KSP made for consumers. KSP2 made for shareholders. A tale as old as time.

@XouZ88

5 күн бұрын

Says the people that wasn't around then KSP launched. They basically launched KSP2 in same state like KSP, the difference now is that people has exceptions and is comparing an early access with a finished game.

As someone who played KSP1 since its alpha, I really hope this isn't the end of KSP2 but I am afraid to believe in it.

@cmdr_thrudd

Ай бұрын

Same, pretty heartbroken today :(

@MinistryOfMagic_DoM

Ай бұрын

Totally different development teams and company made KSP2 vs KSP1. That's why they are having so much trouble with 2, it's not made by anyone who has legal access to the source code of 1.

@cheddar2648

Ай бұрын

Why does KSP1 even need a sequel?

@cmdr_thrudd

Ай бұрын

@@cheddar2648 For me, honestly... loading times. :D After playing a bit of KSP2 it hurts to go back to how long it takes to boot KSP1. It's not really a big deal though lol

@chengong388

Ай бұрын

Why not? The game was doomed since the start with that shit game engine.

I agree with basically everything you say here. I remember when it launched I was on the "it's only early access, it will get better" team, now I'm far-opposite.

@sujalshetty5986

Ай бұрын

I feel so bad for them. The devs genunilely saw long term future. They got the rug pulled under them

@neobrandeggen

Ай бұрын

@@sujalshetty5986 I do feel sorry for most of the dev team, but I ultimately blame the lead developers for picking a bad path for the game.

@danielconway7190

Ай бұрын

​@neobrandeggen honestly with a stronger dev team, it probably would have gotten better at a reasonable rate. I think them working on all the features in parallel probably hampered progress since they couldn't get updates out fast enough. Hell, it's been over a year and still no colonies. They either really underestimated the time it took or were too spread out working on future roadmap stuff.

@shiprat7370

Ай бұрын

​@@sujalshetty5986 This dev team is also to blame... Look at all the failed projects before ksp 2

@squgieman

Ай бұрын

@@shiprat7370 dude im sick of this, if you have a shitty plumber who happens to work for a shitty company you dont just blame the company, sure the company might have given him garbage tools and horrible hours, but in the end, he chose to do subpar work, im so done with this, i blame the whole lot of them

A classic example of what happens when a small studio “sells out” to a large publisher. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t blame any of the original or new developers for this, but this would’ve never happened if Take Two, one of the scummiest publishers out there, hadn’t gotten their hands on this IP. Modern “AAA” publishers are the worst thing to have ever happened to gaming.

@RussellWaldrop

Ай бұрын

This is what happens when a company goes public. There's many good publishers that are privately owned that continually do good by the devs and companies contracted with them.

@joelmulder

Ай бұрын

@@RussellWaldrop I agree. When a company goes public, the end user is longer its focus, the shareholders are. When we’re very lucky, what makes money for the shareholders is also what’s good for us as end users, but it usually isn’t. But are there even any privately owned AAA publishers?

@Khazar321

Ай бұрын

Exactly this. As soon as I heard that Take Two is involved, it was already more than 50/50 for me that this would end before it would really take off. So sad how they made the deal with one of the worst devil's out there that currently exists.

@TamaHawkLive

Ай бұрын

I disagree, the worst thing to ever happen to video games was the mobile phone and the whole market of mobile games that spawned from that. That was the market that all of the predatory game models spawned from originally. All of those practices then spilled over into the main gaming industry and here we are now today.

@joelmulder

Ай бұрын

@@TamaHawkLive Juno: New Origins is a mobile game, and that’s pretty decent.

Star theory never really understood the game or the player base. KSP1 was fun DISPITE the bugs, not BECAUSE of them.

@meepk633

Ай бұрын

They understood perfectly well. They understood that thousands of volunteer PR boys would show up on every forum and video to be like "but remember Kraken was epic bro?!?!? KSP took one thousand years and now it's perfect." That's exactly what happened. They also understood that they could use the credibility of Scott Manley and Matt Lowne to sell a $50 pile. Just give them a 7 hour vacation to play KSP2 0.0.0.0.1 in the world's most controlled environment. From that point on, Matt and Scott were "sure" the devs wanted to make a great game, despite zero evidence. Star Theory misunderstood nothing. They bamboozled all of you in the most brazen possible way.

@angelainamarie9656

6 күн бұрын

KSP1 was never frustratingly unplayable like this. I spent hours trying to get a goddamn rocket out of the atmosphere and either it would start flipping and over end and wobbling and I would have to put a bunch of dumb struts on it and make it look stupid or it would come to pieces in the vab. I never ever ever had that kind of problem in KSP 1 where the problem wasn't my fault for not understanding how things worked. In ksp 2 you could never tell what would happen it would just fail on you. And in the back of my mind all I could do is hear Nate Simpson telling me how much fun I should be having with these wobbly rockets and after a couple of hours of that I would just quit. Then I've removed the game from my hard drive and not look at it again for months then they release an update and I'd be like okay let me see if you guys actually did anything worth doing. And then it wasn't fixed again. I'm a computer programmer whose career is probably older than some of the kids who were working on this thing so I can tell when someone isn't really trying and especially when they're not succeeding. Nate Simpson kept going up and saying how much we should learn to love wobbly rockets. After about three times trying to get through that whole cycle I just quit even carrying and I deleted the game from my disc and I was not surprised when development stopped. The development team was incompetent and their leadership were imbeciles that's the long and short of this.

