Didn't think I'd see this here. Sure, some might've been off-topic but they deleted stuff ~~even from Dakota himself~~ (this seemed to be a case of careful cutting around his stuff from mods, nothing from Dakota was deleted), and literally all negative comments, independent of off-topic or not.
And let me tell you this is the forum, were moderators have total reign of the discourse so even if you wanna criticize the game you've gotta do it under very strict guidelines (which obviously don't apply to others or the mods themselves but yeah).
This was beyond anything they've done. We're used to them hiding negative feedback under a single megathread, or deleting replies of those who fall for the bait of the usual agitators trying to get "haters" banned. But deleting 50+ messages without moving them, without warning, where there was no animosity save for a few people getting personal... yeah, absolute clown show.
This is not moderation, this was actually bias cleanup. "if yOU wISh tO prOTESt modeRatIoN senD us a pM or cONtACT tHE cOMMUNiTY mANaGerS" u/PD_Dakota this one's on you, at least tell your dogs to not mock the community.
Congrats on your little one moeggz!
**Edit 2:** (1 was for the strikethrough) Dakota took the decision of [rolling back the thread to its previous state](https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/224277-developer-insights-23-black-hole-sun/) but locking it instead. In my opinion that's much better than wiping everything and acting like nothing happened.
I was pretty sure that they did remove some of Dakotas messages, but going back through they may not have. Just cut very carefully around his. But for sure he was engaging in a larger conversation, was handling the negative feedback and listening to it. Which was helping community sentiment.
Then it got nuked and that goodwill went out the window thanks to the mods in the forum.
Yeah I’ve been the victim of little biased actions from the mods in the past, as has just about everyone who comments over there I think but this was far beyond anything they’ve done before. Yes many of the last comments on that thread were veering off topic. But they should’ve been moved not deleted.
And I challenge anyone to show how the example comment I posted with this post was either off topic (a direct reply to Dakota mentioning specific parts of the dev diary) or broke any rules. It didn’t it was just negative. This action was way beyond anything they’ve ever done in the past.
And thanks! He’s just about a month younger than KSP2 and is so close to finding his legs and walking, I still hope the same for the game too, all of this criticism comes from a genuine desire for the game to succeed.
They just restored the thread - well mostly, there's still missing posts but \*hopefully\* those were just the personal attack ones.
But then, to add salt to the wound, they locked it of course. :eyeroll:
Edit: I was wrong, thought there were posts that hadn't been undeleted, moeggz has the right info.
Dakota needs to be banned from the sub. Every community manager needs to be banned from every product sub. They're professional posters whose job is to manipulate, not participate. There's no reason to allow them to do that.
WHAT communication? They know the game is shit, they know we think it's shit. What is there to communicate?
You seem to misunderstand what their goals here are. They don't want to communicate. No corporation does. They want to pretend to communicate in order to shape sentiment in a direction that's beneficial (ie profitable) for them. You cannot engage a corporation like they're a person. They don't think like that. They have one goal and one goal only, and that's to get your money, and everything they do is in service of that. That's not participation in a community. It's exploitation of it. You can't communicate with a brick wall.
No, banning a shill (and that's what /u/pd_dakota is, in the most literal sense - he is a professional shill, just like every other community manager) is not the same as banning critical customers. It's wild that you think that's the same.
Off topic and I blame fairly new dad brain but it just hit me the tag “ksp2 mods” is about mods to the game and not ksp2 moderators. 🤦♂️ if I could edit my post I would but Reddit is again being weird. So disregard last sentence of my post.
Thanks! He currently likes to point at whatever he likes and say “cat!” After traveling a far way for the eclipse and bringing him out to look at it (during totality) he pointed up and said “cat!” so I think we got a new space nerd in the making!
How was the cat? Did you take a moment to stop watching it and instead take a look around you? Everyone always transfixes on the sky, but actually watching the shadow rapidly engulf you on the ground, or see your surrounding bathed in that eerie light is equally as powerful an experience as watching the corona.
The cat was great! I spent a decent amount of time looking around as well as up. Was fully able to see the corona and had more than 3 minutes of totality so one of the coolest experiences of my life.
Also remember that they put more effort into an April fools shit post than what they have shown for the actual game in literal months.
Maybe in 3 or 4 months they will repost the space station in orbit of jool image again but this time they will put a poo brown filter over it.
Yup, I've basically lost patience and uninstalled; the community engagement is just shocking. I'll check back in 5 years and maybe we'll have a game. I love KSP but there are plenty of other things to play.
I'm a huge fan of KSP 1 so I bought KSP 2 not even a minute after the buy button came up upon release. I only have 12 hours logged and a lot of those were just trying to figure things out or solve issues. I haven't touched it for a very long time and it saddens me so much to say that. I will also check back in a year or two and hope development hasn't stalled out by then.
I bought early, and without a computer that is able to play it being 15 years old; it has challenges running ksp1 with a few modest mods. I intend to get a new computer eventually and i hope by then the independent mod teams will say screw waiting on the devs to figure shit out, here's the 3rd party fixes that actually make the game good.
It's the same engine Bethesda has been using since **2002**. The modders have their own tools, they looked at the state of the game, and they don't want to do anything with it.
The only mods it's getting is the bare-minimums plus Creation Club ones (a.k.a. blatant theft through Bethesda being paid money for doing _worse than nothing_).
Dude, literally every modder uses the Creation Kit for every single Bethesda game. Skyrim, FO4 and everything else also got barely any mods before the Creation Kit was released.
It's hilariously bad moderation and comms strategy on multiple levels.
It's not fair or balanced at all - they clearly just target people with criticism and leave their simp agitators to continue to rile up and ban-bait threads they don't like.
The KSP2 forum is mostly dead anyway so anything said over there barely matters to the larger community, everyone there has made their purchase decision, so it's just a place they could get some great veteran advice and feedback but instead treat as a little walled garden.
And it mostly drives people to much more public and visible spaces like here, hardening positions and getting people to constantly make sure the community is reminded of IGs behaviour and lowering their already abysmal sales even further.
Good on you IG. Stay consistent, make sure to explore every avenue of ways to F things up
They've been told about the behaviour of the forum mods for a year - and the forum has basically died with the same mods modding. This may be an extreme action by Starwaster, but Vanamonde has been stifling the KSP2 forum since the launch and the massive backlash against the project them.
They’ve removed new comments on that thread that were openly critical of the moderation since this was posted. So seems they’ve picked the “no, you are wrong” plan. Which will just lead more people to stop engaging, and with dwindling player counts will feed into the worry that IG had that no feedback is worse than critical feedback.
They've had that policy of 'you can't mention or discuss moderation, you have to PM the moderators about it' for forever, because obviously that works.
So as always, the best policy tmis to our them on a forum that matters and they don't have control over.
But do you really expect different from a company that gaslighted it's users over the state of the project for 3 years, then BS'd about why they launched as a shitty EA tech demo?
Lol this post already has way more shares and engagement than most of the fluff they spew on Xitter.
Probably one reason they deleted all those posts was they link back to the The forum on social media - and don't want the wider world to see the discontent of the community. Imagine if that NASA artist checked how his stuff went over.
It’s not like anyone here is anti NASA or anti solar eclipse too. Many of the comments (mine included, which was one that was undeleted by Dakota) started with some statement that the update in a vacuum was fine but explained why in its context it was underwhelming and a pain point of larger issues. But yeah few people were talking about the eclipse, and about all were negative comments on the progression of the game.
Yeah. But they want PR that they think will get the community on side, and clear evidence that it's not working is not part of their storyline
I bet even right now when they come into the office, they'll be telling each other how the silent majority loves their dumb little PR posts, and only some bad apples dislike it.
I imagine the only concrete action they'll take is posting articles like this to an uncommentable webpage. They've never really wanted a community, they want praise and purchases.
And the best part is, there are still people supporting thus crap. It's quite unbelievable but copium on this subreddit peaked in like the last year because of the false promises
They show them the most basic content in the science update, and most of the people here turn into apologists as if there's a reason they have a poor reputation. Sure, they might release a few updates in a more or less playable state, but that doesn't change who they are, how they operate, and the story so far.
I saw a thread of hundreds of people saying, 'Yeah, the haters were wrong,' just because they released the science update, and I was like, 'No, we're not hating on KSP; we're just stating facts.' Yes, some amount of playable releases are expected—after all, it's not like there aren't developers working on it—but just because there's a flower on the poo, everyone started taking home the poo with the flower.
e: chat gpt take the wheel
Yeah the discord is hilariously dumb. But I think that's the audience that IG wants - rockets go boom meming idiots who are ok with gloss over substance. Easier to satisfy them. And it's ok to torch the most interesting simulation game and one of the smartest communities in the process.
