Friday Facts #247 - Pricing and its exploits

[Mekronid]

I think the calculus is quite simple. You were first to market and started out developing a game you love, which has conveyed that love to a wider audience. It's not technically most impressive, it's not the most complex, but it has a lot of potential. Some of that still remains untapped, but you've shown what you want to achieve, and you've shown you have the ability to accomplish it.

In the meantime, let's compare two other games which spawned their own sub-genre.

- Minecraft is still the most popular in its genre despite being bought by a dev who doesn't understand the community and doesn't care about anything except endless updates. This state of affairs is disappointing, but it goes to show the staying power of a well-designed game. Ever since the days of its infancy people have been following its development and today continue to push the boundaries of what its lead developer thought was possible. This is simply because its lead dev was innately in tune with what made his game "good" and so he almost never wasted time developing things that didn't work or didn't improve the game.

- Slither.IO expanded faster than Minecraft but fell apart like a soviet space shuttle. Similar to Factorio and Minecraft it has intuitive rules and contains many intricacies. Yet Wormax.IO, a clone that was released a mere 6 months later, quickly eclipsed its popularity. Why? Because there was one goddamn thing the Slither.IO devs never did and still haven't done. They didn't fix the network synchronization error. They left a critical bug in the game engine long enough that a competitor was able to quickly overtake them.

I could go into detail about other games and game companies, but the trend is quite obvious. Each that succeeded and stuck around was led by a strong vision and will to grow and succeed. Each that fell apart did not pay attention to core mechanics of the game or business. Some got caught up in developing pointless sub-features and lost sight of what they really wanted. Others got stuck in financial troubles because of inattention to the business side of things. A few paid attention to players who shouted loudest and forgot that other people play too.

I know Factorio is very much on track right now. However, if you ever find yourself asking if you should deviate from your vision, make sure you think about the impact it'll have on the game. Because that, in the end, is what makes a game company. The game.

[Oktokolo]

It's not technically most impressive, it's not the most complex, but it has a lot of potential.

Factorio is technically the most impressive game i've ever seen since starting gaming in the 80's on a Vectrex. Factorio is a complex Single player experience running fine on an iGPU - yet it also can handle more than 400 players on a single instance in multiplayer. I had very little crashes (and only after they lately started to be more aggressive about provoking them). Most of the time i do not think about flaws in the game - wich i really do a lot when playing other games.
Sure, 2D looks easy. But calculating the state of tenths of thousands of entities and rendering their sprites while mostly maintaining 60 FPS on an Intel integrated GPU is hard. It should take some time before we see a competitor manage to achieve that. Factorio created a genre and set the engine bar sky-high at the same time.
For an otherwise great base-builder wich also is 2D, has a lot less state and is singleplayer only - but fails miserably on delivering playable FPS on my iGPU setup, try Rimworld.

[bobingabout]

I think I want to check out this Satisfactory game. This is the first I'm hearing it, well done for advertising your competition

Factorio will still be in my heart though, it's hard to escape when you're a high profile modder.

[Deadlock989]

Satisfactory looks interesting at first glance but I doubt it can directly replace Factorio. I've been sufficiently burned by other Early Access efforts such that my hype vaccinations are now very powerful. Factorio has been the only positive EA/paid beta experience I've ever had and I don't trust anyone other than Wube, with their honesty, humility and notable lack of hype, to manage EA well.

I seriously doubt that Satisfactory will ever operate at the scale or complexity of even a medium-sized Factorio base, and even if it does, the first person aspect is putting me off. And it won't have the replayability unless there's a comparable modding feature. Given that it doesn't even have procedural generated worlds but a single hand-crafted land, that seems unlikely. If/when there's a Factorio 2, I'd like to see it run in 3D, possibly with stepped destructible terrain, but definitely staying top-down. Like this recent new attempt, but operating on the scale we've come to expect. I'd also quite happily lose the player character, moving more towards it being a kind of "god game". But obviously YMMV.

[Ramblin]

One look at the Satisfactory trailer was enough - I won't be buying it.

See, the thing is that FPS actually make me physically ill - kind of a "reverse motion sickness". So a good game with great content and long-term interest like Factorio that isn't an FPS is really my thing!

