Factorio Forums

Today at night Factorio sales went pass 4000 sold copies. Slow but steady:)

YAY! also, congrats (a shame it took this long though lol)

PS. no applause smilie so :applause:
edit: now I know what woke me up after 4 hours of sleep (I must have felt it pass 4k) LOL

Awesome !

Now I want to make my own game.
Unfortunately I'm not good enough to write a game from scratch

Congratulations!

When the game will be in steam you will get so much money.

Trucario wrote:Congratulations!

When the game will be in steam you will get so much money.

Sorry to sound negative, but don't count on it. There are so many titles on Steam, even though the game is brilliant, it will be difficult to find and convince people.

If hey have got 4k with just indiegoo youtube and not much else (afaik) I think they can get much moar with steam

4000, that's not much - if you consider games with a budged over a few millions. But it's a great amount for a "small" game from only a few devs.
The game is fantastic. It still needs much work, but is even now very playable.

sebastius wrote:

Trucario wrote:Congratulations!

When the game will be in steam you will get so much money.

Sorry to sound negative, but don't count on it. There are so many titles on Steam, even though the game is brilliant, it will be difficult to find and convince people.

ficolas wrote:If hey have got 4k with just indiegoo youtube and not much else (afaik) I think they can get much moar with steam

We shall see how it goes. The truth is, that we can't survive this way for very long time, so we need to hope for the best.
But even in the worst case, if it doesn't go well, the money should be enough to pay for the graphics to extend the game content and allow us to work on the integration during weekends

sebastius wrote:

Trucario wrote:Congratulations!

When the game will be in steam you will get so much money.

Sorry to sound negative, but don't count on it. There are so many titles on Steam, even though the game is brilliant, it will be difficult to find and convince people.

Dude, this game spent me 80 hours. IT WILL SUCCESS.

The problem is: Factorio has a very special targed group. "Normal players" don't play games like this, it's not casual enough. Just wanted to say this. Don't think i want to change the way factorio is played. I will really hurt you, if you change the game to appear more interesting for the casual players! You would really annoy the fans from the start.

I think that if we've learnt anything from the past few years(the indie dev boom), is that there is a huge market for well made indie games, and for games with a crafting/base building theme. I don't think we can call a game like this much "less casual" then minecraft. I think the main hindrance right now is polishing to appeal to a larger group. You don't have to change the base game to accomplish that, just look at the tech "tree" for example, it's obviously a messy placeholder.

Also, I don't like the hardcore vs. casual, since every gaming community considers themselves "the most hardcore". You see this with the CoD players, RTS player, Arma Players, and possibly any niche gaming genre. It divides the gaming community unnecessarily. It just antagonizes people who like a different game, and sounds like elitism.

Anyway, congratulations to the developers! I hope greenlight will come soon and we can expand this community a bit

kovarex wrote:

sebastius wrote:

Trucario wrote:Congratulations!

When the game will be in steam you will get so much money.

Sorry to sound negative, but don't count on it. There are so many titles on Steam, even though the game is brilliant, it will be difficult to find and convince people.

ficolas wrote:If hey have got 4k with just indiegoo youtube and not much else (afaik) I think they can get much moar with steam

We shall see how it goes. The truth is, that we can't survive this way for very long time, so we need to hope for the best.
But even in the worst case, if it doesn't go well, the money should be enough to pay for the graphics to extend the game content and allow us to work on the integration during weekends

Try to see how far you can get without steam to get the game as developed as possible then go for a steam greenlight. It will get you a lot of much needed publicity and give you additional funds to work with. From there you can finish the game and release it

yeah better be well prepared when you hit steam, for it to be a viral success you will need to be as polished and finished as possible on day 1, if other early access are an indication of the indie sales on steam.

that said, I can't wait for it - I already own the game but I use to buy game I like for others to play during the steam sales

Yeah I plan on picking up another couple of copies of this for people I know. But that's a fair time off after it has launched on steam and during one of the sales.

LoSboccacc wrote:yeah better be well prepared when you hit steam, for it to be a viral success you will need to be as polished and finished as possible on day 1

My thoughts exactly. I always try to post up any bugs I can find, much to Kovarexs (needless) chagrin I bet, so Factorio will be polished and kick lots of ass when it hits steam.
It'll go viral. Only a matter of time.

I still think end game is somewhat lacking to achieve viral effect upon steam release. *edited for clarity*

I like the game and really enjoy the concept of factory building, but it feels like the game lacks that "omph" at the end, or what I consider as "end-game".

- Turret spam: not a lot of creativity, simple resource hog.

- Lack of real consequences: I just finished excavating huge iron deposit, in 2 game days all pollution dissipated.

- Biter attacking laser fortification is a boring sight: no explosions, no suspense, just methodical slaughter. Feels more like shoveling snow in the winter, than protecting your precious base.

- Biter base spawn feels like a chore: Impossible to make enclosure and expect them not to spawn inside forces players to create very small fractured bases. I don't mind having multiple bases with railroads connecting them, but when I have to split my bases in half due to biters spawning in the middle - it gets tedious. Seriously I don't mind waves after waves of biters as long as they are coming from outside.

- No real drive for exploration: You only travel to find new resources, sometimes a better place for a base, but that is rare. There is no need to always explore, but having very useful base rather far away might help. Can be achieved by rare large deposits, ruins necessary for future research etc.

- And the most important problem, which developers will end up fighting with the entire time - Game encourages "afk-play": As player base grows there is less and less to do for the player. This is why exploration will be essential, no matter what players need something to do not to loose interest in the game. They need mini-games like "Find rare resource", "Gather army of robots and rain carnage", "Destroy that biter base, so I can plunder resources nearby", "Draw obscene crater spanning half the planet because I can", "Repel huge biter invasion", and so on and so forth.
Without these no matter how players are engrossed in the game, they will start to loose interest. Currently I wager it would happen around 10 hour mark for general populace.

Well, I think you are more or less right in all your points, but I don't see it so pessimistic.

The game potential is enormous and the way they do development is really great.
They already said, that they are unhappy with the turret fighting. They said, that they can add much harder enemies now, because of the repair bots.

I didn't want to say game is doomed. I just stated what points needs to be tackled soon, preferably before steam release in order to achieve maximum effect. Without them Factorio will remain to be a small niche game with many not even knowing of its existence.

@Garm

The points you made are valid. Thanks for summing them up. We are working on this:) Just couple of comments:

- I don't necessarily consider a simplified defense (just build turrets) a bad thing. The main motivation for having them was to eat up resources in the first place. Not saying it will not change, but still the main focus of the game is building and automation.

- New biter bases shouldn't spawn close to player structures. If they do it is a bug.

- The exploration will be more encouraged in the future with scarce resource. However at the moment there is not much to explore. This requires graphical content (different looking biomes).

- The lack of real consequences is a good point. We were talking about the pollution killing the trees in the long run. Maybe there should be other "more permanent" effects.

- The "motivation to play" has been something we have in mind from the beginning. Actually that is the main reason why there is the fight in the game in the first place. On the other hand we found that it is quite interesting "just to manage the big factories": walk around, see how things are working, do small optimizations, etc. Anyway the examples you gave are good inspiration.

can you define what is 'near' - because I had biters spawned so close to the base that the one accumulating for the wave were instead rushing to attack

I think that it may happen because if the spawn check is tile based it may happen for the base to be close for the far end of the tile and the spawn to the close end of the tile.