Friday Facts #444 - 2.1 Experimental release

[Aldekotan]

If there's one big thing I'd like re: communication, its for Wube to explain what the intention for Factorio is, and explain design decisions, and do a post mortem about the design. Because you're asking for feedback, but from what I see you don't care at all about feedback and are just doing what you want. There's no consistency or justification, just you telling us what's been done.

A big topic would be quality. A lot of people don't like various things about it. What's your response? Why are you asking for feedback when you've already received a lot of feedback and done nothing with it? At the very least make the statement "we have no intention of changing anything", because otherwise it's disrespectful to ask for feedback - you're just wasting people's time.

As it stands, I'm basically done with not only Factorio, but Wube as a company. I'm in disbelief at the way SA has been handled. I don't feel anything anything but negativity toward you, which is a shame because the base game is amazing and I was really looking forward to SA - which could be easily twice as good with some different choices.

Your comment took me by surprise, since up until that moment I was pretty sure it's the other way around and Wube is The most upfront and open to discussions and feedback studio in the gaming industry that I know.

Why do I think that way? Well, many FFF's among the years of development explicitly stated that they added, changed or removed things based on the people's feedback. For example, a feature to set which color of the logic wire goes where inside each object. Another example is the ability to play without quality as a thing, which was added due to massive controversy around it on the forum.

The same goes for other design decisions.
- Why it's only that amount of planets and not more? We couldn't create any more interesting and distinct planets. Doing more of the same would be bad.
- Why there's only that amount of tech and new buildings available on each planet? Because doing more would make the game much harder, longer and tedious, with very little benefits.
- Why adding quality into the game? Because doing the same setups over and over gets boring. And we wanted to add more replayability.
And so on. I didn't search for these topics, it's something I know for sure from those FFF's.

>At the very least make the statement "we have no intention of changing anything", because otherwise it's disrespectful to ask for feedback - you're just wasting people's time.

To me it looks like they want to hear a broader picture, but not necessarily eager to change everything on a whim. Taking only the stuff they see appropriate, something that will fit into the game.

>which could be easily twice as good with some different choices.

Can you elaborate, please? I have some questions to the SA expansion too and base game is arguably more dense and well-thought to me, but I wonder what makes you unhappy about it.

[burninghey]

Waaait a second 2.1.7 did NOT launch for me on Steam, did that get fixed in 2.1.8 or why does this say steam versions not affected?

Need to opt in in steam settings to latest experimental, like they described. Otherwise you are stuck with the wrong version.

On topic: Great work wube! You are an inspiration for other developers, both in communication and fast bug fixing. Happy Holidays!

100000x science was a nice gift. I struggle with 1000x. Now add swimming biters and some hidden achievements please

[Jap2.0]

If there's one big thing I'd like re: communication, its for Wube to explain what the intention for Factorio is, and explain design decisions, and do a post mortem about the design. Because you're asking for feedback, but from what I see you don't care at all about feedback and are just doing what you want. There's no consistency or justification, just you telling us what's been done.

A big topic would be quality. A lot of people don't like various things about it. What's your response? Why are you asking for feedback when you've already received a lot of feedback and done nothing with it? At the very least make the statement "we have no intention of changing anything", because otherwise it's disrespectful to ask for feedback - you're just wasting people's time.

As it stands, I'm basically done with not only Factorio, but Wube as a company. I'm in disbelief at the way SA has been handled. I don't feel anything anything but negativity toward you, which is a shame because the base game is amazing and I was really looking forward to SA - which could be easily twice as good with some different choices.

Your comment took me by surprise, since up until that moment I was pretty sure it's the other way around and Wube is The most upfront and open to discussions and feedback studio in the gaming industry that I know.

Why do I think that way? Well, many FFF's among the years of development explicitly stated that they added, changed or removed things based on the people's feedback. For example, a feature to set which color of the logic wire goes where inside each object. Another example is the ability to play without quality as a thing, which was added due to massive controversy around it on the forum.