I'll also echo all the comments congratulating the devs on founding (or at least legitimizing) a genre.

[mrvn]

Satisfactiory overshadowing Factorio? Gimme a break

Early and mid-game Factorio - possible, but end-game and megabase level gameplay - not a chance

I agree. I'll doubtless play both, unless Satisfactory has crippling issues. Which with small dev titles, it is a very real possibility (I would play stuff like Oxygen Not Included, Starbound, etc far more if not for all their tech issues, Factorio is really underrated for its sheer stability and smoothness).

But even assuming Satisfactory is a stable and smooth running product, I also can't really imagine that it is going to scale up like Factorio... and they've already said it's a fixed, not generated, world. Still, more titles in the genre is a good thing.

Only runs on windows. Game over.

[HornetSV]

I'll be playing factorio for a long time, I get excited by the trailer, but when you think on perfomance, is all gone, Thanks for such a good game

[adam_bise]

I bought the game on 4/16. I think I saw my pixel in the graph! =D

[cpy]

I like 2D games, I love 3D games but 2.5D games are godtier. (SC4)

Can satisfactory have 30 servers running one single ultra giant base? I don't think so!

Factorio can probably just add some ultra end game aliens to fight for masochists to enjoy spending their science points. Maybe to make a fair challenge is to increase alien damage post 100% evo but with scaling on par with science tech so they would need more evolution for each point they evolve. It would be harder for them to evolve as it would be harder for us to have space tech.

[Rufflemao]

Factorio's come such a long way, and has such a long way ahead of it.

I think you should do as you always did. treat the game with love and iterate over and over, and take your time. with the vision-driven, open to the community attitude you guys have with factorio - very seriously, the very best attitude amongst every developer in the industry today, bar absolutely none-, if that other game is better at launch, then it won't be for long. Especially if they don't support modding.

Furthermore, if the devs of satisfactory are every bit as good and every bit as as awesome as you guys (really.... i'm not licking ass here, you guys are legendary), then one of two things will happen : you will wage war and draw ideas from each other, improving both games, or you will realise you are brothers and join together to create a masterpiece in the genre.

in all situations you emerge as a winner. I hope it ends up in a collaboration, but for factorio, i am not afraid.

That's because you don't only stand head and shoulders above competitors in your genre, you stand head and shoulders above almost all developpers of the gaming industry for community integration and belief in your product, to only name these two. These are essential to the genre.

I am far, far from worried.

[bobingabout]

Satisfactory looks interesting at first glance but I doubt it can directly replace Factorio. I've been sufficiently burned by other Early Access efforts such that my hype vaccinations are now very powerful. Factorio has been the only positive EA/paid beta experience I've ever had and I don't trust anyone other than Wube, with their honesty, humility and notable lack of hype, to manage EA well.

I seriously doubt that Satisfactory will ever operate at the scale or complexity of even a medium-sized Factorio base, and even if it does, the first person aspect is putting me off. And it won't have the replayability unless there's a comparable modding feature. Given that it doesn't even have procedural generated worlds but a single hand-crafted land, that seems unlikely. If/when there's a Factorio 2, I'd like to see it run in 3D, possibly with stepped destructible terrain, but definitely staying top-down. Like this recent new attempt, but operating on the scale we've come to expect. I'd also quite happily lose the player character, moving more towards it being a kind of "god game". But obviously YMMV.

Satisfactory doesn't look like a replacement for Factorio to me either, if I were to replace a game I played right now with Satisfactory (well, I'm not even playing factorio right now, so... fuck) it would probably be empyrion (which in itself I haven't loaded in about a week due to being addicted to Oxygen not included), and even then it wouldn't be a complete replacement, because I play that more for the space aspect.

As for the paid beta stuff, I have had other good experiences, Oxygen not included is one that I'm playing right now. Another is Warframe... now, while a free to play game, I was one of these silver tier founders who spent a hell of a lot of money on it, I have everything except the Lato Prime (Which I heard was crap anyway) and gold badge, but I do have the silver badge, and Excalibur prime.

[Pothrekr]

Pffft Satisfactory..... I think you guys have all missed the true competitor for Factorio.......


Assembly Line for iOS and Andriod.... https://www.google.com/search?q=assembly+line+game

Now that is going to eat away Wube's market share

[thriem]

I always doubt that these messages are being read by the actual people the message intends to.

