Friday Facts #304 - Small bugs; Big changes

[Jan11]

Not really...
Otherwise, I already mentioned it, but I guess that a picture is better ?

Only problem with that is many people will probably disable those from the start.

True, but the onus is on the player if they disable an in-game help feature without at least thumbing through the pages, so in that case you can invoke RTFM.

To a degree, yes, but even if they do flip through them all at the start, I wouldn't expect them to remember them all.

But a thought, too, seems oil is such a huge hurtle for some, perhaps disabling the oil tip could be a separate disable option? So even if they disable the tips at the beginning, this one will still pop on them, but then still have the ability to disable so it won't continue to annoy if/when they start another map. Or incorporate it into something similar to what Llama said above.

I suggested a while ago that Factorio should consider doing it the way some other games do :

(And make the player press Tab/Space/Enter to close that screen once the game finished loading, which tends to be quick these days...)
In fact, this autopause after loading is the reason why I haven't disabled them... though I don't even look at them anymore !

I say no for loading screen tooltips. Because I own some SSD`s since 2012 and in the most games I can`t read any of it.

[Illiander42]

Here's another take on the whole thing:

There are moments when playing Factorio where you go "Wow! That changes Everything!" They tend to be around the time when you learn how to automate something new.

When you start, you're mining ore by hand, smelting it, and making things out of it. You're playing any old regular survival game with no automation. You are limited by your own interaction speed.

Then you discover belts, inserters and assemblers can be set up to do that for you. Now you can automate moving items and crafting things. Wow! I can go bigger!

Then you discover Trains. Now you can use those mining patches that are too far away. Wow! I can go even Bigger!

Then you discover construction bots, and the Copy & Paste functionality. Now you can automate construction. Wow! I can go even BIGGER!

Then you launch your rocket. Now you can automate clearing new space from the biters. Wow! I can go EVEN BIGGER!

I would argue that these are the most important moments in a new players' experience of Factorio. Also, the fact that you unlock all types of automation that don't depend on space science relatively early is a GOOD THING. Because they are the meat of the game, and what makes Factorio different to everything else out there.

If anything, Construction bots should be pushed CLOSER to the start, not farther away.

[Reika]

I am not the original poster, but here is my issue with "forcing" people to use mods that substantially change the gameplay:

[four reasons...]

... but as stated some pages back, that confidence is cracked.

You are treating an Early-Access game as a service game. This is not a service game. There are no guarantees for backwards compatibility, EA is specifically for the developer to DEVELOP the game, including experimenting and breaking eggs, we are just onlookers.

Factorio users were especially pampered by Wube all these years I guess. I'm also playing "7 Days to die" and there they have changed the whole RPG system, after 7 years in development. Every alpha you have to start a new game, and often even between experimental sub-versions too (though that takes 1-2 months usually). There is no upgrade path, no automatic conversion of the save game.

Your confidence is cracked, and it should be cracked if you are confident that EA is a stable environment where you can play the same save for years.
In a few months Factorio will probably be released. THAT is a stable version, that is what you would have to use if you want to depend on it. But don't complain if that version bores you after a few weeks, because as per your wish THAT is a stable environment that won't see any new features, never again (except for DLCs and expansions that will probably break compatibility again)

Did you even read what I wrote? I was talking about the problems with forcing people to use mods, none of which have anything to do with backwards compatibility or expecting the game to be static, and you rambled back at me about the meaning of the term "Early Access". And your random accusation that I am seeking an endless stream of new features makes no sense as a reply, either.

[Barhandar]

You are treating an Early-Access game as a service game. This is not a service game. There are no guarantees for backwards compatibility, EA is specifically for the developer to DEVELOP the game, including experimenting and breaking eggs, we are just onlookers.

Factorio users were especially pampered by Wube all these years I guess. I'm also playing "7 Days to die" and there they have changed the whole RPG system, after 7 years in development. Every alpha you have to start a new game, and often even between experimental sub-versions too (though that takes 1-2 months usually). There is no upgrade path, no automatic conversion of the save game.

