Factorio Forums

I'm reading the friday facts for some time and i don't like the actual focus on graphics and multiplayer.

Sure -both is great. But i think most people here dont love factorio for its stunning graphics!
We love this game for its new and great kind of gameplay!

But sadly there is no more news in improving gameplay.
What about a better distribution of resources to make trains useful? (A long belt is often much better, cheaper and easier than a train)
What about new creeps and towers to make defence more interesting?

There is not much to talk about since the devs are still in the stabilisation process of 0.14.xx

From the current roadmap it seems like there is lots of gameplay planned for 0.15.
Regarding multiplayer it looks like you haven't read FFF 157 as it clearly states that they won't work as much on multiplayer anymore.
Below you can see the features planned for 0.15.

Factorio 0.15
Planned:

• Nuclear power
• Blueprint preservation (Export/import blueprints)
• Update optimizations (belts + pipes)
• Multithreaded update (This is the first experiment with that, only some entities will get multithreaded update, we will probably improve it later on)
• Liquid wagon + universal barrelling
• High res graphics introduction (This means just some parts of the game will be in high res in this version)
• New terrain
• Gui reskin and possible improvements
• Circuit network improvements and optimisations
• Allow loading games with different mod settings (and automatically download the mods if necessary)

Maybe:

• Scenario pack extension
• Surprise with 8-10 legs
• Interactive mini tutorials

0.15 makes me so excited, but then, I get excited for any new update

I get so lost in what I'm doing that I don't really think about the things I/we're missing and just enjoy the stuff we do have. At the moment I'm just building with robots because it's so satisfying, rip up and replacing my factory as required for better efficiency.

The ONLY thing I would like (in vanilla) that I feel should have been in for ages is the ability to barrel ANY liquid, I'm looking at you Lubricant. Making a factory similar in theory to Zisteau's Meiosis series and that ability would be great.

I have read the Roadmap. But i mostly read about graphics and multiplayer.

What i really miss is a new distribution of the ressources. To make trains really important and useful. At the moment a belt (or pipe) is much easier than a train and gets the job done.

Well. Transportation, logistics and distribution.
One of those subjects is so broad, that I could write pages around it. You should be more specific with what you want and you might post your ideas in Suggestions board, please.
You might have also a look into this:
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=9 Railroad [in Development Proposals, which are proposals, that the devs want to hold]
Suggestions:
viewtopic.php?f=80&t=15330 Transport of Fluids/Liquids via Barrels or Tank Wagons
viewtopic.php?f=80&t=17734 New types of vehicles (train, tank, car, plane, ship...) [for example the ropeway conveyors]
viewtopic.php?f=80&t=21899 Control Train Pathfinder (Passthru stations, Add Penalty)
viewtopic.php?f=92&t=4504 The Fat Controller. Remote train manager 0.4.15

And, yes, you can say of course: That are just suggestions. But again: I could complain the whole day about Factorio, but much better strategy is to say: I would like to have that detail improved like so.

And to your specific request Belts vs. Trains: It's a balancing problem between distance of your "second ring of resources" around your base and speed/costs of belts.
Make it a little bit more distant and it is no question that you need trains... make it too far and beginners could not play it any longer.

Since new players probably want to get some resources with just belts, I don't think this will change in vanilla Factorio. The recent patch already made farther away resources more rich, so you profit from buiding long railway lines already. The RSO mod (https://mods.factorio.com/mods/orzelek/rso-mod) makes resources more distant, so you might want to try that if you want to build long train networks.

To make biters more diverse, and add more towers etc., there are tons of mods that do this. You might want to try these. Vanilla will also get more content, but more slowly, and their focus at the moment is to add more diverse things, instead of more of the same things.

Seems like today's FFF-159 is full of game content..... the focus is in the right places.