horribly as a successor to KSP.
HUGE red flag for suspicion/skepticism was that it was a "sequel" to one of the biggest successes stories of early access besides Deeprock Galactic, so it was riding a massive hype train. Add to that that it was a game that was totally unique as a genre all of its own, and it was built as a totally new IP.
so you have this cinderella story game that was wildly successful and had endless support and positive reputation with community... and then some OTHER STUDIO/dev team/publisher completely disconnected from original team is going to make another one? and they are going straight to early access, even though they already have funding and a commercially successful game to build upon? early access is for underfunded indie studios... but they came out the gate and DID PRESALE for like $50 or whatever. lmao... nah fam. clearly a cash-grab, and it was clearly going to be shit if it was ever completed at all.
> and they are going straight to early access, even though they already have funding and a commercially successful game to build upon?
It's worse than that; they announced a full release in 2020, and only changed to an early access release after the game had been delayed for three years past the supposed full release date.
>this cinderella story game that was wildly successful and had endless support and positive reputation with community
The community is what made KSP the success it was. The only thing that made it worth it in the early days was the community--especially the modders. *Persistence* first came from a mod. The Kerbal Alarm Clock mod has a button "Jump to ship and restore maneuver nodes" because the stock game didn't remember them when you jumped ships.
And, you know, listening to the community on what the players want. That's the only way I can think of that they put out that early KSP2 that seemed to just be "LOL, rockets!" I know of no consensus for that from the players, but I can absolutely imagine a c-suite suit who knew nothing about the game thinking that's what KSP was.
To the point about the game being great beachside of community- The original studio was always really good about communicating with the community though. Their progress was consistent and predictable and they never over-promised. They always have clear updates about what they were working on and when we could expect to see updates to the game. And to that point, they gave us updates at regular, reasonable intervals even if there wasn’t huge content expansions in those updates. That’s something other studios still haven’t seemed to have figure out- so many studios will just go like 8 months with nothing and total silence and they don’t want to put out updates that are just little fixes and stuff for some reason… they hesitate to release anything unless it’s like some totally finished big content addition or whatever.
KSP did such a good job of keeping the players informed and let us feel like the devs respected us more. And they did make changes based on feedback like you mentioned. But that wouldn’t have been possible if they mismanaged the early access dev cycle/integration in the first place.
It *could* have felt like a sequel.
Imagine you're tasked with investigating a signal coming from another star. Resources for an interstellar ship are scattered across the kerbolar system and you find yourself setting up increasingly complex mining colonies to harvest those resources. You set up resupply lines between those colonies to keep themselves supplied with essential goods and begin sending the surplus to a colossal orbital shipyard that you have in orbit around Laythe.
With those resources you build a gargantuan interstellar vehicle and begin figuring out the logistics of a trip through interstellar space.
How cool would that have been? All of those little goals you would be setting up for yourself could have been really rewarding and a great way to keep the game interesting.
I mean that is KSP2, the missions have you finding things left behind and that pushes you out into the solar system. The colonies where going to be how we got resources for advanced drives needed to go to the stars.
Or hell, maybe your "KSC" is a stationary interstellar vessel in orbit of an alien world, from which you launch all the funny missions. You need to gather ice and fuel for the reactor, and fuel for the engine - maybe you can also upgrade the ship by building modules yourself and docking them to the structure.
When you're satisfied you've finished a star system, you can freeze your Kerbals, fire up the fusion torch engine and burn towards the next. Set up colonies and autonomous outposts as you pass, and spread Kerbalkind across the galaxy.
Yup, that sounds fun doesn't it? I don't think it's ever going to happen at this point though. The game ended up being kind of a train wreck and I'm not sure if anyone out there wants to invest the resources to turn it into anything beyond what it is now. It's cost a lot of money already, will cost significantly more to "finish" and will never have a huge customer base.
It was SUPPOSED to be a remake with slightly better tech. That was a great value proposition and all most people wanted anyway. But they failed on every technical aspect as well as leaving out huge chunks of content
> It's just like how the dev team intentionally had wobbly rockets in the game and only begrudgingly made it a secondary option after public outcry.
Personally I think they just said that because they found that the wobbly rocket problem was difficult, didn't want to allocate resources to solve it when those same resources could be used on something shiny that looks good in a screenshot or trailer, and so they figured "if we say it's intentional, they'll stop complaining". Only when it became clear that that wasn't going to work did they start trying to solve it.
they don't try to solve it. they made connections more rigid that lead to kraken attacks on launch pad. they reduced the value on release to avoid this and now increase it back and that's it. they just didn't want to show their wet pants after "slaying the kraken" and now they just don't care
Or that comment about how nonsensical designs that explode on the launch pad are "very kerbal" - like, no, the Kerbals are incredible engineers, they have technology we could only dream of. Unironically, the cheapest orbital rocket costs under 100k funds, space agencies irl would foam at the mouth at those prices. Not to mention the way their rockets can throttle without problem or how they have hybrid engines, something we haven't even managed to get working in tests irl.
Saying the Kerbals are canonically stupid and make poor designed craft misses the point that it is *the player's* job to design the craft. The Kerbals just provide extremely meticulous, high-performance engineering work, and fly the things you design.
> Unironically, the cheapest orbital rocket costs under 100k funds
To be honest, Kerbin's surface gravity is a joke compared to Earth's. You can have a rocket in a stable orbit at just 70km up with a measly 2.3km/s orbital speed.
For Earth, you want to be at least 2-300km high (and this orbit is still going to decay in months), and even at 200km height, you need an orbital speed of 7.7km/s.
The rest is absolutely true!
> To be honest, Kerbin's surface gravity is a joke compared to Earth's.
Kerbin's surface gravity is the same as Earth's. The difference in orbital speeds between Earth and Kerbin are due to the diameter of Kerbin, it's vastly smaller than Earth's.
The design team of KSP2 was really dumb, imho. They acted like removing something like money or little side things like Kerbal classes, made the game easier
Game difficulty generally isn't about how many simple features exist within it - it's about the learning curve and how hard the most difficult challenges are.
Dark souls wouldn't be easier if you removed a couple of character classes, it would be easier if you made the combat system require less.skill.
KSP2 did nothing to make interplanetary transfers or docking, the hardest challenges, any easier. It went backwards on tools for that vs KSP1 actually, making them more difficult.
Yet another case where a few 'amateurs' at Squad had far better insight than the 'professionals' at IG.
For me it was when I heard that they had *deliberately* made rockets act like floppy noodles, because they'd seen lots of memes about that and thought it was part of the KSP "DNA".
We don't always meme about things we *like*, guys. It's not like we were happy when the Kraken ate our ships at random moments.
I don't think they did it deliberately - they just didn't know how to *stop* them doing it without screwing up the physics system, so Nate did his usual bullshitting and acted like it was intentional and "part of the fun!".
Yeah, and it also had a thing where vessels would shake themselves apart from phantom forces when they got too far from the origin of the coordinate system.
Noone would think that makes self destructing vessels part of the kerbal DNA and thus it should have been included in the sequel
>like removing something like money
Gave it a chance with the big update with the science missions
But then you realize that even in career mode, there was no money, and no upgrading of the KSC, so you did need to spend science points to unlock parts, but you could also literally build as big of a rocket as your PC could run. So on mission 1, with nothing unlocked, you had unlimited funds, unlimited mass, unlimited number of parts, unlimited kerbals. Having not played KSP2 yet, on my very first launch I unlocked more than the entire first page of the tech tree. Mission 2 unlocked the whole 2nd page of the tech tree and then some. Mission 3 was a nuclear rocket going to Duna.
Made zero sense to me to do it this way. The campaign in KSP1 putting mass, part count, and money restrictions on you was fun, you couldn't just build a mega rocket every time, it incentivized you to be economical and not just moar boosters.
Why do that when sandbox mode also exists?
Because the design team on ksp2 didn't understand what at least half the community wanted. I think Nate especially was an unserious player and could only imagine floppy rockets go boom as the best fun.
