Game Goal: Exploitation

[tobsimon]

I recently thought about the game goal from a storytelling perspective.

- The start needs to fit the end.
The current setup of a crash landing immediately attributes the game to the survival genre, as evidenced by many suggestions in this direction, e.g. FOOD!, which (I assume) predominantly come from relatively new players. I don't think factorio wants to be a survival game and apart from the solitude, it doesn't play like one either. So, the setup should change.
I assume, the player arrives intentionally. Which begs the question, why?

- Chekov's gun.
"Every memorable element in a fictional story must be necessary and irreplaceable, or should be removed."
Aliens and alien artefacts currently violate that principle, as evidenced by mods, which remove them from the game, without significantly altering it's story. They are, however, the one alien feature of this otherwise very familiar planet, so, by extension, the one special feature which sets it apart from other planets, which makes them a perfect reason for the player to arrive at this planet specifically.

- MacGuffin.
"Some goal, desired object, or other motivator that the protagonist pursues, often with little or no narrative explanation."
Historicly, when men set foot on previously untouched land (and destroy it in the process), they always do so to exploit it's natural ressources. The ressource the player is after, is probably nothing else than alien artefact. That aliens have to die, in order to obtain it, is ... unfortunate ... for them. By the way, I always identified these orbs as alien eggs, which would make the whole thing even more gruesome. This aspect may make the whole operation illegal, which would provide an explanation for the solitude, apart from pure greed.

Summing up, for me, factorio in it's current form makes sense, if the story goes like this:
- The player lands alone and without ressources as to not attract unwanted attention.
- The goal is to harvest alien artefact, produce something out of it and ship it off into space.
The product from alien artefact probably is a drug (as in stem-cell therapy) or bionic component (see their use in the power armour), which would need a complex assembly. Part of this assembly may only be done in zero gravity conditions, e.g. on the space platform, requiring frequent rocket launches.


Also, in my mind, the space platform can only be built by blueprint and not use any belts or robots, requiring careful planning of the production on the surface.

And lastely, there may be an alternative and sustainable way to get alien artefact, e.g. by breeding, to reduce the amorality of the process.

Critique
- What does the player gain from shipping the product? Some virtual currency?
- While the drug makes for a better incentive, the bionic component better ties in with the rest of the production.

[ssilk]

Very interesting thoughts.

I added it to viewtopic.php?f=80&t=24090 Collection of End-Game-Ideas / Enhancing Endgame
which also answers some of the points.

The summary/goals you made is eventually wrong, cause it can be seen also like, that everything you do on the planet makes things more worse and the best would be to not have crashlanded. In other words: The game reflects itself in a way that the best way to play it is not to play it. (not my idea, someone said that recently here in the forum, I think in General).

[tobsimon]

The game reflects itself in a way that the best way to play it is not to play it.

Yes exactly. That is the strange part. You don't need to do anything, cause you have no needs whatsoever. There is no conflict (except for the moral dilemma, what you are doing to the natives and their world along the way). It's ultimately not very interesting story-wise.

That is why I think the game is not about need, but greed. The story then naturally is one of ressource exploitation.


P.S.: Did I actually "misspell" the subject line to read "exploration", instead of "exploitation", what I meant it to be??? Anyway, I corrected it.

[ssilk]

You can have not only this one view.

For me - as it currently is - is the story about an hero in the style of Robinson Crusoe that tries to find a way back home.
Others might see it as a science-fiction-story of colonizing a planet.
And so on...

[5thHorseman]

Maybe it's a bit of all of these. You're exploring for a megacorporation that exploits planets for their resources, so you have all the knowledge of how to do this stuff but not the ability (hence the need for labs). While scouting this particular planet, a problem with your ship or shuttle causes a crash. Now your goal is to launch a satellite to [call home|teleport you to your orbiter|death ray the biters|whatever] using the only tool readily available to you: Your ability to create these factories.

[ssilk]

Hm. I think that is a little bit too easy, cause I think it would be simple to create some kind of antenna on the surface to call home. I assume, that his home is in the same solar-system. No rocket needed for that.

No, it's much more complicated: The hero seems to find some information, that let him built the rocket (and perhaps later the space plattform).

[5thHorseman]

Hm. I think that is a little bit too easy, cause I think it would be simple to create some kind of antenna on the surface to call home. I assume, that his home is in the same solar-system. No rocket needed for that.

I never assumed that the home was in the same system. And of course the planet has a big magnetic field (all those ores!) and as we all know, magnets can and will do anything the story requires of them.