Friday Facts #375 - Quality

[majorita]

I was very pleased to note that the developers were willing to share playtesting details. It at least reassures me that THEY thought the mechanic works, so no matter my feelings on it, at least I can understand that this wasn't just some crazy idea, they thought it through.

My strongest concern is the naming conventions. Instead of Normal Uncommon Rare Epic Legendary, how about:

Common, Fine, Tuned, Optimized, and... Masterwork. Or maybe replace Masterwork with Perfect, or Flawless. Something with the right 'flair' for Factorio.

[AvengerStar]

Given the positive comparison to gambling in the FFF and Kovarex's comments on Reddit, anything that ameliorates the issues quality has is almost certainly going to be a response to its negative reception and not actually something prepared beforehand.

That in part encompasses what I find to be rather worrying about this announcement as a whole: a lack of clear direction for quality. In the blog post, Kovarex is excited to implement this mechanic as it partially aims to reproduce the feeling of gambling, yet earlier in the same paragraph, he mentions that scaling such operations large enough becomes statistics (the way to play with quality in later stages). There's presumably a very small window where the gambler's high would even apply, and to very few items at that like personal equipment. Anything else that you would actually want in high numbers and that would be sufficient as "good enough" requires massive upscaling to counteract the randomness anyway.

It's trying to do both conflicting design approaches with randomized output, switching over with progression, yet one is so insignificant and very quickly glossed over across a playthrough that it might as well not be a selling point.

Perhaps we've yet to see the whole picture, but I do agree that the confidence exuded from the announcement makes it clear that Wube, or at least Kovarex, are/is pretty invested in this mechanic as is, already. My concern is that only the superficial problems like the naming convention are resolved while the more glaring issues regarding samey solutions across the entire factory in light of this mechanic, or inventory/belt bloat, or whatnot, are left unaddressed, or even unacknowledged entirely.

[mmmPI]

The base game was developed very publicly for quite some time. The expansion will be launching straight to 1.0 after being developed in secret without anywhere near the level of feedback - everything should be treated with skepticism, especially for features with the sunk cost this one has.

What about spidertron ? I think it's a reason to not be skeptic but rather confident

[eclay42]

Created an account specifically to discuss this proposed feature.

My gut reaction to hearing this news is a resounding NO. Like many others have said, I do not enjoy the existing RNG mechanics in Factorio with uranium, and this feature would extend that to the entire game. Also echoing many others that the currently proposing naming scheme for the quality tiers is awful and does not fit with Factorio at all.

After giving it some thought, I recognize that there are many real life processes with yield rates (which the uranium processing mechanics seem to be attempting to implement). Implemented properly, I can see some potential for this feature in the game where at larger scales the RNG doesn't matter anymore and the player is just dealing with statistical yields.

However with statistical yields, this applies to the processes and not so much the end product since as long as all the parts meet minimum tolerance all the end products are going to be identical unless they're hand made. Like I can understand when manufacturing some parts like gears there could be some % yield where the vast majority of the components come out as some quality, with a few being a tier higher or lower. Higher tier recipes would require higher quality components so the manufacturing chain would need to be upgraded, but we already have this game progression mechanic covered with more complex components so this is a bit of a redundant system.

If the devs are dead set on keeping the proposed quality system, here's what I would suggest:
Change the names and colors and reduce the number of quality levels to 3 (or 4 if the devs intend on adding another tier as part of the expansion). Try to match the belts for example for internal consistency, no need to add tired rarity tropes to Factorio where they don't make sense. Lots of suggestions have been given for better tier names, honestly I would say to just use numbers since what quality is ultimately conveying is machining precision/material purity and not some silly abstract concept like rarity which doesn't make sense.

Have the current yield rate for everything be painfully obvious in the UI. No guesswork/external calculators, just show the % for each potential output when an assembler is selected.

Make the quality system active from the start in terms of showing item quality so right from the start players can start saving up higher quality components for weapons/armor/etc.

