I feel hollow after finishing a game of Factorio.

[numgun]

The issue:

• Upon reaching the winning condition, all the work I've done gets discarded. All accumulated resources and items are deleted.
• Attempting to continue playing after a rocket launch feel empty, since there is no official objective to work towards.
• The achievements feel vain, I only hold myself back from enjoying the game's features fully if I choose to pursue them.
• Having to start a new game from scratch means all research requires re-doing, this time feeling like a chore than a path of gradual discovery and surprise.

I love how Factorio is about solving a big problem by using resources, tools and machines to creative solve increasingly complicated production challenges, then enjoying the fruits of those solutions to take on big problems. However the current metagame leaves me feeling hollow, empty. Like in the end nothing really mattered that I achieved.

It does not have to be like that.

I have need for persistence and meaning in the things I do. This is a suggestion on how I would see this issue solved.

Two solutions:

I can offer two suggestions to solve it. They revolve around the biters as the central element of the metagame.

One centers around peace, with the goal of taming the biters and coexisting with them, recruiting them to work in my factories to create bonsai-tree like sculpted utopias together, bringing a harmony to the galaxy, one planet at a time. The aliens are quirky with evolution and mutations, so each encounter will present a unique challenge in taming them on each planet.

The other centers around war, where the biters/aliens are a cosmic menace looking to consume all and everything, like bugs from Starship Troopers, xenomorphs from Alien, tyranids from Warhammer 40k or zerg from Starcraft. My mission is to fight the biter infestation and wipe them out of the galaxy, one planet at a time, using factories and defences to set up footholds on infested worlds and using the produced weapons and resources to fund the war against an overwhelming and unpredictable foe.

In both cases, aliens are mostly just animals, not intelligent being that can think or hold a conversation.


Common things shared by both solutions:

The idea of a "playthrough" is no longer applicable. The game is divided into a metagame (which is infinite) and a play session (finite).

The metagame will randomly generate a new play session, which will include:

• A map with a limited size that respects average computer performance limitations and acceptable save/load times.
• Random parameters for what is on the map, in what quantities, frequencies and density.
• A unique randomized surprise per-planet factor that will either affect the player, the aliens or both.

Research the usual tree is only ever done once and infinite researches are removed. The research system serves as the introductory tutorial to the game, revealing each new piece of content gradually to new players to let them appreciate the full scale of their benefits and weaknesses. Early gear is cheap but dirty/wasteful/slow, while final gear is expensive but impressive/clean/efficient.

After that, the research system is only used as information gathering to uncover the nature of the unique randomized surprise factor of each play session.

Unique randomized surprise factor is a per-planet phenomenon that is different for each individual planet the player visits. It takes form as a special element on the map, such as weather/environmental conditions, ultra-limited special resources, a temporary technology advantage/disadvantage, altered recipe costs or presence of hazardous/beneficial native flora that interacts both with the player and the aliens, be it negatively or positively.

The surprise factor can also take form as a unique per-planet evolution/mutation on the part of the aliens, spawning a tinted version of enemy types, either just one species or all species (biters, spitters and worms) that has randomized stats and unique abilities or passive effects that make it distinctly different, either making it harder or easier to tame/kill, depending on which solution is selected for the metagame.

The main point is that the game is infinitely playable, forever.

The player hops from one planet to another, completing the task of taming, conquering it or just issuing an exterminatus in the event of an impossible situation where the place is just doomed, with no way of completing that planet. An exterminatus is not a desirable outcome as the resources are lost, as well as denying myself and humanity from being able to colonize the planet ourselves.

The player will have a home planet which is safe and peaceful with insignificant starting resources, but lots of space. This planet is persistant and always accessible. Other planets are discardable and temporary. The player merely goes to them, completes them, takes the resources and moves on the next challenge, gradually conquering the galaxy (which is not achievable in a human lifespan, since galaxies are way too big with way too many planets for a player to complete the task of conquering it all, hence why the game is infinite).

There are some persistent elements that stay with the player indefinitely. Things like the player character's inventory always remains the same from one planet to another. The player may have a headquarters planet where they can build their a safe megabase and return to it to use its facilities once a while with the resources gained from other planets. The player can also take large transport ships from the previously completed planet to the next one, loaded with resources to jumpstart the operation on a new planet and already have some equipment to defend and build with.