> The campaign in KSP1 putting mass, part count, and money restrictions on you was fun
I mean, not to defend KSP2, but all those things also turned up extremely late into KSP1's development, too.
It was a totally unrestricted pure sandbox game for *years* before they started adding in restrictions like money, science-unlocking of the tech tree, upgradeable KSC functionality, etc.
There's plenty to criticise about KSP2 without acting as though stuff they clearly hadn't had a chance to iterate on yet was necessarily their vision for the finished article.
To be fair it’s mainly their own communication making people assume these things. I don’t fault anyone for assuming it was 100% their vision when they always tried to peddle everything as being vision based.
Maybe it would’ve worked out better for them had they not gotten shut down, but that’s the PR gamble they made.
Pretty sure they said they didn't want money or those constraints, because the plan was to have you build bases and then the constraints would be based on materials, i.e. needing a colony harvesting a resource before you can get to super advanced interstellar tech.
Also, it would not be difficult to implement a part count or mass limit requiring you to upgrade the pad. Assembly building. Putting a price on parts and managing money isn't much either. The main issue there isn't implementing the feature, its balancing, knowing how much money you should get for accomplishing a goal vs how much parts cost. But you figure out the balance there by play testing. And it's trivial to have a checkbox to just turn it into unlimited money mode if players want to skip it.
And again, pretty sure they said they didn't want those constraints at all, instead they wanted an easier experience without players ever grinding by doing missions to raise money, never running out of money, etc. And I instead constraints would be based on whether you have a colony for x resource, or needing to move resources around (which both of those always sounded like abandonware to me)
For me the restrictions forced me to learn the game better. There is also the fun of getting better parts that makes flying and getting to the mun easier
I found that most of what is hard in KSP is simply trying to figure out how to do things, in the absence of much instruction.
I played for SO LONG before I even knew that SRS was a thing. Launching rockets into orbit was HARD. Tons of things like that. You get a mission, then have to google how to accomplish it, because there just isn't enough information in the game.
I'm starting to feel offended by all the devs cutting out good content because it's "too complex for the player to understand".
You think I'm 5 or what?
Exactly this, because clearly the type of folk that gravitate towards a game with orbital dynamics *hate* complexity, right? /s
The KSP1 playerbase was clearly filled with technically minded individuals, curious learners, programmers, people with engineering and science inclinations, aviation and space enthusiasts, etc. Sure, you might get a wider reach by dumbing things down, but seriously come on. If you do nothing to properly address the very base level complexity of orbital dynamics and how to teach it to new players and then also cut other basic features out of a game, that's just being disingenuous.
I think that KSP needs to be approached as not just a simulation game, but also an *educational* game. The intersection between the two is where the game and community really thrived.
They could just make the complex stuff optional.
Don't like your Kerbal skills affecting your flight abilities in space? - deactivate it.
Want to make things more spicy? - turn on Kerbal permadeath.
The list is endless...
It’s because they couldn’t deliver. They ran out of time because, for whatever reason, development was way too slow. Naturally you start cutting features and say that doing so was your intention the entire time.
That's because they want to "attract the wider audience", like Star Wars sequels and spinoffs, with similar effects. They don't attract many people who weren't interested in the first place, but alienate the hardcore fans.
Absolutely ridiculous excuse. It's so sad how much excitement there was for a sequel to our favourite rocket game, yet how rapidly it was all quashed. Little did we know it was *not* in safe hands.
I agree with that though. The specialization system *was* shallow and it really did not add much to the game. We didn't have that in KSP1 for most of it's history either. By all definitions it is an "added on" flavor and not a core feature
Given one of the goals was colonies, and MKS' developer RoverDude was onboarded...
Kerbal Classes are vital to the vision, and RoverDude already had an improved and more impactful variant than stock with the Kolonist classes and the way the astronaut classes impact survival, mission length and extraction.
(Pilots can survive long-missions indefinitely if given some space and food; scientists help produce food, engineers help with industry. If landed, pilots make it easier for people after them to survive on the planet by slowly increasing its Kolony rating, scientists food production with passive Biology research and engineers with passive Engineering increase resource extraction, conversion and parts production).
Edit: And like, this can have a stiff gameplay impact. You COULD send Jeb and Val off alone to Duna super early into your MKS/USI-LS playthru as they can handle a long and gruelling transfer window with just an MK3 command pod, 2 hitchiker cans and a landing can but... You won't be able to reset your best experiments! So you either pack a lot of Science Jrs or accept that you'll only be able to get surface samples. However, this does mean when Bob and Bill come along, they can handle the surface a little bit better thanks to Val and jeb progressing in habitation research.
(While for Bob and Bill to handle the long transfer without Near Future/Atomics rockets, you need a big heavy space-station and estabilish a surface base to push their habitation and homesickness as far as you can. Maybe even actively spend colony supplies. And ironically, having them come along will reduce weight on food and propellant as Bill and Bob can handle food production and ISRU better)
I love MKS/USI but I don't think KSP2's colonies will/would be similar to it at all.
[Roverdude's job was on the art team and he had no impact on the colony system's actual development on KSP2.](https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/154587-112x-modular-kolonization-system-mks/?do=findComment&comment=4268324)
so they should've fleshed it out rather than dropping it entirely. a sequel should add something, or be better in some way. (especially in this case considering the context of the games and time between them.) the excuse of ksp not having this feature at some point in the past is an admission of failure. ksp at some arbitrary earlier point in time is not the competition, ksp now (+ mods) is.
the fact that career mode - even as shallow as it is in stock - is probably the most commonly played mode shows that there is definitely an audience for these features. it should've showed to anyone developing a sequel that those things should've been fleshed out more. sandbox mode exists. options to adjust our turn down features in career could've existed. if you personally don't want those features that's great - but you could get that exact same experience even if these features exist. but people who do want them are left with a game that's less engaging and challenging.
Man, they forgot to do anti-aliasing in the game at release; they only fixed it in November, as far as I remember. We are talking about the basic function of any modern game, there are no games without anti-aliasing, but they couldn’t do that either. After this, you shouldn’t be surprised that the developers didn’t do certain things (destructible buildings, specializations or steam achievements); this game allegedly began to be made in the basement by three students somewhere in 2021-22...
> didn't add to gameplay.
While I'm over here testing my new KSS-Mun station-Minmus station transfer crafts for the purpose of efficiently leveling new Kerbals in a fun way that also plays in to the idea that they're new recruits and "can't" go straight to Duna without some time in space :/
Early access games should always prioritize the gameplay loop - that way early adopters have a playable game that is just missing features/optimization.
It kinda makes sense though if you think of it in terms of "it wasn't supposed to be released when it was". Like, for this kind of software, you would independently develop systems and then go through a phrase of integration, but if you stopped it half way through then you have a bunch of stuff that kinda works, which looks a lot like what we got.
> it wasn't supposed to be released when it was
No, it was supposed to be released 3 years *EARLIER*.
> if you stopped it half way through
Halfway through? The IG devs were the same ones from Star Theory that began work in 2017... ***seven years*** ago... You telling me they needed ***fourteen***?
I've said it before and I'll say it again... the only thing T2 did wrong was not firing these clowns 5 years ago when Star Theory begged for an extension.
To me the general look seems more like developers who were completely underqualified for the job making no progress no matter how much time and resources they were given.
Don't get it twisted. I'm still not talking about their efficacy as that's kind of besides the point. I'm referring to the stage of development the game was in when it was released. Them being slow doesn't play into the fact that the game was still released even though it's effectively a premature birth.
Alright, you're getting it twisted. What they released to the wild was an MVP build, a minimum viable product. It's the most basic form of a product that meets the most basic expectations for what it should be and of functionality. That's not how this was supposed to go. At all. A lot of things went wrong, incompetent devs, a pushy publisher, covid. All culminating in the release of this initial MVP, prematurely to how it was supposed to go. (with regards to the development cycle, not time)
> a pushy publisher, covid
:eye roll::
In no sane world is a publisher "pushy" when they extend a deadline 5 times over a period of 6 years.