My guess, having seen a few posts here and there along similar lines, is that it's because how Wube has interacted with the community has changed over the years. I'm not going to say whether that's for better or for worse (probably some of each, to be honest), but it has changed. And ultimately game design has some hard/controversial decisions sometimes. Even if Wube is still much more communicative than other studios, I think that contrast (change over time) is what causes objections.

[Jap2.0]

Re: FFF furlough—

Last week's post probably could have been above 5 weeks worth...

Also, I would be interested in some bug fixing or optimizing posts like we used to get.

[GregoriusT]

Okay I gotta be honest, I have not seen any "bad" things in the Game that persisted to this day, aside from the following:

- Removal of that one very fun Tutorial Scenario with Compilertron that spawns waves of biters at the end. (could have stayed as a non-tutorial tbh)

- The Productivity Researches not stopping at 30 Levels, resulting in a ton of misunderstanding of the Game's Mechanics. If a Mod really wanted to add beyond +300% or add negative Productivity Modules that justify this, then that Mod could just modify the Techs to make them unlimited again...

- Landmines punching illegal holes into Space Platforms and also potentially instant-deleting the Platforms themselves if you place them adjacent to the Hub to prevent Biter Egg Issues.

- Latency Hiding disabling itself specifically in combat when the shoot button is held, making it impossible to fight Biters neither in person, nor in Vehicle, completely making Tanks useless unless remote controlled and when remote controlled they dont do ANY latency hiding, even out of combat --- All of this multiplayer combat destroying shit is considered intended by the devs and i am still extremely pissed about that.--- If this is really such a huge problem to keep latency hiding enabled in combat, then give us a button to set the Vehicle Turret to FULL-AUTO so that this latency Issue wont happen anymore, since modded Vehicles with Auto-Turrets have absolutely no problems with latency hiding.

EDIT: I KNEW I FORGOT ONE THING!

- Oil Processing being locked behind placing a functional Pumpjack on an Oil Patch, forcing you to do things in order lest you waste time running back and forth to and from the oil patch.

[luc]

So happy to hear it won't be the last FFF :) <3

[quineotio]

Can you elaborate, please? I have some questions to the SA expansion too and base game is arguably more dense and well-thought to me, but I wonder what makes you unhappy about it.

I've written stuff elsewhere. This won't be comprehensive, but is an attempt to summarize and give some examples to illustrate broader points.

The main thing I enjoy about Factorio is building an increasingly complex factory and managing the logistics challenges that come both with growing complexity and growing quantities of items that need to be distributed. SA ruins this for me, because instead of a single complex factory, it's 5 (plus platforms) mini factories, with only a basic logistics challenge between them. By the time I would want to "megabase", I can't, because I'm already hitting UPS limitations just by building what's required on each planet. And much of what I'm doing on each planet is just replicating things I've already done - building power and iron and copper etc.

Quality helps with this somewhat, as well as stack inserters and faster belts etc, because I can increase throughput without adding buildings. I like this aspect of SA. But quality is only useful up to a point, because once I have everything at legendary I don't need it anymore and it becomes a dead system. I think it would be cool if I could continue to scale with quality science, but it's not worth doing this, partially because productivity is just better, and partly because the quality system is quite tedious for that application.

So one of the main things where I think SA missed the boat was having no reliable way to produce quality items without having to deal with a lot of unwanted crap. My suggestion was to have recipes specific to quality, using reagents to reliably produce quality items, so that I could be rewarded with more science by making a more complex factory. Another aspect where this factors in is the productivity research. You get additional productivity without changing your factory at all. I would prefer if there were more complex recipes to get the productivity to reward. The place where I really feel those two things are at the endgame, where the most effective way to progress is to literally do nothing and just wait for productivity research and quality upgrades.

