Player Power Curve vs Biter Power Curve imbalanced

[BlueTemplar]

I'm not sure if you meant to say that, but Factorio is not strictly a single-player game, nor even a strictly "Players vs Nauvis" one !
(And will probably be even less so by the time 1.0 is released...)

(AFAIK some servers already do PvP and "Nauvis vs Players vs Players vs Players vs ...").

Now that I think of it, before any discussion of game combat balance, everyone should play first this mod, ideally in a PvPvN(auvis) setting :
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/pvp-rebalance
(Well, if 0.17 wan't already available, that is...)

[Ranakastrasz]

I'm not sure if you meant to say that, but Factorio is not strictly a single-player game, nor even a strictly "Players vs Nauvis" one !
(And will probably be even less so by the time 1.0 is released...)

(AFAIK some servers already do PvP and "Nauvis vs Players vs Players vs Players vs ...").

Now that I think of it, before any discussion of game combat balance, everyone should play first this mod, ideally in a PvPvN(auvis) setting :
https://mods.factorio.com/mod/pvp-rebalance
(Well, if 0.17 wan't already available, that is...)

I second that, although I haven't used it for PVP yet. Unfortunately the shotgun is still UP in that, but yea. It did feel better in the previous PvE coop game I did.

[CDarklock]

I'm not sure if you meant to say that, but Factorio is not strictly a single-player game

The game I'm using as an example was. I brought that up specifically because Factorio is NOT a single-player game, so there's automatically a stronger justification for enforcing these rules at a game level. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

[SyncViews]

You can make the start of the game almost impossible, but long game, if you want a challenge right now, even in 0.17 from my testing, more limitations are needed, which the player can set themselves.

Question: should we make some of these limitations that the player can enforce from the start of the game? Like, you can turn off technologies and block an entire branch of the tech tree because now its dependencies aren't available?

Some of them the devs can, or mods can easily. But people just abuse the next thing along, so in the name of balance its maybe not so useful.

The final and infinite damage techs are not dependencies for anything, so not researching them is not an issue. Actually I believe a server can even easily disable them without modding (the same way the campaign scenarios do).

I ask this because I've seen a lot of players in other games complain that they are weak-willed people and can't just not use a thing that is sitting right there. Like when you can put insanely overpowered guns on your ship in a space combat game, and they make the game stop being fun because they're... well, insanely overpowered... I've seen people complain that these guns should be removed from the game entirely because (a) they ruin the game, and (b) players should totally not have to employ the minimal self-imposed restriction of "don't buy them." (Which makes a lot more sense in a multiplayer game, but in a strictly single-player game I think it's just weird. "Don't let other people do this because I don't like doing it myself.")

I'm not sure if you meant to say that, but Factorio is not strictly a single-player game

The game I'm using as an example was. I brought that up specifically because Factorio is NOT a single-player game, so there's automatically a stronger justification for enforcing these rules at a game level. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

In a single player, private server or public server with active admin, then player imposed limitations seem enough for me. If you try to do it with the current overall game design people that want to or are just weak willed will move on to the next "exploitative" thing. Sure remove infinite techs, reduce the total bonus to be more balanced. And players just do other things, some are much harder to balance.

Its an issue in PvP or public servers for sure though, but PvP I think needs its own conversation, and leaving a Factorio public server running unattended has all sorts of issues already.

I see most of the complaining in PvP games, which totally makes sense. When all your opponents are doing something its easy to feel you don't really have a choice as repeatedly dying/loosing isn't much fun, you have to go with the "meta" to at least some extent.