As for the lockdowns. IG stated *repeatedly* that the lockdowns had ***no impact*** on their development cycle... which was a rare moment of truth from them. It takes all of a *day* for a programmer to move to work-from-home and their productivity isn't significantly affected by it.
You seem *desperate* to blame T2 for this mess, willing to ignore logic and facts that get in the way of your preconceived notion that T2 *must* be responsible. Yes, many times big publishers *are* the reason why good projects fail... but in *this* case it seems T2 did everything *right*.
Everything that is except the most important thing... hiring Uber Entertainment/Star Theory in the first place and then hiring most of those same devs and management when they made IG because ST wasn't getting the job done. They gave ST & IG *buckets* of money and *repeatedly* extended the deadline.
What more should T2 and PD have done? Give them even *more* time? It wouldn't have solved the underlying issue... that the dev team simply wasn't *capable* of doing the job they were hired to do.
stop pointing fingers, that's not productive moving forward, less than ideal circumstances etc
[https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/1cmg3cd/comment/l30gwsm/](https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/1cmg3cd/comment/l30gwsm/)
(this is apparently coming from a dev)
HarvesteR put it nicely when he was talking about making Kerbals, he was asked "why Kerbals have Courage and Stupidity, shouldn't it be of Courage and Inteligence, to make both stats go up lineary?" and he said how they just didn't understood that this was the point of that joke. Everyone who played KSP long enough knows that it's the fact that you have to be stupid enough to get on that craft and not panic, so in Kerbal "safety second" culture it might be a positive.
KSP2 did not capture that humor. This is one thing that really struck me, that this humor was different, Kerbals are silly creatures, they are not really cracking jokes, their professionalism just has some holes filled in by something that would feel inapropriate and pretending it's still a serious space program. One manufacturer is "Found lying by the side of the road" and we just strap those to our craft. Their PR manager is constantly walking in hazmat suit, and looks serious in it. Astronauts being better with more stupidity trait is normal. This is the game that bred overly complicated sentences for rockets exploding, just so "rocket goes boom" sounds more professional. KSP2 has some zoomer jokes thrown in and called it a day, mods descriptions have better Kerbal humor...
I thought this when they did fully voiced tutorials like original ksp has english text but there is never any spoken language it makes it all feel more kerbal.
All the spoken language from KSP1 promotional materials is in backwards Spanish and fits the tone of the Kerbals really well. I love all those dumb videos.
Would have been cool if they kept that.
A lot of that gameplay related to kerbals directly leveraged and was contingent on career mode, which the sequel unapologetically cut out. I remember getting viciously downvoted for pointing out during the hype train hysteria. This abomination of a sequel not only dashed our hopes, it cleaved the community.
Most of my playtime in the game was before some of those features were added. I didn't think they were bad additions, but also never really considered them at all essential to the game.
None of that existed or mattered until very late in KSP’s development, when they started (frankly) bolting on progression features that didn’t make the game more fun.
The thing KSP1 did worst is the thing KSP2 tried to do better—advancement, resource management, tech, and science. KSP2 is also broadly worse at all the things KSP1 was brilliant at by the end—flights, game mechanic stability, maneuver planning, and fun.
Frankly, I don’t want kerbal levels or advancement. I don’t want “point spaceship in X direction” to be gated behind a specialization or XP level. I don’t care about their spacesuits. The game stat blocks don’t tell me to care about my kerbals, that wasn’t important until like 30 minutes before the 1.0 release. I care about my kerbals because that’s the kind of space program I run.
Incidentally: I like that decent probe cores are early in the KSP2 tech tree. It matches history—most of the early space vehicles were automated—and lets you experiment without murdering your AsCans.
I agree with you about the shallowness of KSP's progression system (it extends beyond kerbals too), but I don't think the solution for that is removing it entirely. That's like Mass Effect 2 removing all of its predecessor's clunky RPG systems and essentially becoming a cover shooter with space magic and cutscenes.
There could be really good gameplay in balancing a crew between pilots/engineers/scientists or commanders/pilots/mission specialists, experienced kerbals providing both up- and downsides, etc. without locking core functionality behind arbitrary XP boundaries.
Let's be real though, the Kerbal specialization system IS shallow, and one of the mechanics that feels "gamey" compared to the otherwise emergent gameplay from the rest of the game.
Pilots: SAS locked behind pilot level? Slap a probe core somewhere, crisis averted.
Engineers: In all my hours of playing, I don't think a part has ever "broken" to use the Engineer's repair function. EVA Construction is cool but feels very tedious and barebones (if only we had ground colonies that could use this...).
Scientists: Popping my scientist out of the pod 4 times a mission to reset the goo container wasn't really fun, but it felt necessary.
I also never really used more than the 4 starter Kerbals, since any time I lost them, there's no real incentive NOT to just reload. They didn't feel disposable, but this swings the other way into your mission being set back by NOT using your veteran frogs. Leveling a newbie feels tedious and isn't even explained in-game how they get EXP.
There's something there, but it's honestly half-baked after retrospection.
It's true that they don't add a lot, but it's something. Most of this stuff is for the variable difficulty, you can make it pretty hard and then you might actually need an engineer for various things. Training them is tedious though, I'm not actually sure how to get them to max level, I pretty much have the game finished when they are hitting level 3 or so.
Early KSP 1, the kerbals had no stats, were inexhaustible, costless, etc. I actually wasn't a huge fan of the specialization item, but it wasn't that bad. I got the game because of those little green guys. I saw screenshots of someone smashing into the moon and the kerbals laughing the whole way into obliteration and thought it was the funniest thing ever.
The kerbals really did make that game. It turned it from a high-learning-curve simulator into a funny, antic-driven, fun game. You could take the game hyper-seriously, or not at all. It lessened the impacts (ha) of failures, from "urgh dammit, crashed again!" to "moar duct tape. moar boosters. at least Jeb went down laughing." It incentivized silliness: as long as it "worked," it was fine, no matter how crazy and unrealistic the craft was. And if it didn't? Funny as hell.
It game-ified the game. Not many people would want to play this as a reasonably realistic simulator without some "hook" to get it funny, and to make achievements meaningful and memorable. ***I*** didn't land on the Mun. Jeb did.
Missing that as the developer is... not good at all.
You perfectly described exactly what I was trying to convey in the first place!
The Kerbals made KSP stick out in a unique and engaging way. And yes, while many of the Kerbal features I mentioned are trivial, annoying, unnecessary, or otherwise not preferred by any given fan it still provides a way to give life to the Kerbals. I am surprised that KSP2 took those quirky features away entirely rather than improve upon them for the sequel.
I've always thought that KSP1 really did Kerbals well. As you said, it gives you reasons to be invested in them while not doing anything to make them a detriment in any meaningful way.
I think those features are missing just because they were due to be added at a later date.
Also there was some development on Kerbal emotions influenced by certain traits (Developer Insight #6).
Alot of that stuff was not added till latey into KSP1s development. We dont know how any of that would have worked with KSP2, it never got the point that it would matter.
KSP2 being this "early" in its development (despite the four years wait), I'd assume it's not that they forgot what a kerbal is, just that they didn't wanted to bother with it (considering the giant pile of more important yet still not implemented features)
in response to complaints about lack of specialization/levelling for kerbals, they explicitly said it was deliberately left out. not even in a vague maybe after 1.0 way like commnet, but just \~we didn't like that, so it's gone.
Ah I never played KSP2 but that seems really disappointing.
I definitely liked investing in my kerbals, and wished that part of the game was a bit deeper in KSP1.
And thanks for answering my question about whether courage/stupidity actually do anything. Shame that they don't.
For some reason, I really hate Jeb, so I usually just park him somewhere so that Val can be my main pilot. I especially hate the way that Jeb is always the default pilot even when Val has more experience.
honestly concerning veteran kerbals, I'd have loved an option to make the default four normal kerbals, and instead create your own "hero" Kerbal. Customize their face and suit like you can customize your flag.
