Friday Facts #306 - Experimental Demo

[FactorioBot]

Here it is! (beep boop)

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-306

[Gergely]

Finally!!! What I have actually been waiting for!

[wheybags]

Finally!!! What I have actually been waiting for!

What have you been waiting for?

[Rebmes]

I was playing the demo a few days ago, and got slaughtered by the challenge wave (280 hr player). I tried a few times to re load the save but could not overcome and gave up.

As stated above, it wasn't very representative of the actual game (in most cases) though it was kinda fun to try. New players will likely be better off without that particular quest (and so will veterans lol)

Way to keep your standards high Factorio team!

[Reika]

From my reddit post:

I do not think it is a good idea to put too much focus on the combat side of things; it reminds me of the original trailer, one which actively put me off the game back in 2015. Indeed, people were offering to buy it for me, and I was turning them down because of what the trailer made me think the game was. I cannot be alone, and so going back in that direction is NOT a good idea.

[nafira]

Let's wait for FFF-307 now !

The main topic seems to be still too hot to handle

[DanGio]

Good read. I'm going to test this right away.

Thanks !

[Faark]

Sounds nice. Will replay the intro-campaing asap. At the end, does it open up into an endlessly generated map? I'd love to hear the reason if still not, since this seems an important aspect of factorio.

I also wouldn't have see much of a problem with experienced players not having much difficulty because of Failed Solution 2.

[BlueTemplar]

Solution 5 :
When it's time for the challenge quest, ask the player if he wants to try it :
"I'm too young to die" vs "Hurt me plenty"
Emphasize that the game automatically saved before that choice, and that the player can always load back to pick the other one.

Solution 6 :
If having to pick between menu options would take the player too much out of the game, make instead the result the action of the player - for instance restarting one of the derelict machines (the radar?) would trigger the challenge.
(Make Compilatron explain to the player what the consequences would be. Ditto about the autosave.)

Solution Ω :
Make it so the challenge happens after the player has "won" - but also make it so that the biter waves only keep increasing until the player decides that he had enough challenge for today.

Probably in combination with some sort of escape route available to the player : potentially via car ?

For instance, ask the player to make a car and X landfill (and give the landfill to Compilatron?), then, when he does, trigger the win and start the unending challenge, and say to the player that he can leave at any time by bringing the car to Compilatron, who has moved near the lake.

Then when the player eventually does drive/come near Compilatron with the car in his inventory, trigger a cutscene with the player entering the car*, Compilatron landfilling a path through the lake, and both of you driving away to safety from this biter & cliff surrounded death trap, while your base crumbles to an insane biter onslaught ! (featuring, shudder, red biters and spitters !)
*Compilatron possibly had cut some wood to power the car...

[BlueTemplar]

So, what about multiplayer for the Introduction scenario / demo ?

Or is that not feasible due to Compilatron having to babysit a specific player ?
(Would spawning one Compilatron per player work ?)

[almo]

As of right now, the FFF does not have the usual links to this forum page and the Reddit page. Did someone forget to add them?

[Koub]

As of right now, the FFF does not have the usual links to this forum page and the Reddit page. Did someone forget to add them?

They seem to have been added.

[Aflixion]

Before I get started, I want to caveat this with the fact that this topic (the new introduction campaign) does deserve discussion, but maybe there were more urgent topics to cover this week?

Are we just going to pretend that nothing controversial at all happened in the last 2 weeks? The last time any FFF thread generated this much discussion this quickly was the proposed (and scrapped) bot nerfs in January/February 2018. The only other FFF threads to pass 20 pages of discussion did so after a few weeks. The last time any single release announcement thread generated this much discussion was 0.12.35, and it took a few weeks to get 15 pages whereas the 0.17.60 thread is already there after 3 days.