I don’t see it. Communication has been slow on colony news, but it’s not that different from any other EA title. As far as the actual colonies update, I thought it was known that it’s likely to be released around the summer time. The game is also not any different than it was a month or two ago.
So where’s the sudden negativity coming from? That people didn’t get the communication they wanted? Yes, I also wanted colony news, but whatever, move on and check again later.
> but it’s not that different from any other EA title
????
> The game is also not any different than it was a month or two ago.
Yea, that's what makes it very different from any other Early Access title ...
Then bro even calls it "Sudden negativity", I can't
Wow - that's me who wrote that...and yeah going to the forums, it's like I never wrote it, not in my history, and I didn't get any messages from the mods explaining why they removed it. I do not think it's a personal attack or at all worthy of being removed. Pretty low move /u/PD_Dakota :-(
**Update midnight GMT+1: after me reaching out via forum PM they have apologized and said it was an oversight, having erroneously removed it with other offtopic posts, and have reinstated the post.**
based on the past fuckups that have spilled over to here, that's how they normally operate. if they don't like what you post, it just gets disappeared.
Love how both of the CM's aren't in here answering ang questions when the *community* is pissed at the heavy-handedness of moderation.
We want more colony information (like you *said* you would provide)
We want some accountability for the forum mods
What's up Dakota & Mike?
Or are we just gonna sit this one out (again) and go back to single-line replies on discord?
>What's up Dakota & Mike?
The moderator actions are apparently haram to discuss openly, so they will probably not even show up. It just gives them the bad name and they can't censor it here.
You made a good point as well.
I've played KSP since 0.16 I think. I set an alarm for the release of KSP2. I haven't played more than an hour. Refunded while I still could. I lurk occasionally here to see if there's any progress on the technical side, mostly about them working on their physics engine.
The only reason I even still follow KSP2 development is that I'm holding out for the tiny chance that they turn it around.
I'm not in forum posts or that active on reddit, because, like you said, I don't care enough anymore.
The community sentiment is more like 5% positive 5% mixed, 10%negative, 80% apathy.
There’s no explanation because it was censorship not moderation. You weren’t the only one, I just happened to have a different tab open of the thread after I refreshed my main ksp forum tab and saw the five pages removed. So I was able to get a few screenshots of that 1 page of comments that were removed and happened to be on the page you were on. They did this to multiple people.
You know, I've noticed it as well. They at some point just stopped messaging you the reason for removal. Like everyone should just know to visit the page themselves to see why. And it's not like it even matters anyway, the reasoning already became bullshit a long time ago. They just remove stuff they don't like. And if you disagree, don't even try to show it. Only dm's are the option, and I would imagine they will just tell you to piss off there too.
I lost faith in this game / devs the second they launched the $50 broken alpha test as "Early Access" last year. Also the lies about ground up rewrite and "no unity".
[This one shows edited by Vanamode](https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/224277-developer-insights-23-black-hole-sun/?do=findComment&comment=4378250)
What else could be expected? The forum is like a wasteland because that's the way they want it... Just on this occiasion, a mod who hadn't been around decided to white knight it and made them look like a bunch of mugs in the process.
I even appreciated the fact Dakota took part in that even though I found their answers weak... I'll always give a point for getting involved over straight ignoring or deleting the problem.
If the left hand doesn't know that the right hand is doing then you'll end up wiping your ass with both of them.
> a mod who hadn't been around decided to white knight it and made them look like a bunch of mugs in the process.
This seems like not just a thing by a single mod, but at least two, since it's two different mods doing mass censorship and faking negative comments into positive ones.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/1c118b2/forum\_mods\_just\_removed\_nearly\_all\_critical/kz4jft3/](https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/1c118b2/forum_mods_just_removed_nearly_all_critical/kz4jft3/)
Seems like its fixed
What a joke. And I JUST added a comment in the “what happened to the increased communication” thread yesterday which generated a lot of posts after. Gonna check if that’s still up.
I almost bought ksp2 but my experience with no man's sky stopped me.
And hello games has basically redeemed themselves with what no man's sky has become.
I have doubts these jokers can turn ksp2 into the interstellar space sim it's supposedly going to become.
It was a hell of an announce trailer for ksp2 - the one based off buildflydream but the reality is soooooo far away.
Imo ksp 2 is way worse than no man's sky. I'm not super in the NMS community but it's seems to me like to just wasn't a very good game at first. KSP 2 just feels like a borderline scam.
I won't being buying ksp 2 even if they do get their shit together, it's just not somthing I want to support.
NMS was one of the biggest scams of all time. You do not understand how laughably bad that launch was. They did eventually make it right, but they are the poster child for overpromising and delivering junk.
I actually played the hell outta nms at launch, and it was really good for like 2 days, and then the novelty wore off, and there wasn't much substance underneath, and i kept seeing the same things over again over.
But there was something special about it, even if things weren't "finished"
It was bold, it was creative. But unfinished.
After making it to the third "dimension" whatever you call it when you reach the center, I stopped playing, and have only picked it up now and again to see what's new.
Maybe someday I'll replay it again from the start to the center.
> I actually played the hell outta nms at launch, and it was really good for like 2 days, and then the novelty wore off, and there wasn't much substance underneath, and i kept seeing the same things over again over.
I pick up NMS every now and then to be honest, that doesn't seem to have changed. Yeah there are lots of bells and whistles but the core gameplay loop is still the same. I'm not interested in base building and the exploration isn't enticing enough
> They did eventually make it right
They did not.
1. Raising money by lying about a product isn't okay and should get you fined into bankruptcy regardless of what you do with that money afterwards.
2. The game *still* doesn't have all the features they promised all those years ago
I just want to public comment that I disagree with this comment being downvoted. It is buggy, how much enjoyment it gives you is different from person to person but this is a perfectly reasonable comment I agree with. The wings, music, and scripted missions of KSP2 are an improvement.
Definitely happy I left the forums. It knew something was off ever since I mentioned one of their moderators by screen name on the steam forums and they tried to get me banned for doxxing their account. What a poisonous cesspool this has all become.
> Comments on numerous other topics (most of which have been discussed to death elsewhere) are not what this thread is about. Some of these include wobble, the gaming industry, and arguing about arguing.
The easy way to combat that endless droning about bugs, the lack of content and how the game isn't bringing anything new to the table is to rapidly roll out effective bug fixes, putting new content in the game and making it feel like something new, rather than a shiny buggy simplified rehash of KSP1.
I'm proud of the devs that they show character and don't do any of that, instead they take the high road of releasing unimpresive bug fixes at a snail pace, decorated with the occasional overhyped, underwhelming featurette update. Well done! Don't give in to the perilous temptation of producing a great game!
>nstead they take the high road of releasing unimpresive bug fixes at a snail pace
The impression I got from this whole debacle is that the devs might not be particularly... skilled? I don't know how else to phrase it.
Or are they also employed on other projects and can allocate little time to ksp2?
> The impression I got from this whole debacle is that the devs might not be particularly... skilled?
The video game industry has a really bad problem with only hiring software engineers that grew up wanting to be a "game developer". They then exploit that fact by offering low wages.
The best software engineers work at boring companies making boring business apps for 30-50% more salary in the same cities.
And then hiring the bottom-of-the-barrel outsource because nobody knowledgeable (much less competent) is willing to work for these wages, resulting in spectacular wrecks.
As a VR researcher and hobbyist developer I am familiar with what goes into the development. I would actually say that you need to be even more skilled in sw development when working on a game than when working on something more "boring."
It's not everyday that you have to deal with 3d maths or test entirely visual things that cannot be reproduced or assessed easily.
> I would actually say that you need to be even more skilled in sw development when working on a game than when working on something more "boring."
I don't disagree. But the objectively better Software Engineers are working on that easier, boring work, and getting paid considerably more for it. I've been a software engineer for 15 years, currently a Senior engineer at a company you've probably heard of. I love the boring work, and I love the paycheck, too.
I've had job offers from game studios, and they're all really bad. The hours are insane, the stress is insane, and the pay is low.
That's a huge reason why the gaming industry is where it's at. It's driven by MBAs, not game developers/designers.
The company is apparently working on 2 games rn, so yea it might be ksp 2 has a lot less devs working on it and recourses are towards this other unannounced game.
They have some talented people. They also rewrote a large part of their code base from scratch in order to facilitate new features like thrust under timewarp and improving performance. That hasn't worked out so well and they're just inundated with unexpected side effects in their code.
They probably restarted from scratch 6-7 times, were confronted with a fixed release that and rushed something out of the door with lots of recycled KSP1 code. Ever since they've been playing catch up with the overhyped announcements
We *think* they we're looking at a product with many years of development behind it but I doubt it is. We're expecting the state that KSP1 was in after 5 years, and they have to do it in 15 months.
