KSP 1 was developed with constant community interaction, open development procedures and mutually beneficial design process.
KSP1 became a incredible success despite the low funding available to its developers.
KSP2 was developed by an incredibly rich, powerful publisher’s hand-picked group of well-paid developers. They kept development a secret. They took zero advice from estabilished members of the community like Scott Manley or the original developers or the many modders. They refused to interact with the community and refused to work on mutual design principles.
KSP2 became a flop despite costing more than KSP1. The studio working on it had to be shut down, and the product they made fails to compare to its predecessor’s pre-release beta in all but glamour and illusion.
Runescape 3 is the product of developers ignoring the playerbase, pushing their own vision through despite its consequences.
Runescape 3 almost went under, and to this day is held alive solely through nostalgia and a few whales addicted to the MTX.
Old school Runescape was born as opposition to Runescape 3. No more publishers’ whims. No more developers’ out of touch actions. Everything but the basest integrity changes (game breaking bugs, unforeseen consequences, optimizations of performance) must be polled, put to vote, discussed with the paying customers and only if majority agrees, can development begin. Once development is almost done, the content must be presented and through back-and-forth surveys, consultation of target audiences within the community and public consultations a poll is produced, presented and only if it passes by 70% of yes votes can it be implemented.
Old School Runescape, despite having fewer developers and less funding and no MTX, far surpasses Runescape 3 in success in terms of revenue and playernumbers alike.
I believe these examples speak for themselves. Direct comparisons between the same product effectively, differentiated only through the developers working in harmony with the playerbase versus think themselves superior and cutting off communications.