It's insulting that the only dev who made any substantial effort to discuss the changes and explain things was V, even though he doesn't fully agree with the changes. It feels like he was sent out as a sacrificial lamb because you knew the changes wouldn't be well-received. The only explanation of why a change was even needed in the first place was "We believe this contributes to make oil a bit less of a difficulty spike", and there was no dev response to the post detailing exactly what the problem was with blue science to begin with (it wasn't oil complexity/difficulty): viewtopic.php?f=38&t=73684&p=445760#p445760. You only addressed alternatives to your proposed changes and said only after the changes were released that "no change" was always an inferior Option A with no explanation of why it was inferior.

This leaves me to conclude that you wanted to make oil simpler to try to appeal to newer players. Players who would otherwise never even try the game because it's not the type of game they want to play. All you did with that was alienate your current playerbase, myself included, because you gave us the impression that our feedback about why a change wasn't needed was ignored.

[JD-Plays]

So I tried the Experimental Demo.... by downloading the demo...

This was my results after running away from the biters...



I think the Bugs won!

[V453000]

Before I get started, I want to caveat this with the fact that this topic (the new introduction campaign) does deserve discussion, but maybe there were more urgent topics to cover this week?

Are we just going to pretend that nothing controversial at all happened in the last 2 weeks? The last time any FFF thread generated this much discussion this quickly was the proposed (and scrapped) bot nerfs in January/February 2018. The only other FFF threads to pass 20 pages of discussion did so after a few weeks. The last time any single release announcement thread generated this much discussion was 0.12.35, and it took a few weeks to get 15 pages whereas the 0.17.60 thread is already there after 3 days.

It's insulting that the only dev who made any substantial effort to discuss the changes and explain things was V, even though he doesn't fully agree with the changes. It feels like he was sent out as a sacrificial lamb because you knew the changes wouldn't be well-received. The only explanation of why a change was even needed in the first place was "We believe this contributes to make oil a bit less of a difficulty spike", and there was no dev response to the post detailing exactly what the problem was with blue science to begin with (it wasn't oil complexity/difficulty): viewtopic.php?f=38&t=73684&p=445760#p445760. You only addressed alternatives to your proposed changes and said only after the changes were released that "no change" was always an inferior Option A with no explanation of why it was inferior.

This leaves me to conclude that you wanted to make oil simpler to try to appeal to newer players. Players who would otherwise never even try the game because it's not the type of game they want to play. All you did with that was alienate your current playerbase, myself included, because you gave us the impression that our feedback about why a change wasn't needed was ignored.

Even though it was not my idea, I was very significantly responsible for the changes and they would not have happened without my agreement, therefore you can fully blame me for them... and sacrifice me to the dark gods if that is what you desire.

Honestly, there isn’t that much to write further. The proposed solution from last FFF got implemented and the reasons are the same as stated many times. We already presented almost the same thing twice in two weeks, I don’t believe yet another discussion would yield much different results.

Many if not all the suggestions were considered and several of them I even implemented. I already tried to explain the downsides of each of them, and why the no-changes option as well. I’m far from civilization on a phone now so can’t link nor am I going to make a megalong post, but I think the answers are there, though probably lost in the sheer amount of posts. I’d be happy to answer later when I get to a computer if there are further questions.
In short, the changes make oil less annoying to set up in the basic form. I hate hearing that this is only for newcomers, I think it’s just generally better, not having to worry about as many things.
In case of no changes, the basic oil processing was annoying yet completely unsustainable, deadlocking all the time. This lead to just spamming tanks which is a really weak solution, and forced the player to rush advanced oil processing, thus rushing blue science. However with all the things in green the player is generally in a good spot.

Also, I honestly cannot spend another full weekend fully reading the forums and spending several hours writing replies.

BTW your opinions were absolutely not ignored.

[Oktokolo]

The demo craftables list looks like you should expect a lot of screenshots exhibiting production lines with two tiles between assemblers and belts instead of the usual one.
Always thought long-handed ones to be a derivative of yellow ones.

[Optera]

Having read comments before playing the tutorial I went into it like I would on deathworld. I survived rather easily.
Unless pollution scales ridiculously I'm not sure beginners would be able to win the old version.

