TL;DR
Supply challenge should be expanded for users with this playstyle (goals, time pressure, and most of the time no enemies), adding leaderboards and ways to compete within the community.
Preamble
Hello! First time poster here. I've searched the forums to see if anything like this has already been requested, and this is my idea for a game design that I feel would enhance the supply challenge playstyle that I have grown to love and honestly obsess over. Though there are a few features listed here, I find it hard to simply think a feature exists in a vacuum without all the other pieces outlined for the whole picture, so to anyone that reads this, thanks for your time
The overall spirit of the Supply Challenge shouldn't change. Goals for each level with time, and submitting time gives you points (more points earlier in the level!) There is something so pure and wonderful about this mode.
Why?
I'm leading with this first over "What", because I think it's most important!
Motivations and Preferences
There are various player preferences/motivations that are tapped into when playing Supply Mode that would benefit greatly enhancing features around.- The desire to have clear immediate goals to learn new concepts, enhance existing knowledge, or demonstrate expertise
- The desire to have a meaningful accomplishment after an evening length of play (1-3 hours)
- The desire to know a user's performance quality
- The desire for variability in order to test one's mental flexibility and effectiveness
- The desire for variability in order to commit to and accomplish new challenges
- The desire for consistency over a period of time to enable repetition and mastery
- The desire for discovery that necessitates repetition utilizing newly learned information that breaks from conventions
- The desire to play with others and still meet previously listed preferences
What?
Supply Challenge Mode 2.0 - What to Play?
Users are first presented with two options to choose from
- Practice Mode
- Competitive Mode
The main things to note of Practice mode are the following:
- Self Competition/Training (reviewing historical progress)
- The ability to play random, custom, or previously played, or Factorio inc supplied seeds (Mimic Freeplay Map Generator with a default set map width/height, timer multiplier for larger or more spread out maps)
- The ability to customize difficulty for a given map - Easy (-30% deliverables,-30% points), Medium (0%), Hard (+30% Deliverables, +30% Points)
Users can select from the following options after selecting "Practice Mode"
- Scenarios (Factorio Inc. designed levels)
- Saved Seeds (Max 10)
- New Game (Mimic Freeplay Map Generator)
- Highest Scoring Session, (bonus, it would be cool to see a graph on when reaching certain production milestones (e.g. 1:00 - First iron plate)
- Graph of historical scores over time (X axis isn't dates, but Session 1, session 2, session 3, etc.), only successfully completed sessions are saved.
All of these are tools that can be leveraged in the competitive section below
In order to enhance replayability, randomness, and possible discovery, the following features could be enabled on a randomly generated map:
- All Tech Already Unlocked - Users have access to everything, they just have to try and meet the delivery goals (+500% Delivery requirements on all levels)
- Iron Man Mode - Multiple Recipes are changed, swapping out certain material types with those that originate from iron ore (resource pinch) (+10% Mining Speed)
- Enemy Attacks On - Enemies attack as you build (+25% time per level)
- It's For Sport! - Goals can include a requirement to kill # enemies in levels
- Polution Solution - Goals require that polution stays under X - (Solar Panels already available to build)
- Uphill Both Ways - The delivery boxes are not near major resource veins and require longer trasport (+20% time per level)
- Convey Your Ideas - A lot of no build areas (cliffs and water) +30% resource mining speed, start with a couple tnt and some ground material that can be placed over water.
- A recipe for disaster - Recipe costs are 'expensive' (+20% points per second cashed in)
Also, map/scenario discoveries
I really liked discovering better oil, and the speed modules in the existing challenge, so let's expand/keep that? give people a reason to explore a little, some random ideas
- Each seed could choose one to exist:
- Random Modules on the map x10
- Bulk Wood - a deposit of a large quantity of wood (500-600)
- Production of X Module has 50% input requirements
- X resource minimum distance from center start point is x screens away
Practice Mode Completion Options
When a user has succesfully completed a map on practice mode successfully, they are able to 'submit' the scenario to be chosen in future multiplayer weekly challenges (these challenges include a min time per level or a +30% timer duration to prevent min/max players from making levels impossible for most people).
They can also select to save the seed to one of their Saved Seeds slots (1 out of 10) and name it.
Competitive Mode
The main benefits of Competitive Mode is the following
- The ability to see your performance against other players
- The ability for Factorio Inc to run short term competitions for re-engagement and adding variety easily
- The ability for multiple people to play together to compete against others
- -stretch goal, the ability for users to challenge the greater community interesting scenarios
- Multiplayer has a limit on user count, maybe 4, all users are recognized on rank/score at the end[/i]
- Weekly Challenge #
- Scenarios
- Stats
To reduce development time by Factorio staff, maps can be similar with slightly altered deliverables, or by enabling various features listed in the Map & Scenario Random Generator Feature described above. More than likely it could take a couple weeks to just design out 52 levels and queue them up to run. The goal though for each level is that they should really try to never exceed 2 hours to play
The weekly challenge also prominently displays a leaderboard (for both solo and multiplayer) of the current high scores (1-10) and your place on that leaderboard with your score (3 users ahead of you, your score, user behind you) that also displays total player count (I want to know I am 535th out of 10,000 players)
*Bonus - your solo ranking amongst your steam friends
Scenarios
These are a prebuilt set of 10 scenarios that users can play that cover early game, early->mid, Mid game, mid->late, and late game development requirements. Scenario 1 should be extremely accessible to new users but still present an optimizable challenge, Later scenarios will force users to play Freeplay to try and understand how late game systems better work.
Each scenario challenge also prominently displays a leaderboard (for both solo and multiplayer) of the current high scores (1-10)and your place on that leaderboard with your score (3 users ahead of you, your score, user behind you) that also displays total player count
*Bonus - Your solo ranking amongs your steam friends
Stats
You can see your stats across all scenarios (historical week challenges and scenarios)
Stats
When players access 'Stats', you can see every weekly challenge you participated in and your ending rank.
- For each historical weekly challenge, The user who got 1st at the end of the challenge is presented as the week's winner, plus showing where your end placement was.
- Stats include # of sessions for each challenge (weekly & normal scenarios)
- Time played
- Total Sessions Played
(maybe more, but running out of steam on this writeup!)
Anyways, hope this all makes sense, ultimately, I tried multiple times to get into freeplay, and though it's fun, It doesn't quite strike the chord that the supply challenge does. After playing so many sessions and then watching Games Done Quick, it only inspired me more to post here. Also, I'm kind of getting tired of saving screen grabs to figure out what my highest score is
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