What I can’t believe is the huge number of staff, 70! Judging by their output I would have guessed only 10 people max were working on KSP2.

@XouZ88

5 күн бұрын

But then again you probably know nothing about programming 🤷‍♂

It’s almost like the more money and staff is thrown at a project the worst it becomes. It’s not even diminishing returns, there are no returns after some point, the product genuinely becomes bad, it’s fascinating.

@lubricustheslippery5028

Ай бұрын

There is a lot of bad indie games that fails hard. It's just that we don't care or now about them. I am not saying that there isn't a lot of great indie games just that the majority is shit and you don't even now they exist. There is about 73 000 games on steam alone

@ares106

Ай бұрын

@@lubricustheslippery5028 that’s true, it’s definitely selection bias. At the same time whenever I think of a good game it was often created by a smallish team (not necessarily indie), that had a strong vision and talent and great culture. Thanks to their success these studios expand their staff and are acquired by big publishers that throw a lot of money and demand annual releases usually of the same series. The quality of their games declines as a result. Seen this cycle repeat so many times, It’s like they become victims of their own success. In fact sometimes they fail so bad they downsize as a result and miraculously the games they release become good again for a while. All this leads me to believe there must be some optimal number of staff and resources depending on the project, scope and culture. If they go too far below or above that number things never seem to work out.

@supersleepygrumpybear

Ай бұрын

@@ares106 I don't think there's a magic arithmetic with game design, team sizes, and quality. From my own experience, making my own little games, I can say that scalability always grows the more complex the project is. I actually can see how this developed with the GTA series (used to be a fan, but never played GTA V, still too expensive for a game that's essentially the GTA 3 trilogy). I remember playing them back on PS1, and how the PS2 games defined my own life experiences. But I'm pretty sure it took them 10+ years to make GTA V, only for the multiplayer to become the current behemoth. GTA IV had the heart, story, and expansions... that led to GTA V becoming the product that keeps shareholders happy for decades. The cash cows of tech~ Maybe they saw the same with KSP2... Doubt it. They laid off almost everyone in that entire division to focus on GTA and Zynga (Harry Potter Facebook game. Ugh. Cringe)

@TheLevitatingChin

Ай бұрын

Take a look at star citizen as another example. 1000+ staff with 12 years development and still in pre alpha!

@lebojay

Ай бұрын

That’s Brooks’s Law: adding manpower to a late software project makes it later

Early access is meant to be for indie groups that needs the money to keep going, not the AAA industry Also seeing the AAA priced "early access" game made me wait for a full release when it could remotely justify that price tag

@MrBubbleJet

Ай бұрын

what makes the AAA-industry AAA? IMO only the prize of their shitty products.

@ATSaale

Ай бұрын

​@@MrBubbleJetgenerally the amount of money spent. Games like call of duty have budgets over 100 million dollars

I've been waiting for KSP2 to finish cooking but this I fear is the end. Hope someone rescues it.

first time i noticed something was off was when they made the first announcement off ksp2 releasing early 2020 and when covid came they pushed the release date to late 2021, they should have been allready almost finished by the time covid hit but they pushed it back for 1.5 years.

If KSP 2 ever sees a 1.0 release, it will be the only game this studio has ever released that wasn't abandonware. The odds were never good.

@fridaycaliforniaa236

Ай бұрын

Exactly ! Nate is used to these practices... It's not the first time

After playing Juno: New Origins, they should have gone with procedural parts. Solves the wobble issue, an overly long and thin fuel tank won't wobble, but will suffer a dry mass penalty. Avoids cluttering the part selection UI with a vast array of parts that only differ in the type of propellant carried and in their size.

@chengong388

Ай бұрын

Juno is one of the ugliest games I’ve ever played, it’s pure agony just looking at any UI element in that piece of shit. It’s clear they don’t have a single designer or anybody with any kind of art/design background on their team.

@angelainamarie9656

Ай бұрын

The problem wasn't the type of parts they chose the problem was that Nate had his head shoved directly up his ass and kept trying to sell us on how much fun wobbly rockets were, and didn't make fixing that so that rockets could actually get out of the atmosphere without turning and over and his number one priority because that's actually the mechanics of the game that made it fun: launching the f****** rockets. As long as the basic goddamn function didn't work the game was never going to go anywhere

@tomshackell

23 күн бұрын

@@angelainamarie9656 People *love* to rail on Nate, and to be fair he was flat wrong defending wobbly rockets. However, as a software engineer it's clear to me that this game's biggest problem was the engineering (not Nate's responsiblity), rather the artistic or creative direction (which is Nate's responsibility). Nate definitely made some bad decisions but it's not all his fault; people just love to blame the person who was asked to go on camera. KSP2 was no doubt a failure for many complex reasons; due to the choices made by lots of different people.