And this brings me to the endgame and the concept of a sandbox vs an adventure. In a sandbox, you have all the tools and can play with them as you want, and the goal is whatever you want. In an adventure there's an end goal - a big accomplishment to work toward. The SA design is partially a sandbox, but not really - there are a lot of restrictions. And it's partially an adventure, but the end goal is really bad, and certain design choices make no sense if SA is considered this way.

First consider SA as a sandbox. I would like to do stuff like build biolabs on other planets. That in itself would open up a bunch of different possibilities. I'd like to be able to build multiple landing pads. I think that would be cool. I'd like to be able to build crushers on planets, and plant Gleba plants on Nauvis. Stuff like this, where the game opens up and I can do whatever. But the design is very strict in what's allowed and what isn't, and it doesn't necessarily follow a logic I can discern other than "the devs want people to play a certain way".

Now consider SA as an adventure. The endgame challenge is to reach the solar system edge, which is an almost identical challenge to reaching Aquilo. It's not a challenge really. And also, nothing you unlock on Aquilo is necessary other than railguns, and even they aren't strictly necessary. And then after that the only two things to do are to gather promethium science, which just makes a number go up, and to reach the shattered planet, which is clearly not intended, and there's no reward (or even acknowledgement) for doing so.

I've played through SA seven times, trying a bunch of different strategies, and each time I'm left frustrated and unsatisfied. I end up abandoning my factory with a hollow feeling because the only thing left to do is wait for technology to unlock. It sucks. And some of the stuff you get on Aquilo is basically useless because it comes so late that I've already built my factories by the time I have it, so I don't need it. Foundation is an example. By the time I get it, I don't need it.

And with regard to playing through, the railroaded design hurts this experience too. For example, quality is not really worth using unless you have recyclers, because it just jams your factory. But if you're integrating quality into your Nauvis factory, you need to design around that from the start. So I basically have to go to Fulgora first, because otherwise I can't use quality. Or if I play with cliffs on, I basically have to go to Vulcanus first, because cliff explosives will change how I play Fulgora and Gleba. This particularly irks me because cliff explosives were attained on Nauvis in the base game - and I could say more on this point with regard to Vulcanus (artillery, coal liquefaction, speed modules). The Nauvis experience is WORSE in SA.

Continuing with being railroaded, other things which are not as critical but also annoying are the oil tech requiring me to go to an oil field first and Kovarex and logistics chests being behind space science. It's less critical, I can work around it, but it's another annoying roadblock that disrupts the want I want to play for no good reason - these things use to be Nauvis techs, but now I'm FORCED to do things in a particular order.

I have other issues with quality that I've mentioned elsewhere and ways I think it could be improved which I won't reiterate here. But there are other things that I think are missed opportunities. I'm disappointed that there is no agricultural stuff on Nauvis, other than wood (and fish I suppose, but it's basically nothing). I think it would be cool if you unlocked the ag. tower on Nauvis so that you could use trees to control pollution. By the time you get it it's redundant for this purpose. Just an example of something I think would be cool, but has a barrier to entry that makes it useless. Give us the recycler when we unlock quality, the ag tower when it would be useful to control pollution, and foundation when it would be useful.

And there's stuff like having an alternative to violence when interacting with biters, but that's probably beyond scope.

Other than that, I feel like SA is just missing content. It feels like 4/5ths of a game. It feels like there should be SOMETHING else at the endgame - the above suggestions about different recipes for quality and productivity would suffice. But also I feel the planets are lacking. As I wrote above, the thing I enjoy most about factorio is the increasingly complex logistics challenges, but the planets' only sustained production is a single science pack. The rest of it is just power and the basic resources. And so because of this, the planets barely interact with each other, and they feel like a minigame.

I like the challenges on Gleba and Fulgora and Aquilo (I find Vulcanus boring), but once I've set up my factory I find myself not even thinking about them for many hours. I don't think this is fixable - the design is baked in now - but it's worth mentioning. I would actually have preferred less planets for this reason. I didn't expect it, but I had hoped that maybe in 2.1 there would be an "all planets on Nauvis" mode. The mods that exist don't look good to me. Simply allowing biolabs on other planets would help a lot with this problem though.

