Peak Factorio 17.79 and the hot mess of .18 and 1.0/1.1

[aka13]

Well, if it is not about oil, then its simply about taste. You consider the gretech/angel/whatever it is in factorio to be the desirable and interesting form of gameplay.
I myself find this tedious, and find the beauty of factorio in logistical challenges, as well as ressource management.

Angel/Bobs are a small fraction of factorio players, and saying they are mountaneers is just a rather disappointing attempt at saying "my taste is better than your taste".
I have 3 different vanilla saves with each having about 300hours riht now. I'd guess 10 more perished in time since before steam.

Tedium does not equal to complexity, your opinion on what is challenging, and what not does not equal to objective facts -
The only argument you had was oil, and now it's not even about oil anymore, but purely "stop liking what I don't like".

[ssilk]

A large portion of the Factorio player base wants more complexity and less ease of use. The number of downloads of said mods underwrite this statement.

It doesn’t fit to your argument , because you cannot know how many of your million would have stayed to download those mods, if Factorio would have been more complex to play.

Yet the direction Factorio went after the Oil change is "making the game more simpler and easier to understand".

As a moderator I would say: yes, that’s what many posts are about.

To use my allegory, the Mountaineers are those people that like to play those mods, that build mega bases, that funded the kickstarter, that played through all versions etc etc. The taxi passengers in that sense, are the people that want easy games, pretty colors, tips and tricks, fancy sounds and a well written tutorial and all those other trinkets, they play 50 hours, launch a rocket and leave.

Yes, of course. Most people play because for entertainment and amusement. Gaming is about that. But Factorio was and will always be a niche game. How many players have suggested to make crafting faster/easier and I need to tell them, that Factorio is about automation, not crafting things yourself?.

That’s also the clear red line, where I would say if that changed it’s not longer Factorio. But streamlining a really complex game, removing the most frustrating elements (which oil really was), I don’t see the bad in it. In the end i also play to have good thought after a hard day, and not to solve the riddle how to make oil and then need to destroy everything, because I could not know at the beginning how it continues.

This strategy enables now to have a DLC (aehm, in the next 6-36 month ), it enables also to have such mods you want to have as vanilla (because the api is so well designed that modding is easy) and so much more.

Because you forget in your rant, that Factorio is made by people, which put in their heart and mental strength to make Factorio a good game. But they cannot do that for free. They need to live from something. And if they cannot live from Factorio they will find another job. But we wouldn’t have nothing to play with. Which concludes me to say, that it would be really stupid to make a game extra difficult so that it is harder to sell, because it’s harder to play.

There is enough earning potential in the Factorio base that wants more complexity.

No, you want more complexity in the vanilla, which is stupid seeing from an economic perspective.

I would say I want modders, that can make a living from making mods for Factorio, because Factorio introduces a way to pay modders a small fee for playing a mod longer than some weeks. A fair way to make more and high-quality mods that satisfies more people which wants to play Factorio in a different way - like you.
A dream, I know.

[jodokus31]

...
To use my allegory, the Mountaineers are those people that like to play those mods, that build mega bases, that funded the kickstarter, that played through all versions etc etc. The taxi passengers in that sense, are the people that want easy games, pretty colors, tips and tricks, fancy sounds and a well written tutorial and all those other trinkets, they play 50 hours, launch a rocket and leave.

Hi, good you came back.

My assumption:
The most people, who are potential players, try the game (probably the demo) for 2-5 hours and if they don't have any success and get caught by the fascination, they will leave. A big fraction watches gameplay and explanations on youtube/twitch and get caught by that and/or learn the things, they don't understand.
But in the end, factorio is not a game who attracts the mainstream.
The biggest hurdle is IMO to get players to play long enough, that they invest in learning the game more and more.
I remember, that I had a hard time to get used to controls, but I pressed on, because I was really fascinated by the trains tutorial mission and then instantly started Bob/Angels, which blew my mind. But it was a lot of time investment.
The "pretty colors, tips and tricks, fancy sounds and a well written tutorial" is something, which makes the game as basis better for vanilla and modded gameplay.
Complexity itself is very easy to achieve and mods are the place for insane complexity. Vanilla is rather a well balanced experience and whether the basic oil has 3 or 1 output is only a nuance. The posted mod changes it back in no time. I didn't like the change myself, tbh.

[tuhe]

This thread would be much better if the OP explained which specific game-play elements of old-style oil processing are superior to the current way; it would potentially be useful information to the developers and mod-creators, and it would allow for constructive counter-arguments.

I have only played 1.1, and oil seemed like an extra challenge because the first setup deadlocked and it have to be fixed with signals or cracking. IMO, it is in a good place compared to the rest of vanilla: A step up in complexity and probably the first thing you build that 'stops working', but still fairly easy to fix by clicking around and figuring out why it stopped.

I don't think difficulty/lack of difficulty has a lot to do with attracting new players. I found the game very accessible because of the demo/informatron/the wiki/youtube, and I think what attracts some people to this game is simply that you spend the first few minutes wacking away at trees and stones and get a certain expectation of how fast that is, but then you build the first small setup where ore is automatically mined, put on a belt, picked up and turned into a plate and put in a box. I don't know why that is so satisfying to do/look at, but it just is. I have never played a game where learning new mechanics was this rewarding (trains, bots, etc.).

Without additional details/suggestions for improvement, it is hard to understand why the OP cannot just play a mod that adds complexity to the game. I cannot help thinking that if oil used to be much 'better', a mod to revert oil processing would be more popular than it is.

(for what it is worth, I would agree with the OP that 'harder' factorio is more fun -- I am just perfectly happy getting that from mods and a harder vanilla might have broken me on my first playthrough)

[quyxkh]

The only concrete example given is oil, and the problem with that is, the three-fluid puzzle's still in the game, and is still not optional. Nobody launches a rocket without solving it.

[JimBarracus]

Mods like Bobs and Angels, Py, Krastorio, Space Exploration have in total millions of downloads. A large portion of the Factorio player base wants more complexity and less ease of use. The number of downloads of said mods underwrite this statement. Yet the direction Factorio went after the Oil change is "making the game more simpler and easier to understand".

And thats the reason why mods exist.

Oil is usually the point where most new players get stuck. Simplifying basic oil was the right thing to do. It made the access to the game way easier. I know several people that lost the motivation because of oil and they stopped playing. It can always get more complex but for beginners it can be overwhelming and they simply quit. The devs could have not cared, because at this point a refund is usually not possible via steam (more than 2h playtime) but they improved the game for beginners.

You can do anything only once for the first time and if that experience is not what you expected you might not bother to try it again.

One reason for developing Factorio was, if I am not mistaken, that Minecraft was too "simple" and had no "production". Hence me mentioning the spidertron, its the ultimate convenience vehicle.

I think one of the reasons was that minecraft was not scaleable. In the end its just you with a pickaxe.

The taxi passengers in that sense, are the people that want easy games, pretty colors, tips and tricks, fancy sounds and a well written tutorial and all those other trinkets, they play 50 hours, launch a rocket and leave.

Is there anything bad about it?

[cpy]

Last time I played unmodded factorio was maybe in 2019/2018? I find base game too easy, I always have some complex mods such as py mods/bob/angel etc.

So only you're to blame if you chose to play it on easy mode. If you don't take advantage of great mods out there, then only you are to blame.