The player's total progress of conquered/tamed planets is kept track off, showing a clear path of persistent history of the player's progress, stats and achievements. All these things bring meaning to the game, that everything that the player does matters and is not deleted.

The reasoning behind the unique randomized surprise factor, which is different for each planet, is that this keeps things interesting and surprising, so that there is always something unpredictable to look for in the next play session as the player goes from one planet to another. Without it, each game would feel samey and dull, making the persistent elements meaningless.

Its also performance conscious. While there are infinite planets to explore with infinite random possibilies in terms of environments, alien evolutions and surprises, only the player's inventory, their home planet and the list of completed planets and stats are saved, keeping the footprint of memory usage and storage minimal.


Differences between the two solutions:

With the peace version of the game, more focus is directed towards the game having green-technologies that reduce or absorb pollutions, as well as technologies to approach aliens safely and befriend them to work for me. Weapons as they are in 0.16.x are still in for self-defence purposes, but using them is only applicable to prevent player death in failed attempts to tame the aliens.

The unique per-planet surprise factor can alter the aliens to feature some units that can alter their AI, making them more or less shy, twitchy, curious or stubborn, while giving them passive or active abilities that can make them akward to work with, requiring specialized solutions to tame them and accomodate their wierdnesses and quirks.

With the war version of the game, more focus is directed towards offensive weapons, like automated robot soldiers, remote controller robotank squadrons, attack vehicles with AI controlled doll-units that follow the player's commanding vehicle, more exotic weapons that cover a wide range of damage types (acid, fire, kinetic, electric, etc), mechs, aircraft and super weapons.

The aliens are also more fierce and diverse in their evolutions and mutations, having different hives, fortresses, tactics, unit types, unit variations and interactions with player's tactics and the environment.

Again, the unique per-planet surprise factor can give the aliens dangerous unique evolutions or mutations that alter their stats for the better or worse, giving them abilities or other synergies that make them an unpredictable foe from session to session. The surprise factor may also offer the player some unique elements, phenomenon or resources that they can take advantage to as weapons or tools to aid them in battle, construction or defence.


Conclusion:

In effect, this would remove the feeling of hollowness from playing a game of Factorio. I'd be more of an ongoing lifestyle to play it infinitely, having progress, resources, player inventory and gradually conquering or taming the galaxy with a clear footprint of progress to show for it, giving a sense of accomplishment.

Players can share blueprints, share moments, share mods, share footage of their homeworlds and have a good time being surprised with each new planet they understake to tame or conquer.


-Thank you for reading.

[bobucles]

First off, I don't think you should be using video games to fill the void in your life. That's what money and pornography are for.

Second, biters aren't the main selling point of Factorio. The game is about building factories. Your suggestions are much more of RTS or 4x ideas. While those are certainly fun game archetypes, they do not lend themselves to challenging the player with factory production chains. The player can already choose to run a low pollution map or go full industrial menace, and the game engine is so solid that players can invest hundreds of hours before reaching a satisfying end point.

Of course there's nothing wrong with suggesting new game modes that test the player in different ways. It would certainly be nice to have a "new game +" where players might start the game with a boon such as bonus tech or resources or construction bots. Don't forget that old """finished""" maps are still a gigantic library of blueprints that you can import into a new game at any time, so they're never completely forgotten. There are also a mountain of mods to tweak the game in small, handy ways or overhaul it for a completely new challenge. Give them a shot.

[MeduSalem]

Ah... well the title and the beginning of the thread brings the Nihilist out in me. So pardon me...

• Upon reaching the winning condition, all the work I've done gets discarded. All accumulated resources and items are deleted.
• Attempting to continue playing after a rocket launch feel empty, since there is no official objective to work towards.
• The achievements feel vain, I only hold myself back from enjoying the game's features fully if I choose to pursue them.
• Having to start a new game from scratch means all research requires re-doing, this time feeling like a chore than a path of gradual discovery and surprise.

So pretty much like life itself, wouldn't you say?

• Upon reaching death, all the work you've done gets discarded. All accumulated resources and items are scattered to the four winds.
• Attempting to continue to live after retiring feels empty, since there is no official objective to work towards other than death.
• The achievements feel vain, they only hold you back from enjoying life's features fully if you choose to pursue them.
• Having to start life over from scratch means all learning requires re-doing, this time feeling like a chore than a path of gradual discovery and surprise.