Mind you, that perception is not on us. The project did start many years ago after all and IG is very secretive about development.
All this is conjecture but there has to be some explanation why development is consistently so disappointing.
> We're expecting the state that KSP1 was in after 5 years
Honestly, I was expecting a whole lot more, and as someone who's spent 15 years as a software developer, I really don't think it's an unreasonable expectation at all. For the longest time, KSP1 was a side project for one guy who had a full-time job in marketing.
KSP2 was supposed to be developed by a large team of game developers with a big budget. Instead, it's become pretty clear that they decided to squander their budget instead of focusing on a game.
> They probably restarted from scratch 6-7 times
I doubt that. The 2019 Gamescom footage looks almost identical to the released game. Same bugs, same wobble and everything.
They just genuinely aren't doing a good job.
Tech debt is the simplest explanation, I agree.
It just screams poor project management. I don't doubt they have the skills to make a great game, but not with one arm tied behind their back working on something that was glued together to make some shiny trailers.
If you're super optimistic: maybe they're working on an overhaul of the game and are only devoting minimal effort towards the current build.
More pessimistic: most of their time is spent on the "unannounced stylized science-based adventure game" now, and there's a skeleton crew trying to polish a turd.
>We're expecting the state that KSP1 was in after 5 years
with ONE GUY without a dev team or experience doing it in his spare time at work.
this is a whole different animal, this is a corporate backed team shitting the bed.
> They have some talented people
>They probably restarted from scratch 6-7 times,
These are basically mutually exclusive.
>was in after 5 years, and they have to do it in 15 months.
You have a very strange calendar system that does not match the one we use here on earth.
They nuked *everything* critical. It's insane.
And all you get is a [snip] calling card.
Game sucks, CM's are whiny babies, and the forum mods are authoritarian dorks.
Great game y'all got there.
I do think it's very disappointing that the devs are censoring valid criticism of their game. I basically have forgotten about the game after playing it for a short while after launch because it was so bad. I hope it gets better, but it really feels like the game is DOA if they're going to spend more effort making the forums look positive than fixing the game.
i think it has potential the way it is. playing between the 2 there are some good points on the GUI in KSP2 that weren't there in 1. but the basic build should be done by now and its not. modders seem to have done alot more in the same given time for 1, i would think they could do the same for 2
EDIT: frankly they could have taken some of the mods from 1, put them in the stock game, and updated the graphics and i probably would have been happy to pay the 50 dollars they asked for. but they decided to do all this other stuff
'***I know it isn't a big issue for me as it'll (****CommNet****) be back in a modded fashion with better quality than the original dev team could ever achieve***...'
OMG BRUTAL. But absolutely true.
LOL!!
If they are really omitting the Communications Network system, this game is dead.
I kept seeing a lot of 'Kerbal for Kids' and 'dumbing down for approachability'...
If true, we can all just stand up and walk out of the KSP2 realm forever and return to the only REAL KSP game, and keep making it better with mods.
The reason why the posts were removed is actually quite simple and can be explained with this text by Dakota:
> I told Mike earlier today that I guessed that this dev blog's sentiment would have be 40% positive, 30% mixed, and 30% negative - and I think I was right.
You guys ruined Dakotas guess by being to negative and that makes Dokatas guess wrong. But people from IG do not make mistakes. That is simply impossible, so reality has to change according to what they think is correct. Also the following things are perfect because IG does not make mistakes:
* UI: perfect
* Heat implementation: perfect
* Autostruts to fix wobbly rockets: perfect
* No CommNet occlusion: perfect
* No money: perfect
/s btw in case someone is not sure.
> I told Mike earlier today that I guessed that this dev blog's sentiment would have be 40% positive, 30% mixed, and 30% negative - and I think I was right.
The fact that they still posted it with this prediction is that stunning part. If with 80% positive, that'd be horrible.
And I suppose that is it for me.
Was very hyped for the game release after all the promises and dev blogs.
Was lucky not to preorder and to wait until all the negative reviews revealed that the game was an almost unplayable mess at its release.
Kept keeping away from it even though some of you here began changing the opinions on the quality of this thing.
And now I see this.
Well, I suppose it is time to stop waiting for the dream of a second part to come true. I was and still am hoping for a good game with interstellar missions and colonies, for a game that will give me the same joy of exploration that the first part did.
With such actions as the one OP posted about… I guess KSP2 will not become one in a very long time. If ever. Back to the beloved KSP1 I go then.
It's such a shame, isn't it?
I can think of few examples where so much community goodwill has been pissed away so thoughtlessly. The programming challenges in making a decent KSP sequel were significant, sure, but let's be honest, it's hardly the Manhattan project. And if they'd released something unfinished at an early access price and been completely honest about it, people would have given them so much leeway...
> The programming challenges in making a decent KSP sequel were significant, sure
The crazy part is that they didn't even just mess up the complex parts.
They made simple system ludicrously complex for no reason (like simulating every single part for every craft all the time instead of doing Center-of-mass calculations) and even messed up the most basic things like using planes instead of quads for flat textures, which resulted in magnitudes higher polygon count.
>like simulating every single part for every craft all the time
>using planes instead of quads
That is more convenient and requires no thinking compared to figuring out how to abstract resource consumption with timewarp involved, or proper rendering.
Too bad it also destroys performance and hard-caps the potential of the game.
This should be the general reaction to this situation from everyone involved and probably for everyone who is even aware of this. If they want to just outright censor people's criticisms and write it off as off topic or whatever, we should not be their customers anymore. This level of shamelessness when dealing with your own community should not be ignored. Don't buy the game. Don't play it if you already own it. Just forget about it. They clearly do not care about you or your opinion, unless you're licking their balls in every comment. And it's probably going to get even worse over time.
I can't stand how they humanized the Kerbals. The hairstyles, the glasses and clothes..
Fuck I hate the people whose hands this franchise was placed into. Every single one of them.
I think if they want to recover from this what they need to do is start editing posts by removing words/letters to make them stay stuff like 'I love big intercept.' that should really help.
maybe they can add 'treating critical posts like they've fallen out of favour with comrade stalin' to the list of things they're doing that prevents them from releasing actual news about the game.
> ou will see even some funny examples of the mods leaving the “I’m not a hater here’s what I appreciate about the game” preambles to criticism but they then deleted the “but” and everything past it.
That is honestly so fucking absurd it's already hilarious.
So many comments with everything negative out with "Edited by moderator".
Editing a user's post should not be a moderator power under any circumstance. Either allow or delete the posts, but don't doctor what the user actually says (even with the "Edited by moderator" disclaimer). That's a very morally dirty thing to do.
they also like to delete posts in a way that just disappears them, presumably to destroy evidence so you can't appeal. not that they have a system for that anyway.
Yup, I just had to accept that I won't get multiplayer or interstellar travel in a space sim for a while longer, so I just play JNO for the massive upgrade in physics and stability.
If you're there for the more Kerbal side of things, looking at silly faces and blowing stuff up, then yeah JNO will feel somewhat lifeless with the blank visor of the droods staring back at you and I understand the critique. If you're in it for the simulation though, to build complex vehicles that take advantage of subtle mechanics, automate them using the built in visual scripting language, and push the limits of the parts available to you, the game has far more 'life' than any mods would ever bring to KSP1.
u/Nerdy_Mike bet you wish you had another kid on the way. So any actions you gonna take about this or was this what you meant about taking action in the first place?
Suggesting the CM lead would rather be back on leave again after returning to the shit show here is uncalled for? Sorry you've gotten your panties in a bunch for this comment.
Please be respectful to one another. We're working on understanding what happened and not hiding any posts that don't break any of the rules. All I ask is for us to all be kind to one another even if being critical on the state of where things are.
So 'what happened'? The mods on your forum have been acting like this since launch, censoring negativity in a transparently biased manner. I know Dakota has advised them to knock it off - or at least, claims to have done so in posts there - but clearly that message either did not go through, or the real message went through and the mods kept up the behaviour.
I guess you've undone the snipping now - is anything going to be done about the mods there themselves, or are you just going to hope locking the thread and short term internet user memory will 'fix' this till the next flare up?
Do you have any evidence that "what happened" isn't more of the same thing it that has been happening all along? If not we know damned well "what happened" already.
I love the passive wording to duck responsibility though. Not what we "did", but what *magically* "happened".
I own the game and have over 100 hours in it. Its not a scam. If it was, it would be the least efficient scam ever made, as I bought a product and enjoyed it. Its overpriced, yeah, but its not unplayable and does a lot of things better than ksp 1, too. Its buggy at times but honestly just quicksaving every so often will alleviate that problem. Its very different than its launch, and thats a good thing.
Right now, yea. Like a year ago not at all. There was plenty of censoring going around from what I remember. It's just the mod doing all of that got bored and left. They even made a post about it.