I honestly knew it was doomed when i saw the trailers, they highlighted the team as some sort of ksp gaurdians. It was over right there

@lucasart328

Ай бұрын

Exactly hahahahahahaha😂

I don't want ksp2 to be closed this summer after layoffs. The game clearly has potential! Ksp2 lacked that colonies and interstellar flights to become a different game! The first part also became a NORMAL game after a long time, I think with the second part it was only necessary to wait (or find other programmers).I hope that this is not the end yet and we will wait for the next progress on the roadmap.Greetings from a KSP fan from Russia

KSP2 failed because Nate the "developer" over promised and under delivered.. Take two is a public traded business that answers to its share holders. It was originally announced in 2019 and was pushed back multiple times. Take Two and Private Division are to blame for putting together a team not capable of actually producing a finished product.

@fridaycaliforniaa236

Ай бұрын

Not the fist time Nate realeased a botched alpha version of a "game" and gave up just after, to be honest...

@Buzzdog1971

Ай бұрын

@@fridaycaliforniaa236 Nate is a living example of The Peter Principal in action.

@everythingpony

18 күн бұрын

Don't blame me, the laid me off too

50 USD for EA : Insane. Then bugs, features missing,... Sorry for those who gave their cash.

@sunnyjim1355

Ай бұрын

50 USD for EA : Insane. Agreed. I smelt a rat and didn't bite. But I'm not sorry for those who gave their cash, just those who gave their cash and still don't realise they've been played. That, takes a special kind of stupidity that I have sympathy for those such afflicted.

@nonegone7170

Ай бұрын

@@sunnyjim1355 I bought it with the slight hope that a few more purchases would keep that train wreck going until it became at least semi-acceptable. Serves me right for not pirating it like every other game.

@henrikmadsen6446

28 күн бұрын

I dont buy a lot of games, and I feel sorry for KSP(and myself). I will never buy another EA game, ever.

While I agree that the push for EA was probably from higher ups looking for a return... It had been in development since when? 2017? Covid didn't help development, but even accounting for it, that's still a really long time in the oven for what ended up in EA. I kind of feel like they were justified in getting some revenue, even if it obviously was not the right call for the game. It just seems to me like the publisher isn't the only reason the game ended up in the state that it was at launch or is now.

Corporate greed demolishes creativity. It no longer became a game for the players, it became a product for the investors.

@Racketeerof89

Ай бұрын

Bloat in the gaming industry is a scourge. Most games that have been huge successes have been made by small dedicated teams.

@meepk633

Ай бұрын

Literally 100% of video games are funded by investors. Including every good indie game you like. There's no lack of creativity. There's an audience who will pay $50 for garbage. They are the problem.

@Racketeerof89

28 күн бұрын

@meepk633 having investors versus being a publicly traded company are two very different things.

@meepk633

28 күн бұрын

​@@Racketeerof89 No. Companies have obligations to all kinds of investors. There are far more public shareholder activists than private. The idea that either group wants games to be bad and unpopular is dumb social media dogma. People invest to make money. The "product for investors" is their dividend. Also, the most successful games have been developed by the largest companies with huge teams. It's not particularly close. The alternative is that companies get huge through failure. That makes zero sense. But even if it did make sense, KSP 2 would still be a counterexample.

Man do I wish it was better than it went. Despite everything, we still have KSP1 and endless mods that will now no longer break since the game is finished

I really don’t understand how it took them 4 years to get to that alpha build when KSP was built by a much, much smaller team. It reeks of micro management from the top. ETA: Regarding the UI, the in-flight UI is deeply inaccessible to folks with vision problems. Even with my glasses, the font is stupidly hard to read.

@garyengelman7867

Ай бұрын

Expectations when the first game came out were real low people just took it for what it was and played it.

@silmarian

Ай бұрын

@@garyengelman7867 I was one of them. It was still far more playable, with much better information flow from the team, at this point in the dev cycle.

@angelainamarie9656

Ай бұрын

You can tell they focused on the graphics and the soundtrack. They blew all their money on that and didn't have anybody around who knew how the f*** rockets worked.

@silmarian

Ай бұрын

@@angelainamarie9656 Yeah, but don’t blame the artists for doing their jobs. This was mismanagement from the top and not malfeasance from the trenches. Though tbh I’m looking forward to stories as NDAs expire.

I fully believe if they hadn't released early access and just waited til it was done, none of this would have gone wrong.

@silmarian

Ай бұрын

They were never going to get to that point, they took too long to even get to the early access release.

@russellg1473

Ай бұрын

If take 2 cut them with revenue having been generated, what makes you think take 2 would float the business for LONGER without that revenue?

@Bamamarama

Ай бұрын

Yup. Could have delayed it another 5 yrs for a finished/working product, nobody would have cared. But, I really don't think the devs were capable of finishing it, I think it was way harder than the inexperienced team they put together thought it would be.

@user-be2md6kr1h

Ай бұрын

KSP 2 had problems long before the Early release. It really started to go downhill way back when they added Valentina and the game became a cash grab for girl gamers (which never materialized). You can see that in the later DLC for KSP which was all about making the game interesting to casuals.

@chengong388

Ай бұрын

But they don’t have the funding to do that

My thoughts are exactly the same. KSP2 made me realize I should never pay for EA anymore and always wait for full release. I played only 22h because I couldn't stand all the things you just pointed out. I'd like to refund the game but it's against Steam policy. No more paying up front.