I am writing that because your conclusion about the game is what you will find more often in life about more and more things the older and older you get, and it will severely hamper your abillity to enjoy things.

However the current metagame leaves me feeling hollow, empty. Like in the end nothing really mattered that I achieved.

[...]

I have need for persistence and meaning in the things I do.

Maybe you should accept the possibillity that there is no meaning... and move on and do something else.

Also it is not like one cannot play without a meaning just to toy around and have fun just like so without pursuing a bigger goal.

You might also want to try some mods... there are plenty of them that expand the game far beyond.

Solutions

[...]

About the rest... the lack of an "endgame" ... like a neverending goal/infinite quest or something like that, which encourages people to keep on playing and expanding etc is being pointed out at least once every month. There are numerous threads with all kinds of ideas and whatnot.

The Devs are aware of it and proposed several ideas of their own beyond what is there currently, but abandoned or halted development on those ideas due to resource/time constraints.

They want to get the game finished as it is currently and have been pushing the deadline further back year after year after year now, so it is just reasonable that they don't want to add a truckload of new problems to their schedule and rather just want to get finished with the game for now.

For the money you invested in Factorio you get a lot of playtime already... more than you get with your average 6-8 hour singleplayer shooter game for 60 bucks that you never touch again and which doesn't require any thoughtprocess at all.

First off, I don't think you should be using video games to fill the void in your life. That's what money and pornography are for.

Honestly, this made me laugh.

[eradicator]

First off, I don't think you should be using video games to fill the void in your life. That's what money and pornography are for.

Honestly, this made me laugh.

Only the second half?
-------------------
@OP:
Well...i'll abstain from talking about Buddhism and Zen-gardening i think. So let's get to the point, there's a slight problem with your central thesis:

The reasoning behind the unique randomized surprise factor, which is different for each planet, is that this keeps things interesting and surprising, so that there is always something unpredictable to look for in the next play session as the player goes from one planet to another. Without it, each game would feel samey and dull, making the persistent elements meaningless.

The Problem is: it's impossible. You can not genrate an infinite number of suprises from a finite set of randomizable parameters. Can't be done. Others have tried. No Man's Sky would be the most recent example of how you will inevitably fail trying. The human brain doesn't care for random biter colors. It stops being suprised or interested after seeing 2 or 3 differnt colors. After that all colors are the same. And this is the same for all parameters. Even "service games" (ye know, those big multiplayer games that require regular payments to develop new content) can't do it because they're still restricted by the lore and mechanics of one game. You can't make tetris more interesting by slowly converting it into doom, and a year later into age of empires. It's in the very (annoying) nature of the human brain to adapt to stimuly very quickly. And once it has successfully adapted it needs new ones. Completely new ones. (Unless you're a professional chess player or something i guess )

That said, NewGame+ is already a mod. And randomizing a few biters or landscape tiles would be easy enough. But the central logistic/crafting puzzle can't be randomized in an interesting way. Unless of course if you find it interesting if circuits cost 3 copper plates on one world, and 5 iron cables on the next.

"Writing on the forum feels hollow and empty. All my quotes are lost when the thread drops to page 2."
E.Radicator, 2018

[numgun]

After reading the above replies, I feel upset and discouraged. I have a need for courage in other people and open-mindedness to overcome problems instead of just accepting them nihilistically and doing nothing about it.

I also have a need for respect and feel terrible when people dismiss a problem with the game's design, as if there is something wrong in the player, ridiculing their concerns instead of listening empathically, trying to understand how this happened and actually addressing the problem.

I do not believe that this suggestion is impossible or overly difficult to do, its mostly a matter of rearranging how the structure of playing the game works.

• The random map generator already exists.
• A robust base game mechanics already exists.
• Powerful modding tools and game file structure allow relatively easy addition of new content.
• Character properties and stat bonuses as a system already exists.
• Resistances to certain types of damage already exists.