Your confidence is cracked, and it should be cracked if you are confident that EA is a stable environment where you can play the same save for years.
In a few months Factorio will probably be released. THAT is a stable version, that is what you would have to use if you want to depend on it. But don't complain if that version bores you after a few weeks, because as per your wish THAT is a stable environment that won't see any new features, never again (except for DLCs and expansions that will probably break compatibility again)

You're wrong and here's why:

The only reason Factorio is in Early Access is because Wube have exceptionally high standard for what is a valid "release" version - I believe it's "no major bugs anymore". If a more common standard is applied, 0.16 or even 0.15 would effectively be the "release" version - 0.17 is QoL and mopping up bugs. Which is also why a change like this should get much greater consideration before being implemented - it is not quality of life (however, infrastructure changes to enable limiting fluidboxes is), it actively changes the balance and progression.

"7 days to die" and many other games are only in EA for a different reason - namely, it allows them to not have responsibility for bugs and extreme changes exactly like the ones you're describing; they can just excuse it as "it's early access" exactly like you're doing right now. Lack of save migration is also a symptom of bad development practices, and so is calling the game "alpha" seven years into development.
Wube are not pampering their players. 7 days to die and other similar early-access games are exploiting them. And you're so used to this exploitation that good development practices and treating the players well feels like pampering.

Additionally, the idea that release means the game is to no longer be developed, barring DLCs and expansions, is utter nonsense. Minecraft had its release seven and a half years ago. It's still being developed. Don't Starve has been released 6 years ago. It's still being developed - at the same time as Klei are finishing up another game, at that. Terraria has been released 8 years ago and an update is now in progress, with zero "expansions and DLCs" involved - they're claiming it's going to be the last feature update, but I remember same claim about previous updates. For pretty much every sandbox game "release" is just a checkbox.

[jobby239]

i made an acct to say i <3 the changes its great that u guys listen to the players so much caus most games dont. i do have another question tho. its never made sense to me that u needed a special machine to craft oil into stuff, like everything else does just fine in assemblers. if ur gonna get rid of the extra complicated stuff we dont need then i think thats some thing u guys should change. thx

[Adamo]

The mod interface is available for exactly this reason. You are not a rebel by using mods, you are the use case of mods.

For me, I don't buy a game for it's mods. I use the mods to enhance what I've paid for. If the base game doesn't interest me/loses its appeal, then mods are more of a way to "fix" it and this feels wrong to me. If the mods are more interesting than the game, why am I giving my money to the game devs?

Strongly second this. I make mods (most are not on the portal, but you can contact me directly!) and use mods. I hold strongly, in how I design and select my mods, that the vanilla core of the game should be altered as little as possible. There are a variety of reasons for this, and it is an argument among modders, but the argument just goes to show that many in the community feel this way. The vanilla does matter, forever, and rightfully so, and the vanilla game should have the core elements in it that we hope to expand on in our mods.

i made an acct to say i <3 the changes its great that u guys listen to the players so much caus most games dont. i do have another question tho. its never made sense to me that u needed a special machine to craft oil into stuff, like everything else does just fine in assemblers. if ur gonna get rid of the extra complicated stuff we dont need then i think thats some thing u guys should change. thx

I appreciate you coming to give your opinion, but I'm sorry, I have to use you as the example, here. I think what you're asking is the wrong way to go. Do you guys see what path this leads us down? Jobby239 here is saying "why do we even have chemical plants? Just make the stuff in an assembler, especially now that you've already made it less complicated." Now, those of us who mod know that they're both just an extension of crafting machine, so why not just combine them into one crafting machine and be done with it, like Jobby239 suggests? Because we do actually have a certain level of "realism" abstraction that we want as part of the game. Otherwise: everything could just be made in copies of the same building, right? Some would have said, a few days ago, that this is a ridiculous conclusion, but please, look at what our friend here Jobby239 has said. Instead of going down this path, Jobby239, I hope that you will keep playing with what we have now and come to see why it makes the game much more interesting that we have different types of products going through different types of buildings for different purposes. There's a lot to this game -- it really took me a few years to master it all -- and I hope the same for you! Don't take this away from people, guys.

