Friday Facts #266 - Cleanup of mechanics

[mexmer]

Honestly, while i like most changes, 2 thing i would rather keep.
Fuel efficiency, i think there was lot of post advocating it, so i will not repeat the stuff. And item limit on assembler.

Item limit on assembler is neat idea, only co plaint i have with it, that is unclear to players. You need to find out by trial and error. .... this should have been part of tutorial. And “hidden” item over limit, because every assembler has one fluid input, so you can craft recipe that has item limit + one fluid. Since from is not obvious it’s fluid, people might actually think it’s a bug, yet again, it’s just because it was never explained to players.

I hope, we can keep item recipe limit for mods.

As for hardness, while it was interesting mechanics, i think having just minning time on resource is enough, i don’t like having it in percent tho, just simple unit’s, like it’s output for oil patches.

[eradicator]

I'm amazed at how the removal of a useless act (crafting the object pickaxe) is prophetized to end the world. Honestly, I can't understand how not having to manually craft oneself a pickaxe has any chance to drastically change the game into anything else.

I think i'm just gonna post "that picture" again. And hope someone understands what i'm trying to say. And that it's not about the pickaxe at all. And that it being a "slippery slope" doesn't mean it's not going to happen.

rough_vs_polished_amethyst_factorio.png (787.64 KiB) Viewed 6177 times

[Light]

My standalone 0.16 folder now has a permanent spot on the PC for myself and my close friends. We can enjoy the game before it was dumbed down and destructive to the mods that define Factorio for us.

This is because:

I have source access, remember? I downloaded the latest version of 0.17, and everything they said in the FFF is already done.
I'm not saying it can't be undone, but from what I've seen on the source access discord... it won't be undone.

So thanks for the fun experience while it lasted, Wube. There's no way that the mods can work around poor decisions to restore the game to what we love about it if these changes are forced upon us without at least consulting the community for feedback on such major changes first.

I was hoping that FFF 267 was going to be "We rushed the gun and we're sorry. We left the code in for mods as most requested." but I wasn't surprised to see that it was swept aside, with little hope that it will be revisited in the future.
---

To those of you who who intend to debate Koub, you're going to have a rough time. He already made it clear that he dismissed criticism with a blanket statement of people being salty to change and being entitled, even if there's legitimate reasoning that shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. While he seems like a decent guy, his first post shows he missed the point:

I welcome most of these changes. Most people who dislike them do it because they have to change. would they have never known the "before", they would probably have loved the "after" even better when discovering it.

[eradicator]

To those of you who who intend to debate Koub, you're going to have a rough time. He already made it clear that he dismissed criticism with a blanket statement of people being salty to change and being entitled, even if there's legitimate reasoning that shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. While he seems like a decent guy, his first post shows he missed the point:

I welcome most of these changes. Most people who dislike them do it because they have to change. would they have never known the "before", they would probably have loved the "after" even better when discovering it.

Hm. If i had to rephrase that quote purely based on logic-structure that sounds similar to something like "Most people who've never eaten a 5-course meal will probably love a 3-course meal." That is to say that it is just stating the inherit properties of "knowledge" in that you can not miss that which you do not know. It's almost a tautology. But without having eaten the 3-course meal it's impossible to say if it was worth dropping the other 2 courses.

[Mike5000]

Well, I am extremely disappointed. What I want is a mod with different tools that go in the tool slot. Maybe an axe that only cuts trees and not the ore underneath. Or maybe a tool that only removes buildings so I don't have to chop multiple trees simply to pick up a segment of wall/track. A whole bunch of options just went away, Great.

I don't get it, this is factorio, the game where you automate things. If you are using hand tools then you have already lost.

If you prefer sandbox mode I am happy for you. I prefer freeplay myself.

But why do you want to turn my freeplay into the same thing as your sandbox?

[5thHorseman]

The weapons : Pistol, machine gun, shotgun, combat shotgun, rocket launcher, flame thrower. These are a one time craft (at most), also infinitesimal in cost... Getting the weapons as passive upgrades on appropriate research makes totally sense.