All that is needed is:

• An extra screen to display metagame progress, which is mostly about restructuring the main menu and having a slightly different New Game screen, where the player simply chooses a drop location on the next planet, gets some information on what to expect and selects what resources they want to bring from their previous planets to this new one.
  A persistent global stats screen of player deaths and accomplishments.
• Changing the context of player's death and how the game continues after a death. (The player can be an android that is replaced upon death and death means an undesirable setback in progress as the new copy of the players body is en-route to continue the mission, while the aliens can munch on parts of the factory until the player arrives back on the scene.)
• Looking up the aliens with a mutation system that alters their stats randomly and gives or takes away abilities from them, from a pool of modular plug-in/out solutions. The system also uses shaders to change the appearance of mutated aliens to tell them apart from their regular counterparts.
• Expanding the environment content with weather events, flora, hazards and opportunities.
• Changes to the story/flavor text to reflect the context of the game.
• A set of standards that help modders and devs to balance a new added content consistently with the existing content.

The developers and modders can add new aliens, AI behaviour modules, ability modules, new weather/environment objects, which can exponentially multiply the number of possible surprises with minimal effort, as the new small content/module additions will synergize with the old existing content/modules, thus creating new content out of the combination of all existing content.

With a game that has the necessary existing systems and is actually capable of providing its user with years of fun gameplay with a feeling of satisfaction instead of just 80 hours and a feeling of hollowness followed by it, I feel horrible that the devs hard work over the many years was consumed in such a short time. Its all just a matter of design, not insurmountable levels of work.

It is possible.

[Aeternus]

Well, the point is you're trying to make Factorio into something it is not. It is not a RTS. It is not Starcraft, though we do have Zerglings and Hydralisks.

Factorio is a building and logistics sim. It's got more incommon with the likes of Transport Tycoon or SimCity. Such games are rather open ended, as is Factorio. Sure, you can see blasting your first rocket up as "okay, now I'm done" and go play a new map or do something else. Me, I see it as merely a steppingstone, now I can do the extreme research. Get the lasers to level 12 or so, so they chew even the strongest biters quickly. Get your bots to lv12 speed boost so they zip about like hummingbirds. Then mining productivity galore so your mining outposts will not run out. Meanwhile build up your factory - secure more land and make expansive clusters of production, boosted by speed beacons. Set up artillery positions to automagically beat back the biters and pummel them into submission. Set up an extensive rail grid.

The possibilities are quite extensive, even in the base game.

[MinotaurBlack]

Aeternus said it well, the changes you are suggesting would change the core of the game, and that is building a factory and optimising it and making it more effective. What once considers as good and done is each ones own wish/goal. Firing a rocket is some game defined goal i personally dont give a damn about. I do it and its done, on with my factory. All the changes you are suggesting would shift the focus from building a factory to fighting, and i for one dont want that. Sure, nothing against a bit more challenge in that regard, but for it to be the main focus please dont.

Factorio is one of the best games i have ever played (a precious gem like terraria for me) and i hope the main focus of the game never changes

Even the name of the game lets you hint of its focus

[numgun]

No, I'm not suggesting to turn factorio into something that it is not.

I'm trying to suggest a solution for giving me a reason and context to apply my factory and its produced goods/services to solve a greater issue.

Currently the game is about designing a factory for the sake of having a factory and not really doing much with it. I want the construction, optimization and expansion of that factory to have an outlet that it can contribute towards. Make it actually useful for something ongoing.

[MinotaurBlack]

No, I'm not suggesting to turn factorio into something that it is not.

I'm trying to suggest a solution for giving me a reason and context to apply my factory and its produced goods/services to solve a greater issue.

Currently the game is about designing a factory for the sake of having a factory and not really doing much with it. I want the construction, optimization and expansion of that factory to have an outlet that it can contribute towards. Make it actually useful for something ongoing.

That is not easy feat to add without changing the core gameplay. That is the problem here. The solutions you suggested would shift the focus of the gameplay from factory management to combating the random effects and biters. Any greater purpose for the factory as you describe it will change the focus. Because the factory is needed to handle that purpose. Now the rocket is just a small focus for your factory, the rest is up to the player to make their own purpose, as with most sandbox games. That freedom is the reason why i myself like factorio so much but cant comment on others

I understand your viewpoint, and as stated, dont mind for some higher purpose to be implemented as long as its done in a way that i can still ignore it if i want so

[batorfly]

There is more and more topics about lack of goal after launching rocket, completing all finite research, maybe a handful of infinite research. I would like to hear if dev's even consider option to add some kind of BIG, long lasting - goal/task/quest related to the factorio story. It seems that this is kind of hot topic, and it's getting hotter.