@Rodhern

Ай бұрын

That is a bit sad. May I suggest that you take into consideration who you are paying, and that will make your decision easier. With Take Two Interactive for instance, I have actively decided to delay my KSP2 purchase, because their motivation is best aligned to the "goods first, money later" approach. Another example is the development of "Stormworks". The game ended up being not all that good, however I already got my money's worth during Early Access development when different game design options were tried. Then there are the great examples where I got a really good game cheap, and thus will not be concerned that I might 'overpay' next time, because it will balance out (say Kingdom Come Deliverance).

@silmarian

Ай бұрын

I’d be willing to get an indie game in EA, but I don’t think I’ll ever again get a title with a big publisher in EA.

@Superbus753

Ай бұрын

@@silmarian you are right there are really great independent developers out there that deliver amazing games, made possible trough early access. One great example is Vintage story. It is already an absolutely amazing game, it doesent cost much, the dev really does listen to the community and the game keeps improving constantly. also it seems that Manor Lords might become a good example for early acess even though it is still early to tell wot that one will go.

@illpunchyouintheface9094

Ай бұрын

You can get any 1 game refunded every time you are banned from contacting steam support. A good way you can get banned is by spamming support with gibberish. Of course if you have had a lot of prior bans don’t do this method to get a refund.

If I'm a suit, I think I'm probably seeing the light at the end of the tunnel when you consider the five million copies that KSP 1 sold, the game clearly has a potential audience. But, if you consider how poorly the game sold, and the original release date of 2020 (lol), even when considering the pandemic, they probably did several years longer development than was originally budgeted for. Idk, i hate corporate "assistance" in game development as much as the next guy, but i find in this case, i almost understand the choice to cut their losses, at this point. Just my view.

Can't wait for Rocketwerks "Gerbal Space Program" to release, where we get to fly little furry brown rodents to distant planets and moons!

@MichaelGabriel-zf7kx

Ай бұрын

That studio has no experience in making a physics based game. It would be just as bad as giving it to Intercept Games

@swordcowfan

Ай бұрын

Who makes BeamNG?… 😉

The way you talked about the business world made me envision Nate Simpson at this big corporate board meeting where they grill him, and he just gives them a totally honest nice guy answer like he always does. Then it's like the meme where the dude gets thrown out the window 😢

@fridaycaliforniaa236

Ай бұрын

Don't have to much mercy for him. He is well known for having released many botched apha versions of "games" and then having given up on them, letting them rot in their unfinished state. He's used to do this.

@londonspade5896

Ай бұрын

@@fridaycaliforniaa236 Exactly, when he showed his face I knew the KSP franchise was doomed

Its insane that in span of ONE week three of my favourite games will start burrying themself (Tarkov,Helldivers 2, KSP2)

@trapsarentgay4195

Ай бұрын

Bros favorite games are from the last decade

@sunnyjim1355

Ай бұрын

Really? 😂I never bought into any of those games, either conceptually or financially. Wisdom results from the application of intelligence upon experience, kid. 🤣

@everythingpony

18 күн бұрын

2 of those 3 games have nothing to do with ksp2 And those two other games are fine?

@wdkpwr6586

18 күн бұрын

@@everythingpony if u have been under a rock for last month and a half try googling what hapened 4 weeks earlier with hd2 and still happening with Sony and tarkov :D

This is exactly what i think happened. The LUDICROUS spec requirements and atrocious performance and quality where the biggest killers of KSP 2 imo. KSP is an old game and has low-ish requirments and I had a mid tier pc that could run it with a ton of graphics mods and all the settings cranked to the max. KSP 2 was so laggy and buggy I noped out of a purchase immediately upon watching a stream by stratzenblitz. This was for me and probably many people an unimaginably high barrier to entry where we just literally couldn't play the game if we wanted too.

@timsvarietyksp

Ай бұрын

I'm on a fkn threadripper with a decent video card (RTX 3070) and KSP2 is STILL a dog on my system! The low performance, even on monster systems, has been an issue since day 1 :-\

@angelainamarie9656

Ай бұрын

​@@timsvarietykspthey prioritized snazzy graphics and music over the actual gameplay. Plain and simple it wasn't fun it just looked pretty

@guesswho2778

Ай бұрын

​@@angelainamarie9656 they also did a windows and remade the ui and removed a bunch of functionality. Change for the sake of change instead of making things better.

Some quick corrections from a game dev. Private Division owned Intercept. The latter were an internal studio, so it's work for hire, not work under contract. More direct control for PD, plus ability to do layoffs, as we've seen happen. Alpha version of a game is feature-complete. For KSP2 it would by definition have to have included interstellar, colonies, and multiplayer. KSP2 Early Access doesn't qualify even for an early alpha. It's a pre-alpha with some vertical slices, to put it into dev terms. Nobody in the industry would have expected Early Access to pay for KSP2 development. T2 wasn't trying to make PD show positive balance on this. The push for EA wasn't so much to generate real revenue as to gauge public interest. Sort of, "Hype's good, but put your money where your mouths are." But the underlying reason is likely the same. KSP2 development was costing a lot of money and T2 was getting nervous about the costs. Wobble wasn't forced in. That's a misunderstanding of what has been stated. (I'm wearing my game physics programmer hat for this part.) The choice was between completely rigid rockets vs a simulated flex. KSP2 went with simulated flex, exactly the same as KSP did. And if you look at early KSP builds, they had largely the same problems as KSP2. Intercept was trying to fix the problem differently from how Squad handled it with autostruts initially, but the physics engineer they had didn't have adequate experience in game physics. That was purely a technical failure to execute, and not an intentional design decision to make things unplayably unstable. Visual fidelity cleanup happens late in alpha. As mentioned before, the game never made it that far in the development process. This isn't what the game was meant to look like. Things tend to look shinier and more contrasty in pre- and early alpha because it makes testing tech easier. Finally, the bad UI comes off more as "programmer art", rather than somebody putting their foot down. I'm sure it would have eventually gotten a UI/UX pass from people who know how to make game UI. But again, we never got this far. This likely applies to the whole saving system as well. I can see how it would sound like a good idea to a programmer. Not much impact on conclusions on the net - KSP2 EA was entirely too raw for general public. I enjoyed playing it, but mostly because working on unfinished games is my job (as part of finishing them...) so I'm used to dealing with all the jank. For a typical player experienced with KSP? Yeah, basically all the things you've said.