[Reika]

Strongly second this. I make mods and use mods. I hold strongly, in how I design and select my mods, that the vanilla core of the game should be altered as little as possible. There are a variety of reasons for this, and it is an argument among modders, but the argument just goes to show that many in the community feel this way. The vanilla does matter, forever, and rightfully so, and the vanilla game should have the core elements in it that we hope to expand on in our mods.

Count me as another modder who has the same rule - for Factorio and basically every other game I make mods for - and who agrees on all points.

i made an acct to say i <3 the changes its great that u guys listen to the players so much caus most games dont. i do have another question tho. its never made sense to me that u needed a special machine to craft oil into stuff, like everything else does just fine in assemblers. if ur gonna get rid of the extra complicated stuff we dont need then i think thats some thing u guys should change. thx

I appreciate you coming to put in your two cents, but I'm sorry, I have to use you as the example, here. I think what you're asking is the wrong way to go. Do you guys see what path this leads us down? Jobby239 here is saying "why do we even have chemical plants? Just make the stuff in an assembler, especially now that you've already made it less complicated." Now, those of us who mod know that they're both just an extension of crafting machine, so why not just combine them into one crafting machine and be done with it, like Jobby239 suggests? Because we do actually have a certain level of "realism" abstraction that we want as part of the game. Otherwise: everything could just be made in copies of the same building, right? Some would have said, a few days ago, that this is a ridiculous conclusion, but please, look at what our friend here Jobby239 has said. Instead of going down this path, Jobby239, I hope that you will keep playing with what we have now and come to see why it makes the game much more interesting that we have different types of products going through different types of buildings for different purposes. There's a lot to this game -- it really took me a few years to master it all -- and I hope the same for you! Don't take this away from people, guys.

And yet too many people still reject the idea that simplifying the game to appeal to more people is opening Pandora's box.... Of course the very next question some people are asking in light of the oil changes is "why is the refinery a thing at all"...

[Oktokolo]

while we're at it, remove copper and make everything from iron
copper only serves to make things complicated for the sake of being complicated

Actually, iron plates are the resource that should get axed. Almost everything that uses them in the game should really use steel instead. In the real world, there are hundreds of relevant types of steel, but abstracting that down to only one is okay for a game.

[BlueTemplar]

* Being a user of mods, especially ones that substantially changes the game, somewhat isolates you from all the pure-vanilla players; your opinion on vanilla content is taken less seriously, you have a harder time discussing setups due to a lack of common understanding and sense of normality and balance, and you have a harder time finding MP companions because most people just want vanilla. I have experienced all three personally on many occasions, and the first came up earlier in this very thread where someone told me my opinion on oil processing was invalid because I tend to play (not even heavily!) modded.

I wonder how much of this relative unpopularity of modded MP comes from servers like RedMew that became wildly popular before 0.17, and had to adapt to an environment without automatic mod syncing -
meanwhile, a good chunk of their games are scenarios that might heavily rely on vanilla, but at the same time do a lot of work to twist it into hardly recognizable game modes ! (For instance, Diggy.)
I predict that modded MP games will become more popular with time...

[...]
(And make the player press Tab/Space/Enter to close that screen once the game finished loading, which tends to be quick these days...)
In fact, this autopause after loading is the reason why I haven't disabled them... though I don't even look at them anymore !

I say no for loading screen tooltips. Because I own some SSD`s since 2012 and in the most games I can`t read any of it.

I know that a lot of people don't bother reading the whole thread, but you could at least have read my whole post...

(Also, I have a SSD too, but being able to control the exact moment when I'm thrown in the game is very nice when in tense Death World situations - especially with the awkward moments that autopause tends to randomly save on...)