And how would you propose we switch weapons?

Well seeing as they just freed up the Tab key, they could use that.

So would that just be cycling through the highest tiers of all unlocked weapons? What about mods, which could add many more weapons? Some people might not want to have to press tab 10 times to go between their combat shotgun and nuke launcher.

Well I don't know. I'm not a programmer and they're not even doing this so speculating on it is pointless. However I can think of two ways off the top of my head to do it that will make it work pretty much exactly like it does now with the exception that you don't craft the weapons.

[Ashprinny]

Well, I am extremely disappointed. What I want is a mod with different tools that go in the tool slot. Maybe an axe that only cuts trees and not the ore underneath. Or maybe a tool that only removes buildings so I don't have to chop multiple trees simply to pick up a segment of wall/track. A whole bunch of options just went away, Great.

I don't get it, this is factorio, the game where you automate things. If you are using hand tools then you have already lost.

but WHY do you automate things? I'd say the answer is that doing it by hand is too slow. If the pickaxe gets removed then fine, I can live with that no biggie....but I don't see these changes as JUST features to be removed...it spans greater than that. Changes that have been announced are actually simplifying the game...a game I mod because I want it to be more complex because I think it has become oversimplified already. But it's not "just" simplification either...it's complete removal of the option TO MOD those mechanics to become more complex.
Like I said in my own, earlier, reply; what I missed from vanilla is to grow INWARDS as well as OUTWARDS. To grow in efficiency as well as size and that's what I see (or fear) is about to be gutted irrevocably now and that path is treacherous; as other players are trying to point out.

I'm going to elaborate that with an extreme thinking example:
We remove the tool slot...and considdering people turn biters off (apparently) remove them from the game too. Might as well remove burners because people think it's tedious.... No biters means no threat; guess the playerentity becomes obsolete too. No biters also means pollution is obsolete...can remove that as well then and weapons too seeing as there's nothing to use them on. No pollution means no incentive to research clean energy so solar panels can go too.
This is just logical step-thinking.....If this becomes the reality of Factorio you know what game springs to mind? Transport Tycoon.
And the worst part is; removal of all of those things from the BASE of the code means there's no way to mod them in again either....so let me ask you...should that extreme thinking example be a reality...what's going to convince me to play Factorio over Transport Tycoon?

Like I said in my earlier reply....the reason why I see those things being "cleaned up" is that they were never fully fleshed out to begin with. Maybe I'm a tad biased in that; I love early game. It gives me the tedium of having to do stuff by hand and plan for the future where I can automate them. I LOVE Pyanodons because it allows me the option to create wooden boards by hand but is extremely slower than it is to craft them in a sawmill....yet it allowing me the option to do so means that everytime I DO create one by hand my mind immediately goes "jeez I should really fix that....but then I need power too...I need steam for that (because powergeneration in pyanadons is actually locked away behind quite a few techs)." so plans get put on hold because of other priorities being shoved higher up the ladder....once the process is running however my mind goes "right, that's fixed; what's next.." and it gives me a sense of accomplishment. Same goes for that pickaxe (to come back to that)....starting with that iron pickaxe I lust for the steel one...once I have that I lust for the brass one, the titanium one, the diamond one and everytime I reach that minor "milestone" is another sense of accomplishment and that idea of "yeah; now we're getting somewhere."
Biters too; it's a fine balance between polluting enough to keep me going at a steady pace whilst not enough to get constantly harrassed by biters and with their vast amount of different resistances it means my defensive line has a myriad of different turrets to deal with that instead of just laser.
Simplifying those aspects of the game would also take away that sense of accomplishment and...in the longer run, I fear....just make my base consist of endless blueprint built modular sections wheras now I also check to see if I can improve the efficiency of the section too.
Like I said; Factorio doesn't have (or need) to be only about "More (stuff) is more" imho...why not allow for the option to be "More efficient (stuff) is more"

[mcdjfp]

I don't get it, this is factorio, the game where you automate things. If you are using hand tools then you have already lost.