@Locutusofborg41

Ай бұрын

I don't know, but if EA was indeed to gauge public interest, I guess they discovered I wasn't interested in paying 50 USD for a pre-alpha build.

@henrikmadsen6446

28 күн бұрын

Seem insightful - thx for the comment.

I like the green men though..

Wow I’ve been watching quite a few videos on this topic. Never expected one of my favorite KZreadrs to cover the game as well!

2 things really puzzle me. First, the product we have really doesn't reflect all the materials they offered us before early release. It seemed way more polished and implicated in the videos than what we got. And second, i'm surprised it lasted so long before the plugged was pulled. And it's not even official! It blew out because someone found the layoff announcement and posted it.

On the one hand: I desperately wanted a KSP sequel. On the other hand: As soon as they announced that T2I bought the IP, I knew the game would never be better than the original.

would watch the hell out of a realism overhaul playthrough :)

@timsvarietyksp

Ай бұрын

Noted :-)

Really good video! Weird that YT just showed me the channel. Subbing for KSP1 content!

Happy to see you are into KSP as well as I know you through your great content about War Thunder. I have been genuinely repelled from KSP2 by all the bad publicity surrounding it. Recently I checked if it had gotten any better or if I have to stick to the original KSP, since Im taking a break from War Thunder for a bit. To me, the dissatisfaction only grew from hearing about KSP2s roadmap and its player numbers. The current news really put the last nail in the coffin for me. KSP2 is a dead end.

@timsvarietyksp

Ай бұрын

Tons of binge-worthy content on this and my other side channel ;-)

I think the main issue here is that KSP as a concept is impossible as a corpo project, because it takes way too long to develop games with more advanced physics.

@rexthewolf3149

Ай бұрын

Not exactly while not of similar scope Microsoft Flights Simulator is in that same position. KSP2 has been in development since 2017 and it didn’t have more features than is predecessor even out of early access. The devs clearly overestimated their capabilities.

@fridaycaliforniaa236

Ай бұрын

Meanwhile, the game Orbiter (2016) is still pretty realistic, while not being a AAA. Nate Simpson just f.cked up, period.

@knarfweasel

Ай бұрын

​@@fridaycaliforniaa236Yeah Nate struck me as a worm when I first saw him, but the attitude was generally optimistic so I stayed hopeful. I'll be trusting my gut from now on

KSP1 vet who was brick walled by bugs. A couple months ago my jet engines all kept trying to use nonexistent rocket engines at takeoff causing them to reverse thrust. Normal, basic, jets engines were using nonexistent reverse thrust because it was failing to use nonexistent rocket components because it sensed low air intake. Didn't get fixed

ARMA 3 is another example of early access done right, and was one of the first games to use steam early access. It was £15, didn't stay in early access that long, just long enough to do something with the feedback, and they gave the first few DLC out for free to all owners of the game. Unfortunately, since then early access has increasingly become an excuse for developers to release unfinished games at full price, and has likely been responsible for a fair few games never reaching their potential. A lot of games don't do it as it was intended, to get player feedback and help fund the development.

Best analysis video I have seen so far

Yeah your analysis tracks with my thoughts too.

As much as I am disappointed that we wont be getting a feature complete KSP2 due to Take Two greed, Intercept Games had 5 years and all they did was make KSP1 with fewer features. The work was already done for them, just copy and paste and add a few more features.

KSP2 was doomed from the time they paid all those content creators to say it wasnt going to be Early Access and showed a roadmap and then back tracked and tried to claim they never said that despite all the videos being there easily accessible to see the proof. This team was never going to be able to make KSP2 the way they wanted with the staff they had. Its what happens when you get a fan company making a sequel to a game they never made.

@knarfweasel

Ай бұрын

Yep, same with 343 and halo, difference being that 343 does have some amount of talent, just no taste or idea what the game is about

This entire thing was a corporate money grab trying to capitalize on the success of KSP1. Spend some cash on some glitzy animations, rush out a totally unready-for-release game, and charge full price. Milk it for all they can with grand promises and a skeleton dev team and once they got all the cash they felt they could, pull the plug. Glad I saved my money. I can put $50 into something that is done, and ready for release so that I can get my money back in satisfying game time.