OP asks for something different, i know. Probably not going to happen in vanilla. Maybe someday i will be able to say: there is a mod for that™

[Raish0]

As others said (mainly Aeternus), I too think that what you describe is not problem with game design, but just you expecting this game to be something else. Factorio is building game that is meant to be sandbox-like. There is the rocket goal, but tbh, no one really cares about it - the journey and further expansion are the selling points of this game.
If the rocket really was your goal and without it you feel "hollow" then well, I suppose you milked everything you could out of this game from your perspective.

Do not get me wrong, I do not think that your preferences are bad, but I think this game was never meant to be goal driven game. It is just paradise for people who enjoy building for the sake of building. I suppose you can set your own goal (I mean, what is the difference) or try mods? (With certain mods you are looking on countless hours before you reach your rocket again)

[MeduSalem]

After reading the above replies, I feel upset and discouraged. I have a need for courage in other people and open-mindedness to overcome problems instead of just accepting them nihilistically and doing nothing about it.

I also have a need for respect and feel terrible when people dismiss a problem with the game's design, as if there is something wrong in the player, ridiculing their concerns instead of listening empathically, trying to understand how this happened and actually addressing the problem.

I do not believe that this suggestion is impossible or overly difficult to do, its mostly a matter of rearranging how the structure of playing the game works.

[...]

Honestly... let me ask you one thing... how much research did you do before you created this thread?

The game has been in development ever since 2012. Everything you suggested has been suggested at least 50 times over ever since, if not more. Hell even I made all those suggestions 3-4 years ago already. Almost everyone who has been around here for this long has made at least some of these suggestions at one point or another. A lot of people aren't even here anymore who were the first to make those suggestions because they accepted that Factorio is just a game and not the single most important thing in the world and that the devs can only do so much to make it a better game and hence moved on with other games in meantime and only check back on Factorio every now and then or when there is a major update.

Go over to the "Ideas and Suggestions" section and just take a look at it. Nearly 7000 threads there. If only 1% of them is about endgame content and prolonging gameplay beyond the currently ad-hoc rocket launch etc then it's still 70 threads. But I bet it is far higher than 1%. Even in the "General" section such threads pop up at least once a month, just like I wrote earlier.

So what is there left to discuss that hasn't been discussed to death yet?

If you read the Friday Facts from the beginning then you know that the devs are aware of most problems, that they had several additional things in mind (like Space Platforms, a RTS direction and whatnot) that are currently beyond their means if they want to get to a reasonable end, which is why they don't waste time and resources to develop them. I mean look at those Friday Facts... They are from 3 years ago and back then they thought they would be done with 0.13 or 0.14... and now we have 0.17 on schedule and I bet there is even going to be an 0.18.

Developing those things is not impossible, but it just takes a lot of time and creates a whole new set of bugs and problems that no one can forsee and which themselves require also attention and so on and so forth.

It is plain obvious that all those things aren't going to happen in Vanilla Factorio within the scope of an 1.0 release if the devs want to get into a finished state within this year as planned (even I already start to highly doubt that they will make it this year... again. Somehow becoming a running gag here). They have been trying to get the game into a finished state for at least 4 years now... and every time they get closer to a release another can of worms seems to open up even with what is already in the game, requiring another major rewrite of something, requiring an additional major update, which requires another 6 months to develop and stabilize, dragging development further and further out.

Maybe some of the suggestions/ideas happen for a DLC/Addon or whatever far off in the future, but the official stance is that they definitely WON'T happen in 1.0.



If you ask me they could as well just fix the outstanding bugs etc and wrap it all up and call it a day. The devs definitely deserve it already because otherwise they get burned out, if they aren't already.

I would get burned out as well if I had to look at the same piece of shit code over and over and over again, becoming sick of your own project to the point you start to hate what you once loved. I know from myself (I am construction engineer) that I am always glad when I don't have to see that project anymore after 3-12 months, a reason for why I would never take on large scale projects that take several years to develop and realize.

People had more than their fair share of the game for the price anyway, at least in comparison with your average fullprize AAA game. That is at least what I think when I look at my playtime and that of most of the other Factorio players.