This may have already been covered in the info provided on this proposed feature, but for intermediate/end products the output quality cannot be higher than the quality of the input materials. To get a top quality end item, all of the ingredients must also be top quality.

Make it so hand crafting has a 100% success rate to avoid the truly awful feeling of saving up a bunch of top quality components only to have the RNG gods curse the player with a failed crafting attempt for their ultimate power armor. This is a great way to get a LOT of angry players. This would be countered by the fact that the player cannot smelt ore, so they still have to rely on the smelters for the base materials and the stone furnaces could have only a very small chance of higher quality since they can't control the material purity properly. Also, with max quality modules, allow a top tier assembler to also have a 100% success rate so the player can eventually work towards completely eliminating RNG. Maybe have some items where the top quality can only be reached by using a properly kitted out assembler and they can't be hand crafted due to the complexity of the assembly (similar to how some recipes requiring liquids can only be crafted in an assembler).

Add some way of allowing materials to be reprocessed to a higher quality besides just the hugely inefficient recycler. For example, feeding iron/copper/steel/etc back into furnaces with something similar to the Kovarex enrichment process where some other material can be added to draw off impurities.

[NGMZero]

this update seems to have a lot of mixed opinions, I would like to add my opinion and say I am excited about this mechanics. It adds scrap mechanics for those who want to try them without forcing them on us.

I am also the kind of player who usually don't play (vanilla) game after the rocket launch, and my longest save was 80 hours in a death world with my brother where we both were clueless trying to get the finishing all research achievements, I was never Into megabases, and they felt more labor than actual new gameplay to me, I also never used boosting beacons for anything other than smelters. as my nephew put it, Instead of building a Megabase we can aim to build a super factory, a smaller factory with high outputs. and I think this will be beneficial when we have to start new bases on other planets. having a smaller footprint factory should make logistics easier.

And no one stopping those who enjoy Mega factories from doing both, can't wait to see the insane science per minute numbers at 60 UPS players will achieve in Space Age.

[ScottyWired]

Makes me think of real-life semiconductor manufacturing. There's a fairly high defect rate, and the different price tiers of product are based on random chance. The best chips get the highest performance, slightly defective chips get bumped down, and most chips get recycled.

[morhp]

Created an account specifically to discuss this proposed feature.

[...]

Make the quality system active from the start in terms of showing item quality so right from the start players can start saving up higher quality components for weapons/armor/etc.

You haven't understood the mechanic. Without quality modules inside machines, which are a mid/late game item, you won't get better/different qualities at all. By default, everything is just normal quality. The only thing they do is hide UI filters and so on until it's unlocked, because it would be confusing for new players.

[DeiaDaemondelle]

Maybe we could name them something like Standard, Revised, Machined, Fine Tuned, and Perfect. That or a mark system like Assembly Machine 2.2

[DanGio]

Sorry, I already voiced my opinion in favor of actual naming of quality using rpg rarity theme, but here's another thing : industry themed naming will clash with some vanilla items, and even more mod items.

"Standard advanced circuit" is confusing IMO. "Rare advanced circuit" is more clear. You get a prefix which is instantly identified as the quality modifier, and then "advanced" that defines the second tier of circuit.

Getting the wordings way different from each other helps clarity.

[mmmPI]

Make it so hand crafting has a 100% success rate to avoid the truly awful feeling of saving up a bunch of top quality components only to have the RNG gods curse the player with a failed crafting attempt for their ultimate power armor.

This is already the case, you already have 100% chances to avoid a fail craft, if you handcraft with good quality component, you will have the same quality in output, GUARANTEE .

If you want a quality UPGRADE, which depends on RNG, you CAN use an assembling machine with quality modules, and from basic component maybe you will not have an upgrade in quality in the output maybe you will, but here too you have 100% success rate to retain quality and so you can never fail your attempt at crafting a ultimate power armor if you have saved the high quality component.