But all this (and this isn't everything) to say, it's impossible to give feedback when we don't know the scope of what's possible. My ideal SA experience will never happen, but some things could be done. But the thing that's really tipped me over the edge was the removal of the space casino. To be clear, I don't even use them, but it's more railroading, a snub to the sandbox and a middle finger to a bunch of people for NO GAIN. It's symptomatic of a design mentality which I think has crippled SA - certainly my enjoyment of it. And it feels disrespectful. Who is this FOR exactly? It only effects the people it hurts.

And then the degenerate idiots come in and derail the conversation and mock and insult without adding anything, but when I spend time writing something it gets moved into the middle of a thread and disappears. And we report bugs and get mocked by the devs "lol that was actually a feature". And they change concrete recycling for what reason? And then when someone says something, "oh, you can just cheat in an infinity chest and void it". Huh? So for this FFF to say "we listen to feedback, please give us feedback"...

[quineotio]

My guess, having seen a few posts here and there along similar lines, is that it's because how Wube has interacted with the community has changed over the years.

This is worth highlighting. The original game had a lot more back and forth and iteration. Major changes happened. The expectation I had going into SA was that this would continue. I understand the desire to complete a basic framework for the expansion in private, but I believe SA would have benefited from earlier involvement, because certain decisions have been baked into the design too deeply for anything to be done about it now.

My guess as to why this didn't happen is because it would have significantly extended development time.

[GregoriusT]

And there's stuff like having an alternative to violence when interacting with biters, but that's probably beyond scope.

My Nauvis Base does not have any defenses, and I am pretty much not getting attacked by Biters on default Settings unless they expand to a closeby area, in which case, yes I am forced to kill the nearby nest, but apart from that it is quite peaceful as long as you keep your pollution and expansions in check.

As for the whole reagents system for quality Items, game-design-wise that is just higher tier Items, and not "the same item but better", which is very linear and tedious if you ever played with Bob's Mods. Quality was supposed to be different than that, not to mention it would irreparably change the way Quality works, so the devs could not possibly listen to you without wrecking the game for everyone who likes the way Quality works right now.

What you are suggesting is basically the territory of "yeah you should do mods for that, because vanilla is fine for most people"

[radical_larry]

Other than that, I feel like SA is just missing content. It feels like 4/5ths of a game. It feels like there should be SOMETHING else at the endgame - the above suggestions about different recipes for quality and productivity would suffice. But also I feel the planets are lacking. As I wrote above, the thing I enjoy most about factorio is the increasingly complex logistics challenges, but the planets' only sustained production is a single science pack. The rest of it is just power and the basic resources. And so because of this, the planets barely interact with each other, and they feel like a minigame.

One big issue seems to be that most design decisions were taken from the mod space exploration. I think Kovarex just had a vague idea about what he wanted to add for space age, which is why they hired Earendel to give it a shape. So that's what we got, space exploration but with engine support. Sure the planets are more varied, but the skeleton of it is identical. Go to planets one by one, set up an outpost, ship resources back, fly far out, done. The ending to space age is just as unsatisfying and uninspired as the ending(s) to space exploration. The restrictions on the sandbox-y nature of the game are also in the same spirit. So we got neither a good sandbox nor a good linear game. The current dev team won't be able to do anything about it either, which is why your anger is kind of misplaced. Feels bad man, but it is what it is.

[GregoriusT]

Factorio is neither Sandbox nor Adventure.

Factorio is a Problem Solving Game, and this type of Game needs restrictions that make it not a Sandbox, and openness that make it not an Adventure. So viewing it from either Lens will fail since Factorio is neither.