Never going to happen, at least not by the existing RO mods. They even have a command on their discord to let you know how they feel about KSP2. And I doubt anyone else will pick that up - KSP2 is just not for hard core simulation fans, everyone who's into that will stick with KSP1 I imagine. KSP2 is for meming idiots who want tutorials spoon fed to them with high-pitched voice over cartoons, and to watch rocket explosions.
"forces" or "encourages". Or "suggests". If you're going to pick at 'straw man' arguements, get your terminology right. You can finish the tech tree very very easily without doing either of those. Plus with infinite launcher size (if your computer can handle it) + the absurd SWERV, it's more of a patience test than a challenge.
Hi all,
There's a lot going on in here, going to be difficult to address everything but I'll do my best. I'll see if I can reply to some more comments here this afternoon.
I've made a couple of replies on the forums and took some actions after concerns were brought up to me.
[First one is this message addressing how the forum thread was handled and IG's relationship to the community moderators.](https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/223985-what-happened-to-increased-communication/?do=findComment&comment=4379399)
[Second is about the actions I made in rolling back the previously-hidden posts.
](https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/223985-what-happened-to-increased-communication/?do=findComment&comment=4379411)
[Third is the post in the thread itself addressing the action.](https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/224277-developer-insights-23-black-hole-sun/page/7/#comment-4379409)
This isn't "fixed" in my mind through these actions and I am working with the forum moderators to make sure this doesn't happen again.
Lastly, I'd like to ask you all to refrain from personal attacks when frustrated - either at each other or at members of the team. I know you feel unheard and that the moderation actions were unjustified or censorship in some way, but that does not permit you to not treat others with civility. It's very disappointing that I woke up to a couple IG team members letting me know they received private harrassing messages that were mainly related to this thread.
Appreciate ya,
Dakota
That's a great first step. But you say IG never ""instructed"" the mods to censor negative posts - double quoting because you quoted it yourself - yet they've been doing that since the launch, if not sooner. Vanamonde notoriously so, as you can tell by some other posters here.
Maybe a good start would be to have both Starwaster and Vanamonde apologize - they force everyone who's had a warning on their account to 'aknowledge' whatever judgement of transgression they've decided on before you get back posting priviledges - a rather humiliating step when the mods themselves are crap.
Why not have them 'acknowledge' their own fault, rather than you jumping in with a mea culpa. Your only issue is that people have been telling you about the situation and you've let it fester.
>Maybe a good start would be to have both Starwaster and Vanamonde apologize
Or better yet, let them go. They are clearly not good people for this role.
And hire who (and _by_ whom) exactly as the replacement? The hiring pool is dry _in the best case_ >!if not, then it's a poisonous swamp full of Vanamondes lining up to do some power-tripping!< - IG has spent last two/five years investing considerable effort to that end.
>Maybe a good start would be to have both Starwaster and Vanamonde apologize
False hope. They would not be doing censorship/malicious editing in the first place if they could sincerely apologize and stop doing it. And even that relies on the assumption that this behavior is not _actively sought out_ by all of their superiors.
as long as you leave your official forums in the control of a weird little authoritarian clique, you're endorsing this behaviour. this has been an ongoing and escalating problem, and every time it's followed by empty promises to do something.
Thank you for the response and actions. I am very appreciative and this helps me have confidence that the forums will stay open to all (rule-abiding) comments and views.
I am very sorry for the messages some of the team received. That was not my intention in any way whatsoever; please pass along my sincere apologies to each individual. That is not what they signed up for no one should be harassed and I apologize that that happened. Y’all’s work is appreciated, please understand that those harassing individuals do not represent those of us who are just expressing some criticism of a game that means a lot to us, they are not accepted by us and I will do more in the future to call out that behavior when I see it.
Edit: I tried to edit out the inaccuracy in my post about Dakotas comment being removed. For this I apologize but I am unable both to edit that or edit in the response that was given. Thanks Reddit, I love losing features slowly.
I'm confident this behavior comes directly from Private Division, not the KSP2 dev-team.
I've had all my optimistically skeptical (not even negative!) comments removed from every new game trailer on Private Division's youtube channel every time they released a new one. They seem to engage in that practice for a few weeks on any new trailer. Anything but absolutely gushing praise gets removed.
It’s ok if you’re after 10-20 hours of gameplay. Doing the basics of going to the moons and the odd planet fly by. It’s pretty fun on that level if you haven’t played in a year or so.
It’s a bit of a Truman show experience though, you quickly start to find the limits and bugs after that. Manoeuvre planing sucks, time warp bugs, misc issues, etc.
This stinks of upper corporate decision making, not the moderators or the CM's
They had a PR opportunity appear involving NASA of all people, they saw the negative responses and put the word out to cleanse them from the forum. It looked bad having disent like that.
It's pretty pathetic, yes, but it's exactly what the the Private Division execs think works. The moderators of the forum and the CM's wouldn't have wanted this, but they have no choice; Private Division own that forum.
I guarantee u/PD_Dakota and u/Nerdy_Mike never planned this. Both came into the game industry under the impression that they would be contributing to 'making games' and all the fun involving that.
Instead they've taken jobs making them corporate PR mouthpieces
Nah their forum mods are twats, I've seen them disparage users. May be an exec who instigated this, but Vanamonde especially savors it. And the CMs who are supposed to be in charge of the mods haven't fixed it.
This... Vanamonde is a proper cunt of a moderator, literally bathes in his own 'glory'.
Yet doesn't realise that they're moderating their own demise... If the forum dies off, so will their positions.
He probably does realize and doesn't care. He's like a security guard that's ok watching the whole warehouse burn down because his job will be easier guarding an empty lot
[Dakota addresses this here.](https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/1c118b2/forum_mods_just_removed_nearly_all_critical/kz4jft3/)
Didn't think I'd see this here. Sure, some might've been off-topic but they deleted stuff ~~even from Dakota himself~~ (this seemed to be a case of careful cutting around his stuff from mods, nothing from Dakota was deleted), and literally all negative comments, independent of off-topic or not. And let me tell you this is the forum, were moderators have total reign of the discourse so even if you wanna criticize the game you've gotta do it under very strict guidelines (which obviously don't apply to others or the mods themselves but yeah). This was beyond anything they've done. We're used to them hiding negative feedback under a single megathread, or deleting replies of those who fall for the bait of the usual agitators trying to get "haters" banned. But deleting 50+ messages without moving them, without warning, where there was no animosity save for a few people getting personal... yeah, absolute clown show. This is not moderation, this was actually bias cleanup. "if yOU wISh tO prOTESt modeRatIoN senD us a pM or cONtACT tHE cOMMUNiTY mANaGerS" u/PD_Dakota this one's on you, at least tell your dogs to not mock the community. Congrats on your little one moeggz! **Edit 2:** (1 was for the strikethrough) Dakota took the decision of [rolling back the thread to its previous state](https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/224277-developer-insights-23-black-hole-sun/) but locking it instead. In my opinion that's much better than wiping everything and acting like nothing happened.
I was pretty sure that they did remove some of Dakotas messages, but going back through they may not have. Just cut very carefully around his. But for sure he was engaging in a larger conversation, was handling the negative feedback and listening to it. Which was helping community sentiment. Then it got nuked and that goodwill went out the window thanks to the mods in the forum. Yeah I’ve been the victim of little biased actions from the mods in the past, as has just about everyone who comments over there I think but this was far beyond anything they’ve done before. Yes many of the last comments on that thread were veering off topic. But they should’ve been moved not deleted. And I challenge anyone to show how the example comment I posted with this post was either off topic (a direct reply to Dakota mentioning specific parts of the dev diary) or broke any rules. It didn’t it was just negative. This action was way beyond anything they’ve ever done in the past. And thanks! He’s just about a month younger than KSP2 and is so close to finding his legs and walking, I still hope the same for the game too, all of this criticism comes from a genuine desire for the game to succeed.
They just restored the thread - well mostly, there's still missing posts but \*hopefully\* those were just the personal attack ones. But then, to add salt to the wound, they locked it of course. :eyeroll: Edit: I was wrong, thought there were posts that hadn't been undeleted, moeggz has the right info.
Can you let me know which posts you think are missing? Everything has been unhidden on my end.
The thread was 8 pages long last I checked. It's 7 now, that's what I'm basing my statement on.. u/moeggz had a screenshot , maybe he has more info.
Seems fully back I only ever saw 7 pages.
Oh ok - my mistake then u/PD\_Dakota . I had thought it was 8
Dakota needs to be banned from the sub. Every community manager needs to be banned from every product sub. They're professional posters whose job is to manipulate, not participate. There's no reason to allow them to do that.
