Friday Facts #177 - Difficulty settings

[Xeanoa]

I am unhappy. I bet you could have told us that a month ago. Most likely more. And even last week when at least somebody did talk about it (which I much appreciated), it sounded like MAYBE end of Feb or if that doesnt hold up early March. now its an optimistic end of March which means most likely April+.

As much as I respect the work which is Factorio, I do not feel good at times when I visit this place. When people talk about some issues they have with the game, they get told "Turnaround time for bugs is like half a day max" (which almost sounds like bragging) and "oh, that one is already fixed in 0.15!". When 0.15 is a version at least a month(s) away for customers so they have to live with or work around their issues until then. Oh well. Someday.

This is an indie game, and all the devs are focused on bringing out 0.15. Bringing out updates for minor bugs is not worth it at this moment

Depends on the time frame, in my opinion. I don't think I have ever heard "indie development" used as a full excuse to not release bug fixes. I completely understand how being told that bugs are fixed but being held off for 0.15 when the release of 0.15 continues to get pushed back could be quite frustrating to people that purchased the game.

I'm in the same boat. To me, as a consumer 'fixed for 0.15' means 'not fixed'. 0.15 is a future release, we have 0.14 now. And 0.14 has, apart from the network fix, not seen any bugfixes for months. This leaves the same feelings as an abandoned game. Or that the devs don't care much about those playing right now, their customers.

[SaintFlow]

I am unhappy. I bet you could have told us that a month ago. Most likely more. And even last week when at least somebody did talk about it (which I much appreciated), it sounded like MAYBE end of Feb or if that doesnt hold up early March. now its an optimistic end of March which means most likely April+.

As much as I respect the work which is Factorio, I do not feel good at times when I visit this place. When people talk about some issues they have with the game, they get told "Turnaround time for bugs is like half a day max" (which almost sounds like bragging) and "oh, that one is already fixed in 0.15!". When 0.15 is a version at least a month(s) away for customers so they have to live with or work around their issues until then. Oh well. Someday.

This is an indie game, and all the devs are focused on bringing out 0.15. Bringing out updates for minor bugs is not worth it at this moment

Depends on the time frame, in my opinion. I don't think I have ever heard "indie development" used as a full excuse to not release bug fixes. I completely understand how being told that bugs are fixed but being held off for 0.15 when the release of 0.15 continues to get pushed back could be quite frustrating to people that purchased the game.

I'm in the same boat. To me, as a consumer 'fixed for 0.15' means 'not fixed'. 0.15 is a future release, we have 0.14 now. And 0.14 has, apart from the network fix, not seen any bugfixes for months. This leaves the same feelings as an abandoned game. Or that the devs don't care much about those playing right now, their customers.

I think this pretty much sums up my thoughts in only a few words. thanks man!

[Klonan]

I am unhappy. I bet you could have told us that a month ago. Most likely more. And even last week when at least somebody did talk about it (which I much appreciated), it sounded like MAYBE end of Feb or if that doesnt hold up early March. now its an optimistic end of March which means most likely April+.

As much as I respect the work which is Factorio, I do not feel good at times when I visit this place. When people talk about some issues they have with the game, they get told "Turnaround time for bugs is like half a day max" (which almost sounds like bragging) and "oh, that one is already fixed in 0.15!". When 0.15 is a version at least a month(s) away for customers so they have to live with or work around their issues until then. Oh well. Someday.

This is an indie game, and all the devs are focused on bringing out 0.15. Bringing out updates for minor bugs is not worth it at this moment

Depends on the time frame, in my opinion. I don't think I have ever heard "indie development" used as a full excuse to not release bug fixes. I completely understand how being told that bugs are fixed but being held off for 0.15 when the release of 0.15 continues to get pushed back could be quite frustrating to people that purchased the game.

I'm in the same boat. To me, as a consumer 'fixed for 0.15' means 'not fixed'. 0.15 is a future release, we have 0.14 now. And 0.14 has, apart from the network fix, not seen any bugfixes for months. This leaves the same feelings as an abandoned game. Or that the devs don't care much about those playing right now, their customers.

I think this pretty much sums up my thoughts in only a few words. thanks man!

I mean, we had 21 bugfix releases in 75 days for 0.14, and we could keep going indefinitely bugfixing, for increasingly smaller and rarer bugs. At a certain point we have to shift focus from what we consider a stable version, and more to developing features for the next version.

This has always been the factorio development cycle, and if there were any major game breaking or large scale bugs still in 0.14, we would release a bug fix, which we recently did with 0.14.22.

Other than that, in many cases a lot of bug are fixed for 0.15, even bugs that you will never see, and a lot of these fixes become dependant on other fixes and changes within the codebase. Back porting all these changes for the sake of fixing a minor bug in 0.14 has a greater chance of introducing more bugs, as well as being overly complicated and difficult to manage.

