Factorio Forums

I think that giving the new Stack Inserter the colour of the old Smart Inserter -- which is now the Filter Inserter -- is a grave mistake that should be reverted early in the 0.13 cycle.

Rationale:

1. It is very confusing for anybody who has played the game in 0.12 that the Filter Inserter -- which practically exactly replaces the old Smart Inserter -- now has a different color. To make matters worse, the color of the Smart Inserter has been re-used for an entirely new inserter with very different behaviour.

2. It will be very confusing for all new player, who have not played the game in 0.12 due to existing screenshots of the vanilla game. Any 0.12 screenshot with a "green" inserter will suggest to the player that it is a "stack inserter". This is just befuddling, to say the least.

3. There's just no good reason for this colour swap. It's very arbitrary.

Please make the "Filter Inserter" light green, and the "Stack Inserter" violet. Please.

Thank you.

+1

This is pretty much a mandatory change.

-1

The filter inserter used to exist and be purple back in 0.7. It has finally returned!

DaveMcW wrote:-1

The filter inserter used to exist and be purple back in 0.7. It has finally returned!

Sure, but a lot more people are used to it being green.

DaveMcW wrote:-1

The filter inserter used to exist and be purple back in 0.7. It has finally returned!

0.7? Are you KIDDING?

How long ago was that?

Everybody is used to the "green inserter" being the Smart (now Filter) Inserter -- and suddenly it's supposed to be purple again because it was like that 3 or 4 years ago?

Oh, and by the way, the filter inserter from 0.7 has not returned, no, the Smart Inserter from 0.12 has had its behaviour changed (stack bonus removed). This is what effectively happened (because all inserters now share the connectivity to the wire network).

It makes no sense -- and there exist a LOT more screenshots and guides and videos in 0.12 than in 0.7, and mark my words, tons of new players will be very confused when they watch those and wonder what the green inserters are (not what they expect, anyway).

It's simply a completely unnecessary source of confusion.

The color of the filter inserter is also too similar to the fast one. I have to zoom all the way in to see which it is.

+1
rule of least surprise

What you want is a system in place. My I suggest the following:

siggboy wrote: Please make the "Filter Inserter" light green, and the "Stack Inserter" violet. Please.

Thank you.

+1

If you think the colors are wrong, feel free to make a mod fixing it

In my opinion it's just habit. Nobody will speak about it in a month or two. Same as with the change of stacksizes.

Klonan wrote:If you think the colors are wrong, feel free to make a mod fixing it

Can't. That disables Achivements.
XD.

I personally don't mind the change all that much... except that they changed it to look identical to my express inserter.


We need more colours, there's just not enough unique ones to choose from.

I think what we need is for every inserter to have a mask layer, and the colour is random every time you place an inserter. any inserter.

Klonan wrote:If you think the colors are wrong, feel free to make a mod fixing it

This would help me personally not having getting used to new colors. It won't help all the players that are confused when comparing 0.12 screenshots and guides to their 0.13 maps.

Klonan, the change is simply arbitrary and not necessary, please don't weasel around that by pointing out that it can be modded (I knew that when I made my post, BTW).

Some things need to be right in the Vanilla game, and most of all, identical across the player base -- color coding of entities is one such thing.

bobingabout wrote:I think what we need is for every inserter to have a mask layer, and the colour is random every time you place an inserter. any inserter.

Does that mean you want every inserter to get a random color when placed? That can't be what you're thinking.

ssilk wrote:In my opinion it's just habit. Nobody will speak about it in a month or two. Same as with the change of stacksizes.

OK, I'm saying it again, and for the last time, and then I will shut up about it:

It's not just about breaking my personal "habit" of recognizing "green" inserters to be the ones that can filter (but make no mistake, I don't like it at all that I'll have to relearn this, not a bit).

You have a lot of material depicting 0.12 configurations. Looking at this material and applying it to 0.13 now has this cognitive tax of having to map "green inserter" to "purple inserter" and avoiding to think about it as "stack inserter".

If you even know that these changes were made from 0.12 to 0.13. There will be plenty of newbies who do not know this and it will prompt redundant forum questions over and over again.

If they had only changed the color of the smart inserter that would be bad enough, but they have actually REUSED it for another, newly introduced, entity in the same patch. That's about as bad as randomly swapping the "OK" and "Cancel" buttons from a UI perspective.

Now, it would be a lot easier to come to term with an arbitrary change like this when there was a good reason for the change. But there just is none. The only official reply we have so far is "feel free to mod it", go figure.

Now I'll go light my nightly candle, maybe the gods will listen.

Edit: Does the forum fix the back to back posting automatically or did a moderator do this? In that case thanks for fixing it and sorry for the back-to-back posting.

There is a good reason for this change, in that the smart inserter no longer exists,
The smart inserter is still green, if you like the green smart inserter feel free to continue playing 0.12

But 0.13 has no smart inserter, it has filter and stack, both of which have an arbitrary color
Overall i feel you have no argument against these colors other than "this is how it was in 0.12",
Which for a early access alpha title, doesn't hold much weight

Klonan wrote:There is a good reason for this change, in that the smart inserter no longer exists,

It still exists, and it is now called "Filter Inserter". For all intents and purposes, the "Filter Inserter" in 0.13 is the "Smart Inserter" from 0.12. The only difference between the two is the loss of stack bonus (shared by all inserters) and the new features that are also shared by all inserters.