And that is not even covering the aspect that most others already wrote... that the game is in its core a sandbox game... so at some point there is a terminal down the tracks and then you have to go off-track on your own and somehow have to make up your own fun while at it. If you can't find any then maybe you should look into mods and if that isn't anything for you either then the only thing left to do is to... accept it and maybe move on with another game.

[numgun]

Now the rocket is just a small focus for your factory, the rest is up to the player to make their own purpose, as with most sandbox games.

See, I feel very skeptical about this mindset. Human beings have a natural, fundamental need for meaning, that whatever they spend a lot of time with contributes to their life positively and that what they do matters. This applies to playing video games too.

I've seen people that push this "make your own purpose, its a sandbox" thought get their need for meaning met externally in some way, that makes the game itself secondary. Such methods include:

• Making youtube videos about megabase tours, to validate through public showcasing with real world people to show the immense effort that went into constructing and designing their otherwise pointless creation.
• Making youtube videos about tutorials on how to play the game properly, since all that accumulated skill and knowledge needs an outlet to have meaning that otherwise serves no point.
• Sharing screenshots with a community to solve the question of how to make this thing more efficiently, thus being part of a group and having friends with similar interests, thus getting the benefit of social interaction, thus gaining meaning through simply belonging to a community of like-minded people.
• Making huge overhaul mods in a vain attempt to fix hollow feeling by extending the game's complexity so that it simply lasts longer to reach the finite goal, which simply delays the inevitable empty feeling anyway.
• Making mods about fixes, new content and new features because its a fun accomplishment as a creative personal challenge to just make stuff and have it work. In other words, modding the game becomes the game for such a person.
• Factorio is just an intermediary excuse to hang out with people and engage socially in a collaborative activity, thus gaining meaning just from making friends and doing stuff together.
• Real life work/life is so complex, hectic and/or dreary that factorio serves as a method to relax and empty their brain in short bursts in between an otherwise hectic life, thus not having a need for a meaning, since the mind of such a person is already more than overloaded and numb to consider such things.

This doesn't excuse game design holes. People simply find various ways to cope with the flaws of the game design, explaining away that the game is fine and the issue is with themselves or with others. Seeing this happen over many years with many different people, I don't trust the whole "its a sandbox game" line at all. There is always something behind it that allows a person to ignore the inherent flaw of the game's organization/structure.

I also feel rather dissapointed at how there is this desire to push the game out into a "1.0" state for the sake of it. Factorio is already a sell-worthy game and provides a comprehensive game experience that puts many other games to shame in terms of content/price that it is offered at.

The thing is, it doesn't need to be finished or completed, then discarded to start another project. It can grow for years and live a very long prosperous life.

Factorio has all the systems and mechanics that give it potential to be an infinitely expanded and supported game for potentially forever with new content updates, new mods and a subscription/patreon model to support its on-going development, with subscription payers getting early access to the latest goods, while regular users will get the stuff eventually for free, just with a bit of a delay compared to the subscribers. I'd rather have one excellent game that I can play forever and invest myself into fully, than have a bunch of throwaway projects that aren't worth the effort to become serious with them.

All it takes is a structure change in the metagame and a few extra features to support it. Its not a huge undertaking. Just a bit of reorganization of existing elements in a clever way.

[Raish0]

The thing is, it doesn't need to be finished or completed, then discarded to start another project. It can grow for years and live a very long prosperous life.

Do you see the irony in that statement?

[HurkWurk]

i personally felt something similar after my first play though and rocket launch back in 14, since then ive gone to mods to meet the requirements you talk about, and making my own starter maps, etc.

I like compact factories that run big on results, and im not much of a bot user, so for me, its usually marking out ~160,000(400x400) tiles as my starting area and staying within that limit until the multiple rocket phase of the game

[darkfrei]

i personally felt something similar after my first play though and rocket launch back in 14, since then ive gone to mods to meet the requirements you talk about, and making my own starter maps, etc.

1. Vanilla
2. Mods
3. Own mods

[MeduSalem]

This doesn't excuse game design holes. People simply find various ways to cope with the flaws of the game design, explaining away that the game is fine and the issue is with themselves or with others. Seeing this happen over many years with many different people, I don't trust the whole "its a sandbox game" line at all. There is always something behind it that allows a person to ignore the inherent flaw of the game's organization/structure.