In the end you will just have to trust us. All we want is to make the game as great as possible, and we truly do try to fix and solve as many bugs and issues with the game that we can find. We know the break in updates in painful, thats why we post the Friday facts, so people can stay informed about our progress, as well as give us valuable feedback and input on the direction we are taking things with the game.

[hylomane]

I always check FFF on every Friday hoping to hear some good news about the next release. I've been waiting for a while now because I want to play a game with the new blueprint system. I'm kind of tired of having to reinvent the wheel and it makes the game very tedious. That said, my game is on hold at the moment and I was hoping to see some positive news.

I am a bit perplexed as to why some features are being worked on at all. I guess if you have people standing by while other work is being done you have to make them work on something, but still, it raises an eyebrow. I don't think the new randomization features are needed or critical, unless they address the distribution of resources which is awful and unpredictable (see RSO). I also don't think the speaker gadget thing is of any real use to most people. I also couldn't care less about new high res graphics when major gameplay changes are in the works. The tech tree changes, blueprint system, new nuclear power, etc are already a lot of big changes. I'm still waiting on a liquid wagon. Is that in 0.15, too? It's been so long I forgot. Also there was that spider thing... whatever happened to that?

I don't know what you guys are doing but we've been waiting for a while now and I feel you are spending time on things that don't really interest most of us. Could you prioritize better? Take half of the stuff you want to add to 0.15 and move it to 0.16. Then take half of that list and move it to 0.17. We would like more incremental updates, because well, we're human. We want to play the game. You tease us with all these features but we can't play them. It's frustrating. It may not be the best way to develop a product, or the most comfortable for you, but you have to remember we're part of this equation, too. We financed this, and we would like to have some fun as well

[jkeywo]

Any chance of mods being able to modify that difficulty screen? Setting new defaults and/or adding new settings? (changing defaults, or locking out options, on the basic map gen screen would be cool too).

[Schismatise]

This is AWESOME!

Also, get out of my head.

(Just kidding, stay as long as you like.)

[SaintFlow]

I always check FFF on every Friday hoping to hear some good news about the next release. I've been waiting for a while now because I want to play a game with the new blueprint system. I'm kind of tired of having to reinvent the wheel and it makes the game very tedious. That said, my game is on hold at the moment and I was hoping to see some positive news.

I am a bit perplexed as to why some features are being worked on at all. I guess if you have people standing by while other work is being done you have to make them work on something, but still, it raises an eyebrow. I don't think the new randomization features are needed or critical, unless they address the distribution of resources which is awful and unpredictable (see RSO). I also don't think the speaker gadget thing is of any real use to most people. I also couldn't care less about new high res graphics when major gameplay changes are in the works. The tech tree changes, blueprint system, new nuclear power, etc are already a lot of big changes. I'm still waiting on a liquid wagon. Is that in 0.15, too? It's been so long I forgot. Also there was that spider thing... whatever happened to that?

I don't know what you guys are doing but we've been waiting for a while now and I feel you are spending time on things that don't really interest most of us. Could you prioritize better? Take half of the stuff you want to add to 0.15 and move it to 0.16. Then take half of that list and move it to 0.17. We would like more incremental updates, because well, we're human. We want to play the game. You tease us with all these features but we can't play them. It's frustrating. It may not be the best way to develop a product, or the most comfortable for you, but you have to remember we're part of this equation, too. We financed this, and we would like to have some fun as well

Yes. Even if we have different tastes about what we like, bottomline is exactly the same. And I dont think its like unreasonable or mean in any way. After all, I guess almost all people who do care to visit this forum (apart from the spam bots at least) have strong feelings about this game and really like it. The Spidertron tease has been in January 2016, the finished assets for the gorgeous working HD pipes were shown 5 months ago. There comes a time when people like me just want to get to play what they get teased with or the tease becomes painful, tiresome, or one just settles down with just not caring anymore really and some of the fire and high spirits you have about something gets lost. It's like you see something, and if you like it you wanna play it, but in the time between seeing it and being able to play, you get shown many other different things as well (which you cant check out either) and by the time you get to play the one thing you were dying to play weeks/months/a year ago, there most likely is almost a new thing you are now dying to play, but then its the same cycle again. I might be the odd one out with feeling kind of let down with this cycle, but I think it's important to speak up when something bothers you about a thing in life you love.

That's why I think it's so important to keep people in the loop in due time. For many, many months, Feb has been the ETA for 0.15. If you know you will most certainly miss that and dont plan to release any smaller content update in between, just tell people about it. Telling them in mid February that it's not even close just feels bad to me personally.

