Factorio Forums

I'd like to see permadeath + save&exit option. With save/load it's very hard to lose the game. And losing is fun.

This is Factorio.
Not Dwarf Fortress (A great game btw).

Rhodan wrote:This is Factorio.
Not Dwarf Fortress (A great game btw).

So why Factorio can't have hardmode for more challenging game? If you don't like it then you just play normal or peaceful mods.

I think this would not be too hard to implement if more people have fun in such a playstyle, which I think would be quite a lot. Including online rankings, calculated after some eg Playtime/items created, enemys slain, ore mined, etc

I'd kind like to see permadeath as well. One of the first ideas I thought of for this game.

Might completely change the order you build.

I support this. Dwarf fortress is one of my favorite games.

While not a proper hardmode, there's the lua event entitydied that can track the player's death. But we can't do much with it because (AFAIK) we can't access the save/load system with scripts yet.
If we could, then we'd simply delete the last autosave(s) on death, or, preferably, disable the autosave feature completely oninit or onload.
Going beyond that is pointless, as savescum will always exist.
When/If we do get intentional access to the Player Port, then disabling it would be turning on hardmode.

Personally, I think because the player port is essentially disabled, it's always in hardmode, and you loading a game is you deciding to savescum.
It just happens that most people apparently think that because there's autosave, that means it's not savescumming.
Neither of these of course apply to people not interested in a hardmode.

At the moment when the player dies the game is over. There is only one resurrection mechanism (the player port) which was an experiment a long time ago, but we didn't go forward with it (and probably it will go away completely).

So it comes out to whether to obscure the saves mechanism. Not sure what is the most peoples attitude to this, but there is always a way around. I have been playing some Dont Starve recently and I have decided that I don't want to start over everytime I am killed, so I make a copy of the save folder now and then and overwrite it if I get killed. I know there are mechanisms for resurrection in the game, but quite frankly for me the interesting thing in the game is to try out things and not be all the time afraid of dying.

Factorio is not that unforgiving or full of nasty (yet fun) surprises as some other games (like the mentioned Dont' starve). Therefore I can imagine the hardmode would work.

slpwnd wrote:So it comes out to whether to obscure the saves mechanism. Not sure what is the most peoples attitude to this, but there is always a way around

Well, not really no one has to develop workarounds, because the player has the choice when starting the game and isn't forced into hard mode like "Don't starve", but just like in Diablo "Softcore or Hardcore"

Honestly I do not believe this is needed nor would it be a particularly good investment in development time given that as said, it can easily be circumvented. So really short of removing the ability to save or load at all it wouldn't make much sense. If there is any save and load what so ever the entire investment of time spent on making this 'feature' becomes moot as 'recovering' is still there. It's just been made annoying and tedious to perform.

Now with that being said... I get that people want it I really do. There are a lot of masochists out there with regards to gaming. But this is one of those things where if the game itself isn't designed and built around it... it should fall onto the player themselves. If YOU want to have permadeath. That's easy. Just as soon as you die, delete the saves. Tada. You've just now created permadeath for yourself. That being said, there really needs to be a way to organize and delete saves in the game lol.

But yeah. If you have the will to engage in that sort of hardcore game. You really DO actually have that option within yourself with just about every game. Simply delete save and start over.

slpwnd wrote:At the moment when the player dies the game is over. There is only one resurrection mechanism (the player port) which was an experiment a long time ago, but we didn't go forward with it (and probably it will go away completely)

I hope you don't get rid of it. I mean it's nice to have there as an option. I haven't ever used it myself, but I can see myself using it just because I think it would be nice not to have to worry about dying lol.

Here are my thoughts about hardmode:
1. Disabling of autosaves to achieve hardmode is not a good idea. Why? Autosaves are mostly implemented to prevent players from losing of to much progress when they encounter some game braking bug (game is still in development so there is a great chance for these) or if their computer suddenly shuts down (power failiure). So disabling autosave would anoy everyone who will lose ingame progress due to some bugs or power failiures.
2. Implementing forced save on exit is a good idea but such systems can always be evaded by forcing game shutdown.
3. Deleting of savegames on death is also not such a good idea. Why? As stated above game is still in development and there is slight chance that OnDeath event might be raised at wrong time (bug) or code for savegame deletion might be wrongly called (some other bug). This could result in unjustified savegame deletion.
So I recomend that instead of savegames being deleted they are simply marked as ended.
This could then provide another neat feature of you being able to check your base status at time of your death (game is loaded but stays paused and still alows you to scroll around in mode similar to godmode (you can click on various entities to check their status, you can click on chests to check their storage, you can click on powerlines to check power statistics, you can check production statistics, etc.).
Another thing this would require is limiting player to save only to one savegame while currently player can save its game into any savegame he wants.

SilverWarior wrote: So I recomend that instead of savegames being deleted they are simply marked as ended.
This could then provide another neat feature of you being able to check your base status at time of your death (game is loaded but stays paused and still alows you to scroll around in mode similar to godmode (you can click on various entities to check their status, you can click on chests to check their storage, you can click on powerlines to check power statistics, you can check production statistics, etc.).

Nice idea.

If there isn't going to be respawning, then how will it work when multiplayer comes out ?