I'm curious on your thoughts, if any, about Juno:New Origins. I discovered it after the news about KSP2's demise broke and so far out seems pretty interesting. More complex in some ways than KSP2, with native support for a very robust visual scripting/automation system. It also leans heavily into procedural parts, right down to modifying the engine chamber pressure and gas cycle.

@timsvarietyksp

Ай бұрын

I havent played it, but its on my list for a full review on my variety gaming channel (linked from this channel's main page)

"I'm not happy but I'm not surprised." -- This speaks for all fans, I think. The moment that we saw the incredibly ambitious scope and took into consideration what we got on launch day, we knew that this wouldn't work.

Things like that happens all the time: SimCity > Cities Skyline 1 (dont mention the second one), RollerCoaster Tycoon World -> Planet Coaster, Flatout >2 - Wreckfest,...

@lucasart328

Ай бұрын

Exactly

Great assessment but you glossed over the development troubles prior to Early Access. When KSP 2 was announced a launch date of 2020 was given. After repeated delays and restructurings Early Access eventually opened in 2023. It seems evident that Early Access was an attempt to salvage a development that was in crisis and possibly at risk of cancellation.

If they pull the plug on the project, could they please release or sell the source code? They spent a lot of time on it so it’s probably worth it for another studio to pick up where they left off, maybe even as a purely crowdfunded undertaking.

Good analysis. It's sad to see the end of a franchise that's been so cool for so long - even though KSP2 has tons of problems I feel it could have been beaten into shape over time. Cities Skylines drama, DCS drama with a 3rd party developer, and now this? The gaming side of my 2024 hasn't been so great 😂

@gnarl12

Ай бұрын

Cities Skylines 2 was a complete self own.. I meant wtf happened???

@josefwitt9772

Ай бұрын

​@@gnarl12 hard to understand. There's so much potential but they seem to insist on the product driving the market instead of the market driving the product's development. Sort of like KSP2 unfortunately. "No career mode because we say so. Wobbly rockets on purpose because we say so." Fortunately CS2 is ironing out the bugs. KSP2 had a chance to become great but... welp...

Another element which had a negative impact on the early access release that you didn't touch on in your video, is the minimum and recommended system requirements for the game. I recall there being a lot of consternation from the community that they were far in excess of what was needed to play (even a fairly heavily modded) KSP1, and simply out of reach for much of the player base without spending a significant amount of money on new hardware.

@angelainamarie9656

Ай бұрын

It goes back to the answer I keep coming up with is what they wanted to do is make a really snazzy graphically sharp-looking copy of this game and put some really expensive music on it and they did not prioritize the main feature of the game which was to launch and orbit rockets. None of this s*** they appeared to work on ever was about just making the game run as smoothly as ksp1 did and as a player of ksp1 all the way from the second public Early Access release I've got to tell you ksp1 was never as miserably unhappy to play as ksp2.

I’m…disappointed but not surprised. KSP2 looked pretty in trailers but the actual game since EA has been underwhelming compared to its predecessor. For Science! Update has largely brought KSP2 to where KSP1 had been, but aside from the graphical update, KSP2 still doesn’t offer much of anything new over the original. The Colony update might, but as the plug has been pulled, I’m skeptical we will see much of anything past that point.

@angelainamarie9656

Ай бұрын

Like The superficial idiots that big corporations make us all into they prioritize the snazzy graphics and the zippy soundtrack over actual gameplay.

Great video. I would combine your points on the part manager feature, the early version available and the pretty graphic. It feels like the skeleton was well in place. Then they put on pretty graphics for screenshots so they could sell the game. I never thought the part manager was the expected outcome, but rather a concept they would refine over time. The whole UI felt like that to me. Great concepts, just not enough work.

@bobrik399

Ай бұрын

Same, and one of the biggest issues I have is the text font/format I cant really afford a great huge monitor but I make do with a 1080p smart tv and even with that its almost impossible to read half of the text no matter what resolution I set the game to. I don't have the best eyesight either but I have glasses and I don't have that kind of issue with any other game I've ever played.

Great video and I agree which by the way the OG KSP1 dev has a game on Steam SEA called Kithack model club and wile not a space game it's what KSP2 kinda should have been SEA wise.

Hit the nail on the head. Got everything too, the shitty VAB cam, Workspaces etc. I am glad I am not the only one

1:05 No, they didn't. It was easy to tell that they were highly edited, basically just CGI video that showed little to no gameplay. I was screaming this from day 1 and it was literally the biggest red flag, but everyone was too hyped about seeing pretty images.

7:45 yes it was intentional but man it wasn't the problem.... A simple marth error making Keirn atmo the same a jupoter as it has the same pressure as earth but much smaller... That was the main issue... No supersonic air craft worked for me because no sound barrier = brick wall you must punch though to get high speeds... Which tio fix the wobble I did just add more wings then ran into the too many parts bug then the rocket falls apart for no reason bug...

If Ksp2 is dead but we get a spiritual sucessor with all new planets and bodies to explore and all the content Ksp2 was meant to get, then I would be ok with that. I am happy playing Ksp1 and I'm glad I never bought 2. Reguardless I didn't lose anything here, but it is sad this all happened.