[Rythe]

Heh. You all complaining about how long 0.15 is taking are very late to that game. I've been in that boat since multiplayer became the focus way back when biters/combat mechanics were already undercooked compared to everything else at around ~0.11. And then they decided to revamp circuit networks instead, and continue to focus on multiplayer. It really would have been nice if the to-do list for 0.15 had been examined a bit longer and split into an extra major version too.

But you know what?

I'm going to defend the Factorio team on this one. They did the right thing this time around and told us well ahead of time that 0.15 was going to be delayed. They can also focus themselves on whichever aspect of the game they like, no matter how much I feel like my version of the game is stagnating and incomplete. This is early access - not final 1.0 launch product. The game isn't finished and aspects that are currently lacking don't need to be patched in on your time table. The reality is we're lucky to be playing as full of an experience as we are at this point given that most titles of this quality have very limited betas if any early release versions at all.

Now enjoy Factorio as it is, or download some more mods for it, or go play something else. It's not like GOG and Steam don't exist or something. And it's not like you bought Factorio on some delusional notion that it was finished and perfect either.

The noise about the time spent on Hi-Def graphics work is about the silliest complaint to have graced this forum, by the by.

[SaintFlow]

They did the right thing this time around and told us well ahead of time that 0.15 was going to be delayed.

No. Just...no. When for many months your ETA is February and you tell people mid February that it's gonna be delayed that is...not well ahead of time. And I guess if they feel the need, the devs can defend theirselves just fine (even if there is nothing to defend here). Game development is hard, managing a Game development team is hard and "managing" a huge community which loves your game can be even harder because of exactly that. Different expectations, different tastes and different mindsets.


However, that's my 5 cents for now. I think I was able to convey what's in my head. It will not change anything and it is not important for the greater scope of this game, but I think it's important that it's there for people to read if they so desire.

[cellular]

I'm very interested in the HD texture pack, the speaker will be useful for low resource level alerts and similar, and I like the new option to disable biter expansion. And I'm perfectly happy with a "when it's done" timescale, considering Wube's history of near-perfect major version launches.

[Schismatise]

I don't know what you guys are doing but we've been waiting for a while now and I feel you are spending time on things that don't really interest most of us.

I could not disagree more, just for the record

[eradicator]

The advanced settings sound like a really neat addition, though i have to admit i'm a bit scared of trying to adjust the evolution values with a slider. ...because it looks like that's a slider <200 pixels in size that's supposed to go from 0 to 1? Sounds impossible to adjust the sixth decimal place with that. I sure hope i'm either wrong about that or you add a text entry field . (I'm a burned child regarding games trying to map values ranges to slide controls that are greater than the pixel length of the slider...)

[RoddyVR]

I always check FFF on every Friday hoping to hear some good news about the next release. I've been waiting for a while now because I want to play a game with the new blueprint system. I'm kind of tired of having to reinvent the wheel and it makes the game very tedious. That said, my game is on hold at the moment and I was hoping to see some positive news.

I am a bit perplexed as to why some features are being worked on at all. I guess if you have people standing by while other work is being done you have to make them work on something, but still, it raises an eyebrow. I don't think the new randomization features are needed or critical, unless they address the distribution of resources which is awful and unpredictable (see RSO). I also don't think the speaker gadget thing is of any real use to most people. I also couldn't care less about new high res graphics when major gameplay changes are in the works. The tech tree changes, blueprint system, new nuclear power, etc are already a lot of big changes. I'm still waiting on a liquid wagon. Is that in 0.15, too? It's been so long I forgot. Also there was that spider thing... whatever happened to that?

I don't know what you guys are doing but we've been waiting for a while now and I feel you are spending time on things that don't really interest most of us. Could you prioritize better? Take half of the stuff you want to add to 0.15 and move it to 0.16. Then take half of that list and move it to 0.17. We would like more incremental updates, because well, we're human. We want to play the game. You tease us with all these features but we can't play them. It's frustrating. It may not be the best way to develop a product, or the most comfortable for you, but you have to remember we're part of this equation, too. We financed this, and we would like to have some fun as well

No. just No! splitting things off into "later" updates would tick people like you off even more. because the things YOU care about will most likely not all fit into the first update, and if we assume you care about 4 new features/fixes, when 3 of them would be in .15 and 1 in .17 you will be the first one to start complaining that your one super important feature that you were promised a year ago just got postponed into oblivion and now you're demanding your money back...