[quineotio]

My Nauvis Base does not have any defenses, and I am pretty much not getting attacked by Biters on default Settings unless they expand to a closeby area, in which case, yes I am forced to kill the nearby nest, but apart from that it is quite peaceful as long as you keep your pollution and expansions in check.

That's not really the point. Kovarex said something once in an interview, "you are the bad guy". And a design proposal at one point was to make peace with the biters. I'm not complaining about difficulty. I just think it would be cool to have an alternative to being the bad guy. To be clear, it's not one of my major issues - I normally play with biters off. But maybe I wouldn't if there was some interesting way to befriend biters.

I suppose an issue that is relevant would be to say, I think Factorio has a large amount of design space left untapped, and I wish that development would continue.

As for the whole reagents system for quality Items, game-design-wise that is just higher tier Items, and not "the same item but better", which is very linear and tedious if you ever played with Bob's Mods. Quality was supposed to be different than that,

Not really. For producing buildings yes, but for producing raw resources no. I didn't explain the complete system I had in mind, but basically the reagent thing would be only for raw resources, which wouldn't effect how you do quality buildings. But with regard to your next point:

not to mention it would irreparably change the way Quality works, so the devs could not possibly listen to you without wrecking the game for everyone who likes the way Quality works right now.

This is true, at least in part. It would be possible to combine both systems. You'd have the option of using the system as it is, and/or producing quality items reliably with more complex recipes. This is potentially a way to make the cross pollination of planets more relevant, because you could, for example, require Gleba fruits as a reagent, or uranium, or electrolytes, which would emphasize interplanetary logistics. But this is one of the problems with communicating - I can't completely design an entire game system in a forum post. But this points to several things:

1. I would have liked if there was more communication and iteration earlier, so that kinks in the system could have been worked out BEFORE they became entrenched in how people play.

2. I have other suggestions that I didn't put here would would make the current system better (in my opinion), but I was trying to explain my broad reasoning for my dissatisfaction with SA.

[quineotio]

Factorio is neither Sandbox nor Adventure.

Those are words I used to describe the two extremes between which ALL games live, which is open ended freedom and self made goals (sandbox) vs constrained freedom and developer determined goals (adventure).

These two conflict with each other. By reducing freedom you make the sandbox worse, but by providing too much freedom you detract from the impact of designed experiences you would encounter in more story driven games.

In my opinion, Factorio is best as a sandbox, and therefore reducing freedom makes it worse (with caveats), especially because there is no good payoff at the "end" like you would expect in an adventure game, i.e. you kill the final boss and rescue the princess, credits roll.

In Factorio, the end screen is an arbitrary milestone which I don't think about - it's not the point of the game. The point of the game is to play in the sandbox. The end screen actually runs counter to this, because who wants to leave their factory? That's the game!

There is problem solving in both types of games.

[Hurkyl]

And with regard to playing through, the railroaded design hurts this experience too. For example, quality is not really worth using unless you have recyclers, because it just jams your factory. But if you're integrating quality into your Nauvis factory, you need to design around that from the start. So I basically have to go to Fulgora first, because otherwise I can't use quality.

This is maybe an aside, but it exemplifies GregoriusT's remark that Factorio is a problem solving game.

You've identified a problem: the way you were using quality winds up jamming your factory. Your solution was to wait for Fulgora to let recyclers solve that problem. But there are other methods that solve that problem to varying degrees that people use successfully.

You do sound like you are interested in trying different approaches, but I guess because you're viewing the game as a sandbox-adventure you took your first impressions at face value as just being the way things were? But if you come at this from the problem solving angle, you see a problem to find other solutions to, which will open up new ways to use the mechanic.

[Zinic]

Re: FFF furlough—

Last week's post probably could have been above 5 weeks worth...

Also, I would be interested in some bug fixing or optimizing posts like we used to get.

Those FFFs are great, but no doubt take a great amount of time to write up. I'm content with any type of FFF.