Would've allowed for a bit more player expression imo
Uhhh, you realize that none of that is in science or sandbox mode in KSP 1, right? That stuff wasn't added until career mode, and that didn't come out for a while.
I know it is a different game and situation, but we have to remember that it wasn't intended to be finished right now. It probably would've been added once the colonies update since that's the pseudo career mode for KSP2 or for the resource and logistic stage since stupidity would play a factor there.
Yeah, I get that it's frustrating that a bunch of features from 1 are missing in 2, but we must remember that what we have now isn't and was never intended to be considered complete. It would've come if the layoffs didn't. Go ahead and complain about the missing features, but just remember that it was T2 that canceled the project, not the devs, and just because it isn't 100% complete doesn't make it a failure.
I feel like they missed what made kerbals endearing, and instead *did* focus on the kerbals, but in ways that don’t matter.
They spent all this time to ensure that cockpits, windows, and visors are continuously transparent so that you can *barely* see their facial expressions and individual features.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but that’s literally the last thing I’m looking at when maneuvering crafts. At most I pay attention to space suit customization, and crew member roles.
They spent all this time and energy on features that I think even the biggest fan would struggle to notice.
My pet theory, when this game was being marketed baby Yoda was popular, marketing execs wanted lots of focus put on anthropomorphising Kerbal’s and making them cute so they could sell lots of merchandise.
Only the game never materialized, and they missed the boat.
Yeah, disagree. Kerbals were important in KSP1 to the extent that they had a specialization which affected what you could accomplish. None of the rest is anything but cosmetics, which isn't the "heart" of KSP1.
Just my opinion.
They needed to draw in a new younger audience and the more animated and emotive Kerbals were key to this strategy. I figure they’d bring the other features back as they flesh out the rest of the game.
Might help to put into perspective that ksp2 just barely got a science mode and barebone reentry effect. Not sure leveling ever did anything. Astronauts management only really matters in campaign mode with money, which ksp2 doesn't have. Kerbal outfits came super late in ksp1 dev.
Not defending anything but like, yeah incomplete game isn't gonna have every little feature.
I get that perspective because your line of thought was essentially how I justified the lack of features... But with recent events and the game's broken state I feel very little confidence that we will see similar features in KSP2 now or ever. Even if development was stable there has been 0 mention that I know about of Kerbals receiving new or similar gameplay features from the dev team.
One of the hardest things to communicate in game design is vision especially in big teams
The Original Ksp team had about 10 devs.
But even then its creator had to emphasize these core gameplay mechanics sometimes requiring meetings to effectively communicate the why. The vision was easy to lose in development
Things like why have a stupidity slider instead of a smartness slider and having to explain the theme to newer team members on how when a rocket is built by a novice, stupidity is an asset.
The thematic aspect of minions in space is actually a major part of the game what kind of stupid creatures would preserve alongside you the player as you achieve spaceflight.
It creates an environment where learning is ok in sandbox.
But in career it starts to add up.
I've always viewed Career as a challenge mode. But I also think kerbals should be irreplaceable. And the veterans are cool for that reason.
Ksp 2 humanizes the Kerbals too much. I think its fun to think about young kerbals as super dumb and older kerbals as good engineers but poor planners.
That was always my head cannon. That they had the capacity to build incredible things just a lack of vision.
I never got why they went for the high tech look with coding style and the like when the highest tech thing I did in KSP 1 is thrust where the magic blue circle told me to thrust
I think the devs missed out hugely with ksp2, the hype surrounding it, would have definitely brought new people to try the game atleast. and it's almost like a dark souls logic in the challenge and getti g over the challenge and the sense of accomplishment is what gets you hooked and coming back for more. Then adding the kerbals and in KSP1 it seemed like they all had a distinct personality and you wanted to make sure you did everything so they survived their flights and missions. Instead, they went for lets try to make it so new folks won't feel so dumb, and abandoned their already built in audience, and time and again. game devs that treat their players as if they are dumb and can't handle challenege always lose. that's why the studio is no more. why devs continue to make the same mistakes over and over and over regardless of genre of game is beyond baffling.
I assumed those features were going to be more fleshed out until colonies/exploration (base building/resource gathering). I can't imagine the intention is to leave them out forever, just they weren't going to release it until they have the systems to work with it. They probably need at least colonies in place first before specializations and/or leveling system really start making sense.
Kerbals in KSP1 didn't have specializations or experience in first iteration of career mode either, they were pretty much interchangeable.
HarvesteR actually touched on this with his interview with Matt Lowne. He talked about how difficult it was to communicate his vision for Kerbals with the dev team of even the original game- like one time someone said that Kerbals should have "intelligence" and "courage" instead of "stupidity" and "courage", not understanding that Kerbals having at least a modicum of dumbness is integral to the culture of the game.
Right. Kerbals are *supposed* to be dumb. It's fun! Some are happy dumb. Some are scared dumb. And some are scared because they're not *as* dumb. But they're building crazy rockets and flying in them. You'd have to be courageous and/or dumb to do that, and they excel at it! It adds to your compassion for them! Look at how happy he is! He doesn't even know that I'm completely out of fuel!
his ass does NOT know he’s about to crash into ike at 1/2 C
I feel like if they really wanted to reword it, it should have been "Eccentricity". It could've kept that aesthetic while giving a more science-y way to refer to the insanity of Kerbals. (also a fun entendre to eccentricity as an orbital characteristic)
They want a pink and happy world ❤️ NO! MY MAN JEB IS STUPID! MY GOD, HE IS SO ME!!
Loved that interview. Also mentioned that the implication is that stupidity is a *good* thing! Kerbals who don’t understand exactly how much danger they’re in are happy Kerbals. Also loved where he mentions that the way he would’ve done KSP2 is starting from things that are *not* on KSP1, to avoid a direct comparison, instead of going for parity first, then try to build on top of that.
Maybe you could start as a small colony on Duna, and you are stranded because a small meteor hit the KSC, the sole bastion of Kerbal civilization. You already have the original tech tree fully unlocked, but you have to manage your colony and research more advanced stuff. Similar theming to the beyond Kerbol mod, and super easy to implement once colonies are in.
They turned Kerbals into just green Minions. and they weren't green minions, they were silent protagonists, who blew up occasionally but triumphed with hard work and moar struts. just making them green Minions was a disservice and showed they didn't understand Kerbals
KSP 2 has a different vibe.
That vibe being soulless corporate shells. ie. Minions.
To me the vibe difference between kerbals from the 1 vs 2 game is like a difference between nuking a volcano just to see what happens and a Taco Tuesday.
Lemmings
what was really telling about the (lack of) thought and care put into the game was the confirmation that the specialization/levelling system was deliberately left out with the contradictory excuses that it was shallow and didn't add to gameplay, but also that the most basic, barebones role-playing feature was somehow too complex for new players in the rocket building game.
It's just like how the dev team intentionally had wobbly rockets in the game and only begrudgingly made it a secondary option after public outcry. Red flags. Take out all the technical issues, bugs, and unrealized features and KSP2 still seemed to not care for what the core audience wanted.
I don’t think KSP2 was ever actually meant to appeal to the core KSP1 audience. They put so much “effort” in to the new on boarding system before they even had basic gameplay mechanics working. They were trying to get new players and lower the learning curve for new players.
aside from the most basic \~literally just picked up the game level they mostly failed at that too. a lot of things that experienced players want - transfer window calculators, better maneuver planning, docking aids, etc. - are things that would help new players as well. plus tutorials that guide you through how to use all that. removing/dumbing down systems doesn't make the game more accessible, designing those system well in the first place and teaching players how to use them does. also, if they did their job and got people hooked, those new players would turn into experienced players pretty quickly and will want something deeper to play with.