[Engimage]

Before I get started, I want to caveat this with the fact that this topic (the new introduction campaign) does deserve discussion, but maybe there were more urgent topics to cover this week?

Are we just going to pretend that nothing controversial at all happened in the last 2 weeks? The last time any FFF thread generated this much discussion this quickly was the proposed (and scrapped) bot nerfs in January/February 2018. The only other FFF threads to pass 20 pages of discussion did so after a few weeks. The last time any single release announcement thread generated this much discussion was 0.12.35, and it took a few weeks to get 15 pages whereas the 0.17.60 thread is already there after 3 days.

It's insulting that the only dev who made any substantial effort to discuss the changes and explain things was V, even though he doesn't fully agree with the changes. It feels like he was sent out as a sacrificial lamb because you knew the changes wouldn't be well-received. The only explanation of why a change was even needed in the first place was "We believe this contributes to make oil a bit less of a difficulty spike", and there was no dev response to the post detailing exactly what the problem was with blue science to begin with (it wasn't oil complexity/difficulty): viewtopic.php?f=38&t=73684&p=445760#p445760. You only addressed alternatives to your proposed changes and said only after the changes were released that "no change" was always an inferior Option A with no explanation of why it was inferior.

This leaves me to conclude that you wanted to make oil simpler to try to appeal to newer players. Players who would otherwise never even try the game because it's not the type of game they want to play. All you did with that was alienate your current playerbase, myself included, because you gave us the impression that our feedback about why a change wasn't needed was ignored.

Even though it was not my idea, I was very significantly responsible for the changes and they would not have happened without my agreement, therefore you can fully blame me for them... and sacrifice me to the dark gods if that is what you desire.

Honestly, there isn’t that much to write further. The proposed solution from last FFF got implemented and the reasons are the same as stated many times. We already presented almost the same thing twice in two weeks, I don’t believe yet another discussion would yield much different results.

Many if not all the suggestions were considered and several of them I even implemented. I already tried to explain the downsides of each of them, and why the no-changes option as well. I’m far from civilization on a phone now so can’t link nor am I going to make a megalong post, but I think the answers are there, though probably lost in the sheer amount of posts. I’d be happy to answer later when I get to a computer if there are further questions.
In short, the changes make oil less annoying to set up in the basic form. I hate hearing that this is only for newcomers, I think it’s just generally better, not having to worry about as many things.
In case of no changes, the basic oil processing was annoying yet completely unsustainable, deadlocking all the time. This lead to just spamming tanks which is a really weak solution, and forced the player to rush advanced oil processing, thus rushing blue science. However with all the things in green the player is generally in a good spot.

Also, I honestly cannot spend another full weekend fully reading the forums and spending several hours writing replies.

BTW your opinions were absolutely not ignored.

I do understand that you feel that this is just a common "anti-change" wave from people that got used to things as they were.
I do understand that your aim is to aid newcomers which are obviously the most focused target group as only they will bring you extra money and not those already owning the game.
But you should understand that you have left a vast majority of your most loyal community that has brought you to 97% positive Steam success - in a very uncomfortable and worried position. There was 0% of compromise coming from Wube side on the oil topic. Yes the majority of ones that resist already do play with mods and will probably find the most suitable solution for them there but IMO this dumbing down has just derailed initial target audience and has resulted in generally sub optimal brute illogical solution.
I sincerely hope you will reconsider at some point. Until then I personally am not touching Factorio which I did plan to play with my son after 0.17 stable. I did want him to play it to challenge his mind and current solution will definitely not.

Not only you were burnt out on this topic. We all did too. I will come back here in several weeks and see. For now I am also tired of reading 60 pages of discussion all in vain.

Just watch latest videos from the majority of Youtubers casting the game. That is some "advertisement" you are getting.

[TwoPizzas]

The demo crashed. Here's a report
https://imgur.com/a/gzSowPz

[Hamster]

An issue with the demo:

The Companion is sitting directly on the chest, so I can not click on it, and empty the content..
I have a workaround to move everything to an another chest, but this could be frustrating for a new player.
I think the companion should go some other place.