Improving replayability
Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2015 11:51 am
<tl;dr> No matter how randomly generated a map is, it doesn't have enough influence on the gameplay, making the playing of each map too similar </tl;dr>
When I first started playing Factorio, I was amazed, and spent many hours building my first factories. However, after starting a third game, a horrible thought occurred to me: I started losing interest in it. Far from being a critique of the game (I still think it's an amazing game, and I didn't regret buying it), I intend this post to show some issues which might be useful in improving replayability.
What happens if I start a new game as not a complete beginner? Independent of how the map is generated and where the resources are,
- I first make a starter base, with the resources available nearby. It is guaranteed that at least a little bit of every resource is around the starting location, and this is a good thing, as it would not add much to the gameplay if I have to spend a lot of time running around at the very beginning.
- This starter base is enough to make building materials and the first very basic research topics
- After this, if the location of the starter base is not the most optimal, I search for a large, unobstructed area, preferably having oil and some water nearby, the main point is that it should be a large land area.
- To this large area I import iron and copper plates via train from the largest mineral deposits I can find.
- After that, I build almost the exact same factory I built on my last playthrough, with at most very minor optimizations.
I think you can see the problem. No matter how the resources are placed, the properties of the map have almost no influence upon the actual gameplay, besides which directions do I build my rail tracks and at which choke points do I build my turrets. This makes every game look exactly the same.
Another big problem is, that almost everything I produce directly contributes to either research or the end goal of the game. And everything is produced from the very limited variability of raw materials. Even with mods which add more types of ores, it's still the same: The same factory, using the same resources, is building the same things, in every game.
I would like to point out how this problem is solved in the following two games:
Transport Tycoon. A game which is cited as one of the influences in creating the railway system. There are various industries, and not every industry is required to make progress in the game. The spacing and placement of towns and industries in a randomly generated map leads to different choices and different transportation networks in every game.
The City Building Series. For those who are unfamiliar with this series, it was a series of late 90's /early 00's games such as Caesar 3, Pharaoh, Zeus and Emperor (citing the most influential games in the series, all using the same engine). These games can be compared with Factorio, because they focused on the extraction and refinement of resources via production chains, but as they were set in pre-industrial times, the resources were transported by workers on carts, instead of on conveyor belts. The end goal of these games is usually either to build a city being able to support a certain population size, or to stockpile a certain number of resources.
However, not every raw material type is present on every map, and not every building is enabled. This means that you can produce some types of wares, and you have to import the raw materials (or even the end products) of other types of wares. Different trade partners also import and export different types of goods. This means different production chains have to be planned for every game. Imagine if this wasn't the case: each of your games would be played exactly the same, only the raw material extraction sites would differ for different maps, the rest of your city will be exactly the same in every game. This would make the game boring very soon.
These games have a huge replay value even today, despite most of them being over 15 years old.
Solution proposals for Factorio
1. There could be a larger variety in the producible goods, some products but especially research packs could have multiple paths leading to them (just like the "food" items in medieval city-building games can be made from different paths, agriculture, livestock, etc.)
2. There could be different end goals, or at least end goals with different, randomly generated raw material requirements.
3. There could be more types of raw materials, and some of them randomly absent from the map. The only way to acquire them would be to trade for them. Either human settlements, or aliens different from the biters/worms (which would remain an aggressive fauna) could have bases on the map, far enough from your starting location, which would provide trade. I mean something completely different from the merchant building. The base should occupy a fairly large area, you should not be able to build anything inside that area, but at the edge of the area there could be a trading station so you can build a train station and inserters. Each such base should have a very limited number of resource types which it would sell and buy, and the resources it buys should be different from the very basic items now producible in Factorio. Instead, there should be different types of "consumer goods", each type requiring vastly different production chains. This means, that depending on what resource types are mineable on the map, and what types of consumer goods the different bases/settlements are trading for, our factories would greatly differ in every game. The basic resources needed to go through the early game should be available, but after that, not everything should be producible on every map. Even without trade, we could make this idea to work: Either different game-winner items would be randomly generated as a goal, or some high-end building materials required for the end-game items could have different methods to produce them, each requiring different production chains, not all of them available on every map (or available only at very large distances from the starting location - so a choice has to be made).
4. With trade stations, a rough economy could be simulated in later versions, depending on supply and demand. The availability of a trade should not completely diminish to zero (just like how the oil wells are implemented) but a trading post should also not provide an unlimited amount of trades/day. Later in the game you should explore to find more trading partners.
5. The only item currently not acquirable through mining and production is the alien artifact. As an in-between before fully implementing something like #3 or #4, there could be a possibility to trade for alien artifacts instead of looting them. This could satisfy players who want to play in a pacifist way, but the main focus is not on the introduction of trade itself, but on the variety of the tradeable items: different trade goods should require vastly different production chains and raw materials, some of them maybe randomly missing from the map (either the raw materials, or the buyers for these items), so that in every game you will be required to build a different factory.
