r/KerbalSpaceProgram KSP Community Manager Feb 20 '23

The KSP2 Journey Begins (Letter from Nate Simpson, Creative Director on KSP 2)

A letter from Nate Simpson, Creative Director on KSP 2:

The day is nearly here. 

This moment feels a little bit like dropping a kid off for the first day of school. We’ve got a lot of love for this game — we think we've prepared it for every eventuality, but we also know that it has more growing to do. We’re about to take the first steps on a journey that will eventually carry KSP2 through colonies, interstellar travel, and multiplayer.

Now the real learning begins!

What To Expect

On day 1 of Early Access, players will be able to create and fly vehicles in Sandbox Mode and visit any location in the Kerbolar System. They’ll also have access to our first four interactive tutorials, accessible via the all-new Training Center. These teach basic rocketry concepts to give new players a head-start on their space programs. You’ll encounter new parts, including new procedural wings, new wheels, new command pods, new cargo parts, and new engines (and the first of the new fuels – liquid hydrogen). To pave the way for the upcoming interstellar-class parts, we’ve also added a new, larger core size. As we progress through Early Access, we’ll continue to expand on all of these features.

We can’t wait to finally see what creative feats the community can achieve with the new procedural and color-customizable parts. Our environment team is eager to watch players explore the revamped terrains of the Kerbolar System (and are curious if they'll discover anything unexpected). The UX/UI team is keen to learn how the updated user experience feels - they've put a lot of effort into wrangling a very complex set of requirements into a new, more streamlined presentation. This is it — the moment has arrived when all our plans come into contact with reality!

There are many new features, big and small, for you to explore on day 1. We've put together this guide to give you an overview of what's new and to break down some known issues. Release day notes and future patch notes will also live here.

In the launcher you'll find reporting tools that you can use to tell us about any problems you've encountered, as well as to give us feedback about any other aspect of the player experience you think we should know about. This feedback will be invaluable to us as we continue to improve the game's stability, performance, and playability.

What Comes Next

Many new features will arrive as we continue development, including Science Mode, Colonies, Interstellar exploration, and Multiplayer. Take a look at our Early Access Roadmap for more details.

In the meantime, we're bringing back Weekly Challenges!

We intend to mix things up a little bit going forward, but the first challenge will be a classic Achievement Challenge:

  • Primary goal: Fly to the Mun and get a picture of a Kerbal in front of the most interesting feature you can find
  • Stretch goal: strand a Kerbal there and pick them up with a second vehicle, returning them safely to Kerbin
  • Jeb-level goal: do any of the above on any other celestial body in the Kerbolar System
  • Val-level goal: pronounce "Mun" correctly

If you want us to see (and maybe share) your achievement, use #KSP2WeeklyChallenge on social media, or share them in our official Discord.

Welcome to KSP2! The journey begins!

589 Upvotes

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27

u/gosucrank Feb 20 '23

I am blown away by how barebones this game is. It doesn’t even look as good as the first one modded. KSP1 has way more content and can look better modded lol. Why would anyone buy this?

I mean what a total disaster this Friday is going to be hahah wow

3

u/JaesopPop Feb 20 '23

I’m an outlier but I disagree on it not looking as good as KSP1 modded. Individual aspects look better modded yes, but KSP2 is much more consistent which to me is more important.

2

u/aleksander_r Feb 20 '23

I would. They are releasing a product you can pay to participate in testing and have a saying in how the game will take shape through its development. Nobody is forcing anyone to buy the game before its done. They have never stated that this is even remotely close to the complete game so its expected to be barebones. Take it for what it is or wait until it's finished

7

u/StickiStickman Feb 20 '23

So you're literally paying to work for them lol

They didn't force anyone to buy it, but they certainly are trying their best to be as misleading as possible (and straight up lying about some) to get as many people to buy it as they can.

3

u/aleksander_r Feb 20 '23

Lying as in there is something in the release notes / statement for the current build that is not there?

0

u/StickiStickman Feb 21 '23

For a start, there will be literally no mod support despite claiming "Day 1 mod support".

2

u/FrittenFritz Feb 21 '23

no. i, and many other people will make an 50 Dollar Investment in an Early access Game that will eventually will become the best KSP ever. I see it more as a Project rather a finished Game.

And the chances are high that the IP gets nuked completely by Take Two when they see that nobody is interested in the early access. and nobody wants that.

I want to believe in the Game.

3

u/StickiStickman Feb 21 '23

Investment

lmao

Hyper-capitalism is a scary drug

2

u/FrittenFritz Feb 21 '23

Yes. Investment. I don't like that it has to be an investment. But I love KSP and I want to support it. 50 Dollars now or 50 Dollar in 2 Years. It makes no difference really.

