Friday Facts #247 - Pricing and its exploits

[zebediah49]

Another reason Factorio doesn't have to worry so much: Nobody else can match the potential factory scale, at least without spending years on the problem.

From all the things we've seen from the various optimization FFF's, we have seen the lengths the devs have gone through to make an insanely optimized system. Sure, there are a few more places to pick at, but the overall design and structure is one of the fastest things I've seen for simulation code. The only major place to go from here is massive SMP parallelization. = For the record, the only place I've seen that done effectively is high performance academic code. Even there, most of it is much, much worse.

Point is, I would be extremely surprised to see another developer beat the scaling behavior of Factorio. If you want to make a megafactory, this is the option.

[thereaverofdarkness]

That game won't ever overshadow Factorio, it's far too pretty. No development company can front the resources to do graphics like that and still beat Factorio in gameplay. Such a thing has never happened in the history of gaming, and nobody has a computer that could handle that. Games like that get over-hyped all the time, and they rarely even deliver enough to keep the fans from whining about being cheated, let alone actually produce a game that outlives its development time.

If there is some takeaway for us, then it is, that we shouldn't wait with finishing the game too much.

Please don't stop developing the game any time soon. Whenever you decide to slap that 1.0 label on it is unimportant, what matters is that the problems get fixed and development keeps happening until we're truly satisfied with this game! But whatever happens, your game is still a shoe-in for best Factory classic of all time! Plus, it has one of the best developers and programmers I've ever seen, kovarex, on the team!

[basementjack]

I had the opposite feelings, so I just wanted to post this alternative view...

1) After watching both trailers on your website, I bought the game immediately, without even trying the demo first.
2) If you're having a hard time convincing friends, you could always buy them a copy - I always felt the game was easily worth $50 based on how much gameplay I've gotten from it, so I didn't mind picking up a few extra copies back when it was $20 for friends that I didn't think would have bought it otherwise.

I want to play this game with my friends so much but convincing them to buy it is hard. This is mainly due to me being unable to explain to them what the game is and it isn't made any easier with the trailer. I find that the trailer is quite outdated and poorly shows off Factorio failing to capture what makes it fun. From personal experience, the trailer put me off buying the game but after watching youtubers play it I then began to see what a masterpiece it was. With seeing the Satisfactory trailer I think maybe you guys could learn from this to make a trailer that could truly show what this game is all about. While I understand the game is close to being released and you might wait until then to make a new trailer, you have however stated that you don't intend to add in any more content I feel a new trailer could be a beneficial investment. I'm keen for the release either way and until you make a new trailer I'll keep trying to convince my friends to get this game through other means.

[basementjack]

feedback for the factorio team.

I've only had one person that I thought would like Factorio "Reject" it - he made a comment about having gotten burned by unfinished games in the past.

Getting the game out of "early access" on Steam should really help in that regard.

[basementjack]

Re Satisfactory

I don't think you have to worry much about satisfactory

I /do/ think you have to worry about "how big is the market for an extremely complex game that requires a lot of thinking" I would have guessed it was less than 1 million people, so the fact that you've sold 1.5 million copies is great, proves me wrong, and makes me wonder exactly where the cap is. I don't think you will ever sell as many copies as Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, etc..

You might be reaching the point where, everyone who's a possible good fit for factorio, has already bought a copy. If that is true, then sales will start to taper off, and it won't be because of satisfactory. If the total market for this kind of game is say 2 million, then maybe you'll sell 2 million and satisfactory will sell 2 million.

All you can do is ask yourself, if you step out of the box, and think a little bigger, a little different, what can you do with the game engine you have _right now_ that would make the game appeal to more people?
(on this topic, I loved factorio back in version .12/.13/.14 I actually think it's gotten a little worse in the gameplay department - graphics have improved, but the fun I have playing a new sandbox level from ground zero up, that's gotten to be way more frustrating that it used to be back when we only had 4 research colors to deal with. (with the one exception being that the addition of the tank car made dealing with oil much more enjoyable)

[Tesse11ation]

This is exactly why since the beginning of times master is taken over by his student. That's the way it goes, and that's how a master finish his life. But the master was an essential piece of perfecting an art and transmitting his knowledge. The student will become master the day he overcome him, it's his goal, the master cannot refuse it, refuse the evolution, stand against the youth and he cannot be called a master.