I absolutely agree with your thoughts on the business side of this. Furthermore, I suspect that you are also right about bad management at Intercept or Private Division. I feel sorry for the devs (!!!!) and surely a game like KSP2 involves a lot of HARD problems to solve, but considering the amount of time and resources the team had, the current state of KSP2 is somewhat baffling.

Thank you for the insightful video.

Seeing the original KSP2 trailers had me really excited. But the price for early access, together with the early reports of problems - bugs and wet noodle rockets - I held off. As nothing seems to have improved to any great extent, I am still playing KSP1, and have got to the stage where I don't think I'm likely to make the change.

To get to your video-footage: 5:55 who needs transfert windows....

@timsvarietyksp

Ай бұрын

Old habits die hard ;-)

why is the video at 4k if the video is like 1080p size? or just insanely low bitrate... OBS: .mp4, NVIDA NVENC HEVC, VBR 34,000-80,000 Kbps, P4 Medium, Low Latency, Two Passes or Nivida NVENC AV1 same settings for 60fps double res, and export to about VBR 45,000-65,000Kbps.

@timsvarietyksp

Ай бұрын

I record at 1440p, encode at 4k, who knows what youtube does with its internal "processing"

The point of early access is to be able to, you know play the game. The fact that most people's hardware wasn't within the minimum requirements was telling. Workspaces are ridiculously bad. Fingers crossed, PD actually do develop KSP 2 to completion and that we get better overall communication & progress though that probably won't be the case as the new team will have to pick up the pieces (assuming there is a next team).

Loving KSP 1 and waiting on KSP 2 this is really sad to hear. Unfortunatly, without living through the troubles KSP 2 had, i feel like i agree with the OP... Such a bummer. It had a lot of potential. Hopefully the community can help take up the slack.

Within 20 minutes of booting up the first release of KSP2, I had the inescapable feeling that this was a "product" that was pushed out by suits poring over spreadsheets, probably over the objections of the dev team (argue about their competence all you want, but I do believe the devs care about the franchise and wanted to make a good game). The giant mismatch between the visuals of the game - which were IMO impressive even at launch - and the quality of core fundamentals that a suit would never see or care about was obvious. This was a build made for presentation, not play. Still, I had hope that it would eventually be fleshed out into a worthy successor. I was beyond hyped for colonies, interstellar travel, even multiplayer. I guess I let that excitement blind me, a bit, to a truth I still knew deep down: that this thing I love so much was in the hands of soulless money vampires who wouldn't hesitate to kill it if it didn't feed them piles of cash. I had hope, a rare commodity here in 2024. I believed. Even though I can't say I'm much surprised, I'm still heartbroken. Whoever makes the game that KSP 2 should've been, shut up and take my money. I'll pay triple what KSP 2 cost me if it means getting another game from which, like KSP 1, I can reap literally thousands of hours of joy and wonder.

@angelainamarie9656

Ай бұрын

Yeah apparently the people at take two interactive never understood that this was a game about launching rockets

@DKTAz00

Ай бұрын

I agree 100%, made for presentation, not play

Damn this is sad to see. Loved the first game but when KSP2 came out I saw all the problems and decided to get it later after some of the core issues were fixed. Sad to see they haven't spent their time doing that. Your last segment talking about how the game looks better than the first, while being a worse actual game really hit the nail on the head. Luckily the KSP1 modding scene is pretty good so at least that game might stay alive from it.

i love how i can come to your channels and get news on my favorite games. not only war thunder but i find out also KSP? if you start making videos on tarkov youll have hit the trifecta with me XD

Yes, agreed. Best reasoning I've heard to date. With no shilling. Shame you weren't the one asking Nate questions in interviews.

Totally agree, this doesn't look anything like a good faith EA program. Manor Lords EA for example have already released an update that's specifically targets at feedback received, and of course BG3 was an exemplary EA.

Dean Hall and his team have zero experience in N-body physics. His only response was something about Stationeers which has zero N-body physics as far as I can see. It was a good move not giving this IP to his studio. It was also a bad move giving it to Intercept Games.

100% agree with your notion that they spent a gazillion dollars on teaser videos and ‘behind the scenes’ films for years instead of proper development work. They recorded IRL rocket launch sounds and NASA building acoustics; did anyone notice? 🤬

I'm honestly not that surprised since looking at some older promotionals, I saw they were advertising THE TEAM working on it. I do not care if the game is made by ogres, elves, phantoms or any other group of fantasy creatures, please, just make it good.

Spaceplane development is the one thing that is better is ksp2 than 1. Love the part editing and multi fuel management. If ksp2 dies I’ll likely keep playing as the majority of features around spaceplanes are perfect for me. Really wanted multiplayer though :)

KSP was one of the first video games I played on PC! Ive been waiting to pick up KSP2 until it’s polished and complete enough to be worth playing over KSP, but I guess thats never going to happen now. sad…

To add to your rant, keep in mind that the trailer had nothing to do with the game engine that ended up being used. It was beautiful but misleading, well, without really being misleading because there was a tiny "Not Actual Gameplay" disclaimer at the start of it. People let themselves fall into too much hype from the start...

Stop paying for early access, what do people expect at this point?

Unfortunate. Been waiting for it to get good, as the EA was just not up to par.

hey Tim! Didn't realize you had a KSP channel. After playing a considerable amount of RP-1, I just don't see the same love and care ever coming to KSP2. The devs have failed on their promises, and have failed to capture an active and loyal player base that will continue to support their game for years to come. KSP2 feels hollow with the plethora of missing features, it's honestly impressive how little has gotten done since "release".

