Friday Facts #375 - Quality

[Jon8RFC]

More factorio-like names would be good. Epic, legendary and the colors feel cookie-cutter. They kind of devalue the respectability of the game--the intuitive controls, the code that is frequently bugfixed, the attention to detail, the developers integrated with the player base, the enjoyment that spawned copycats, etc.

Hopefully it's adjusted so that the immediate reaction, even with different names, is NOT "oh, just like in fortnite, that game that foul-mouthed children play" or the plethora of games which use those terms, coloring scheme, and "better item" vibe.

Regardless of the colors and words used, if done right, it should feel like something to solve and work toward.

Kind of how the graphics and vibe evolved and it felt a little less Minecraft-like. If it feels earned and strategized, even if random, then it's Factorio. If it feels "LET'S GO!! MRBEAST!!", then it's every other game out there.

[sarge945]

It seems that it will take a long time to obtain recycling, and this is because of the quality system?

You don't have the recycler soon in the game, so you can't really just recycle to get the best stuff, the most common way how to start with the quality is to just insert some quality modules into production of final products, which emits some higher quality products as a by product.
This results in a stage of the game, where you pick the very limited number of higher quality modules, machines etc. made as a side effect, and you can decide what are the most important parts of the factory that need boosting.

I don't like this, as there's definite reasons we would want recycling early-game, and many of the recycling mods make it available early for this reason. Otherwise, we have to build boxes of items and have them all lying around (especially Pistols)

I propose a change: Split the Recycling Machine into 2 separate researches (which also allows progression)

"Recycling Machine 1" - available after Automation for a small number of Red science.
- The machine only returns 20% of the cost of items, and cannot take modules

"Recycling Machine 2" - available where Recycling would be now (probably requires at least 1 planet)
- returns 25% of the original resources
- able to use modules

Maybe even have an intermediate one too

EDIT:

Maybe if machine produced something for a really long time it could start producing higher quality products instead? For example after 10000 solar panels produced in single assembler its quality tier would go up. Maybe progress for this should be also logarithmic with some additional minimal player interaction, not sure.

This sounds very interesting, and adds an element of base retention to the game. No more throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Have an assembly machine that's ranked up, but your OCD is making you want to move everything over one space so you can perfectly fit another line of assembly machines in? Nope. You'll lose that ranked up machine if you deconstruct it.

It'd force spaghetti belts and sushi belts on occasion. Blueprint abuse and tic tac toe solving/playing of factorio could be balanced out again.
"what's that one out of place assembly machine doing there?"
"i forgot about it and it ranked up, so I don't want to lose it now"

This is AMAZING! More gameplay depth is always welcome and I like the balance here between more "straightforward" factories and frankenfactories

[Jon8RFC]

Maybe if machine produced something for a really long time it could start producing higher quality products instead? For example after 10000 solar panels produced in single assembler its quality tier would go up. Maybe progress for this should be also logarithmic with some additional minimal player interaction, not sure.

This sounds very interesting, and adds an element of base retention to the game. No more throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Have an assembly machine that's ranked up, but your OCD is making you want to move everything over one space so you can perfectly fit another line of assembly machines in? Nope. You'll lose that ranked up machine if you deconstruct it.

It'd force spaghetti belts and sushi belts on occasion. Blueprint abuse and tic tac toe solving/playing of factorio could be balanced out again.
"what's that one out of place assembly machine doing there?"
"i forgot about it and it ranked up, so I don't want to lose it now"

[shmooooo]

As an ex factory technician to me this mechanic looks fine except for a random chance to create higher quality product. There is nothing random about producing quality product IRL, there is only constant regulation, tinkering and maintenance of machines.

Maybe if machine produced something for a really long time it could start producing higher quality products instead? For example after 10000 solar panels produced in single assembler its quality tier would go up. Maybe progress for this should be also logarithmic with some additional minimal player interaction, not sure.

If you don't do this I could see myself making mod for this after expansion release

I adore this! This is such a better way to do quality than RNG. This kind of "burn-in" mechanic really increases the value of long term planning and is, I think, much, much more consistent with the "aesthetic unity" of factorio gameplay than RNG. And, it is indeed significantly more logical.

[Atraps003]

I would borrow a page from Space Exploration's book and make all assemblers (or building producers) of lower tiers have a pain-in-the-ass chance of producing Scrap

Do you really think that the whiners about an optional module are going to appreciate their blueprint slammed main bus getting filled with scrap from assemblers that are needed to beat the game?


If wube did vertical scaling like mods do with MKx upgrades then the whining would transition to "mod ripoff"

[DabMCfapDAB]

i think the quality update is a good improvement to the late to midgame overall, i dont think there is bad surounding it as one can just ignore it. If one doesnt like it.