In my humble opinion, Satisfactory will never reach the depth and strenght of Factorio, but it might simply slide on an other line, like from Minecraft is inspired by Dwarf Fortress but have far from his depth, Satisfactory may win a certain popularity by focussing in the player sensation, emotions, easy fun, than a depth in the gameplay, deep calculation, and massive builds.

Be sure about a thing:
1. There will always be hardcore player, like there is still people playing Starcraft, Dwarf Fortress, ect...
2. Factorio will be for sure one day be an oldschool game, therefore new game will be "better" or at least different.
3. Factorio like many other game as Simcity, Railroad Tycoon, Civilization, Dwarf Fortress, ect created a new genre and will never be forgotten, will exist in every new game. Look how there is crafting everywhere since Minecraft (he certainly didn't created it, it made it way more popular)


I am piano tuner, sales goes down since 40 years now. If I refuse the evolution of piano/music and destroy all digital piano, I'm shooting in the foot by refusing reality and ways to adapt myself to the people. And my job will die for real.


You are astonishing, the end of Factorio is far from near. You approaching the 1.0, basically the highest spike of awe. You cannot hope to exist for ever. You simply will.

Have a great day
(sorry not english)

As someone who prefers the original StarCraft and Brood War over SC2, I couldn't agree more. Factorio is an instant classic in my book, and as they say, you can't beat the classics.

[thereaverofdarkness]

I want to play this game with my friends so much but convincing them to buy it is hard. This is mainly due to me being unable to explain to them what the game is and it isn't made any easier with the trailer. I find that the trailer is quite outdated and poorly shows off Factorio failing to capture what makes it fun. From personal experience, the trailer put me off buying the game but after watching youtubers play it I then began to see what a masterpiece it was.

What got me into it was when my brother said he had a puzzle he was trying to solve. He was playing this game where he was trying to balance copper ore going into furnaces such that it pulled from each mining drill evenly, but he felt like the task was impossible. I set out to prove him wrong and next thing I knew I was playing Factorio!

I still haven't solved the mining drill problem!

[Koub]

Any plans to support steam keys for GOG buyers and vice versa?

IIRC, the answer is no, I'll add the link to the post if I find it.

[golfmiketango]

Do you like 3D things that move?

[bobucles]

50 assemblers is truly an impressive sight for the 3d world. But I'm betting the factory won't get much bigger than that. Engine Efficiency is such a low priority for most devs.

[ske]

50 assemblers is truly an impressive sight for the 3d world. But I'm betting the factory won't get much bigger than that. Engine Efficiency is such a low priority for most devs.

If the logic behind the factory is simple enough, it could actually scale the same way like factorio. You could actually right now make a 3D representation of factorio where you can walk around in first person view.

Things would get messy, though, if the properties of the 3D world influence the factory. For example having a physics simulation of the objects on a belt instead of just virtually bolting them on.

[ske]

Please don't stop developing the game any time soon. Whenever you decide to slap that 1.0 label on it is unimportant, what matters is that the problems get fixed and development keeps happening until we're truly satisfied with this game!

Who is the "we" to be satisfied? You can please everyone for some time and some people all the time but you can't please everyone all the time. The development would never end and still some things are simply unfixable under the set constraints.

It might be better to use the technology developed for factorio and start a whole new game or maybe even half a dozen of them. I'm sure the team can do more and will do more. This is only the beginning.

[Tricorius]

Please don't stop developing the game any time soon. Whenever you decide to slap that 1.0 label on it is unimportant, what matters is that the problems get fixed and development keeps happening until we're truly satisfied with this game!

Who is the "we" to be satisfied? You can please everyone for some time and some people all the time but you can't please everyone all the time. The development would never end and still some things are simply unfixable under the set constraints.

It might be better to use the technology developed for factorio and start a whole new game or maybe even half a dozen of them. I'm sure the team can do more and will do more. This is only the beginning.

Agreed. I’m already more than satisfied with Factorio. Additional things are icing on the cake.