Just that Factorio was always designed to be this way. The base game always ended with the Rocket Launch and that's it. No glorious secret that hides behind it. If you continue to play then that's your own business and the devs don't provide any guarantee that you will find fun there.

Initially back when the Rocket Defense was still a thing it wasn't even intended to be able to play further than to the landing of the rescue fleet and that was about it. The factory would have been abandoned and you won the game. Well done... now start over from scratch for some more torture.

That they allowed infinite play and infinite research and whatnot is already due to community request.

So that is it... Launching the Rocket is intended as the final goal... if you play beyond then you are on your own.

I also feel rather dissapointed at how there is this desire to push the game out into a "1.0" state for the sake of it. Factorio is already a sell-worthy game and provides a comprehensive game experience that puts many other games to shame in terms of content/price that it is offered at.

Everyone wants to get finished at some point with a project and Factorio got way more major updates for free than it probably was ever intended to. Some of the devs have expressed at several occasions that they have been wanting to do a different project for years already but are stuck with developing Factorio. Even they never explicitely complained about it, it is quite obvious that the reason is because the community is never satisfied, and also because the devs have to beat some of their own personal demons as well in trying to please everyone even though it is an impossible act.

You happen to have the bad luck that you are simply too late. It is the curse of most alpha-acess games. If you would have been there from the beginning and saw with your own eyes as the game slowly expanded more and more and changed and redesigend on several parts then you would probably have gotten more out of it. But what you are seeing now is an almost finished product and it is good enough to call itself finished. You can either like it or not, but whatever is the case there is not much that will change about the game anymore.

If you would have made the growth with the game then you would also know that the devs are already long in overtime and that they should have put an end to the development last year after introducing Nuclear Power and that's it... and that 0.16 should have been the bug-fixing-final 1.0 update after which they should already have taken a break from the project.

The thing is, it doesn't need to be finished or completed, then discarded to start another project. It can grow for years and live a very long prosperous life.

Factorio has all the systems and mechanics that give it potential to be an infinitely expanded and supported game for potentially forever with new content updates, new mods and a subscription/patreon model to support its on-going development, with subscription payers getting early access to the latest goods, while regular users will get the stuff eventually for free, just with a bit of a delay compared to the subscribers. I'd rather have one excellent game that I can play forever and invest myself into fully, than have a bunch of throwaway projects that aren't worth the effort to become serious with them.

Maybe the devs don't want to be stuck on developing Factorio forever and would like to explore their other ideas as well in other projects completely unrelated to Factorio.

Factorio was never developed with the intention to be infinitely supported and expanded by the devs, hence why it lacks a payment model to support that kind of thing, and hence why it has such great modding possibilies.

I am actually glad it doesn't have such a pay-to-win/microtransaction/lootbox or subscription bullshit and whatnot like most other games nowadays force into your face to even be able to play decently. I am glad that the Devs are somewhat down to Earth when it comes to that and are well aware of their time and resource restrictions and limitations as a team and don't become greedy bastards dwelling in hubris just because they happened to have success with their first game.

That doesn't mean that they will never bring a sequel or another paid content update to Factorio. It is just that they won't do anything over-the-top for 1.0 anymore... and all of that has been stated officially on several occasions throughout the last 2 years already.

[JimBarracus]

Older versions when alien artefacts existed and were needed for purple science:
once you reached that you were busy killing biters and going further just for the sake of artefacts.
Was very tendious and annoying.

Now you can stay within your claimed land, IF you have enough resources, might get tendious too.
For infinite research you have to expand rocket construction which can get massive.
With exponential need for science pack it gets harder every time.

[fiery_salmon]

This doesn't excuse game design holes. People simply find various ways to cope with the flaws of the game design, explaining away that the game is fine and the issue is with themselves or with others. Seeing this happen over many years with many different people, I don't trust the whole "its a sandbox game" line at all. There is always something behind it that allows a person to ignore the inherent flaw of the game's organization/structure.

Whatever you like sandbox games or not it is clear that many people like them. See also Minecraft, OpenTTD and many others.

Just because something is not exactly like you want it does not mean it is a "design hole" or an "inherent flaw".

If you want to start useful discussion I recommend to use less inflammatory language.

[Deadlock989]

Human beings have a natural, fundamental need for meaning

Prove it.