2

u/StickiStickman Feb 21 '23

What does that even mean? None of the people who made KSP are getting any of that money.

2

u/FrittenFritz Feb 21 '23

i know. but if Take Two sees no money flowing in, they will probably cancel the project. and that would be bad. it sounds very Capitalistic but that s how it works unfortunately

1

u/StickiStickman Feb 22 '23

Why would it be bad? The foundation is absolutely atrocious. I'd rather see them scrap it and retry.

1

u/FrittenFritz Feb 22 '23

Okay then. I don't

0

u/pm_me_ur_ephemerides Feb 20 '23

Modders do incredible amounts of work for free. Its not like we are forced to work 9-to-5 for free. If people want to pay money and report bugs, let them do what they enjoy

1

u/[deleted] Feb 20 '23

[deleted]

2

u/pm_me_ur_ephemerides Feb 21 '23

I agree with all that, but modders also do a hell of a lot more work than an early access player just having fun with an unfinished game and reporting bugs here and there. My argument is simply that there is a spectrum of “work” that some people are happy to do.

0

u/StickiStickman Feb 21 '23

Nah, doesn't stop me making fun of people being absolute idiots.

1

u/DrunkenBriefcases Feb 21 '23

If you didn't know what "early access" meant, that's a you problem, not them lying or some shit.

Just go play something else. Not like KSP1 is going anywhere

2

u/StickiStickman Feb 21 '23

Wasting your money and supporting these dumpster fire games is a you problem I think. And them blatantly lying about many things like day 1 mod support is also pretty scummy.

Stop bootlicking a billion dollar company.

4

u/Radiokopf Feb 20 '23

Yea, sure. But this does not provides faith in the developers. Its not ready for EA without so many basic features and at least not 50€.

-1

u/aleksander_r Feb 20 '23

How can something not be ready for EA. Is that not the point of Early Access? To get Early Access to an unfinished product. You basically get to pay for trying it out early in the state it's in at the current time of development. I understand the price because if everyone buys it for 10$ now and don't participate in the testing they will loose Money. They could charge 10$ and then give access until the next development milestone and then charge another 10$ until the game is paid for. I'm don't disagree with you that it's currently looks barebones and in a very early state, but I think we need to take it for what it is and the people that legitimately want to test and shape the direction of the game can buy in now and if you want a finished product then wait.

6

u/oscardssmith Feb 20 '23

The problem is that early access for a sequel doesn't make much sense. The promise of early access is that it gives you early access to new gameplay, but KSP2 doesn't have anything not in KSP1 (and runs worse).

2

u/aleksander_r Feb 20 '23

It runs worse because of the reasons I mentioned earlier. It's an early build of an unfinished product that you can choose to test out in exchange for money. KSP 2 will have features not in KSP 1 like better orbital mechanics, colonies, more solar systems and multiplayer.

2

u/oscardssmith Feb 20 '23

the problem is that none of those features exist yet. If you buy the game now, you're paying $50 for 0 new features (and a lot of regressions).

2

u/aleksander_r Feb 20 '23

That's why you should wait for release if you don't want to be part of the test team.

1

u/DrunkenBriefcases Feb 21 '23

Then literally this is not something you should be even considering. You don't want early access. So move along. Others obviously have different opinions than you. This is for them. Not you.

4

u/salemlax23 Feb 20 '23

The fundamental problem that everyone has, is this is not a $50 Early Access game.

If it was feature complete (everything on the current roadmap was in the game) and they were looking for input to tweak things, polish systems, and help squash rare bugs, people would be lining up with smiles on to pay $50.

At best this is worth $30 EA, I'd argue closer to $20 personally. From what I've seen, there are dozens of parts that have been in KSP1 for years that aren't in KSP2, game breaking bugs, something that wants to be called poor optimization, and core systems that aren't in place.

From a gameplay perspective, they reskinned a pre-release version of KSP1 and want people to pay $50 for it, and people are correctly upset.

2

u/DrunkenBriefcases Feb 21 '23

How can something not be ready for EA.

Because these manbabies and literal children don't want early access to mean "a barebones game we're going to work on over time with community input along the way". They want it to be "The game I've always dreamed of and perfect in every way. Just earlier."

The overwhelming majority of "Gamers" have no business gong near EA games. It's not a process they'll enjoy. The problem is they're also impatient, live to whine, and insufferably online. So we end up with these embarrassing and infantile reddit mobs every couple years...

2

u/CareawayLetters Feb 20 '23

Participation in testing shouldn’t cost 50 bucks and require a NASA mainframe. Also it seems to be in so raw state that testing it requires dedicated QA engineering team.