I've been playing factorio since i think .11, and the wait for .15 is NOT a painful one. But more importantly, all of Factorio development is a GODSEND compared to the other game in development that i've benn playing and following closely (Moo:cts if anyone cares to know). In that game, the first beta that was sold on steam was literaly unplayable, the 8 or 9 patches between it and "final relese" fixed the game a bit, but a few major systems went in a pattern of "crappy" to "evenworse" to "learned to live with it". Most reasonable and well though out suggestions from the community were completely ignored.
In factorio's development, i doubt anyone could find more then one feature that was changed and they disliked the change. Ofcourse there are times when stuff you dont care about is improved, but others care about it, so that's not a reason to complain.
And when someone sais "well i think most of us only care about features I want, and the stuff you're doing no one really wants", they're just being egotistical, and are 100% wrong. Most likely its exactly the oposite, some miniscule % of active players care about your waited for feature MORE than everything that's getting worked on now, just because while it may be that 90% of players are waiting for the same thing, its unlikey #1 on all their lists, and most likely theres something higher on most people's list that IS in the works.

[DallasLova]

This map generator page definitely need a random button!

[husky777]

hello! I hope you will understand at least half(use google translate from russian) . I like this game. I played 400 hours online and about 300 hours offline

There are a couple other minor tweaks taken from their own experience and opinions of people I've seen on the forums and community incentive.
These changes concern the map generator.
1) The generator settings when you exit from the game is not saved, it is inconvenient for large-scale, deliberate start of the game and just to select the optimal map. Since the choice map can occur within a few restarts game changing mods etc.
2) adjust the frequency, size and wealth of natural resources, some players often want to expose everything at once. For example all the wealth in the minimum or maximum frequency. You have to select menu items next to each resource separately. It would be nice to introduce sizing function, frequency, and the wealth of resources at once. For example, all the frequency again. such as the size of the entire time.

I like the idea of changing the level of difficulty. But do not want to lose challenge. Can you add a setting that will make the difficulty the standard, as it was before: the recipes and technology?

To be more deployed I think it can hurt the game. People spread the screenshots in the community to see who built the factory more than others. It would be incomprehensible the difficulty of construction and competitive value of the time may be lost

[ili]

No. just No! splitting things off into "later" updates would tick people like you off even more. because the things YOU care about will most likely not all fit into the first update, and if we assume you care about 4 new features/fixes, when 3 of them would be in .15 and 1 in .17 you will be the first one to start complaining that your one super important feature that you were promised a year ago just got postponed into oblivion and now you're demanding your money back...

Agree
If splitting development into major chunks help the developing cycle I think it's preferred.
They have fixed all the major bugs in 14, I don't know of any game braking bugs that are ignored and waiting for 15.
And there are many mods to play with if you get bored, or play other games in the meantime...
It's very fun to load the game and start a new map after a major update and enjoy ALL the new stuff (you may think that stuff like speaker are unuseful but I don't)

I like the transparency of the development in the FFF not only that we get a glimpse of what to come we can also influence the development with the feedback we give here before it's released and "set in stone"
And I appreciate that they gave us a release date estimate so I can now stop asking "When will it be ready!!!"

[bulldog98]

And I appreciate that they give us a release date estimate so I can stop asking When will it be ready!!!

I would be more than happy to just one day start up factorio and notice „Hey a new version is out, wanna play?“, but also roughtly knowing when we can expect the next version is nice.
I play since the 0.8 or 0.9 times and all the updates just added to the gameplay, so if I have to wait one month longer to get a good and stable release for the next version so be it.

[exi2163]

I am a bit perplexed as to why some features are being worked on at all. I guess if you have people standing by while other work is being done you have to make them work on something, but still, it raises an eyebrow. I don't think the new randomization features are needed or critical, unless they address the distribution of resources which is awful and unpredictable (see RSO). I also don't think the speaker gadget thing is of any real use to most people. I also couldn't care less about new high res graphics when major gameplay changes are in the works. The tech tree changes, blueprint system, new nuclear power, etc are already a lot of big changes. I'm still waiting on a liquid wagon. Is that in 0.15, too? It's been so long I forgot. Also there was that spider thing... whatever happened to that?

It's also a human thing. If you work 10+ hours to fix this one bug that is huntingvery few people (stuck map download for example) you need to work on something different. Something easy to get your mind off of those thought-knotting deeper codepaths that you looked on for several hours.
It could be something easy from a wanted list or something that just came to your mind to try out while you were on the toilet. Even if you get slapped for it later because of your crappy UI-design it is an important task to prevent project burn-out.

I love this kind of game development. The path to the devs is short, bugs are taken seriously even if the impact on the playerbase is low and with some ideas you even have impact on the development.
They also could just collect some mods, repackage them and ship version 1.0 with all those features you wanted right now. The game quality would be underwhelming and Wube would be known as just one more of those early access fail firms. I'm very glad we are not going down this path.

[Asterix]

Any chance the evolution destroy factor could also be made negative in the options? It always struck me as backwards that killing enemies and destroying their bases would make them stronger...

[Klonan]

Any chance the evolution destroy factor could also be made negative in the options? It always struck me as backwards that killing enemies and destroying their bases would make them stronger...

Its a great idea