Once you get far enough in the game, the ultimate solution to everything (construction/logistics bots) is available. Earlier in the game, it would nice to have options that are not clumsy (such as chopping a tree, mining some coal by accident, chopping a tree, mining coal by accident...), or risk death and destruction (I normally have a handful of killed miners, belts, and power poles from grenades). I would like more choices in game progression beyond rushing construction bots even if that is the optimal way to play. Mods help with this variety, unless useful functions/features are fully removed from the game to make it difficult for them.

Maybe the pick's slot could be repurposed as a generic player upgrade slot. An axe to speed up tree cutting in the early game, a poison filter later on to prevent accidental deaths, or an extra power generator in the late game (when there are enough personal shields to ignore poison damage).

[eformo]

I'm amazed at how the removal of a useless act (crafting the object pickaxe) is prophetized to end the world. Honestly, I can't understand how not having to manually craft oneself a pickaxe has any chance to drastically change the game into anything else.

Wait, you think this is about the pickaxe?

It's not about removing the pickaxe. It's about removing the FUNCTIONALITY for pickaxes (or other equipment).

It's about removing the support for modders who have used this functionality to do creative things that are different from what the vanilla game has done with it.

When you deliberately break all the mods and remove the dimensions in which modders have enhance the game, just for a minor tweak to the vanilla experience, we who play the modded game (or develop the mods) feel like we're getting the finger. In my experience, it's rare for developers to give large segments of their player base the finger. But that appears to be what Kovarex has chosen to do here. An appearance that is being confirmed moment by moment as the consternation goes without any sort of response.

To clarify then, this isn't about the pickaxe, it's about giving the finger to the mod developers and players who have been told that the game they enjoy isn't vanilla enough, so they should all leave. That's why people feel like this might be the end of their Factorio world.

[Koub]

Even if I think the ability to mod a game is important, even if I understand that Bob's, Angel's, and a few others' mods add so much to the game that many players find them essential, my opinion is that Vanilla experience must be coherent all by itself. I know a few other people have voiced this too, but it was a droplet in a ocean of rage.

While the game is in development, the devs can allow themselves to start in many directions. Some directions will be actively exploited and deepened during the following development iterations, and some will just remain as single quirks. If you ask Kovarex "Did you picture Factorio content would be exactly what it is today when you started ?", he'd answer "hell no, it's way better than I could have imagined" (note : this is a personal guess, I'm not a member of the dev team). The game evolves as a living organism, and as in nature, some bits are not chosen by the evolution as "the way to go", and are dropped because evolution chose another path.

A mechanism that's not thoroughly used within the game, a mechanism that is totally unique and exceptionnaly used (not in the gaming industry in general, but in the game itself) is a mechanism that is not well integrated into the game. This kind of mechanism should be removed. If the development had been in the direction to add many different tools, to use these tools for other recurrent recipes, ..., then the devs would have never removed them.

I remember when the pump was named "small pump". Why ? I guess higher tiers of pumps were expected at one time, but they appeared not to be necessary in vanilla, so they were dropped.
Same thing with Diesel locomotive, basic beacon, basic grenade, and probably others I don't remember of. All these elements were supposed to be tiered at some point, but ... well ... they were not.

The pickaxe and tool slot are vestigial parts of the game. Leaving these parts would make the game never look finished, always relying on mods to be complete, and THAT is something I loathe Bethesda, I'm watching you too.

[Durabys]

Thanks, guys, and gals for all the fun I had while it lasted! I am moving over to Satisfactory once it comes out.

[eradicator]

A mechanism that's not thoroughly used within the game, a mechanism that is totally unique and exceptionnaly used (not in the gaming industry in general, but in the game itself) is a mechanism that is not well integrated into the game. This kind of mechanism should be removed. If the development had been in the direction to add many different tools, to use these tools for other recurrent recipes, ..., then the devs would have never removed them.

I remember when the pump was named "small pump". Why ? I guess higher tiers of pumps were expected at one time, but they appeared not to be necessary in vanilla, so they were dropped.
Same thing with Diesel locomotive, basic beacon, basic grenade, and probably others I don't remember of. All these elements were supposed to be tiered at some point, but ... well ... they were not.