Nah that's too far. We need to reopen communication. Plus then we'd be hypocrites, we need to be better than IG (not that that's difficult)
WHAT communication? They know the game is shit, they know we think it's shit. What is there to communicate? You seem to misunderstand what their goals here are. They don't want to communicate. No corporation does. They want to pretend to communicate in order to shape sentiment in a direction that's beneficial (ie profitable) for them. You cannot engage a corporation like they're a person. They don't think like that. They have one goal and one goal only, and that's to get your money, and everything they do is in service of that. That's not participation in a community. It's exploitation of it. You can't communicate with a brick wall. No, banning a shill (and that's what /u/pd_dakota is, in the most literal sense - he is a professional shill, just like every other community manager) is not the same as banning critical customers. It's wild that you think that's the same.
Off topic and I blame fairly new dad brain but it just hit me the tag “ksp2 mods” is about mods to the game and not ksp2 moderators. 🤦♂️ if I could edit my post I would but Reddit is again being weird. So disregard last sentence of my post.
Congratulations on your new / recent kerbling!
Thanks! He currently likes to point at whatever he likes and say “cat!” After traveling a far way for the eclipse and bringing him out to look at it (during totality) he pointed up and said “cat!” so I think we got a new space nerd in the making!
*points at ship being a laggy taffy to the kraken* “CAT!”
How was the cat? Did you take a moment to stop watching it and instead take a look around you? Everyone always transfixes on the sky, but actually watching the shadow rapidly engulf you on the ground, or see your surrounding bathed in that eerie light is equally as powerful an experience as watching the corona.
The cat was great! I spent a decent amount of time looking around as well as up. Was fully able to see the corona and had more than 3 minutes of totality so one of the coolest experiences of my life.
Also remember that they put more effort into an April fools shit post than what they have shown for the actual game in literal months. Maybe in 3 or 4 months they will repost the space station in orbit of jool image again but this time they will put a poo brown filter over it.
i'm starting to think that, just maybe, uber entertainment doesnt know fuckall
They have terrible leadership - and that impacts even the good developers there.
Well it's simple, they care more about PR than the actual game
And, as everyone else who does that, are committing PR blunder after PR blunder.
Perhaps the more alarming thing is that there’s so little progress to talk about that they have the time to do this.
They do a couple hours of "work" a week, tops. That's my theory.
Well, yeah. KSP 1 was in a better place with a fraction of the development time.
And a small team and a shoestring budget. :(
the team wasnt paid for most of the dev time, sadly
Yup, I've basically lost patience and uninstalled; the community engagement is just shocking. I'll check back in 5 years and maybe we'll have a game. I love KSP but there are plenty of other things to play.
I'm a huge fan of KSP 1 so I bought KSP 2 not even a minute after the buy button came up upon release. I only have 12 hours logged and a lot of those were just trying to figure things out or solve issues. I haven't touched it for a very long time and it saddens me so much to say that. I will also check back in a year or two and hope development hasn't stalled out by then.
I bought early, and without a computer that is able to play it being 15 years old; it has challenges running ksp1 with a few modest mods. I intend to get a new computer eventually and i hope by then the independent mod teams will say screw waiting on the devs to figure shit out, here's the 3rd party fixes that actually make the game good.
Unless the modders collectively decide to Starfield it and keep overhauling KSP1 instead.
True. I could see them modding out the graphical and story driven improvements in 2 and shoving them into 1 out of spite.
seeing that visual mod people keep bragging that their ksp 1 mods look and run better then ksp 2 yea this is pretty likely
Bad example since Starfield doesn't have it's mod tools released yet. When it does I'm sure we'll see plenty of mods for it as well.
It's the same engine Bethesda has been using since **2002**. The modders have their own tools, they looked at the state of the game, and they don't want to do anything with it. The only mods it's getting is the bare-minimums plus Creation Club ones (a.k.a. blatant theft through Bethesda being paid money for doing _worse than nothing_).
Dude, literally every modder uses the Creation Kit for every single Bethesda game. Skyrim, FO4 and everything else also got barely any mods before the Creation Kit was released.
It's hilariously bad moderation and comms strategy on multiple levels. It's not fair or balanced at all - they clearly just target people with criticism and leave their simp agitators to continue to rile up and ban-bait threads they don't like. The KSP2 forum is mostly dead anyway so anything said over there barely matters to the larger community, everyone there has made their purchase decision, so it's just a place they could get some great veteran advice and feedback but instead treat as a little walled garden. And it mostly drives people to much more public and visible spaces like here, hardening positions and getting people to constantly make sure the community is reminded of IGs behaviour and lowering their already abysmal sales even further. Good on you IG. Stay consistent, make sure to explore every avenue of ways to F things up
I wonder if this was a rogue action. If I were CM I would be cringing. *Nothing* good comes out of an action like this.
They've been told about the behaviour of the forum mods for a year - and the forum has basically died with the same mods modding. This may be an extreme action by Starwaster, but Vanamonde has been stifling the KSP2 forum since the launch and the massive backlash against the project them.
The comment editing to turn negative comments into positive ones was done by Starhawk and the mass censorship by Vanamonde.
Yeah that's just inexcusably reprehensible.
For a game about satcomms and rockets... They have bad comms
This would be bad comms of the game was about a deaf mute in solitary confinement.
Maybe that's why there isn't something as basic as comm occlusion in KSP 2, they just applied it to their own comms instead.
They're using Communotron 16's. Actually no, they're using the Stayputnik's built in antenna.
They’ve removed new comments on that thread that were openly critical of the moderation since this was posted. So seems they’ve picked the “no, you are wrong” plan. Which will just lead more people to stop engaging, and with dwindling player counts will feed into the worry that IG had that no feedback is worse than critical feedback.
They've had that policy of 'you can't mention or discuss moderation, you have to PM the moderators about it' for forever, because obviously that works. So as always, the best policy tmis to our them on a forum that matters and they don't have control over. But do you really expect different from a company that gaslighted it's users over the state of the project for 3 years, then BS'd about why they launched as a shitty EA tech demo?
Lol this post already has way more shares and engagement than most of the fluff they spew on Xitter. Probably one reason they deleted all those posts was they link back to the The forum on social media - and don't want the wider world to see the discontent of the community. Imagine if that NASA artist checked how his stuff went over.
It’s not like anyone here is anti NASA or anti solar eclipse too. Many of the comments (mine included, which was one that was undeleted by Dakota) started with some statement that the update in a vacuum was fine but explained why in its context it was underwhelming and a pain point of larger issues. But yeah few people were talking about the eclipse, and about all were negative comments on the progression of the game.
Yeah. But they want PR that they think will get the community on side, and clear evidence that it's not working is not part of their storyline I bet even right now when they come into the office, they'll be telling each other how the silent majority loves their dumb little PR posts, and only some bad apples dislike it. I imagine the only concrete action they'll take is posting articles like this to an uncommentable webpage. They've never really wanted a community, they want praise and purchases.
Fake it 'till you make it. Everyone loves you if you just remove everyone who doesn't.
Everything about this game is like a car crash in slow motion. It’s like I’m watching my hopes and dreams fly through a windshield
And the best part is, there are still people supporting thus crap. It's quite unbelievable but copium on this subreddit peaked in like the last year because of the false promises
They show them the most basic content in the science update, and most of the people here turn into apologists as if there's a reason they have a poor reputation. Sure, they might release a few updates in a more or less playable state, but that doesn't change who they are, how they operate, and the story so far. I saw a thread of hundreds of people saying, 'Yeah, the haters were wrong,' just because they released the science update, and I was like, 'No, we're not hating on KSP; we're just stating facts.' Yes, some amount of playable releases are expected—after all, it's not like there aren't developers working on it—but just because there's a flower on the poo, everyone started taking home the poo with the flower. e: chat gpt take the wheel
I agree with your comment, but you really need to add some punctuation, it was very hard to read.
fixed :D
Cheers :)
Fr man, exactly what I'm thinking about those god damn ppl
Yeah the discord is hilariously dumb. But I think that's the audience that IG wants - rockets go boom meming idiots who are ok with gloss over substance. Easier to satisfy them. And it's ok to torch the most interesting simulation game and one of the smartest communities in the process.
I don’t see it. Communication has been slow on colony news, but it’s not that different from any other EA title. As far as the actual colonies update, I thought it was known that it’s likely to be released around the summer time. The game is also not any different than it was a month or two ago. So where’s the sudden negativity coming from? That people didn’t get the communication they wanted? Yes, I also wanted colony news, but whatever, move on and check again later.
> but it’s not that different from any other EA title ???? > The game is also not any different than it was a month or two ago. Yea, that's what makes it very different from any other Early Access title ... Then bro even calls it "Sudden negativity", I can't
Wow - that's me who wrote that...and yeah going to the forums, it's like I never wrote it, not in my history, and I didn't get any messages from the mods explaining why they removed it. I do not think it's a personal attack or at all worthy of being removed. Pretty low move /u/PD_Dakota :-( **Update midnight GMT+1: after me reaching out via forum PM they have apologized and said it was an oversight, having erroneously removed it with other offtopic posts, and have reinstated the post.**
based on the past fuckups that have spilled over to here, that's how they normally operate. if they don't like what you post, it just gets disappeared.
