Factorio Forums

This is about the pattern people usually have when they play the game. How long each session is, and whether they're "playing" the game in their heads at all other times.

I finally bought this game a little while ago, on version 0.15.11 or so, and holy hell was that a bad decision.

Don't get me wrong, I've found the optimization, troubleshooting, and fiddling around with this to be engaging. I'm saying that it's sucking up a ridiculous amount of time per gameplay session.

The first time I really started up Factorio to give it a play, I sat in my chair for 20-22 hours. I didn't know what items were reagents to what, so my factory was horrifically chaotic, unoptimized, and had no kind of centralized plan outside of where I was generating my steam power and iron/copper.

Then I look up some more videos online. Some guides and tutorials for different concepts. An important one being NegativeRoot's Central Bus Design concept (link) that lasted for 35 god damn minutes. I had to watch that twice before I thought I understood the concept well enough to apply it to my own builds.

One of the things that started to convince me to play the game, while also warning me about the massive "just one more turn" effect, was a NerdCubed video. The "NerdCubed Loves... Factorio", combined with watching the first look at the game. I don't remember how I stumbled on the game enough to start looking in to it, but I have a feeling that it'd been on my radar for a while.

I'm drawing similaritites to games like Dwarf Fortress, and that's my background when I get into this. Whereas Dwarf Fortress is more about the player imposing rules on a living, breathing world, Factorio is more like the player creating something in a relatively static world. Both games allow a surprising degree of freedom, but the pattern of how the rules are centralized and radiate outwards in nodes is exactly opposite. I have some more notes on this as I was feeling out the idea, if anyone's curious.

So, it's still early days for me in Factorio. I know from other games I've gotten interested in that there's usually a 1-2 week honeymoon period where I get really interested in something, but then I kind of drop off for a while, so there's no indication that this pattern of playing for a stupidly long session will continue.

What's your average gameplay session length like, or is it a bit more complicated than that?

I've started with 12h sessions (just like you ) and now sit in game for 2, 3, sometimes 4 hours (depending on free time I've got). Good luck with your addiction!

The biggest difference between Dwarf Fortress and Factorio for me is that in DF you play the game paused (and only watch it while it is running), in Factorio you play the game while it is running (and can't do anything paused).

I describe Factorio as a catastrophic game for me. It has pretty much taken up all my spare time since I found it.

my sessions are only limited by the fact that I need at least 3-4 hours of sleep every day... wish we would just evolve out of needing sleep already.

My sessions are about 6-8 hours 2-3 times a week

Just let me fix one more thing......

my average is in the 1-2 range. but i have sessions run longer than 6 hours as well on the weekends, especially when building new maps.

I normally go for an hour or two if its a weeknight. Weekends can be longer. I just started a bobsangels playthrough and once in a while I realize the complexity of what I have to set up next and I just give up. I'm like "oh no it's time to set up oil, and I want to set up a huge, well organized oil plant, so it doesn't bottleneck me" "guess that means I'm quitting for today cause that's too hard". But then next time i have my work cut out for me.

Around 2-3 hours, normally. But sometimes the flow gets me, and I'll play Factorio all day. After a patch, I'll think of Factorio a lot for 2-3 weeks, but then other things take over

I go through a pretty consistent cycle of loading the game, fixing things that are not correct from the last session, starting a new project to get whatever the next step in my factory is, noticing I screwed something up, getting frustrated, quitting the game, and starting it again a few hours later.

Each of these sessions last less than an hour, and I go through 1-6 of them in any given day, based on whatever else is going on during that day.