You're still mixing moddability (engine features) with content (items, etc). Just because the engine supports a feature does not mean the base game has to use that feature. There are already many features in the engine that the base game makes no use of at all (thank you dev team for every one of them). And as the FFF states itself "burner efficiency" is now one of those. One of the gems of moddability. Do i mind? No, it's a balance change. Balance changes are to be expected, and moddability has been preserved. There are quite a few other mod-only things which i already named in an earlier post. But let's go the other way around and talk about what moddabiltiy has already been removed.
In 0.15 you could change the electric_input/output_flow_limit of the electric-energy-interface (a mod-only item) during runtime. I built a device with that that allowed you to circuit-control the power-flow between two electric networks with perfect granularity. I.e. you could set the circuit to supply 23.55MW to the subnetwork, or 1.38MW, or 2.67GW. Anything you wanted, real time, with circuits. In 0.16 the ability to change flow limits during runtime was removed, which meant that even if i rewrote the whole thing to work with the new system, it could only ever allow maybe tow steps per magnitude (i.e. 5MW,10MW,50MW,100MW) because instead of just saying flow=x i'd have to spawn a new entity every time the limit changes. The dynamic flow limit had great potential, but because nobody ever did anything "interesting enough" with it (and would that really have made them keep it?) it was optimized away on the path to maximize UPS.

[5thHorseman]

Thanks, guys, and gals for all the fun I had while it lasted! I am moving over to Satisfactory once it comes out.

This is the second comment I've seen of this type and I must profess ignorance. What about Satisfactory's development and design paradigms makes it better suited for modders to get involved in it before release?

Did they agree that they would not modify the game in such a way as to make it better (in their opinion), if that change would also anger modders?

[emp_zealoth]

Gotta go the route of every other shitty game company apparently. I've had high hopes that Factorio team would turn out different, but nope. No matter how long your fans are with you, no matter how politely they try to discuss things or plead all they get back is attitude. I bought the game the second I saw the first Steam trailer, precisely because it was quirky and nerdy and slightly messy. Hell, I gifted copies to my friends because I LOVED the game.

Factorio with bob's and Angel's broke me. For me this was end of history stuff. I highly doubt there will be a game as complex, as intriguing and fascinating, a game where you can nerd out for hundreds of hours on one map and not even feel bad restaring because you realised there is a better way to do stuff. Most other games bore me now.

And then at some point you started bogging the vanilla experience down, as if to stretch it out longer, instead of actually adding new playable content.

Without a doubt, the engine itself is getting perfected, but there is less and less of the game itself left...

But the 266 changes seem to be a precision strike against the most comprehensive mods out there. Hell, people even pointed out it completely upends smelting balance, which didn't even earn a response. Are you salty that some modders are able to deliver better Factorio experience (without worrying about maximising sales) than Factorio itself? I'm just disheartened. In the age of shits like Blizzard Activision or EA or Bethesda you were a beacon of hope in the fucking darkness. Childlish as it may be, I simply don't care.

And 267 came and no one had the guts to even post a single sentence acknowledging it was a controversial change, or even some platitudes. No, the universe itself was made right and those pesky shits better get on with the program.

The final BM is that most of the functionality could be re-implemented pretty much with minimal technical debt and with no impact on UPS. (Tag the recipes with assembler tiers, tag miners with allowed ores[limiting placeability - no runtime penalty], leave efficiency toggleable, allow mining upgrades to come from armor modules if you are really hellbent on removing the stupid slot for no gain)

I'm not gonna be ranting about Satisfactory - I know that game will be infinitely less moddable than Factorio ever will - and I will get it no matter what. I'm not gonna pretend I'll stop playing Factorio either (Unless you persist with lobotomizing the game I guess, after this I don't even know what to think). You already have my money anyway. But I'll be wary about spending more with you now.

I'm not angry. Not really. I am mostly sad.