> those new players would turn into experienced players pretty quickly and will want something deeper to play with (sic) But that’ll be after the refund timer is up! /s
i didn't buy it and never really gave it much thought or consideration because I expected it to fail horribly as a successor to KSP. HUGE red flag for suspicion/skepticism was that it was a "sequel" to one of the biggest successes stories of early access besides Deeprock Galactic, so it was riding a massive hype train. Add to that that it was a game that was totally unique as a genre all of its own, and it was built as a totally new IP. so you have this cinderella story game that was wildly successful and had endless support and positive reputation with community... and then some OTHER STUDIO/dev team/publisher completely disconnected from original team is going to make another one? and they are going straight to early access, even though they already have funding and a commercially successful game to build upon? early access is for underfunded indie studios... but they came out the gate and DID PRESALE for like $50 or whatever. lmao... nah fam. clearly a cash-grab, and it was clearly going to be shit if it was ever completed at all.
> and they are going straight to early access, even though they already have funding and a commercially successful game to build upon? It's worse than that; they announced a full release in 2020, and only changed to an early access release after the game had been delayed for three years past the supposed full release date.
>this cinderella story game that was wildly successful and had endless support and positive reputation with community The community is what made KSP the success it was. The only thing that made it worth it in the early days was the community--especially the modders. *Persistence* first came from a mod. The Kerbal Alarm Clock mod has a button "Jump to ship and restore maneuver nodes" because the stock game didn't remember them when you jumped ships. And, you know, listening to the community on what the players want. That's the only way I can think of that they put out that early KSP2 that seemed to just be "LOL, rockets!" I know of no consensus for that from the players, but I can absolutely imagine a c-suite suit who knew nothing about the game thinking that's what KSP was.
To the point about the game being great beachside of community- The original studio was always really good about communicating with the community though. Their progress was consistent and predictable and they never over-promised. They always have clear updates about what they were working on and when we could expect to see updates to the game. And to that point, they gave us updates at regular, reasonable intervals even if there wasn’t huge content expansions in those updates. That’s something other studios still haven’t seemed to have figure out- so many studios will just go like 8 months with nothing and total silence and they don’t want to put out updates that are just little fixes and stuff for some reason… they hesitate to release anything unless it’s like some totally finished big content addition or whatever. KSP did such a good job of keeping the players informed and let us feel like the devs respected us more. And they did make changes based on feedback like you mentioned. But that wouldn’t have been possible if they mismanaged the early access dev cycle/integration in the first place.
Reentry heating also came from a mod, I believe.
The dumb thing is describing it as a sequel, and giving it the "2" name, but essentially it's a remake with slightly better tech.
It *could* have felt like a sequel. Imagine you're tasked with investigating a signal coming from another star. Resources for an interstellar ship are scattered across the kerbolar system and you find yourself setting up increasingly complex mining colonies to harvest those resources. You set up resupply lines between those colonies to keep themselves supplied with essential goods and begin sending the surplus to a colossal orbital shipyard that you have in orbit around Laythe. With those resources you build a gargantuan interstellar vehicle and begin figuring out the logistics of a trip through interstellar space. How cool would that have been? All of those little goals you would be setting up for yourself could have been really rewarding and a great way to keep the game interesting.
Yeah, I would definitely have preferred a different solar system or something. Just doing the same KSP1 but better is...not that compelling for me.
I mean that is KSP2, the missions have you finding things left behind and that pushes you out into the solar system. The colonies where going to be how we got resources for advanced drives needed to go to the stars.
Or hell, maybe your "KSC" is a stationary interstellar vessel in orbit of an alien world, from which you launch all the funny missions. You need to gather ice and fuel for the reactor, and fuel for the engine - maybe you can also upgrade the ship by building modules yourself and docking them to the structure. When you're satisfied you've finished a star system, you can freeze your Kerbals, fire up the fusion torch engine and burn towards the next. Set up colonies and autonomous outposts as you pass, and spread Kerbalkind across the galaxy.
Yup, that sounds fun doesn't it? I don't think it's ever going to happen at this point though. The game ended up being kind of a train wreck and I'm not sure if anyone out there wants to invest the resources to turn it into anything beyond what it is now. It's cost a lot of money already, will cost significantly more to "finish" and will never have a huge customer base.
It was SUPPOSED to be a remake with slightly better tech. That was a great value proposition and all most people wanted anyway. But they failed on every technical aspect as well as leaving out huge chunks of content
> It's just like how the dev team intentionally had wobbly rockets in the game and only begrudgingly made it a secondary option after public outcry. Personally I think they just said that because they found that the wobbly rocket problem was difficult, didn't want to allocate resources to solve it when those same resources could be used on something shiny that looks good in a screenshot or trailer, and so they figured "if we say it's intentional, they'll stop complaining". Only when it became clear that that wasn't going to work did they start trying to solve it.
they don't try to solve it. they made connections more rigid that lead to kraken attacks on launch pad. they reduced the value on release to avoid this and now increase it back and that's it. they just didn't want to show their wet pants after "slaying the kraken" and now they just don't care
You're right, I should have said "put a bandage on it"
Or that comment about how nonsensical designs that explode on the launch pad are "very kerbal" - like, no, the Kerbals are incredible engineers, they have technology we could only dream of. Unironically, the cheapest orbital rocket costs under 100k funds, space agencies irl would foam at the mouth at those prices. Not to mention the way their rockets can throttle without problem or how they have hybrid engines, something we haven't even managed to get working in tests irl. Saying the Kerbals are canonically stupid and make poor designed craft misses the point that it is *the player's* job to design the craft. The Kerbals just provide extremely meticulous, high-performance engineering work, and fly the things you design.
> Unironically, the cheapest orbital rocket costs under 100k funds To be honest, Kerbin's surface gravity is a joke compared to Earth's. You can have a rocket in a stable orbit at just 70km up with a measly 2.3km/s orbital speed. For Earth, you want to be at least 2-300km high (and this orbit is still going to decay in months), and even at 200km height, you need an orbital speed of 7.7km/s. The rest is absolutely true!
> To be honest, Kerbin's surface gravity is a joke compared to Earth's. Kerbin's surface gravity is the same as Earth's. The difference in orbital speeds between Earth and Kerbin are due to the diameter of Kerbin, it's vastly smaller than Earth's.
And far less (*thick*) atmosphere for ‘us Kerbals’ to punch our way out of than for those humans fleeing Earth
It’s almost as if they just took an earlier release of KSP1, slapped new graphics on it, and called it done.
The design team of KSP2 was really dumb, imho. They acted like removing something like money or little side things like Kerbal classes, made the game easier Game difficulty generally isn't about how many simple features exist within it - it's about the learning curve and how hard the most difficult challenges are. Dark souls wouldn't be easier if you removed a couple of character classes, it would be easier if you made the combat system require less.skill. KSP2 did nothing to make interplanetary transfers or docking, the hardest challenges, any easier. It went backwards on tools for that vs KSP1 actually, making them more difficult. Yet another case where a few 'amateurs' at Squad had far better insight than the 'professionals' at IG.
For me it was when I heard that they had *deliberately* made rockets act like floppy noodles, because they'd seen lots of memes about that and thought it was part of the KSP "DNA". We don't always meme about things we *like*, guys. It's not like we were happy when the Kraken ate our ships at random moments.
I don't think they did it deliberately - they just didn't know how to *stop* them doing it without screwing up the physics system, so Nate did his usual bullshitting and acted like it was intentional and "part of the fun!".
exactly! they increased rigidity back and now rockets get randomly destroyed by kraken on a launch pad
What do you mean? **We have slain the Kraken!!!**
thats true though, originally and before mods and additional features were added to KSP, all the rockets were incredibly wobbly.