Also :
How come you can have quality upgrade for material when recycling ?
=> If i was to recycle my old computer i could smelt all the metal, and this metal can be used again in more recent ( superior quality ) component, with some losses that's quite similar to the game i think.

[Mango]

Sorry, I already voiced my opinion in favor of actual naming of quality using rpg rarity theme, but here's another thing : industry themed naming will clash with some vanilla items, and even more mod items.

"Standard advanced circuit" is confusing IMO. "Rare advanced circuit" is more clear. You get a prefix which is instantly identified as the quality modifier, and then "advanced" that defines the second tier of circuit.

Getting the wordings way different from each other helps clarity.

I get your point, but that just depends on the naming you choose. Having 'advanced' quality of advanced circuit is obviously problematic, but there should be no problem if you choose it carefully.

There are many suggestions in the thread.

My proposal would be:
1 Advanced Circuit
2 Fine Advanced Circuit
3 Improved Advanced Circuit
4 Exceptional Advanced Circuit
5 Perfect Advanced Circuit

[Dixi]

I like the idea of quality very much! At least it's something bright and new to grind, since currently mega factory usually just aim for RPS or k SPM. It looks so interesting and new! All other Factorio following games just changing visuals, almost without any interesting innovations in the gameplay. That disappoint me a lot . Techtonica, Foundry, Factory Town, and several others, can't remember them all. They just copy general idea, almost always skipping signal wires and all related stuff, without any interesting innovations. The only two that are really different and worth time are Satisfactory and DSP.

Please, leave quality names as is, modders can change them later as they like. Rare, Legendary and so on are so standard and easy recognizable for any MMORPG fan! People who do not like them, probably just forgot to waste a few years of real time in MMORPGs .

In whole idea of reprocessing, refining resources with medium to low percentage chance of needed output is exiting, that's why I like Industrial Revolution, and it's 1st implementation is still the best, from my point of view. Unfortunately it works only on 0.18.12 version of base game, so I have to keep separate install, that miss a lot of new improvements.

P.S. I currently stuck at 4k SPM (4 RPM) in Vanilla, about 2k SPM in Industrial Revolution 1, and only 250 SPM in IR3.

[Platinius]

What I always liked about Factorio are the simple mechanics that provide a lot of freedom, like the entire 2-lanes-per-belt system. You can really juggle items around, especially in spaghetti bases.

The quality mechanic does not seem to add to that. To use quality you need a lot of extra belt work, which looks like it gets repetitive very quickly. There is no incentive to add quality modules to mass productions, because the logistic cost outweighs the benefits. So here is my Idea:

The quality of an intermediate product affects the efficiency of the process, i.e. a "uncommon" (the names..) iron plate counts like 2 regular plates.
Machines can mix different qualities in their input, and the efficiency is averaged over them. Higher quality materials -> less waste -> higher efficiency. Productivity modules would still give a higher boost, but at the cost of a higher bandwidth requirement.

You could then add quality modules to machines without worrying about clogging your factory, but still sort out the tiers that interest you. The higher tiers now additionally work as a compact transport system. There is an incentive to split machine output for local and remote production, while keeping the highest qualities for personal use. A few strategically placed filters could provide a large benefit, without the nightmare of handling five different outputs for each recipe.

PS: This would require something like mixed quality stacks, and I don't know how much work the implementation would be without knowledge of the current code. But every stack having an effective size along the actual number of items does not sound impossible to my ears.

[malecord]

I don't understand your need to introduce legendary quality items if there is no Real Money Factorio Auction House.

But maybe this is a feature to be announced on the first DD in april?

Also I'm offended that my avatar is just a plain common fast inserter. Clearly I'm at least an epic fast inserter, if not legendary.

[DanGio]

I get your point, but that just depends on the naming you choose. Having 'advanced' quality of advanced circuit is obviously problematic, but there should be no problem if you choose it carefully.

There are many suggestions in the thread.