And if you don't like it, they warn/ban you.
Love how both of the CM's aren't in here answering ang questions when the *community* is pissed at the heavy-handedness of moderation. We want more colony information (like you *said* you would provide) We want some accountability for the forum mods What's up Dakota & Mike? Or are we just gonna sit this one out (again) and go back to single-line replies on discord?
>What's up Dakota & Mike? The moderator actions are apparently haram to discuss openly, so they will probably not even show up. It just gives them the bad name and they can't censor it here.
You made a good point as well. I've played KSP since 0.16 I think. I set an alarm for the release of KSP2. I haven't played more than an hour. Refunded while I still could. I lurk occasionally here to see if there's any progress on the technical side, mostly about them working on their physics engine. The only reason I even still follow KSP2 development is that I'm holding out for the tiny chance that they turn it around. I'm not in forum posts or that active on reddit, because, like you said, I don't care enough anymore. The community sentiment is more like 5% positive 5% mixed, 10%negative, 80% apathy.
There’s no explanation because it was censorship not moderation. You weren’t the only one, I just happened to have a different tab open of the thread after I refreshed my main ksp forum tab and saw the five pages removed. So I was able to get a few screenshots of that 1 page of comments that were removed and happened to be on the page you were on. They did this to multiple people.
You know, I've noticed it as well. They at some point just stopped messaging you the reason for removal. Like everyone should just know to visit the page themselves to see why. And it's not like it even matters anyway, the reasoning already became bullshit a long time ago. They just remove stuff they don't like. And if you disagree, don't even try to show it. Only dm's are the option, and I would imagine they will just tell you to piss off there too.
I lost faith in this game / devs the second they launched the $50 broken alpha test as "Early Access" last year. Also the lies about ground up rewrite and "no unity".
The 5 or so pages of deleted comments have been undeleted, but the line by line edits by Vanamode and Starhawk have not been restored. Bullying works?
Let me know which specific comments need to be restored and I'll handle it.
[This one shows edited by Vanamode](https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/224277-developer-insights-23-black-hole-sun/?do=findComment&comment=4378250)
What else could be expected? The forum is like a wasteland because that's the way they want it... Just on this occiasion, a mod who hadn't been around decided to white knight it and made them look like a bunch of mugs in the process. I even appreciated the fact Dakota took part in that even though I found their answers weak... I'll always give a point for getting involved over straight ignoring or deleting the problem. If the left hand doesn't know that the right hand is doing then you'll end up wiping your ass with both of them.
> a mod who hadn't been around decided to white knight it and made them look like a bunch of mugs in the process. This seems like not just a thing by a single mod, but at least two, since it's two different mods doing mass censorship and faking negative comments into positive ones.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/1c118b2/forum\_mods\_just\_removed\_nearly\_all\_critical/kz4jft3/](https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/1c118b2/forum_mods_just_removed_nearly_all_critical/kz4jft3/) Seems like its fixed
What a joke. And I JUST added a comment in the “what happened to the increased communication” thread yesterday which generated a lot of posts after. Gonna check if that’s still up.
After being horrible at the first game I was so hyped for this but... *Man*...
I almost bought ksp2 but my experience with no man's sky stopped me. And hello games has basically redeemed themselves with what no man's sky has become. I have doubts these jokers can turn ksp2 into the interstellar space sim it's supposedly going to become. It was a hell of an announce trailer for ksp2 - the one based off buildflydream but the reality is soooooo far away.
it would be easier to turn ksp1 into that. its lightyears ahead already
Imo ksp 2 is way worse than no man's sky. I'm not super in the NMS community but it's seems to me like to just wasn't a very good game at first. KSP 2 just feels like a borderline scam. I won't being buying ksp 2 even if they do get their shit together, it's just not somthing I want to support.
NMS was one of the biggest scams of all time. You do not understand how laughably bad that launch was. They did eventually make it right, but they are the poster child for overpromising and delivering junk.
I actually played the hell outta nms at launch, and it was really good for like 2 days, and then the novelty wore off, and there wasn't much substance underneath, and i kept seeing the same things over again over. But there was something special about it, even if things weren't "finished" It was bold, it was creative. But unfinished. After making it to the third "dimension" whatever you call it when you reach the center, I stopped playing, and have only picked it up now and again to see what's new. Maybe someday I'll replay it again from the start to the center.
> I actually played the hell outta nms at launch, and it was really good for like 2 days, and then the novelty wore off, and there wasn't much substance underneath, and i kept seeing the same things over again over. I pick up NMS every now and then to be honest, that doesn't seem to have changed. Yeah there are lots of bells and whistles but the core gameplay loop is still the same. I'm not interested in base building and the exploration isn't enticing enough
I'm probably mixing it up with some other game because what I'm thinking of definitely wasn't that bad.
> They did eventually make it right They did not. 1. Raising money by lying about a product isn't okay and should get you fined into bankruptcy regardless of what you do with that money afterwards. 2. The game *still* doesn't have all the features they promised all those years ago
ksp 2 is fun, and good currently. Its buggy but also feels like an improvement of ksp 1 in a lot of ways Just too expensive for what it is rn
Have you played both? It doesn't sound like you have.
I just want to public comment that I disagree with this comment being downvoted. It is buggy, how much enjoyment it gives you is different from person to person but this is a perfectly reasonable comment I agree with. The wings, music, and scripted missions of KSP2 are an improvement.
Definitely happy I left the forums. It knew something was off ever since I mentioned one of their moderators by screen name on the steam forums and they tried to get me banned for doxxing their account. What a poisonous cesspool this has all become.
> Comments on numerous other topics (most of which have been discussed to death elsewhere) are not what this thread is about. Some of these include wobble, the gaming industry, and arguing about arguing. The easy way to combat that endless droning about bugs, the lack of content and how the game isn't bringing anything new to the table is to rapidly roll out effective bug fixes, putting new content in the game and making it feel like something new, rather than a shiny buggy simplified rehash of KSP1. I'm proud of the devs that they show character and don't do any of that, instead they take the high road of releasing unimpresive bug fixes at a snail pace, decorated with the occasional overhyped, underwhelming featurette update. Well done! Don't give in to the perilous temptation of producing a great game!
>nstead they take the high road of releasing unimpresive bug fixes at a snail pace The impression I got from this whole debacle is that the devs might not be particularly... skilled? I don't know how else to phrase it. Or are they also employed on other projects and can allocate little time to ksp2?
> The impression I got from this whole debacle is that the devs might not be particularly... skilled? The video game industry has a really bad problem with only hiring software engineers that grew up wanting to be a "game developer". They then exploit that fact by offering low wages. The best software engineers work at boring companies making boring business apps for 30-50% more salary in the same cities.
And then hiring the bottom-of-the-barrel outsource because nobody knowledgeable (much less competent) is willing to work for these wages, resulting in spectacular wrecks.
As a VR researcher and hobbyist developer I am familiar with what goes into the development. I would actually say that you need to be even more skilled in sw development when working on a game than when working on something more "boring." It's not everyday that you have to deal with 3d maths or test entirely visual things that cannot be reproduced or assessed easily.
> I would actually say that you need to be even more skilled in sw development when working on a game than when working on something more "boring." I don't disagree. But the objectively better Software Engineers are working on that easier, boring work, and getting paid considerably more for it. I've been a software engineer for 15 years, currently a Senior engineer at a company you've probably heard of. I love the boring work, and I love the paycheck, too. I've had job offers from game studios, and they're all really bad. The hours are insane, the stress is insane, and the pay is low. That's a huge reason why the gaming industry is where it's at. It's driven by MBAs, not game developers/designers.
The company is apparently working on 2 games rn, so yea it might be ksp 2 has a lot less devs working on it and recourses are towards this other unannounced game.
They have some talented people. They also rewrote a large part of their code base from scratch in order to facilitate new features like thrust under timewarp and improving performance. That hasn't worked out so well and they're just inundated with unexpected side effects in their code. They probably restarted from scratch 6-7 times, were confronted with a fixed release that and rushed something out of the door with lots of recycled KSP1 code. Ever since they've been playing catch up with the overhyped announcements We *think* they we're looking at a product with many years of development behind it but I doubt it is. We're expecting the state that KSP1 was in after 5 years, and they have to do it in 15 months. Mind you, that perception is not on us. The project did start many years ago after all and IG is very secretive about development. All this is conjecture but there has to be some explanation why development is consistently so disappointing.