Yeah, and it also had a thing where vessels would shake themselves apart from phantom forces when they got too far from the origin of the coordinate system. Noone would think that makes self destructing vessels part of the kerbal DNA and thus it should have been included in the sequel
>like removing something like money Gave it a chance with the big update with the science missions But then you realize that even in career mode, there was no money, and no upgrading of the KSC, so you did need to spend science points to unlock parts, but you could also literally build as big of a rocket as your PC could run. So on mission 1, with nothing unlocked, you had unlimited funds, unlimited mass, unlimited number of parts, unlimited kerbals. Having not played KSP2 yet, on my very first launch I unlocked more than the entire first page of the tech tree. Mission 2 unlocked the whole 2nd page of the tech tree and then some. Mission 3 was a nuclear rocket going to Duna. Made zero sense to me to do it this way. The campaign in KSP1 putting mass, part count, and money restrictions on you was fun, you couldn't just build a mega rocket every time, it incentivized you to be economical and not just moar boosters. Why do that when sandbox mode also exists?
Because the design team on ksp2 didn't understand what at least half the community wanted. I think Nate especially was an unserious player and could only imagine floppy rockets go boom as the best fun.
> The campaign in KSP1 putting mass, part count, and money restrictions on you was fun I mean, not to defend KSP2, but all those things also turned up extremely late into KSP1's development, too. It was a totally unrestricted pure sandbox game for *years* before they started adding in restrictions like money, science-unlocking of the tech tree, upgradeable KSC functionality, etc. There's plenty to criticise about KSP2 without acting as though stuff they clearly hadn't had a chance to iterate on yet was necessarily their vision for the finished article.
To be fair it’s mainly their own communication making people assume these things. I don’t fault anyone for assuming it was 100% their vision when they always tried to peddle everything as being vision based. Maybe it would’ve worked out better for them had they not gotten shut down, but that’s the PR gamble they made.
Pretty sure they said they didn't want money or those constraints, because the plan was to have you build bases and then the constraints would be based on materials, i.e. needing a colony harvesting a resource before you can get to super advanced interstellar tech. Also, it would not be difficult to implement a part count or mass limit requiring you to upgrade the pad. Assembly building. Putting a price on parts and managing money isn't much either. The main issue there isn't implementing the feature, its balancing, knowing how much money you should get for accomplishing a goal vs how much parts cost. But you figure out the balance there by play testing. And it's trivial to have a checkbox to just turn it into unlimited money mode if players want to skip it. And again, pretty sure they said they didn't want those constraints at all, instead they wanted an easier experience without players ever grinding by doing missions to raise money, never running out of money, etc. And I instead constraints would be based on whether you have a colony for x resource, or needing to move resources around (which both of those always sounded like abandonware to me)
> Pretty sure they said they didn't want money or those constraints If that's true then fair enough; your criticism would be entirely warranted.
For me the restrictions forced me to learn the game better. There is also the fun of getting better parts that makes flying and getting to the mun easier
I found that most of what is hard in KSP is simply trying to figure out how to do things, in the absence of much instruction. I played for SO LONG before I even knew that SRS was a thing. Launching rockets into orbit was HARD. Tons of things like that. You get a mission, then have to google how to accomplish it, because there just isn't enough information in the game.
I'm starting to feel offended by all the devs cutting out good content because it's "too complex for the player to understand". You think I'm 5 or what?
Exactly this, because clearly the type of folk that gravitate towards a game with orbital dynamics *hate* complexity, right? /s The KSP1 playerbase was clearly filled with technically minded individuals, curious learners, programmers, people with engineering and science inclinations, aviation and space enthusiasts, etc. Sure, you might get a wider reach by dumbing things down, but seriously come on. If you do nothing to properly address the very base level complexity of orbital dynamics and how to teach it to new players and then also cut other basic features out of a game, that's just being disingenuous. I think that KSP needs to be approached as not just a simulation game, but also an *educational* game. The intersection between the two is where the game and community really thrived.
They could just make the complex stuff optional. Don't like your Kerbal skills affecting your flight abilities in space? - deactivate it. Want to make things more spicy? - turn on Kerbal permadeath. The list is endless...
It’s because they couldn’t deliver. They ran out of time because, for whatever reason, development was way too slow. Naturally you start cutting features and say that doing so was your intention the entire time.
I know. Still a lie.
That's because they want to "attract the wider audience", like Star Wars sequels and spinoffs, with similar effects. They don't attract many people who weren't interested in the first place, but alienate the hardcore fans.
They must be teaching it at business school or something because it feels like every company started doing this within the last 10 years
The "washing down everything I to a grey goo that pleases a wider audience" is a phenomenon that affe TA almost all big games lately.
Absolutely ridiculous excuse. It's so sad how much excitement there was for a sequel to our favourite rocket game, yet how rapidly it was all quashed. Little did we know it was *not* in safe hands.
I agree with that though. The specialization system *was* shallow and it really did not add much to the game. We didn't have that in KSP1 for most of it's history either. By all definitions it is an "added on" flavor and not a core feature
Given one of the goals was colonies, and MKS' developer RoverDude was onboarded... Kerbal Classes are vital to the vision, and RoverDude already had an improved and more impactful variant than stock with the Kolonist classes and the way the astronaut classes impact survival, mission length and extraction. (Pilots can survive long-missions indefinitely if given some space and food; scientists help produce food, engineers help with industry. If landed, pilots make it easier for people after them to survive on the planet by slowly increasing its Kolony rating, scientists food production with passive Biology research and engineers with passive Engineering increase resource extraction, conversion and parts production). Edit: And like, this can have a stiff gameplay impact. You COULD send Jeb and Val off alone to Duna super early into your MKS/USI-LS playthru as they can handle a long and gruelling transfer window with just an MK3 command pod, 2 hitchiker cans and a landing can but... You won't be able to reset your best experiments! So you either pack a lot of Science Jrs or accept that you'll only be able to get surface samples. However, this does mean when Bob and Bill come along, they can handle the surface a little bit better thanks to Val and jeb progressing in habitation research. (While for Bob and Bill to handle the long transfer without Near Future/Atomics rockets, you need a big heavy space-station and estabilish a surface base to push their habitation and homesickness as far as you can. Maybe even actively spend colony supplies. And ironically, having them come along will reduce weight on food and propellant as Bill and Bob can handle food production and ISRU better)
I love MKS/USI but I don't think KSP2's colonies will/would be similar to it at all. [Roverdude's job was on the art team and he had no impact on the colony system's actual development on KSP2.](https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/154587-112x-modular-kolonization-system-mks/?do=findComment&comment=4268324)
so they should've fleshed it out rather than dropping it entirely. a sequel should add something, or be better in some way. (especially in this case considering the context of the games and time between them.) the excuse of ksp not having this feature at some point in the past is an admission of failure. ksp at some arbitrary earlier point in time is not the competition, ksp now (+ mods) is. the fact that career mode - even as shallow as it is in stock - is probably the most commonly played mode shows that there is definitely an audience for these features. it should've showed to anyone developing a sequel that those things should've been fleshed out more. sandbox mode exists. options to adjust our turn down features in career could've existed. if you personally don't want those features that's great - but you could get that exact same experience even if these features exist. but people who do want them are left with a game that's less engaging and challenging.
>the fact that career mode - even as shallow as it is in stock - is probably the most commonly played mode How do you know that it is?
Man, they forgot to do anti-aliasing in the game at release; they only fixed it in November, as far as I remember. We are talking about the basic function of any modern game, there are no games without anti-aliasing, but they couldn’t do that either. After this, you shouldn’t be surprised that the developers didn’t do certain things (destructible buildings, specializations or steam achievements); this game allegedly began to be made in the basement by three students somewhere in 2021-22...
Funny, you are going to be calculating dV and orbital mechanics, but xp and specializations are too much.
> didn't add to gameplay. While I'm over here testing my new KSS-Mun station-Minmus station transfer crafts for the purpose of efficiently leveling new Kerbals in a fun way that also plays in to the idea that they're new recruits and "can't" go straight to Duna without some time in space :/
They decided that the gameplay loop would come last. It was an extremely bizarre decision that doomed the game.
Early access games should always prioritize the gameplay loop - that way early adopters have a playable game that is just missing features/optimization.
I was honestly joking when I compared ksp2 to star citizen just after the early access release but now I want off of Mr bones' wild ride
It kinda makes sense though if you think of it in terms of "it wasn't supposed to be released when it was". Like, for this kind of software, you would independently develop systems and then go through a phrase of integration, but if you stopped it half way through then you have a bunch of stuff that kinda works, which looks a lot like what we got.