[Reika]

But the [FFF]266 changes seem to be a precision strike against the most comprehensive mods out there...And [FFF]267 came and no one had the guts to even post a single sentence acknowledging it was a controversial change, or even some platitudes.

That really struck me as well. I was looking forwards to FFF267 because I wanted to see an update on these changes, whether the Wube team have revisited any of their decisions, whether they felt the community's concerns had merit.

Instead we got...silence. Not even acknowledging the massive blowback, or making any mention whatsoever of the previous week. If one wants to take the least charitable interpretation, it comes across as trying to "sweep the whole thing under the rug". Even the most charitable interpretation is...what? "We simply did not realize people still cared"?

[eformo]

Even if I think the ability to mod a game is important, even if I understand that Bob's, Angel's, and a few others' mods add so much to the game that many players find them essential, my opinion is that Vanilla experience must be coherent all by itself. I know a few other people have voiced this too, but it was a droplet in a ocean of rage.

The pickaxe and tool slot are vestigial parts of the game. Leaving these parts would make the game never look finished, always relying on mods to be complete, and THAT is something I loathe Bethesda, I'm watching you too.

I whole heartedly agree with everything I quoted above. I remember trying to figure out mining rates, enough so that I grinned at that part of Kovarex's post.

But what Kovarex announced wasn't just removing the tool slot. It's also removing the functionality under the surface for the modder to have something to work with. It's not covering over the hardness and mining power numbers with a simpler display that shows ore per second. It's removing the functionality entirely. They could easily do the improvement for vanilla without pulling out the ability for a modder to create a new harder ore. That decision to go beyond the minimum to make certain that modders can no longer do what they do is what is causing such unhappiness.

[eradicator]

But the [FFF]266 changes seem to be a precision strike against the most comprehensive mods out there...And [FFF]267 came and no one had the guts to even post a single sentence acknowledging it was a controversial change, or even some platitudes.

That really struck me as well. I was looking forwards to FFF267 because I wanted to see an update on these changes, whether the Wube team have revisited any of their decisions, whether they felt the community's concerns had merit.

They probably learned from the bot vs belts flamewar that giving feedback (pouring oil on it) only makes it worse. "The only winning move is not to play." And besides, when was the last time that something announced in an FFF didn't happen? Or the last time a flamewar ever changed anything? (ok, there might be some examples for "anything", but most of the time nothing changes) I don't blame them for making the game they want. If it at some point in time becomes a game that i no longer want to play i'll be very sad. Until then i'll try to enjoy the game. And by posting my opinion here hopefully prevent them from making future decisions that "people like me" wouldn't like.

[Jap2.0]

But the [FFF]266 changes seem to be a precision strike against the most comprehensive mods out there...And [FFF]267 came and no one had the guts to even post a single sentence acknowledging it was a controversial change, or even some platitudes.

That really struck me as well. I was looking forwards to FFF267 because I wanted to see an update on these changes, whether the Wube team have revisited any of their decisions, whether they felt the community's concerns had merit.

They probably learned from the bot vs belts flamewar that giving feedback (pouring oil on it) only makes it worse. "The only winning move is not to play." And besides, when was the last time that something announced in an FFF didn't happen? Or the last time a flamewar ever changed anything? (ok, there might be some examples for "anything", but most of the time nothing changes) I don't blame them for making the game they want. If it at some point in time becomes a game that i no longer want to play i'll be very sad. Until then i'll try to enjoy the game. And by posting my opinion here hopefully prevent them from making future decisions that "people like me" wouldn't like.

Is ignoring the feedback of the community a better option? Also, as for the last time something from a FFF didn't happen? Try FFF 254/255 with the research queue, less than three months ago.

[Avezo]

I'm thinking, since axe is out, nightvision and not even yet implemented belt immunity item also should be out, baked just into hotkey.

[meganothing]

Is ignoring the feedback of the community a better option? Also, as for the last time something from a FFF didn't happen? Try FFF 254/255 with the research queue, less than three months ago.

The difference is probably that arguments then convinced them. Which in this case did not happen.