It was mentioned a while ago that the overall development plan for 0.17 was to declare it stable, and then have sort of mini experimental branches with new features, all under the 0.17.x umbrella. I'd strongly suggest using one of those branches for this idea. Once the bug count for 0.17 gets low enough, hit the "stable!" button and give everyone a checkpoint that's a reference. Then, relative to that reference, roll out an experimental with the change. Easy for users to opt out, allows testing and the possibility of reversion etc.

Do you mean this part from last week's FFF ?

We have been asked a few times when stable will be released, but my question is, why does it matter exactly which version we call stable? Are you waiting for stable to play a new playthrough? The thing is, this stable is only going to be the 'first' stable. Our plan is to have a number of short experimental phases after the first stable, where we will add new GUI's and such, which will add bugs and technical debt. After fixing the bugs in a 'small' experimental content release, we will then mark that as the 'new' 0.17 stable.

Because there's no mention of branches, in fact this looks exactly how the multiple 0.16 experimental and stable versions were released? And how 0.17 seems to be already proceeding ?

[mmmPI]

Strongly second this. I make mods and use mods. I hold strongly, in how I design and select my mods, that the vanilla core of the game should be altered as little as possible. There are a variety of reasons for this, and it is an argument among modders, but the argument just goes to show that many in the community feel this way. The vanilla does matter, forever, and rightfully so, and the vanilla game should have the core elements in it that we hope to expand on in our mods.

Count me as another modder who has the same rule - for Factorio and basically every other game I make mods for - and who agrees on all points.

On the other hand some mods completly modify the game, and it's also to the liking of many, even having both mentality at the same time is more choice for the player.

One (sad) thing to consider i think is that mods are better suited for people more interested in the game, who see the point of the mod since it has enough experience to judge the changes from vanilla experience. You can't really advise a beginner to use mods, so having a "simplified" vanilla that would allow players to get a faster understanding of the game and still be free to add some complexity or tailor their gameplay later.

For my personnal opinion i see it as a staircase, lowering the height of the staircase is bad to my eyes ( that would mean changing the game to make it simpler), but lowering the height of every steps to have more of them but easier to get is ok to my eyes, ( adding some more intermediate step to cut 'hard' puzzle in smaller pieces ).

I think devs tried to make a nicer experience for beginners and maybe widen the audience but maybe miscalculated the roaring from the community with the technical change not being seen as only impacting early-game. ( even though some other people seems to disagree even with the idea of simplifcation which i can understand too.)

[Yandersen]

Argh, no, I can't just quit slamming the door with angry face seeing devs stuffing customers' opinions down their asses while doing whatever they want with the game. Factorio is just too good to abandon it out of childish offense. Plus the ugly oil-for-dummies-patch proposed for today actually postponed, so I assume the bell was heard. Somewhat...

I read a significant part of this thread, thought over things proposed. I am a somewhat an experienced player (3 month, 666 game hours, multiple game starts, few finished, many mods tried). And I remember my first experiences and troubles. So let me share some conclusions and ideas I came up with considering all that. I really hope the devs will hear this and consider. Note that my suggestions will be based on the current state of the game ignoring the proposed patch changes.

At first, yes, the problem with oil wall for beginners is real, totally agree. But dumbing it down like the target patch proposed is not the best way to address that problem. There are multiple factors that contribute to that issue and it would be wiser to try smaller solutions first than going straight with the hammer like devs were going to. So let's dissect the nature of the issue, shall we?

Blue science pack. Red and green can be obtained quickly and easily - it is a matter of adding a couple of assembling machines and connecting few belts. Little effort and the science goes. No brainer, small time investment to get the goal achieved. But when it comes to blue science, suddenly we get a long chain of new things requiring A LOT of time investment before any actual progress made toward the goal (blue science pack). Long time taking tasks with no intermediate rewards kills the fun. That are the factors that contribute to it:

1) Oil deposit is too far away from the base. That is the first brick in the wall. The player is forced to leave the area of comfort (safety of the base) and establish an independent outpost. Probably he will have to craft a dozen of solar panels for that, which kinda takes time. But without laser turrets the base can not be left by itself. The distractions force the player to go back and forth, prolonging the time spent on things. Time goes, actual progress is small, fun dies slowly, player loses interest. Plus at this point the beginner player probably had no reasons to learn train concepts, but now he is forced to, considering the distance. Another delay for the progression. Most probably he will quickly craft a car and start going back and forth like a delivery guy - a repetitive task which is also no fun.
So my first suggestion is to give a small oil deposit in the starting area, so the player will be able to focus solely on learning oil processing without much distractions on forced side tasks.