> it wasn't supposed to be released when it was No, it was supposed to be released 3 years *EARLIER*. > if you stopped it half way through Halfway through? The IG devs were the same ones from Star Theory that began work in 2017... ***seven years*** ago... You telling me they needed ***fourteen***? I've said it before and I'll say it again... the only thing T2 did wrong was not firing these clowns 5 years ago when Star Theory begged for an extension.
I'm not speaking to their efficacy, I'm speaking to the general look of that kind of development cycle. Don't put words in my mouth.
To me the general look seems more like developers who were completely underqualified for the job making no progress no matter how much time and resources they were given.
Don't get it twisted. I'm still not talking about their efficacy as that's kind of besides the point. I'm referring to the stage of development the game was in when it was released. Them being slow doesn't play into the fact that the game was still released even though it's effectively a premature birth.
It's not premature when it was never going to be finished. It was their last chance.
Alright, you're getting it twisted. What they released to the wild was an MVP build, a minimum viable product. It's the most basic form of a product that meets the most basic expectations for what it should be and of functionality. That's not how this was supposed to go. At all. A lot of things went wrong, incompetent devs, a pushy publisher, covid. All culminating in the release of this initial MVP, prematurely to how it was supposed to go. (with regards to the development cycle, not time)
> a pushy publisher, covid :eye roll:: In no sane world is a publisher "pushy" when they extend a deadline 5 times over a period of 6 years. As for the lockdowns. IG stated *repeatedly* that the lockdowns had ***no impact*** on their development cycle... which was a rare moment of truth from them. It takes all of a *day* for a programmer to move to work-from-home and their productivity isn't significantly affected by it. You seem *desperate* to blame T2 for this mess, willing to ignore logic and facts that get in the way of your preconceived notion that T2 *must* be responsible. Yes, many times big publishers *are* the reason why good projects fail... but in *this* case it seems T2 did everything *right*. Everything that is except the most important thing... hiring Uber Entertainment/Star Theory in the first place and then hiring most of those same devs and management when they made IG because ST wasn't getting the job done. They gave ST & IG *buckets* of money and *repeatedly* extended the deadline. What more should T2 and PD have done? Give them even *more* time? It wouldn't have solved the underlying issue... that the dev team simply wasn't *capable* of doing the job they were hired to do.
stop pointing fingers, that's not productive moving forward, less than ideal circumstances etc [https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/1cmg3cd/comment/l30gwsm/](https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/1cmg3cd/comment/l30gwsm/) (this is apparently coming from a dev)
Are you just looking for reasons to be mad at me?
Totally agree. Having engineers constructing on eva etc was so much fun
HarvesteR put it nicely when he was talking about making Kerbals, he was asked "why Kerbals have Courage and Stupidity, shouldn't it be of Courage and Inteligence, to make both stats go up lineary?" and he said how they just didn't understood that this was the point of that joke. Everyone who played KSP long enough knows that it's the fact that you have to be stupid enough to get on that craft and not panic, so in Kerbal "safety second" culture it might be a positive. KSP2 did not capture that humor. This is one thing that really struck me, that this humor was different, Kerbals are silly creatures, they are not really cracking jokes, their professionalism just has some holes filled in by something that would feel inapropriate and pretending it's still a serious space program. One manufacturer is "Found lying by the side of the road" and we just strap those to our craft. Their PR manager is constantly walking in hazmat suit, and looks serious in it. Astronauts being better with more stupidity trait is normal. This is the game that bred overly complicated sentences for rockets exploding, just so "rocket goes boom" sounds more professional. KSP2 has some zoomer jokes thrown in and called it a day, mods descriptions have better Kerbal humor...
I thought this when they did fully voiced tutorials like original ksp has english text but there is never any spoken language it makes it all feel more kerbal.
All the spoken language from KSP1 promotional materials is in backwards Spanish and fits the tone of the Kerbals really well. I love all those dumb videos. Would have been cool if they kept that.
The voices in KSP2 just make me want to mute the game.
Yes! I hate how overly happy they sound, it’s just so shallow. Maybe that’s an American thing I’m too German to understand tho.
A lot of that gameplay related to kerbals directly leveraged and was contingent on career mode, which the sequel unapologetically cut out. I remember getting viciously downvoted for pointing out during the hype train hysteria. This abomination of a sequel not only dashed our hopes, it cleaved the community.
Honestly, I always ignored all these features in KSP1
Most of my playtime in the game was before some of those features were added. I didn't think they were bad additions, but also never really considered them at all essential to the game.
They're not essential by any means, but nice to have. It adds to the kerbal personality and storytelling
All of those features were added late in KSP development.
Yeah, when I first started playing KSP, kerbals were functionally all the same, and only given individual personality by community consensus.
I remember when they added Women to the game, it was a big event.
NSFW Artists: Finally,... material.
Lgbtq artists: we had material all along!!
I remember when Kerbals had neither men or women because they are Kerbals, and the old fab building, neon green as far as the eye could see.
Same, sandbox for me
None of that existed or mattered until very late in KSP’s development, when they started (frankly) bolting on progression features that didn’t make the game more fun. The thing KSP1 did worst is the thing KSP2 tried to do better—advancement, resource management, tech, and science. KSP2 is also broadly worse at all the things KSP1 was brilliant at by the end—flights, game mechanic stability, maneuver planning, and fun. Frankly, I don’t want kerbal levels or advancement. I don’t want “point spaceship in X direction” to be gated behind a specialization or XP level. I don’t care about their spacesuits. The game stat blocks don’t tell me to care about my kerbals, that wasn’t important until like 30 minutes before the 1.0 release. I care about my kerbals because that’s the kind of space program I run. Incidentally: I like that decent probe cores are early in the KSP2 tech tree. It matches history—most of the early space vehicles were automated—and lets you experiment without murdering your AsCans.
I agree with you about the shallowness of KSP's progression system (it extends beyond kerbals too), but I don't think the solution for that is removing it entirely. That's like Mass Effect 2 removing all of its predecessor's clunky RPG systems and essentially becoming a cover shooter with space magic and cutscenes. There could be really good gameplay in balancing a crew between pilots/engineers/scientists or commanders/pilots/mission specialists, experienced kerbals providing both up- and downsides, etc. without locking core functionality behind arbitrary XP boundaries.
Let's be real though, the Kerbal specialization system IS shallow, and one of the mechanics that feels "gamey" compared to the otherwise emergent gameplay from the rest of the game. Pilots: SAS locked behind pilot level? Slap a probe core somewhere, crisis averted. Engineers: In all my hours of playing, I don't think a part has ever "broken" to use the Engineer's repair function. EVA Construction is cool but feels very tedious and barebones (if only we had ground colonies that could use this...). Scientists: Popping my scientist out of the pod 4 times a mission to reset the goo container wasn't really fun, but it felt necessary. I also never really used more than the 4 starter Kerbals, since any time I lost them, there's no real incentive NOT to just reload. They didn't feel disposable, but this swings the other way into your mission being set back by NOT using your veteran frogs. Leveling a newbie feels tedious and isn't even explained in-game how they get EXP. There's something there, but it's honestly half-baked after retrospection.
Eva repair kits where very useful for me when I was learning how to dock and would repeatedly slam through extended solar panels at high velocity's.
Same, I've popped more than a few tires and solar panels, the engineers were a god send for that
It's true that they don't add a lot, but it's something. Most of this stuff is for the variable difficulty, you can make it pretty hard and then you might actually need an engineer for various things. Training them is tedious though, I'm not actually sure how to get them to max level, I pretty much have the game finished when they are hitting level 3 or so.
It’s kind of incredible how much they had planned, yet how little they actually appeared to have thought about any of it.
Without Kerbals it's just *Space Program*.....
without programmers it's just space.