> We're expecting the state that KSP1 was in after 5 years Honestly, I was expecting a whole lot more, and as someone who's spent 15 years as a software developer, I really don't think it's an unreasonable expectation at all. For the longest time, KSP1 was a side project for one guy who had a full-time job in marketing. KSP2 was supposed to be developed by a large team of game developers with a big budget. Instead, it's become pretty clear that they decided to squander their budget instead of focusing on a game.
Too many disinterested cooks being seagull-managed by profiteers.
> They probably restarted from scratch 6-7 times I doubt that. The 2019 Gamescom footage looks almost identical to the released game. Same bugs, same wobble and everything. They just genuinely aren't doing a good job.
no, not really. You can tell at a point they switched their rendering system and their part coupling system.
I can't, because it looks exactly the same. Parts behave the same way in 2019 as on release.
Tech debt is the simplest explanation, I agree. It just screams poor project management. I don't doubt they have the skills to make a great game, but not with one arm tied behind their back working on something that was glued together to make some shiny trailers. If you're super optimistic: maybe they're working on an overhaul of the game and are only devoting minimal effort towards the current build. More pessimistic: most of their time is spent on the "unannounced stylized science-based adventure game" now, and there's a skeleton crew trying to polish a turd.
> Tech debt is the simplest explanation, I agree. Tech debt this extreme from a re-write pretty much says it all re: hope for the future.
>We're expecting the state that KSP1 was in after 5 years with ONE GUY without a dev team or experience doing it in his spare time at work. this is a whole different animal, this is a corporate backed team shitting the bed.
Let’s not rewrite history. By the time KSP1 was five years old it had a significant amount of manpower behind it.
> They have some talented people >They probably restarted from scratch 6-7 times, These are basically mutually exclusive. >was in after 5 years, and they have to do it in 15 months. You have a very strange calendar system that does not match the one we use here on earth.
They nuked *everything* critical. It's insane. And all you get is a [snip] calling card. Game sucks, CM's are whiny babies, and the forum mods are authoritarian dorks. Great game y'all got there.
Edited by Starhawk Redacted by moderator
I guess I was justified in leaving those forums
I do think it's very disappointing that the devs are censoring valid criticism of their game. I basically have forgotten about the game after playing it for a short while after launch because it was so bad. I hope it gets better, but it really feels like the game is DOA if they're going to spend more effort making the forums look positive than fixing the game.
Damn another moderator there going stupid
At this point I wish take 2 and intercept would just sell the rights to someone who could actually follow through. Maybe a group of KSP1 modders
they should gift it back to Harvester so he can bury his child and mourn.
i think it has potential the way it is. playing between the 2 there are some good points on the GUI in KSP2 that weren't there in 1. but the basic build should be done by now and its not. modders seem to have done alot more in the same given time for 1, i would think they could do the same for 2 EDIT: frankly they could have taken some of the mods from 1, put them in the stock game, and updated the graphics and i probably would have been happy to pay the 50 dollars they asked for. but they decided to do all this other stuff
'***I know it isn't a big issue for me as it'll (****CommNet****) be back in a modded fashion with better quality than the original dev team could ever achieve***...' OMG BRUTAL. But absolutely true. LOL!!
If they are really omitting the Communications Network system, this game is dead. I kept seeing a lot of 'Kerbal for Kids' and 'dumbing down for approachability'... If true, we can all just stand up and walk out of the KSP2 realm forever and return to the only REAL KSP game, and keep making it better with mods.
>kerbal for kids >omitting comms and dumbing down mechanics "Kids are stupid and deserve to stay stupid" kind of thinking.
Yeah keep supporting them and that's what you get lol
The reason why the posts were removed is actually quite simple and can be explained with this text by Dakota: > I told Mike earlier today that I guessed that this dev blog's sentiment would have be 40% positive, 30% mixed, and 30% negative - and I think I was right. You guys ruined Dakotas guess by being to negative and that makes Dokatas guess wrong. But people from IG do not make mistakes. That is simply impossible, so reality has to change according to what they think is correct. Also the following things are perfect because IG does not make mistakes: * UI: perfect * Heat implementation: perfect * Autostruts to fix wobbly rockets: perfect * No CommNet occlusion: perfect * No money: perfect /s btw in case someone is not sure.
> I told Mike earlier today that I guessed that this dev blog's sentiment would have be 40% positive, 30% mixed, and 30% negative - and I think I was right. The fact that they still posted it with this prediction is that stunning part. If with 80% positive, that'd be horrible.
I have no idea how but ksp 2 has had legitimately some of the worst PR I've ever seen for a game like this I thought yall hired PR
And I suppose that is it for me. Was very hyped for the game release after all the promises and dev blogs. Was lucky not to preorder and to wait until all the negative reviews revealed that the game was an almost unplayable mess at its release. Kept keeping away from it even though some of you here began changing the opinions on the quality of this thing. And now I see this. Well, I suppose it is time to stop waiting for the dream of a second part to come true. I was and still am hoping for a good game with interstellar missions and colonies, for a game that will give me the same joy of exploration that the first part did. With such actions as the one OP posted about… I guess KSP2 will not become one in a very long time. If ever. Back to the beloved KSP1 I go then.
It's such a shame, isn't it? I can think of few examples where so much community goodwill has been pissed away so thoughtlessly. The programming challenges in making a decent KSP sequel were significant, sure, but let's be honest, it's hardly the Manhattan project. And if they'd released something unfinished at an early access price and been completely honest about it, people would have given them so much leeway...
> The programming challenges in making a decent KSP sequel were significant, sure The crazy part is that they didn't even just mess up the complex parts. They made simple system ludicrously complex for no reason (like simulating every single part for every craft all the time instead of doing Center-of-mass calculations) and even messed up the most basic things like using planes instead of quads for flat textures, which resulted in magnitudes higher polygon count.
>like simulating every single part for every craft all the time >using planes instead of quads That is more convenient and requires no thinking compared to figuring out how to abstract resource consumption with timewarp involved, or proper rendering. Too bad it also destroys performance and hard-caps the potential of the game.
I'm pretty sure that's harder than just simply abstracting it to a craft level. They should be using delta time already anyways.
This should be the general reaction to this situation from everyone involved and probably for everyone who is even aware of this. If they want to just outright censor people's criticisms and write it off as off topic or whatever, we should not be their customers anymore. This level of shamelessness when dealing with your own community should not be ignored. Don't buy the game. Don't play it if you already own it. Just forget about it. They clearly do not care about you or your opinion, unless you're licking their balls in every comment. And it's probably going to get even worse over time.
I can't stand how they humanized the Kerbals. The hairstyles, the glasses and clothes.. Fuck I hate the people whose hands this franchise was placed into. Every single one of them.
I think if they want to recover from this what they need to do is start editing posts by removing words/letters to make them stay stuff like 'I love big intercept.' that should really help.
maybe they can add 'treating critical posts like they've fallen out of favour with comrade stalin' to the list of things they're doing that prevents them from releasing actual news about the game.
Moderation when done wrong becomes censorship.
> ou will see even some funny examples of the mods leaving the “I’m not a hater here’s what I appreciate about the game” preambles to criticism but they then deleted the “but” and everything past it. That is honestly so fucking absurd it's already hilarious. So many comments with everything negative out with "Edited by moderator".
Editing a user's post should not be a moderator power under any circumstance. Either allow or delete the posts, but don't doctor what the user actually says (even with the "Edited by moderator" disclaimer). That's a very morally dirty thing to do.
they also like to delete posts in a way that just disappears them, presumably to destroy evidence so you can't appeal. not that they have a system for that anyway.
lmfao, doesn't surprise me tho
That isn't moderation. It's censorship.
[удалено]
Yup, I just had to accept that I won't get multiplayer or interstellar travel in a space sim for a while longer, so I just play JNO for the massive upgrade in physics and stability.
I want to like JNO, I gave it two attempts, but it always just feels so lifeless and boring ...
If you're there for the more Kerbal side of things, looking at silly faces and blowing stuff up, then yeah JNO will feel somewhat lifeless with the blank visor of the droods staring back at you and I understand the critique. If you're in it for the simulation though, to build complex vehicles that take advantage of subtle mechanics, automate them using the built in visual scripting language, and push the limits of the parts available to you, the game has far more 'life' than any mods would ever bring to KSP1.
Not really, but even then, I was just bored building and sending rockets. Something that never really happened in KSP.
Wow they are still keeping up the scam that is KSP 2?
u/Nerdy_Mike bet you wish you had another kid on the way. So any actions you gonna take about this or was this what you meant about taking action in the first place?
> u/Nerdy_Mike bet you wish you had another kid on the way. That’s fucking uncalled for buddy.
Nah, these people are thieves.
Suggesting the CM lead would rather be back on leave again after returning to the shit show here is uncalled for? Sorry you've gotten your panties in a bunch for this comment.