The smart inserter is still green, if you like the green smart inserter feel free to continue playing 0.12

I don't want to continue playing 0.12. I want to play 0.13 because 99.9% of the new stuff in 0.13 is awesome. "Feel free to mod", "feel free to not update", "feel free to GFY", what is this attitude?

I've made good points why the change is bad, and somebody else has quoted the "principle of least surprise" which is another great point (and one that should be especially dear to technical teams). So far these points have not been addressed. Why is that?

But 0.13 has no smart inserter, it has filter and stack, both of which have an arbitrary color

Smart 0.12 Inserter = Filter 0.13 Inserter (modulo changes affecting ALL the inserters). I don't understand how that's so hard to see.

You're right when you say the colors are arbitrary. They truly are. It makes me wonder why the fast inserter is still blue, though...

Overall i feel you have no argument against these colors other than "this is how it was in 0.12",

Yes, I do have an argument, you continuing to simply ignore it doesn't change the fact. (Quick rundown: confuses veterans for NO REASON; will confuse new players looking at old material for NO REASON; is just an arbitrary change; has no advantages; violates principle of least surprise.)

Which for a early access alpha title, doesn't hold much weight

The game is 4 years old and has sold 120k+ copies, with many veteran players that have put THOUSANDS of ours into it. Alpha, Shmalpha.

siggboy wrote: The game is 4 years old and has sold 120k+ copies

They've actually sold almost 500k copies on steam

Zeblote wrote:

siggboy wrote: The game is 4 years old and has sold 120k+ copies

They've actually sold almost 500k copies on steam

Wow, that's entering Minecraft territory. Soon they'll be bought out for 1 billion and everything is going to go haywire .

My point just is that this "we're in alpha, we can do whatever we want" argument is getting very stale. I guess we all appreciate that the devs are trying to improve the game from release to release, and nobody cares what label they attach to the game ("alpha", "beta", "early whateva"). As long as the improvements are coming we couldn't care less.

If the devs needs the "we're still in alpha" argument in order to justify changes, then it simply displays a lack of confidence in your own roadmap or a plain lack of good reasons for making said change.

Highly competitive games like Dota, LoL, Heroes of the Storm are rebalanced all the time, even long after they've left "alpha". Nobody minds, as long as the reasons for the changes are communicated well enough (I personally think especially Blizzard are really good at community relations, considering the scale of their games).

Klonan wrote:There is a good reason for this change, in that the smart inserter no longer exists,
The smart inserter is still green, if you like the green smart inserter feel free to continue playing 0.12

But 0.13 has no smart inserter, it has filter and stack, both of which have an arbitrary color
Overall i feel you have no argument against these colors other than "this is how it was in 0.12",
Which for a early access alpha title, doesn't hold much weight

Literally correct. The best kind of correct!

However, siggboy is actually being fairly reasonable. I personally don't feel strongly about this, but the filter inserter in 0.13 can more or less be directly equated to what use to be the smart inserter. It's the most natural fit for where the smart inserter use to be used. Smart inserters are even converted to filter inserters when loading 0.12 saves.

He's correct that it will cause confusion, and swapping the colors around now before 0.13 is too well established is such a simple thing. Brushing the idea off without even contemplating the justification is a tad rash.

Humans will be human, and we are actually in for a year of "but I made what I saw in the screenshot/video!" With no strong opposing reason to change the colors aside from stubborn opposition to change give the guy a break.

He's not wrong.

MrGrim wrote:

Klonan wrote:There is a good reason for this change, in that the smart inserter no longer exists,
The smart inserter is still green, if you like the green smart inserter feel free to continue playing 0.12

But 0.13 has no smart inserter, it has filter and stack, both of which have an arbitrary color
Overall i feel you have no argument against these colors other than "this is how it was in 0.12",
Which for a early access alpha title, doesn't hold much weight

Literally correct. The best kind of correct!

However, siggboy is actually being fairly reasonable. I personally don't feel strongly about this, but the filter inserter in 0.13 can more or less be directly equated to what use to be the smart inserter. It's the most natural fit for where the smart inserter use to be used. Smart inserters are even converted to filter inserters when loading 0.12 saves.

He's correct that it will cause confusion, and swapping the colors around now before 0.13 is too well established is such a simple thing. Brushing the idea off without even contemplating the justification is a tad rash.

Humans will be human, and we are actually in for a year of "but I made what I saw in the screenshot/video!" With no strong opposing reason to change the colors aside from stubborn opposition to change give the guy a break.

He's not wrong.

I agree with siggboy. I'm new to the game and could be brushed off as a nobody, but being that the devs seem like reasonable people who want the game to sell and be enjoyed by people other than themselves, I don't see why they wouldn't appreciate more input.

My guess is that some someone (or some people) have an affinity for the purple filter inserter, so the nostalgia was brought back. It's not too late to revert things. There are potentially-disadvantageous situations (as others have mentioned) to the smart/filter inserter having its color changed and its prior color being re-purposed, but I can't think of any advantage.

In time, if not reverted, it will be accepted just like all other changes eventually are accepted, but this is setting a dangerous precedent. Based on the "because I said so" response of the Factorio Team in this situation, I'm not looking forward to the future design changes based on the mindset of this one--in 0.14, the "distance stack inserter" could be added as a red object, and the "long inserter" renamed to "distance inserter" and have its color changed to pink. After all, the "long inserter" no longer exists, technically.