[TatsuZZMage]

What the hell did I just read? It feels like it should be a April fools post almost. that said well more to build more to create, Moar fun to be had.

[AvengerStar]

I'd like to preface this by saying that I do think there are a couple of things in this blog post that I do appreciate, those being the introduction of the recycler and some attempt to further improve the progression of the player and their factory. The recycler does solve a long standing problem of obsolete or otherwise unwanted items cluttering either your inventory or some remote chest in your logistic storage, which is neat.

The idea of quality isn't inherently awful, on paper at least. Having some additional measure to improve your character's equipment and your factory is cool. It might be on the weaker end of achieving that, I'd much rather there were new, unique items and structures that accomplished the same thing, but I can understand from a development standpoint that that may not be as economical an endeavor. The suggestion is reasonable enough.

I don't like this proposed implementation, however.

It's not about the names for the tiers of quality. That's honestly the easiest thing to fix, I can't imagine it would take longer than a couple of minutes of editing the locale file per language, and the bulk of that time would frankly just be deciding on synonyms more appropriate for the setting. I find it absurd that most folks are hung up on this and not the more glaring issues of this implementation, but at the very least you guys aren't strapped for choice, given all the alternatives suggested.

Rather, my concerns are far more ingrained in the mechanics of it, things that are unfortunately not as trivial to address. I've read and understood the reasoning behind this implementation, the motivation behind it all, so I feel it'd be most fruitful to break down the parts I find contentious if not downright disagreeable, and offer my personal suggestions more meaningful than scrapping years of work entirely.


"This mechanic is optional."

In the strictest sense, it is. Delving into quality is not required for progression, nor is it something that is absolutely necessary to complete the game in a reasonable amount of time, if my understanding of the design is correct. Nor is it really required to create a well designed megabase.

But... is it really optional? When endgame legendary items and equipment are the best of the best, what better marker for having mastered the game and its mechanics exist, what better way to experience the game and various builds at their highest potential? It's optional in the same sense that playing beyond the victory condition is optional, which in turn is in the same sense that playing the game at all is optional. It's ultimately an arbitrary thing to point out, as it is part of the game. A part of the game only a fraction of the playerbase would meaningfully experience in its full depth, but part of the game nonetheless. It's optional... until it isn't.

It makes me feel like this point was brought up proactively as a defense mechanism, possibly to deprioritize the issues that may arise from it just because it's pushed to a point where few will properly give it a go to its fullest extent. This is purely the most cynical read, I'm sure this isn't framed in this way for any nefarious reason, it just looks unfortunate. Either way, a mechanic being optional doesn't excuse it from improvement.


"This mechanic scaled up is statistical rather than probabilistic." (The implication being that there's supposedly no inherent problem with the random chance associated with the mechanic, as it'd smooth out over a large base across a playthrough.)

That statement, too, is true, same for any recipe that would have random chance like uranium processing.

The problem is that, for each possible result from a particular process, alongside the expected returns of each result, the complexity for each recipe increases substantially. Unfortunately, the complexity increase is in a direction that's rather shallow. The electronic circuit build in the blog post is, essentially, the intended framework for engaging with this mechanic for all recipes. Repeatedly craft components, break them down, craft them again, repeat until they're at maximum quality. It's a solved problem, the only meaningful improvement to make for each build is belt arrangement. Repeat for *every* relevant component.

When it's a mechanic for uranium processing or a couple other processes, it's a unique consideration. When it's required to get the most out of your equipment and machines, that's just the game at that point. (Perhaps more accurately half the game, if science production is unaffected by quality, which I imagine it is for the sake of keeping productivity modules relevant.) In any case, it's a lot of clutter for, essentially, a modest but desirable increase in player capability and factory performance. I bet the system limit pushers are going to have a field day farming legendary solar panels and nuclear reactors.

You could not engage with quality at all, but then you're left out of the possibilities that improved items can bring. And if you do decide to engage with it, you're forced to implement the same sort of accommodation for every build. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

But there's one more thing that really irks me, something that I'm shocked more people aren't bringing up.


"Quality stacks are independent." Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... t/jznqxel/

This is absolutely dreadful for a couple of major reasons. As it stands right now in the public release, player inventory can get pretty cluttered, there are so many items that are useful to have on hand for quick construction, modification, and combat. Adding unstackable quality only compounds the problem. There's little reason to have anything but a singular quality for each item (and, with little exception, the best quality is going to be preferred). Anything else would just needlessly clog your inventory. It's far simpler to automate for whatever highest quality is practical to achieve for each item and then stockpile on that, than it is to even attempt to care about whatever other quality is possible for that particular item.