I paid $20 for Factorio (though technically I’ve purchased a few copies, but personally, the first copy was mine). I’ve played for at least 2000 hours. The math on ROI is amazing. I realize most wont probably play this long, but I will get many, many more hours out of it.

Satisfactory, probably not so much. The marketing page and FAQ are clever, and humorous. But the content of the FAQ makes me wonder. “Handcrafted” world, no procedural generation. A bunch of other limitations, primarily design compromises for a primarily 3d game. I expect I’ll buy it, but it won’t replace Factorio for me.

[Klonan]

Any plans to support steam keys for GOG buyers and vice versa?

No, not really

[ske]

Agreed. I’m already more than satisfied with Factorio. Additional things are icing on the cake.

For a game to consume, it is plenty good. Additionally it teaches logic.

Satisfactory, probably not so much. The marketing page and FAQ are clever, and humorous. But the content of the FAQ makes me wonder. “Handcrafted” world, no procedural generation. A bunch of other limitations, primarily design compromises for a primarily 3d game. I expect I’ll buy it, but it won’t replace Factorio for me.

The terrain generation is one weak point of factorio. But since terrain is mostly eye-candy it doesn't matter much and it looks quite good. In a 3D-game however I assume that the requirements on a good terrain are much much higher and an automatic generator would probably fail badly. This has to be compensated by a human carefully designing the terrain to look good and be playable. Something that factorio could use, too, but doesn't need it as much. I don't think that satisfactory would provide us with automatically generated infinite worlds.

In the end I think that both games could be good - but in different aspects.

[meganothing]

I think you don't have a lot to fear of Satisfactory. Sure it looks cool but the map is a lot smaller ( 30 squared km ) and they would never be able to handle the amount of factorization because of the 3D graphics. I have multiple friends that play the game on a non-gamer laptop. I don't think Satisfactory will be playable on it.

But handling the mega-factory is just a function of your CPU-power while 3D graphics is done by the GPU. Sure I'm simplifying this a bit, but as long as they don't make it possible to see the whole mega-factory in a 3D view the CPU would have to handle the same complexity as Factorio. And the GPU would just need to display the small fraction of area visible to you (also limiting the amount of data the CPU has to forward to the GPU)

You are right that it won't be playable on non-gamer laptops anymore, so there always will be a niche for Factorio. And Satisfactory could reach gamers who won't touch Factorio because it doesn't provide the bling-bling they want.

[pleegwat]

In a 3D-game however I assume that the requirements on a good terrain are much much higher and an automatic generator would probably fail badly.

Having only one map will eventually cause them problems as well, mainly for replayability. Supporting custom maps may help.

[Faerindel]

Fixed map, mods as an afterthought, and from the trailer it just looks like "FACTORIO ON 3 DIMERNSHONS".

Meh. Pretty, but meh.

If they tried a better Space Engineers or sandbox Infinifactory that would interest me more...

[AyrA]

In a 3D-game however I assume that the requirements on a good terrain are much much higher and an automatic generator would probably fail badly.

Having only one map will eventually cause them problems as well, mainly for replayability. Supporting custom maps may help.

No Man's sky has a fairly decent map generator that also generates ores, caves and occasionally mountains. The problem is probably not to make an acceptable 3D map generator but how to handle destructibility. I could imagine that in satisfactory you want to go full swiss and dig mile long tunnels through mountains instead of going around them.

[Oktokolo]

I still haven't solved the mining drill problem!

There are at least two obvious methods that have to work:
1. Provide a belt lane to each mining drill having a lane balancer for each belt and feeding all belts into a big belt balancer.
2. Use only so much drills per lane that the lane never gets full, have a lane balancer on each belt and feed all belts into a belt balancer (wuich is far smaller than the one from the first solution). Additionally use a circuit to unpower all drills as all the balancer's outputs get clogged.

But personally i would not care about balancing the drills at all. Just have enough ore mining outposts so that mining does not have to be optimal. You have to expand eventually anyway - so just do your first expansion per ore somewhat earlier. As play time and richness of newly discovered fields tends to infinity, the difference between concurrently needed outposts using optimal mining and needed outposts using sloppy mining in average tends to 0.