2) I built pumpjack to get the crude oil. There is no much use for that. Well, it is raw material, so that is OK. But then I build a refinery to turn the crude oil and get 3 new liquid products! Guess what? None of them gives me cookie either! Let me check the recipes... Hm, PG->plastic, plastic->red circuits; PG/LO/HO->Solid fuel... Oh, engines too... Good, at least, I have one assembling machine where I crafted a few for my car... Wait, what are the crafting times?! Oh no, my small camp will not fit that many machines... Fuck this, I need a break!
Do you see the second brick in the wall here? The player spent a lot of time just to establish the first far outpost to get his hands on crude oil, which is of no much use even refined, and now he realizes that his nice small walled lovely house is too small and need to be rebuilt, enlarged to fit hundred more machines. Another big step he is not even ready to take, which is also no fun in the process. If the player is patient enough, he will have to go with tedious manual deconstruction/construction process, since there are no robots yet. No fun at all. Plus many more gun turrets to protect longer perimeter, extra ammo requirement to cover... The goal seem to be further and further away and no cookies along the way.
So here are my suggestions:
a) Let boilers and locomotives accept liquid fuels - crude oil, heavy oil, light oil, petroleum gas. Totally realistic. Makes immediate use of the refined products. A first cookie right away - small injection of fun to keep up the mood. It also solves fluid backup problem until cracking tech comes - whatever product you don't need, burn it for electricity or fuel the trains.
b) Add diesel electric generators which run on light oil. And the according tech with R&G science pack - the tech that is available after the basic oil processing. The crafting should have few engines in the recipe. The diesel e-power should be considerably more space-efficient compared to the steam power plants to encourage the player to switch to it, which will force him to setup engine production chain which will later be used for blue science pack production.
c) Decrease the crafting time for red circuits or remove/replace them in blue science pack recipe. The space needed for the refineries, tanks, pipes mess, plastic block and huge red circuits block itself is huge suddenly grown cancer tumor to the small beginner's base already and it's parts don't even give much cookies, if independently looked over at each. I cautiously suggest to replace red circuits along with engines with diesel generators in blue science pack recipe (diesel generator+solid fuel->chemical science pack). In this case, obviously, it will lock the blue science pack tech behind diesel generators tech.

3) Piping mess. It is a fun as a new type of puzzle when the oil processing skeleton is set up initially, but when it comes to the point when production rate goes up, the fun puzzle turns into a mess and frustrating time-killer, especially for the OCD players. So...
a) I suggest to significantly speed up the production rate of the oil refinery, so there will be no need to build ridiculously long arrays of those. A single oil refinery should be able to process the crude oil collected from multiple oil deposit sites. This will also encourage the beginner player to build single refinery at the base rather than at the oil deposit site and use trains for the delivery from other sites further on.
b) For the basic oil processing the water input should be marked, even if the water is not included in the recipe. The beginners tend to connect both crude oil inputs, so when the advanced version comes this creates the confusion when the player tries to change the recipe and gets the message about mixing fluids.

4) Fluid backup problem. As many said, it is a problem mostly because there is no apparent visual indication of that problem. I suggest to introduce a hint popup message when this problem happens first time with the link to tutorial explaining that concept and showing ways how to address it. As for the visual indication, the building with multiple outputs experiencing single output backup may just blink red.

---

I know there are many more alternatives, and a lot to add, but I believe the suggestions above if introduced will help a lot to alleviate the problems the beginners are faced with when go to the oil processing stage, but I think it will also frustrate the old customers base much less than the changes expected in the upcoming patch. Modders, please link this post to the devs to ensure they see it.