My proposal would be:
1 Advanced Circuit
2 Fine Advanced Circuit
3 Improved Advanced Circuit
4 Exceptional Advanced Circuit
5 Perfect Advanced Circuit

That's better, sure. But, maybe it's just my brain, I still read "Uncommon Advanced circuit" a few millisecond faster than "Fine Advanced circuit", despite it having more letters. I think it's because the rpg vocabulary immediately triggers the right connection and there's no place for thinking "right, is this a tier or a quality?"

Not a game killer though, just ease of reading, and I'll get along with any of the good solutions.

[Fuuryuu]

This is an uncomfortable addition. However, 100% these tier names need to change. They don't fit even 1% with the games aesthetic.

You should be able to alter the names once they release, by adding custom localization for the rarities.

[toman]

I get your point, but that just depends on the naming you choose. Having 'advanced' quality of advanced circuit is obviously problematic, but there should be no problem if you choose it carefully.

There are many suggestions in the thread.

My proposal would be:
1 Advanced Circuit
2 Fine Advanced Circuit
3 Improved Advanced Circuit
4 Exceptional Advanced Circuit
5 Perfect Advanced Circuit

That's better, sure. But, maybe it's just my brain, I still read "Uncommon Advanced circuit" a few millisecond faster than "Fine Advanced circuit", despite it having more letters. I think it's because the rpg vocabulary immediately triggers the right connection and there's no place for thinking "right, is this a tier or a quality?"

Not a game killer though, just ease of reading, and I'll get along with any of the good solutions.

My two cents is that the tiers as presented in the FFF are not intuitive to me. Why is legendary better than epic? What does it mean?

[DanGio]

Why is legendary better than epic? What does it mean?

It's a RPG / MMORPG trope. I never played World of Warcraft, but I know this Normal/Uncommon/Rare/Epic/Legendary thing from another games, like Secret World. You find loot killing enemies, and harder enemies drop better loot. Legendary loot is very hard to find and requires a lot of time.

It works great because every RPG player recognize this immediately without any explanation needed, regardless (?) of the game they play (maybe not) (but I think a lot of games took this Normal/Uncommon/Rare/Epic/Legendary thing)

EDIT : what's amusing is that it's so recognizable that players thought Wube was RPGing the game, which is not what's happening.

[dog80]

amazing feature!

[Tertius]

I also don't feel the naming of the qualities is right. I admit it is immediately recognized by the players, even the order is immediately clear. However, it's just not fitting the character and theme of the game. It's not a game where you actually find rare and seldom loot dropped by slain enemies, the harder the enemy, the better the loot.
My opinion is to find more technical and factual descriptions. Especially "uncommon" and "rare" are a laugh considered Factorio is about mass production.

There were really good proposals. I collected some I find best:

Normal, Fine, Improved, Exceptional, Perfect
Decent, Good, Great, Excellent, Perfect
Basic, Enhanced, Refined, Precise, Ultimate
Standard, Improved, Good, Excellent, Perfect

You have to find descriptions where the order is immediately clear.
In my opinion, the start and the end is clear:

Normal
...
...
...
Perfect

Instead of "Perfect" you can use "Ultimate", but you can not have both. It's both felt as highest tier. I like "Perfect" better.

What do we have in between?
Fine, Improved, Exceptional, Good, Great, Excellent, Enhanced, Refined, Precise

"Improved" is not accurate enough. Everything can be improved at any level.
"Enhanced" the same.
"Refined" the same.

"Good" is about the same as "Fine". I prefer "Good". It is more clear than "Fine", at least for me as non native English speaker.
"Exceptional" and "Excellent" are about the same. Both express definitely better quality than "Fine" and "Good". I like "Exceptional" more.

So we have so far:
Normal
Good
...
Exceptional
Perfect

May be it is one of the improvements again after all.
"Enhanced". Is "enhanced" better than "normal" as well as "good", but less than "exceptional"? It's the weakest comparison from all, but I can't think of anything else.

Normal
Good
Enhanced
Exceptional
Perfect

Ok. That's my naming suggestion, made up of many of the previous suggestions.