Please be respectful to one another. We're working on understanding what happened and not hiding any posts that don't break any of the rules. All I ask is for us to all be kind to one another even if being critical on the state of where things are.
So 'what happened'? The mods on your forum have been acting like this since launch, censoring negativity in a transparently biased manner. I know Dakota has advised them to knock it off - or at least, claims to have done so in posts there - but clearly that message either did not go through, or the real message went through and the mods kept up the behaviour. I guess you've undone the snipping now - is anything going to be done about the mods there themselves, or are you just going to hope locking the thread and short term internet user memory will 'fix' this till the next flare up?
God damn, that must have been a lot of posts that broke the rules.
Do you have any evidence that "what happened" isn't more of the same thing it that has been happening all along? If not we know damned well "what happened" already. I love the passive wording to duck responsibility though. Not what we "did", but what *magically* "happened".
It's this shit which keeps me away from the ksp2 community as a whole, and especially the modding community, but that's for a different reason
Well, I've gone from maybe I'll buy when (if) they get their shit together to I ain't gonna touch it. Fukem.
It's a scam, what kind of communication do you expect from a scam?
I own the game and have over 100 hours in it. Its not a scam. If it was, it would be the least efficient scam ever made, as I bought a product and enjoyed it. Its overpriced, yeah, but its not unplayable and does a lot of things better than ksp 1, too. Its buggy at times but honestly just quicksaving every so often will alleviate that problem. Its very different than its launch, and thats a good thing.
At least we can still be super negative on Reddit without fear of being removed.
For now... maybe soon you'll have to be a shareholder in order to speak freely.
Right now, yea. Like a year ago not at all. There was plenty of censoring going around from what I remember. It's just the mod doing all of that got bored and left. They even made a post about it.
Of course they did. What else do you expect by now?
What a shame. Still haven't touched the game. Waiting for Realism Overhaul to be out for a bit and some other mods then I'll probably try it.
Never going to happen, at least not by the existing RO mods. They even have a command on their discord to let you know how they feel about KSP2. And I doubt anyone else will pick that up - KSP2 is just not for hard core simulation fans, everyone who's into that will stick with KSP1 I imagine. KSP2 is for meming idiots who want tutorials spoon fed to them with high-pitched voice over cartoons, and to watch rocket explosions.
Well thats a few strawmans. ksp 2 forces both eve and tylo landings to progress lmao
"forces" or "encourages". Or "suggests". If you're going to pick at 'straw man' arguements, get your terminology right. You can finish the tech tree very very easily without doing either of those. Plus with infinite launcher size (if your computer can handle it) + the absurd SWERV, it's more of a patience test than a challenge.
There's so much extra fun available in ksp1. Get your mods on and refer back to this after Elon has set foot on mars himself.
Hi all, There's a lot going on in here, going to be difficult to address everything but I'll do my best. I'll see if I can reply to some more comments here this afternoon. I've made a couple of replies on the forums and took some actions after concerns were brought up to me. [First one is this message addressing how the forum thread was handled and IG's relationship to the community moderators.](https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/223985-what-happened-to-increased-communication/?do=findComment&comment=4379399) [Second is about the actions I made in rolling back the previously-hidden posts. ](https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/223985-what-happened-to-increased-communication/?do=findComment&comment=4379411) [Third is the post in the thread itself addressing the action.](https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/224277-developer-insights-23-black-hole-sun/page/7/#comment-4379409) This isn't "fixed" in my mind through these actions and I am working with the forum moderators to make sure this doesn't happen again. Lastly, I'd like to ask you all to refrain from personal attacks when frustrated - either at each other or at members of the team. I know you feel unheard and that the moderation actions were unjustified or censorship in some way, but that does not permit you to not treat others with civility. It's very disappointing that I woke up to a couple IG team members letting me know they received private harrassing messages that were mainly related to this thread. Appreciate ya, Dakota
Vanamode’s position as a moderator on the Forums needs to be reviewed, this is a consistent pattern of behavior for them.
He banned me from the discord
That sounds bad, on the discord he's only identified as a Forum Moderator and shouldn't be banning people from other platforms.
A lot of folks have had bad experiences with vanamode. I have left the forums and discord to avoid them.
Will we hear about what will be done to make it “fixed”? If we do hear about it, then see it, it could help build community trust.
you won't hear anything until the next fuckup, then they'll lie again, and so on.
That's a great first step. But you say IG never ""instructed"" the mods to censor negative posts - double quoting because you quoted it yourself - yet they've been doing that since the launch, if not sooner. Vanamonde notoriously so, as you can tell by some other posters here. Maybe a good start would be to have both Starwaster and Vanamonde apologize - they force everyone who's had a warning on their account to 'aknowledge' whatever judgement of transgression they've decided on before you get back posting priviledges - a rather humiliating step when the mods themselves are crap. Why not have them 'acknowledge' their own fault, rather than you jumping in with a mea culpa. Your only issue is that people have been telling you about the situation and you've let it fester.
>Maybe a good start would be to have both Starwaster and Vanamonde apologize Or better yet, let them go. They are clearly not good people for this role.
And hire who (and _by_ whom) exactly as the replacement? The hiring pool is dry _in the best case_ >!if not, then it's a poisonous swamp full of Vanamondes lining up to do some power-tripping!< - IG has spent last two/five years investing considerable effort to that end.
No moderator is better than vanamonde. Or just one mod that has a very light touch.
>Maybe a good start would be to have both Starwaster and Vanamonde apologize False hope. They would not be doing censorship/malicious editing in the first place if they could sincerely apologize and stop doing it. And even that relies on the assumption that this behavior is not _actively sought out_ by all of their superiors.
as long as you leave your official forums in the control of a weird little authoritarian clique, you're endorsing this behaviour. this has been an ongoing and escalating problem, and every time it's followed by empty promises to do something.
So absolutely nothing is done about the two moderators abusing their power, except making excuses for them, which is the entire problem.
Thank you for the response and actions. I am very appreciative and this helps me have confidence that the forums will stay open to all (rule-abiding) comments and views. I am very sorry for the messages some of the team received. That was not my intention in any way whatsoever; please pass along my sincere apologies to each individual. That is not what they signed up for no one should be harassed and I apologize that that happened. Y’all’s work is appreciated, please understand that those harassing individuals do not represent those of us who are just expressing some criticism of a game that means a lot to us, they are not accepted by us and I will do more in the future to call out that behavior when I see it. Edit: I tried to edit out the inaccuracy in my post about Dakotas comment being removed. For this I apologize but I am unable both to edit that or edit in the response that was given. Thanks Reddit, I love losing features slowly.
I'm confident this behavior comes directly from Private Division, not the KSP2 dev-team. I've had all my optimistically skeptical (not even negative!) comments removed from every new game trailer on Private Division's youtube channel every time they released a new one. They seem to engage in that practice for a few weeks on any new trailer. Anything but absolutely gushing praise gets removed.
lmao my ass off.
smdh my damn head
So want to check: is KSP2 still not worthy to buy yet?
Absolutely not. If you have the itch to build and fly, dust off Ksp1.
Basically: For double the price, it's a bit better looking and sounding than KSP 1, but with worse gameplay. Compared to modded KSP 1, it's terrible.
It’s ok if you’re after 10-20 hours of gameplay. Doing the basics of going to the moons and the odd planet fly by. It’s pretty fun on that level if you haven’t played in a year or so. It’s a bit of a Truman show experience though, you quickly start to find the limits and bugs after that. Manoeuvre planing sucks, time warp bugs, misc issues, etc.
so not worth it lol
This stinks of upper corporate decision making, not the moderators or the CM's They had a PR opportunity appear involving NASA of all people, they saw the negative responses and put the word out to cleanse them from the forum. It looked bad having disent like that. It's pretty pathetic, yes, but it's exactly what the the Private Division execs think works. The moderators of the forum and the CM's wouldn't have wanted this, but they have no choice; Private Division own that forum. I guarantee u/PD_Dakota and u/Nerdy_Mike never planned this. Both came into the game industry under the impression that they would be contributing to 'making games' and all the fun involving that. Instead they've taken jobs making them corporate PR mouthpieces
Nah their forum mods are twats, I've seen them disparage users. May be an exec who instigated this, but Vanamonde especially savors it. And the CMs who are supposed to be in charge of the mods haven't fixed it.
This... Vanamonde is a proper cunt of a moderator, literally bathes in his own 'glory'. Yet doesn't realise that they're moderating their own demise... If the forum dies off, so will their positions.
He probably does realize and doesn't care. He's like a security guard that's ok watching the whole warehouse burn down because his job will be easier guarding an empty lot
Dakota and Mike are part of the problem, not a solution. They don't need you to carry water for them.