When I first started playing Factorio, I was amazed, and spent many hours building my first factories. However, after starting a third game, a horrible thought occurred to me: I started losing interest in it. Far from being a critique of the game (I still think it's an amazing game, and I didn't regret buying it), I intend this post to show some issues which might be useful in improving replayability.
What happens if I start a new game as not a complete beginner? Independent of how the map is generated and where the resources are,
- I first make a starter base, with the resources available nearby. It is guaranteed that at least a little bit of every resource is around the starting location, and this is a good thing, as it would not add much to the gameplay if I have to spend a lot of time running around at the very beginning.
- This starter base is enough to make building materials and the first very basic research topics
- After this, if the location of the starter base is not the most optimal, I search for a large, unobstructed area, preferably having oil and some water nearby, the main point is that it should be a large land area.
- To this large area I import iron and copper plates via train from the largest mineral deposits I can find.
- After that, I build almost the exact same factory I built on my last playthrough, with at most very minor optimizations.
I think you can see the problem. No matter how the resources are placed, the properties of the map have almost no influence upon the actual gameplay, besides which directions do I build my rail tracks and at which choke points do I build my turrets. This makes every game look exactly the same.
Another big problem is, that almost everything I produce directly contributes to either research or the end goal of the game. And everything is produced from the very limited variability of raw materials. Even with mods which add more types of ores, it's still the same: The same factory, using the same resources, is building the same things, in every game.
I would like to point out how this problem is solved in the following two games:
Transport Tycoon. A game which is cited as one of the influences in creating the railway system. There are various industries, and not every industry is required to make progress in the game. The spacing and placement of towns and industries in a randomly generated map leads to different choices and different transportation networks in every game.
The City Building Series. For those who are unfamiliar with this series, it was a series of late 90's /early 00's games such as Caesar 3, Pharaoh, Zeus and Emperor (citing the most influential games in the series, all using the same engine). These games can be compared with Factorio, because they focused on the extraction and refinement of resources via production chains, but as they were set in pre-industrial times, the resources were transported by workers on carts, instead of on conveyor belts. The end goal of these games is usually either to build a city being able to support a certain population size, or to stockpile a certain number of resources.
However, not every raw material type is present on every map, and not every building is enabled. This means that you can produce some types of wares, and you have to import the raw materials (or even the end products) of other types of wares. Different trade partners also import and export different types of goods. This means different production chains have to be planned for every game. Imagine if this wasn't the case: each of your games would be played exactly the same, only the raw material extraction sites would differ for different maps, the rest of your city will be exactly the same in every game. This would make the game boring very soon.
These games have a huge replay value even today, despite most of them being over 15 years old.
Solution proposals for Factorio
1. There could be a larger variety in the producible goods, some products but especially research packs could have multiple paths leading to them (just like the "food" items in medieval city-building games can be made from different paths, agriculture, livestock, etc.)
2. There could be different end goals, or at least end goals with different, randomly generated raw material requirements.
3. There could be more types of raw materials, and some of them randomly absent from the map. The only way to acquire them would be to trade for them. Either human settlements, or aliens different from the biters/worms (which would remain an aggressive fauna) could have bases on the map, far enough from your starting location, which would provide trade. I mean something completely different from the merchant building. The base should occupy a fairly large area, you should not be able to build anything inside that area, but at the edge of the area there could be a trading station so you can build a train station and inserters. Each such base should have a very limited number of resource types which it would sell and buy, and the resources it buys should be different from the very basic items now producible in Factorio. Instead, there should be different types of "consumer goods", each type requiring vastly different production chains. This means, that depending on what resource types are mineable on the map, and what types of consumer goods the different bases/settlements are trading for, our factories would greatly differ in every game. The basic resources needed to go through the early game should be available, but after that, not everything should be producible on every map. Even without trade, we could make this idea to work: Either different game-winner items would be randomly generated as a goal, or some high-end building materials required for the end-game items could have different methods to produce them, each requiring different production chains, not all of them available on every map (or available only at very large distances from the starting location - so a choice has to be made).
4. With trade stations, a rough economy could be simulated in later versions, depending on supply and demand. The availability of a trade should not completely diminish to zero (just like how the oil wells are implemented) but a trading post should also not provide an unlimited amount of trades/day. Later in the game you should explore to find more trading partners.
5. The only item currently not acquirable through mining and production is the alien artifact. As an in-between before fully implementing something like #3 or #4, there could be a possibility to trade for alien artifacts instead of looting them. This could satisfy players who want to play in a pacifist way, but the main focus is not on the introduction of trade itself, but on the variety of the tradeable items: different trade goods should require vastly different production chains and raw materials, some of them maybe randomly missing from the map (either the raw materials, or the buyers for these items), so that in every game you will be required to build a different factory.