Moreover, and I'm surprised that there isn't even the suggestion that this came up as an issue during playtesting, unstackable quality means that machines can deadlock from not having enough of a particular item of the same quality. This problem is identical to the longstanding issue of damaged items not stacking with undamaged items, but now it's compounded to the point where it will become far more apparent to a player casually playing with quality. Even if items don't deadlock, inserters are limited to picking up all of the same quality, which means that stack inserters are inherently a poor choice in these builds. Y'know, the builds that tend to require a ton of components to sift through to roll for higher tiers of quality.


That was a lot of negativity, I apologize. To clarify, I do think this idea is ultimately salvageable. But it needs some revision. A mechanic being optional does not forgive it of its shortcomings, the best way to address it therefore is to, well, actually address it. Players will eventually engage with it, and if most folks do not see any fun in playing with it, it might as well not even be part of the expansion experience.

The randomization of the items inherently creates the necessity to solve it in fundamentally identical ways, creating either a network of filter splitters every build or letting the bots sort it out. What I suggest instead is, unfortunately, more involved development work than simple number tweaking, so I can understand it not being a desirable avenue. But I do think it necessary to make this mechanic work.

Y'all need more processes. That's it. Perhaps other planets may provide you with resources or technology that allow you to craft higher quality items guaranteed. While it is definitely, unavoidably, a significant undertaking just to better recontextualize another significant undertaking already made, it would further entrench the impact and significance of these other planets and make the overall experience feel more cohesive, with the added monumental bonus of introducing actually distinct and engaging complexity for once familiar products.

As for the item stacks? I'd say make it possible for each stack to mix quality, with the ability to single out a particular quality on inventory operations. I have no idea if this is practical, given the data structure of inventories. I have no idea if playtesting a working implementation of this reveals that five qualities is still way too cluttering. Frankly, if it does reveal that, it's probably for the best to trim the amount of tiers, anyway. But I get the sense that something will have to be done to address this stacking issue before it gets out of hand for folks that genuinely want to engage with quality on its own terms. At the very least a solution like this could be backported to damaged items and solve that as well.

Overall, I just want this mechanic to be fun. I want to be excited to work towards stupidly powerful power armor and assemblers. But the process of getting there should be fun. I don't want to dread having to experience anything this expansion has to offer, even if it is ultimately optional. Really, that's all I want out of it, and out of this discourse.

[RedViper]

It's a game, the entire thing is optional, stop saying it as if it somehow absolves any concerns people may have about the feature.

It's not optional for anyone that wants an optimized base, just like modules and beacons are not optional once you get to the endgame.

Also concern of balancing is very real, either the game is balanced around this and not using quality feels bad, or it's balanced around not using quality and it feels bad. Unless they plan on balancing the game around both modes one will have to suffer.

[Atraps003]

"Quality stacks are independent." This is absolutely dreadful for a couple of major reasons. As it stands right now in the public release, player inventory can get pretty cluttered

I'd much rather there were new, unique items and structures that accomplished the same thing

New unique items and structures would clutter the inventory just as bad.

But... is it really optional? When endgame legendary items and equipment are the best of the best, what better marker for having mastered the game and its mechanics exist, what better way to experience the game and various builds at their highest potential?

Yes it's optional. Just like it's optional to research worker robot speed 50.

[Tricorius]

If wube did vertical scaling like mods do with MKx upgrades then the whining would transition to "mod ripoff"

FFF - Space Age Announcement

How lame, You're just recycling what mods are doing.

FFF - Quality

This completely new system you've spent a couple years perfecting is lame! It's a lootbox rip-off and completely ruins factorio.

Welcome to the internet. I guess.

I'd much rather there were new, unique items and structures that accomplished the same thing

New unique items and structures would clutter the inventory just as bad.

New unique items and structures would be worse.

I'm assuming a lot of people stopped reading and came to complain before they looked at the logistics command to auto-trash everything below a given quality tier of any given item.

I'm pretty sure you are going to have logistics bots before you can even craft your first non-basic item.

People are acting like you crash on the planet and loot multiple qualities of things immediately from your ship wreckage.

This is an advanced mechanism folks.

[AvengerStar]

New unique items and structures would clutter the inventory just as bad.

I doubt it'd get five times as bad at worst. Either way, new machines are being added with the expansion on top of the quality, so I guess we both lost on that front.

Yes it's optional. Just like it's optional to research worker robot speed 50.

You miss the point. Regardless of how "optional" a mechanic may be, it's added with the intent that players are to give it a shot and experiment with it. It's still best to try and improve it, not only for the sake of those already invested in it, but also for others that were initially put off by its existence completely.

[SunderedShadow]

The one thing I hate is RNG, I feel that I would look more forward to this system if the system was designed more towards make 100 items and X will be Y quality.