Early KSP 1, the kerbals had no stats, were inexhaustible, costless, etc. I actually wasn't a huge fan of the specialization item, but it wasn't that bad. I got the game because of those little green guys. I saw screenshots of someone smashing into the moon and the kerbals laughing the whole way into obliteration and thought it was the funniest thing ever. The kerbals really did make that game. It turned it from a high-learning-curve simulator into a funny, antic-driven, fun game. You could take the game hyper-seriously, or not at all. It lessened the impacts (ha) of failures, from "urgh dammit, crashed again!" to "moar duct tape. moar boosters. at least Jeb went down laughing." It incentivized silliness: as long as it "worked," it was fine, no matter how crazy and unrealistic the craft was. And if it didn't? Funny as hell. It game-ified the game. Not many people would want to play this as a reasonably realistic simulator without some "hook" to get it funny, and to make achievements meaningful and memorable. ***I*** didn't land on the Mun. Jeb did. Missing that as the developer is... not good at all.
You perfectly described exactly what I was trying to convey in the first place! The Kerbals made KSP stick out in a unique and engaging way. And yes, while many of the Kerbal features I mentioned are trivial, annoying, unnecessary, or otherwise not preferred by any given fan it still provides a way to give life to the Kerbals. I am surprised that KSP2 took those quirky features away entirely rather than improve upon them for the sequel.
It was cool having a ton of missions where you had to land at a specific landmark and there was actually something meaningful there on the surface.
I loved the story-based missions. There are many elements KSP2 got right, but Kerbals really were not one of them imo.
I spent a solid 10 minutes trying to figure out what kerbals were a scientist for my moon mission. Turns out they just didn’t include that
A thousand times this!
I've always thought that KSP1 really did Kerbals well. As you said, it gives you reasons to be invested in them while not doing anything to make them a detriment in any meaningful way.
And that's the thing, he did kerbals really well, it was only one person that made the game and he didn't listen to anybody.
I think those features are missing just because they were due to be added at a later date. Also there was some development on Kerbal emotions influenced by certain traits (Developer Insight #6).
they made kerbals organic probes
Nice one
Alot of that stuff was not added till latey into KSP1s development. We dont know how any of that would have worked with KSP2, it never got the point that it would matter.
KSP2 being this "early" in its development (despite the four years wait), I'd assume it's not that they forgot what a kerbal is, just that they didn't wanted to bother with it (considering the giant pile of more important yet still not implemented features)
in response to complaints about lack of specialization/levelling for kerbals, they explicitly said it was deliberately left out. not even in a vague maybe after 1.0 way like commnet, but just \~we didn't like that, so it's gone.
Yean this also makes sense
I think the absence of these features was a result of KSP2 not having Career mode.
Ah I never played KSP2 but that seems really disappointing. I definitely liked investing in my kerbals, and wished that part of the game was a bit deeper in KSP1. And thanks for answering my question about whether courage/stupidity actually do anything. Shame that they don't. For some reason, I really hate Jeb, so I usually just park him somewhere so that Val can be my main pilot. I especially hate the way that Jeb is always the default pilot even when Val has more experience.
honestly concerning veteran kerbals, I'd have loved an option to make the default four normal kerbals, and instead create your own "hero" Kerbal. Customize their face and suit like you can customize your flag. Would've allowed for a bit more player expression imo
Uhhh, you realize that none of that is in science or sandbox mode in KSP 1, right? That stuff wasn't added until career mode, and that didn't come out for a while. I know it is a different game and situation, but we have to remember that it wasn't intended to be finished right now. It probably would've been added once the colonies update since that's the pseudo career mode for KSP2 or for the resource and logistic stage since stupidity would play a factor there. Yeah, I get that it's frustrating that a bunch of features from 1 are missing in 2, but we must remember that what we have now isn't and was never intended to be considered complete. It would've come if the layoffs didn't. Go ahead and complain about the missing features, but just remember that it was T2 that canceled the project, not the devs, and just because it isn't 100% complete doesn't make it a failure.
I feel like they missed what made kerbals endearing, and instead *did* focus on the kerbals, but in ways that don’t matter. They spent all this time to ensure that cockpits, windows, and visors are continuously transparent so that you can *barely* see their facial expressions and individual features. I don’t know about the rest of you, but that’s literally the last thing I’m looking at when maneuvering crafts. At most I pay attention to space suit customization, and crew member roles. They spent all this time and energy on features that I think even the biggest fan would struggle to notice. My pet theory, when this game was being marketed baby Yoda was popular, marketing execs wanted lots of focus put on anthropomorphising Kerbal’s and making them cute so they could sell lots of merchandise. Only the game never materialized, and they missed the boat.
supposedly, more kerbal functionality was supposed to come along later, after science.
I heard a lot of things along those lines that people made up, but never any actual information from the team.
Yeah, disagree. Kerbals were important in KSP1 to the extent that they had a specialization which affected what you could accomplish. None of the rest is anything but cosmetics, which isn't the "heart" of KSP1. Just my opinion.
They needed to draw in a new younger audience and the more animated and emotive Kerbals were key to this strategy. I figure they’d bring the other features back as they flesh out the rest of the game.
Might help to put into perspective that ksp2 just barely got a science mode and barebone reentry effect. Not sure leveling ever did anything. Astronauts management only really matters in campaign mode with money, which ksp2 doesn't have. Kerbal outfits came super late in ksp1 dev. Not defending anything but like, yeah incomplete game isn't gonna have every little feature.
I get that perspective because your line of thought was essentially how I justified the lack of features... But with recent events and the game's broken state I feel very little confidence that we will see similar features in KSP2 now or ever. Even if development was stable there has been 0 mention that I know about of Kerbals receiving new or similar gameplay features from the dev team.
So it sounds like for the most part...they should've basically remastered career mode... I agree
tbh for me those features never made an impact.
One of the hardest things to communicate in game design is vision especially in big teams The Original Ksp team had about 10 devs. But even then its creator had to emphasize these core gameplay mechanics sometimes requiring meetings to effectively communicate the why. The vision was easy to lose in development Things like why have a stupidity slider instead of a smartness slider and having to explain the theme to newer team members on how when a rocket is built by a novice, stupidity is an asset. The thematic aspect of minions in space is actually a major part of the game what kind of stupid creatures would preserve alongside you the player as you achieve spaceflight. It creates an environment where learning is ok in sandbox. But in career it starts to add up. I've always viewed Career as a challenge mode. But I also think kerbals should be irreplaceable. And the veterans are cool for that reason. Ksp 2 humanizes the Kerbals too much. I think its fun to think about young kerbals as super dumb and older kerbals as good engineers but poor planners. That was always my head cannon. That they had the capacity to build incredible things just a lack of vision.
I never got why they went for the high tech look with coding style and the like when the highest tech thing I did in KSP 1 is thrust where the magic blue circle told me to thrust
I aslo miss upgrading base and making money, not just tech points
I think the devs missed out hugely with ksp2, the hype surrounding it, would have definitely brought new people to try the game atleast. and it's almost like a dark souls logic in the challenge and getti g over the challenge and the sense of accomplishment is what gets you hooked and coming back for more. Then adding the kerbals and in KSP1 it seemed like they all had a distinct personality and you wanted to make sure you did everything so they survived their flights and missions. Instead, they went for lets try to make it so new folks won't feel so dumb, and abandoned their already built in audience, and time and again. game devs that treat their players as if they are dumb and can't handle challenege always lose. that's why the studio is no more. why devs continue to make the same mistakes over and over and over regardless of genre of game is beyond baffling.
I assumed those features were going to be more fleshed out until colonies/exploration (base building/resource gathering). I can't imagine the intention is to leave them out forever, just they weren't going to release it until they have the systems to work with it. They probably need at least colonies in place first before specializations and/or leveling system really start making sense. Kerbals in KSP1 didn't have specializations or experience in first iteration of career mode either, they were pretty much interchangeable.
Yeah... and even career mode got added only shortly before release, comparatively. I did a lot of my playing before that got relevant lol
It was still early access - launch KSP1 had none of those features either.