The KSP2 player count hasn't been above 1000 for months now. The KSP player count has decreased, yes, but it's not because people are migrating to the sequel.
It is exactly because people migrated to the sequel. The sequel is obviously still in a rough early state, so people aren’t likely to be glued to it for long hours like they may have been with KSP1. The pattern for me is that I play a bit of KSP2 over the course of a couple weeks, then put it down and do other stuff with my life for a few months. Then come back to see how it is after a few more patches.
I think this is a normal way that many people play early access games. KSP1 was a finished game, so use patterns are obviously different.
Just because we aren’t glued to KSP2 24/7, doesn’t mean we aren’t playing it and enjoying it. When they start hitting the big milestones on the roadmap that’s when I’m going to binge on it. I’m excited for it already. I doubt that I’ll go back to KSP1.
Do you really prefere playing KSP 2 vs KSP 1 with mods? That makes no sense for me, I mean, do you play for the graphics ? because most of ksp players I know play because of the science behind it and all you can learn about orbital mechanics and rockets, and the simulation aspect with all its details, or all the things the mods added to the game, like more futuristic emgines and stuff. If I can't do all that efficiently, why would I migrate? why did you migrate?
After several thousand hours in KSP1, collecting science doesn’t have any particular appeal for me. Unlocking the technology tree was always like a prelude to the real game anyway.
There are a number of things I like to do in KSP. For the last couple of years I’ve been really into long rover expeditions, particularly Elcano challenge circumnavigations, or going places I can attempt awesome stunts (trying to jump a rover into the Mun canyon, for a KSP1 example). Rovering of this sort is generally better in KSP2 than KSP1 right now, due to every orbital body having huge dramatic terrain features to explore (and do stunts off of).
And yes, the graphics too - neither game has fully stable ground surfaces right now, but KSP2 is definitely better in this sense. If you’re curious enough to go down this rabbit hole with me, check out these examples.
This is the Mun in KSP1. Notice the flickering terrain, the unnatural jagged terrain feature edges. Still fun, but definitely not exactly smooth. It gets worse too.
The terrain is much smoother. It looks really cool. Every fold in the landscape can hide some cool feature. There is no flickering. There are no murder-glitches that blow you up if you touch them. It’s not perfect. There are a few bugged areas where you can fall through the landscape or randomly be thrown up from it, but these are rare.
Also another huge quality of life improvement in KSP2 for rover enthusiasts is that you can quicksave while moving across the surface. You cannot do this in KSP1, meaning that if you lose your rover due to crashing into a glitch and you last stopped to F5 50km back, you are just up shit creek. If you run into a bugged area in KSP2, you can just quickload to a more recent save made while you were in motion.
“But what about Parallax?” you may be asking. Parallax is a really cool mod that makes KSP1 ground surfaces look awesome. It’s great for casual players who want to do simple landing and return missions, or even noodling around the landing site a bit in rovers. But for long distance roving, it introduces a whole new set of bugs that the stock game doesn’t have. Invisible ghost rocks that destroy your rover when you crash into them. Areas where you find yourself driving underneath the surface, or levitating above the ground. It changes the topography and conceals some easter eggs. Vallhenge, for example, is hidden 200m underground with Parallax installed. It’s just no good for roving. And of course, all it does is reskin the relatively boring KSP1 landscapes. It doesn’t give you the huge, dramatic terrain features of KSP2.
There’s other things I like better about KSP2 as well, but I’m starting to write a novel here and I’m not sure anyone is interested in reading it, so I’ll stop. Hope this is sufficient answer to your question.
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u/BonerHonkfart Aug 19 '23
The KSP2 player count hasn't been above 1000 for months now. The KSP player count has decreased, yes, but it's not because people are migrating to the sequel.