[PunkSkeleton]

I'm all for the oil change.

When I first started playing Factorio there was a commonly used trick to dump light/heavy oil into a steam engine. This was the most efficient way until cracking but it was unintuitive and terrible mechanic and thankfully it was removed. I remember than many people cried back then...
Now you have to build storage tanks and periodically destroy and replace them before cracking. Or make a lot of solid fuel, much more than you can consume. This forces you to rush advanced oil processing and is just stupid.

Will it make the game easier? Yes it will. Will it make a difference for experienced players? Only for speed runners. Like the devs said, the part between oil processing and advanced oil processing is now extremely short because you HAVE TO rush advanced oil processing.

[Philip017]

Getting robots a bit later is quite tough to justify as being a good thing on the first sight (my own reaction to hearing this idea from kovarex was WTF, but then quickly calmed down when thinking about it a bit), but there's a lot of factors that soften this. The extra additional delay really isn't that much. You only need to set up some chemical science and do a few cheap researches with it (currently you need total 275 chemical science packs total for construction robots). Also consider that setting up the refinery is less tedious as you don't need to pipe light and heavy oil, so chemical science pack is set up a bit quicker, and with perfect reliability that doesn't clog if you added too few storage tanks.
I think robots fit into the tier of Chemical science very well actually - along with Electric furnaces, Power armor, Nuclear power, Tank and now Laser turrets for example.

for me i disagree that pushing construction bots into blue science is a good thing, it may be semi logical, but delays their research several hours for me now. the main reason i push the research for them so quick is because i want my ghosts. but they also help building that belt buss that gets set up, mostly i prefer to use the personal robots, it's now i have to research more things in blue science before i can get my robots.

i do not like the change to basic oil (the output side, the input is great) because i feel it dumbs down the game, yes it's a hurdle to overcome, although a flare stack would be useful, you can turn any overflow of liquid to solid that is needed for science, or burn it if you have too much. knowledge of the circuit network is needed to make it work well, however if you add a simple valve like overflow valve, then it can be much easier to set up to overflow excess fluids to solid. in my opinion this simple addition can be added to fluid handling, it would be really nice to have basic valves in vanilla.

I have used basic oil through out the game for the necessary heavy oil to make belts and electric engines, i guess i will have to use coal liquification now to get that extra heavy i will need, or solid out gas when i need that heavy, almost all my light gets solid out for science and boilers/smelters early game, at least till i have a huge solar field or nuke power, at that point it becomes electric furnaces instead of steel, requiring a rebuild my all my smelters.

a good tutorial of how oil works should be made, in each of it's steps to help with the complexity of getting it all going.
1. placing pump jacks
2. getting oil into the refinery's (and also making them, choosing a location of where to put them, with a hint that advanced oil requires water)
3. what comes out of the refinery, at what ratio, tips to avoid getting clogged
4. what to do with excess fluids, overflow to make solid fuel for example (maybe a tip that light oil is best for solid)
5. making that plastic that you need for red circuits
6. making lube for electric engines and belts
7. perhaps even one for making sulfuric acid for batteries and blue chips.

[Adamo]

I'd like to also go on record that changing the flamethrower recipe to use petroleum gas makes no sense. Flamethrowers typically use, as fuel, petrol (light oil) that's had a fuel thickener added (heavy oil, I guess), propelled by an inert gas (usually nitrogen, which is not modeled in the game). I feel like you guys thought this out well when you first established the recipes.

[irbork]

No update today?
I guess there will be some changes introduced to the initial concept.

[VFaalcatnodriiro]

But when it comes to blue science, suddenly we get a long chain of new things requiring A LOT of time investment before any actual progress made toward the goal (blue science pack). Long time taking tasks with no intermediate rewards kills the fun. That are the factors that contribute to it

This post is absolutely on point. The step to Blue Science is just too big of a thing.
My two suggestions to solve the problems, with oil being only a minor part of it but:
1) Have a small oil patch inside the starting area for a quick (temporary) solution
Since the biggest problem is the lo-hooooong way to Blue Science because of all the new things you need (engines which require the "new" ressource steel, solid fuel, and advanced circuits which recuire blue and plastic which requires PG):
2) Get rid of the advanced circuit-need in Blue Science. Maybe replace it with plastic.
In addition you can remove light oil from the BOP-Recipes Output. Players can make solid fuel out of HO and Plastic out of PG.