[Jap2.0]

Re: FFF furlough—

Last week's post probably could have been above 5 weeks worth...

Also, I would be interested in some bug fixing or optimizing posts like we used to get.

Those FFFs are great, but no doubt take a great amount of time to write up. I'm content with any type of FFF.

That's true, though I expect that to be true of most types, not just those. I may be wrong but I've kind of gotten the impression that the team wants everything to be more "professional" (for lack of a better word) the past couple years, which undoubtedly makes FFFs take longer to write. And, well, they've done 444 of them already...

[GregoriusT]

The (dum)best solution for earlygame quality is to just add a Steel Chest to the outputs of eacb and every Electric Furnace in your Quality Furnace Stack, that way they will all buffer up a large amount of normal common Plates/Bricks over time, even if quality is somehow clogging your system because you're not using up enough. Or if common is clogging up your system, the Furnaces will keep making Quality Plates/Bricks for a while, so you wont need to solve the clogging immediately and can worry about that later once your Rocket Silo is ready to send up your first interplanetary Platform (or the Nauvis space station if you are slower)

Generally speaking, a lot of the quality clogging can also just be fixed by making a bunch of Storage Chests to ensure you wont clog until you are done getting recyclers on Fulgora.

Always remember, Storage may not be a permanent Solution, but if you know how long you're gonna take to fix the problem, and then double that number, and place a corresponding amount of chests for unused quality Item overflow. Then your temporary Solution will have served its purpose perfectly once you are back from Fulgora with a bunch of Recyclers to void the Nauvis Overflow.

People tend to be fixated on permanent solutions way too much, so they skip the amazing temporary crap you can do to speed up the gameplay. I managed to get to Fulgora in less than 10 hours on default settings, while playing casually and without stress (okay I do have 4200 hours in this game), all because I went all in on temporary solutions that should not last long!

Okay I do regret making the platform temporary because it kinda broke after arriving at Fulgora due to insufficient ammo production. (i dropped all of its contents and parts to the planet at least)

[foxiest_engineer]

Friday Facts always bring a smile to my face

[Borimor78]

IF I could ask for anything, and that's not to say what you guys have done isn't great (except the space casino nerf...), I would love to see more clouds, mist, smoke, fog, etc. For instance, when a rocket takes off, the exhaust is SUPER clean - no smoke. However, the amount and sheer volume of smoke left from the engines of a space platform is massive. And by the way, it looks REALLY well done, imo! So, clearly, it can be done.

On a side note, I'm glad there was an update to the graphics for the rocket launch pad unit, but it seems odd that the pieces being fabricated don't change or represent the rocket that comes up. It's like it's building a never-ending tube. No cone - no cut off - no engine added on.

Pollution coming out of assembly or chemical plants or refineries, etc. comes out and dissipates quickly and cleanly. It would be nice to see the pollution accumulate or dissipate as it is indicated on the map. It would be nice to see it thicken up in the areas where there's a mess of factory units, like a haze, increasing or decreasing based on their output/usage. (Or if there was wind showing movement and it rolls on and out of the area.)

Early morning mists hanging over bodies of water dissipating as the day progresses to afternoon. Vapor or vapor trails coming up off of pipes depending on time of day, location, type of fluid in the pipe, etc. Like a freeze effect when cold fluids are moving through it or heat shimmer for hot fluids. And perhaps a glow effect could be provided similar to heat piping when it gets hot.

I know this may tax some people's systems, of course, and if one's system is on the lower end of ability, that's what graphics slider bars are for. Or add the ability to turn the function(s) on or off, if need be.

[Tertius]

I may be wrong but I've kind of gotten the impression that the team wants everything to be more "professional" (for lack of a better word) the past couple years, which undoubtedly makes FFFs take longer to write. And, well, they've done 444 of them already...

Apropos taking longer. If one FFF needs 4-5 hours to plan and write (and I'm quite sure most of them need more than that), writing 444 FFFs are about one man year's work.