I feel something is not right when I test the game, I ramburs the game after 10 minutes of playng... and I play ksp 1 a lot. Now my feelings are right.

I didnt know tim played ksp too lol

@timsvarietyksp

Ай бұрын

The channel that is now my WT channel used to be my main "variety gaming" channel. I split off all my non-WT content onto two side channels a little over a year ago. Links to all 3 are on the main page of each.

@eaaglee_

Ай бұрын

@@timsvarietyksp oh lol

I have had a lot of the same ideas. I got the one opinionated guy vibe with the wobbly rockets in general. Like dude...I felt more exasperated and worried about that right from the get go. The core of the game was never wobbly rockets. No one has a review that is like "you should by KSP because the rockets wobble."

It is unfortunate. I have high hopes for a modernized KSP.

Early access works for small teams because it is one guy in a basement. For AAA, it's 70 people all with full time salaries. Of course they burn through cash quick!

Also, when hardware recommendations were posted and 12gigs of RAM was MINIMUM (for this kind of game...) I knew right away they weren't interested in optimizing the game or tightening up code.

Developers not long ago did state founds are assured, but the events in past days don't look to good. What sucks is the communication, there is next to none. Still, I don't think there will be an immediate cancelation, to much invested and done.

Short answer, if KSP 2 had a good chunk of the content that KSP 1 had then I'm sure people would have been fine with that I was mostly disappointed because they made it seem they were going to allow mods on steam for the game. But no, we have to pay for the same thing twice or that was what seemed the case, now this game's future is uncertain at best.

@DKTAz00

Ай бұрын

Asking for more content is like asking for a prettier interior in your car with no wheels or engine

Totaly right. For all these reasons I estimated that KSP 2 was not in the right state, and I did not purchased it. And for themoment at the current state, added to the corporate mess, I wil certainly not.

I wonder how long till this self destructive behavior catches up to the big studios. You can only cancel so many projects before you stop making games entirely. Games cost money to make, and they usually give a profit in the long run. But quarterly greed makes long run projects unviable. Cut expenses now at the cost of future profits is lunacy. KSP 2 if given the chance to become the game promised would be profitable, and early access worked wonders for BG3. More people bought it once it came out of EA than anyone expexted, yet to criple a title still in development is unbeliveably sort sighted.

@DKTAz00

Ай бұрын

Should've called it KSP MAX

Hi - 1st time viewer here. This is pretty much spot on, I will just add that I think lack of launch cost also make the game less interesting. Too much focus on visuals, failure (forced wobble and explosions) and now ugly green men rather than making cool and interesting space creations.

They had a super huge community where they could have got them to make content. Impossible to loose money

When i saw the early release price I knew this was going to happen. Glad I made that choice.

Your point on corporate demands is odd, because wouldn’t everyone at the start of the project agree and understand how much time/man hours it was going to cost to develop. It’s as though they started work not knowing what they were getting into, or what it was going to take to complete; not professional at all.

Here's the thing: You can't be a realistic physics simulator *and* have interstellar space travel. You can't have colonization without having some sort of Factorio/Satisfactory-type mechanics This was never going to become KSP with Moar Stuff This was going to become a dumbed-down resource manager with a KSP paint job

as someone who worked in video games for a long time I get why you can get these assumptions, but I can assure you the real reason is that people who make video games are not super human turbo programmers, they just do their best and sometimes the are not very good :') This is a risk a company takes when they make a new studio to develop a new game. You have all these release windows and big corpo financial reports, so you hire people that are available to you and not always the cream of the crop.

Love KSP, had KSP2 on top of my wishlist from the first day the store page went up. Got it on launch, and only then did I learn about all the features that were cut and slated for "later" like multiplayer, announched just a week or so before. Wasn't even able to play the game on launch, because it kept crashing, on the beefiest hardware achiveable at the time. It was so obviously clear that their focus was on visuals, which just isnt going to work for physics simulated space exploration game, you NEED a solid game underneath all the makeup. You dont see good code, you experience it, but CEO's don't want to understand code and just look at the flashy flashies and go "cool!" It was so painfully obvious that this was going to be the "result" from the get go, that I immediately refunded my dream game. Another thing ruined by middlemanagement and beancounters, text-fucking-book

Since when did you have a KSP channel? I thought you only made war thunder videos

@timsvarietyksp

Ай бұрын

Originally my channel was full-on "Variety" content (hence the name) but I split off my KSP stuff onto this channel, and everything else onto my "variety gaming" channel. Links to all 3 are on the main page of each channel if you're interested.

@MrBosszillaGaming

Ай бұрын

@@timsvarietyksp oh I see

If they are killing it the least they can do is release the source files for it and let the modding community finish what they can’t.

I agree with everything here- great video!

I have submitted over 50 refund requests over the the course of a few months. i have felt like this was a scam from day one but I keep getting refused.

No skin off my teeth, I decided I wasn't playing ksp 2 until they had all the bugs worked out.. I hope they can square up their company and make it work, as a player of the original Kerbal Space Program that has landed on every Celestial body I was looking forward to moving past the Kerbal system but not sure if that will happen now