[TheBloke]

I'd like to also go on record that changing the flamethrower recipe to use petroleum gas makes no sense. Flamethrowers typically use, as fuel, petrol (light oil) that's had a fuel thickener added (heavy oil, I guess), propelled by an inert gas (usually nitrogen, which is not modeled in the game). I feel like you guys thought this out well when you first established the recipes.

There's a developer post indicating this may well be changed to crude oil rather than petroleum gas. Source: Post by V453000 on Reddit.

[meganothing]

Wube are not pampering their players. 7 days to die and other similar early-access games are exploiting them. And you're so used to this exploitation that good development practices and treating the players well feels like pampering.

Oh really? Then what can a developer do if he really wants to develop a game from the ground without sacrificing his vision for the vision of a publisher or an anonymous crowd of players who often can't agree on anything themselves? I assumed this was the major reason for EA. Could it be that you expect only games that are in beta to use EA? Many successfull games developed in EA wouldn't exist if that was a rule.

7D2D gets a lot of new features every alpha, it clearly isn't in beta yet. If they had frozen major parts of the game engine the game would have been released by now, sure, but it would have been a MUCH smaller game.

In most cases I trust the judgement of a developer who has shown that he can produce a great game more than the mass of users in a forum. Especially since forum users have a big resitance to change in any form. I've seen it with 7D2D more than once, forum is protesting a change, half a year later everyone agrees the change was good. I don't want to get a game produced by comitee, sorry.

7D2D's developers have their big ideas and they follow them and they should be able to with their own game.

Additionally, the idea that release means the game is to no longer be developed, barring DLCs and expansions, is utter nonsense. Minecraft had its release seven and a half years ago. It's still being developed. Don't Starve has been released 6 years ago. It's still being developed - at the same time as Klei are finishing up another game, at that. Terraria has been released 8 years ago and an update is now in progress, with zero "expansions and DLCs" involved - they're claiming it's going to be the last feature update, but I remember same claim about previous updates. For pretty much every sandbox game "release" is just a checkbox.

I stand corrected. Yes, lots of games do this. In a small way "service games" already. But the important thing I wanted to point out: Those released games surely do not break backwards compatibility if it isn't absolutely unavoidable. A released game should have higher standards after all.

[meganothing]

Did you even read what I wrote? I was talking about the problems with forcing people to use mods, none of which have anything to do with backwards compatibility or expecting the game to be static, and you rambled back at me about the meaning of the term "Early Access". And your random accusation that I am seeking an endless stream of new features makes no sense as a reply, either.

It was you who was replying to my opinion that no game lasts forever and you can either stop, or use a mod, but not complain you got nothing for your money.
So how did you read into that that you are forced to use mods? You make it very clear in your last paragraph that you think you need mods to REVERT the changes Wube makes. You ARE clinging to backwards compatibility or better said a game as static as possible.

If I read too much into that, sorry. But this is what I was answering to. EA is for development, if a developer can't change his game anymore (and there is always at least one person who says he can't live without the old way of whatever gets changed) then that developers has stopped developing his game.

I also didn't accuse you of seeking an endless stream of new features. But just in case you should ever want them (I would, so I mentioned it), the release is (or used to be) the wrong place to look for it.

PS: I confess, I want an endless stream of new features

[mcdjfp]

I have never felt the need to rush advanced oil processing. Between several (2 Light Oil, 2 Heavy Oil) storage tanks, and a pumps to solid fuel producers triggered to turn on if the tanks are nearly full I never feel pressured. I am usually rushing something else (frequently nuclear as it is my preferred backup and I don't want to overbuild my steam engines). It may be the way I design my base, but I do advanced oil processing whenever I get around to it.