How Long to Beat...

[je11693]

Hey guys, I just looked on howlongtobeat.com and saw Factorio had a 42 hour 29 mins average time for the main story. Do you guys think this is fair, or should it be lower/higher?

[wrathofbong46290]

there is a achievement, Which I have already beat. "Launch a rocket in less than 8 hours." the main story essentially is to launch the rocket, so yes it can be done in less than 8 hrs if your trying to rush, but a non spaghetti factory that's built nicely will most likely take longer

[Jap2.0]

I think that an average does very little to say how long the game will take to beat. It's very open ended, so you could spend enormous amounts of time without launching a rocket, or you could speedrun it in 3 hours or so.

[zOldBulldog]

I beat it several times. How long it took? Depends on what I was trying to do in that playthrough. I have taken just over 7 hours and I have taken well over 100. In my current game, I am not even trying to beat it, so it will likely be several hundred hours, and one of my goals is for my first use of nuclear fuel to be in a furnace... just for the irony.

[ColonelSandersLite]

My first factory, where I went in cold with no blueprints, not really a clue what I was doing, and further hampered by my decision to get the bulk of the achievements out of the way, took 142 hours to launch the first rocket.

My second factory, a lazy bastard run, took half that.

My third factory, a there is no spoon run, including the planning and prep time that went into it, took half that again.


I'm sure that if I wanted to, I could build a factory using my existing blueprint library and just launch a rocket in under 20 hours from a cold start.

[je11693]

Thanks guys, I'm looking for a game that will keep me engaged for a long time and has a lot of replability which is why 42 hours didn't really appeal. Sounds like there is quite a lot more to Factorio, including multiple play throughs, if a player wants. I just wasn't sure how good it would be on subsequent play throughs.

[Zavian]

40+ hours to launch your first rocket (aka 'beat' the game) seems reasonable to me, assuming you don't get sidetracked. But if you finish in 40 hours, then you probably haven't explored all the tech tree yet, nor have you played with different world generation settings. You certainly won't have built a megabase. Some of the achievements also provide different challenges.

As with all sandbox games you can also set your own goals to complete. Then there are mods. Factorio has an active modding community, and many mods that add a new recipes and more replayability. Steam says I now have 966 hours, but most of my factorio hours have been played with the .zip version, that isn't linked with steam, so I'm probably over 2000 hours by now. Obviously different people will look for different challenges, and have a different drive to set and complete their own gameplay goals, so your mileage will vary.

[ColonelSandersLite]

Thanks guys, I'm looking for a game that will keep me engaged for a long time and has a lot of replability

Oh, factorio has replayability in spades. There is a huge chasm between a dinky base that can barely manage to launch a single rocket and a megabase capable of producing and consuming a thousand plus of each of the science packs per minute.

And that's before you even get into mods which can massively expand the game.

[eradicator]

Thanks guys, I'm looking for a game that will keep me engaged for a long time and has a lot of replability which is why 42 hours didn't really appeal. Sounds like there is quite a lot more to Factorio, including multiple play throughs, if a player wants. I just wasn't sure how good it would be on subsequent play throughs.

Factorio is mostly about launching lots of rockets (to get more science). And most people on these forums would find it perfectly normal to start over and over again to get to a better design to launch more rockets. I'm not so sure how people outside of this forum think about that. But the 42h definetly looks like "average time to first rocket launched", because that's when you get the "Victory [continue?]" dialog, but if you stop playing after just one rocket you're skipping the part that many people love so much about factorio. Average playtimes on steam would probably be more useful for your purpose (but then there's also lots of people not playing on steam...). So...it depends heavily on your playstyle. Some people get bored after 10 hours, some happily continue after 1000 hours (and i know which group i belong in *cough*).

[Escadin]

Hey guys, I just looked on howlongtobeat.com and saw Factorio had a 42 hour 29 mins average time for the main story. Do you guys think this is fair, or should it be lower/higher?

There is no main story campaign. Just some lore and setting providing tutorial campaign for what is otherwise a complete sandbox game.

There is no proper answer to your question as (with all sandbox games) play time depends on how long you can entertain yourself with the toys this game provides. Those who bring the necessary interest and curiousity easily get 1000 hours out of Factorio. For those who like to be passively entertained and be taken by the hand from start to finish probably won't like the game at all.

[Jap2.0]

For the sake of an analogy, this is like saying "how long does it take to beat the ender dragon in Minecraft." It's largely a sandbox game, and you can reach what is technically the end in anywhere from a few hours to hundreds of hours, and you can keep going as long as you want after that.

[je11693]

Thanks guys, all really helpful responses. This may sound like a silly question but what exactly do you mean by "mods" and "modding"? I presume it's short for "modifications".. How/why are people allowed to change the game? Is this common in PC gaming?

[Jap2.0]

Thanks guys, all really helpful responses. This may sound like a silly question but what exactly do you mean by "mods" and "modding"? I presume it's short for "modifications".. How/why are people allowed to change the game? Is this common in PC gaming?

This is somewhat common, although not universal. In some games mods are made essentially by hacking the game; others, such as Factorio, have the ability to mod built-in, which makes modding easier and less of a security risk. Mods (which are short for modifications) alter the game in various ways, ranging from minor tweaks to major content expansions. Most can be found at the official mod portal, which is also accessible in-game. Mods can change a lot of things in the game (and this varies by game), but they cannot cause harm to your system, the game, or anything you have saved, can easily be removed, and you can find some good ones by asking around the forum. Note that they do disable achievements in maps where they are used.