However, I think you do not have to fear about being -overshadowed-. In my point of perspective, 3D-games are mostly more user-friendly and is usually preferred vs. 2D-Games, however, games like Factorio got their strength somewhere else. And Factorio is (for me) all about scale and growth. There are tons of items on the belts, hundreds of robots, countless counters... all things i would not be worried being outmatched by a 3D game(engine). Also, Factorio has the advantage of perspective - the ego-perspective which we've seen grants you barely any overview, which means there are menus and maps for that...

The things I'd advise to you, dear Factorio-Team, is: We have a proper industry-setting now, so the core, the -all about- is already there. Now the time dawns, where side-things should be topic, Like

• More variation of enemies

• More fun-vehicles to explore the world

• Events
  • (climate-change (maybe due pollution?)
  • seasons,
  • extinct bases (as seen in campaign)
  • trading-posts
  • solar-flare
  • eclipse
  • sea-level-change... you get the idea

So there is actual stuff beside the dry task of building an industry.

Maybe you are against that thought, I on the other hand think, that we spend multiple dozens of hours at a single map, there should be fun things to do if i want to.

[orzelek]

A bit OT but I can confirm one thing...
Oxygen not included is a dangerous game I tell you that

As for Satisfactory I'll certainly check it out once it's a bit less early access - I do like eye candy from time to time in my builder games.

[RobertTerwilliger]

From what I saw in the "S." trailer, Factorio still gives player very unique feature: you give puzzles to yourself. One of the most specific examples is so-called belt puzzle, which is the most fun part for me (in complex with other game features, ofcourse)).

However, S.'s trailer have shown a thing, that Factorio is lacking - it's a proper vehicle unloading&resupplying station. Seriously, we can do something that works somehow, but it would be far from optimal.
How about adding vechicle station entity that would simply read v. inventory and output it into logic network?
If you'll ever add electric-powered/liquid-fueled vehicles, these stations may also get charging/refueling function.
Also what if to split vehicle inserter-related checkboxes into two separate ones: ammo+fuel and trunk (add spare ammo inventory slots if so)?

[taikodragon]

Pffft Satisfactory..... I think you guys have all missed the true competitor for Factorio.......


Assembly Line for iOS and Andriod.... https://www.google.com/search?q=assembly+line+game

Now that is going to eat away Wube's market share

I broke the economy in that game using the simplest of factorio logic and then uninstalled it. I don't think it's anything to be worried about.

[Pothrekr]

Pffft Satisfactory..... I think you guys have all missed the true competitor for Factorio.......


Assembly Line for iOS and Andriod.... https://www.google.com/search?q=assembly+line+game

Now that is going to eat away Wube's market share

I broke the economy in that game using the simplest of factorio logic and then uninstalled it. I don't think it's anything to be worried about.

Whoooosshhhhhhhhhh.........

[Anhalter]

This Satisfactory game looks like a mix between Factorio and Rust, both of which i really like. Looks promising, but there is the chance that it will be a overhyped bugfest (*cough* XXX Engineers *cough*).
So let's see when it comes out.

[jaggmann]

I don't like to mix the style of play .Overhead to first person that is what the other game will be.What I like mostly about factorio is that you can customize the game to your own liking .Perhaps a more accessible modding friendly application would be good .That is an application to do modding easily .I would like for factorio to have a variation of the wave mode that would start from scratch but have some constructor bots and logistic bots .

[robeja]

I've seen the trailer and I was like "omg, a Factorio in 3D, awesome!!". For me it looks like a mix of No Man Sky/Subnautica with Factorio, and I love that combination (although I didn't like NMS very much in the end). Let's see how it evolves. And as seen from previous comments, probably I will play them both.

About what thriem said:

• More variation of enemies: I agree, when you develop lasers the enemies are only a nuisance.

• More fun-vehicles to explore the world: Also agree, I would like to fly with that plane you have to build on the tutorial, or have a ship (on a most-water scenario)

• Climate-change: Agree: would like to see desertification, acid rain, (and the ability to plant forest or terraform to fight the change)

• trading-posts: Disagree: I like the feeling of 'stranded' and 'loneliness' that offers the game