I have in far to many situations seen Do this 100 times and one person gets 35 legendary items, person 2 gets 10 and person 3 gets 4 all for the same work and effort (looking at you Diablo 3) depending on how RNG lands for you in the day. While I have enjoyed some favor of RNG (multiple natural 20s in a row on a gaming night), I have also spent weeks without a dice roll in the double digits. At least there though I can hard lock enough bonuses that even with bad RNG its still a success.

.. and yes at least diablo 3 eventually put in a pity system so you are after a period of time eventually guaranteed a legendary (while the rest of your friends have still grabbed a dozen).

[sarge945]

"This mechanic is optional."

I completely agree with your analysis here.

I will go on record and say "It's optional" is the most dangerous statement ever said by game developers. Namely because:

- When a mechanic is optional, it has to deal with two contradictory positions. On one hand, it has to be useful in order for it to be worthwhile investing into in the first place, on the other hand, it can't be TOO useful or it essentially becomes mandatory (via a dominant strategy)
- "it's optional" is often used as a cheap rebuttal to justify bad gameplay decisions. Usually something like "who cares if the mechanic sucks, just don't use it", as if it's that simple, especially when a dominant strategy is involved.
- Optional mechanics frequently give way to grindy or uninteresting gameplay, with the idea that "the player can just use it whenever they want for however long they want, and switch to something else when they get bored", which can undermine the mechanic entirely.

I do feel like long-term investments into quality should matter more than RNG. However, I feel the approach explained in the FFF is somewhat of a middle ground - you CAN get lucky and get higher tech stuff, but realistically you are going to want to invest to improve your chances.

I feel like at that point, they might as well not bother having RNG in the first place and tie it entirely to progression. If they want to make it much harder to acquire these items or inherently limit them, a better approach might be to make them significantly harder to make, needing extra components like blue circuits etc.

"But won't this result in extra recipes?"

New Feature: Optional Recipe Components

In order to make higher quality versions, each recipe should allow extra "optional" components, such as blue circuits. Then, when selecting the recipe on an assembling machine (or whatever), we should be able to enable or disable the extra components, allowing the machine to make different quality versions.

Lets say, for example, I could make a Rare inserter by adding a Blue Circuit. The Inserter recipe should be updated to have Blue Circuit as an "optional" component, and the assembling machine would look like this (pretend the second green component is a blue one)



This allows "extending" the recipes for the quality system without adding a bunch of extra duplicates.

[DaveMcW]

Now i wan assembly machine to have high mood so they got creativity inspiration.

And if you don't feed them, they go berserk.

[Stringweasel]

Overall, I love this! But I also hate the names! I expect you will make them moddable though, right? I'd name them something like Crude/Low (and you only realize the quality wasn't even good before you unlock quality modules and see it), Normal/Nominal, High/Great, Exceptional/Superior and Pristine/Perfect.

I agree with this. The name should not be the rarity, but should rather represent the quality of the construction. Words like Rough, Refined, Pristine, Exceptional, etc.

Using words like "Uncommon" and "Legendary" makes it sound almost magical, which is total in the opposite direction of what this game is about

Also, was a little thrown off guard with the new mechanic, but I think I can learn to enjoy it. Already designing builds in my head.

[sarge945]

Using words like "Uncommon" and "Legendary" makes it sound almost magical, which is total in the opposite direction of what this game is about

I can't wait to find Legendary Shotgun of the Jackal +1, with higher crit chance and added bleed damage per shot!

[ManaUser]

It would be more intuitive if the first tier of quality just had no symbol/dot at all, meaning "no particular quality". The dots can be viewed rather as badges this way. Also there is no need to explain/argue why the dots of Q1 items are not visible in the world and why the symbols you're seeing in the world start with the two-dotted ones.

Yeah that's a good point. It does seem like the first (normally visible) symbol should be the one-dot (or equivalent).

[aka13]

mment, however, paradoxically indicates the truth in "Good observations/ideas can come from anywhere" while attempting to contradict it. Please be more constructive.

Edit: tl;dr: Post vitriol, get vitriol back, destroy what you love.

Meh, I just feel bitter with the return of the FFF. Over the years I have worded the same in nice, positive ways, let me be bitter for once
I am just taken aback with changes shown so far, and am upset, that while supposedly the FFFs are back, the developers are not.
Only discussions on bugfixes, not in the FFF topics, which upsets me, since it hasnt always been this way. Sure, it is all a question of "reality not adhering to my expectations", and rationally, it is me who has to adapt and accept the new reality, but I still am emotional about it.

[EvanT]

Essentially every mechanic in the game is optional. You may hand craft everything not involving fluids.

I like belts so beacons are unfeasible in a lot of situations. Quality looks like a way to improve fps of my base. There were highly controversial features in the past and they turned out to be well designed so I would not doubt that this is the case with quality too.

There is still at least a year left. So the GUI will likely change.

There are lots of questions how quality will actually work. So until then I will wait for the answers before implying bad stuff that isn't there.