Version 0.17.60

[Aflixion]

it just kicks the can down the road

That was the intent

Kicking the can down the road doesn't solve the problem, it just makes for a bigger problem later on. And I still have yet to see a response to Antaios's post about the true problem of blue science: viewtopic.php?f=38&t=73684&start=240#p445760

[Klonan]

it just kicks the can down the road

That was the intent

Kicking the can down the road doesn't solve the problem

You must be referring to a different problem,

Delaying the multiple output recipe spreads out the introduction of new concepts,
We felt that the problem is too many new concepts at once, the oil harvesting, fluid wagon, refineries, chemical plants, etc.

We think and feel that the changes break the process down into more digestible chunks,

At its introduction now, you only need to deal with Crude -> Petroleum -> Plastic + Sulfur

Then later the more advanced recipes and fluids are introduced after blue science

To me, I feel like this isn't 'kicking the can down the road', its breaking up a concept from a large and more complex item into smaller and more manageable pieces.
I always believe, in Factorio, work, life, planning, cooking, programming, music, etc. Smaller things, smaller scope, smaller scale, is always better.
And this change aligns with my belief, we break the game content apart into a set of smaller and more approachable challenges.

[Aflixion]

it just kicks the can down the road

That was the intent

Kicking the can down the road doesn't solve the problem

You must be referring to a different problem,

Delaying the multiple output recipe spreads out the introduction of new concepts,
We felt that the problem is too many new concepts at once, the oil harvesting, fluid wagon, refineries, chemical plants, etc.

We think and feel that the changes break the process down into more digestible chunks,

At its introduction now, you only need to deal with Crude -> Petroleum -> Plastic + Sulfur

Then later the more advanced recipes and fluids are introduced after blue science

To me, I feel like this isn't 'kicking the can down the road', its breaking up a concept from a large and more complex item into smaller and more manageable pieces.
I always believe, in Factorio, work, life, planning, cooking, programming, music, etc. Smaller things, smaller scope, smaller scale, is always better.
And this change aligns with my belief, we break the game content apart into a set of smaller and more approachable challenges.

That's what you thought the problem was? Why not continue simplifying the game so that it spoon-feeds you everything if having too many new concepts is the problem?

The problem with oil processing, the challenge everyone gets stuck on temporarily, is balancing the multiple outputs of the refinery and consuming them enough to keep petroleum flowing. By removing that problem until you have a recipe that gives you everything in the ratio that you want it, you completely gut the challenge of oil. I'm starting to feel like you're deliberately ignoring this point since so many people have made it by now.

But oil processing is just a symptom of why people hit a brick wall at blue science, not the root cause. It's the only new resource that you need to deal with (steel is "new" but just requires a new smelting column that inputs iron plate instead of iron ore in the simplest designs), so people naturally blame it for their frustration. The real issue though is the amount of scaling up that needs to be done to continue to feed the factory for blue science, combined with the necessary size of the blue science build to produce it at the same rate as red and green science. All of this is in Antaios's post if you'd bother to read it and address it.

[Theikkru]

[...]
Delaying the multiple output recipe spreads out the introduction of new concepts,
We felt that the problem is too many new concepts at once, the oil harvesting, fluid wagon, refineries, chemical plants, etc.

We think and feel that the changes break the process down into more digestible chunks,

At its introduction now, you only need to deal with Crude -> Petroleum -> Plastic + Sulfur

Then later the more advanced recipes and fluids are introduced after blue science

To me, I feel like this isn't 'kicking the can down the road', its breaking up a concept from a large and more complex item into smaller and more manageable pieces.
I always believe, in Factorio, work, life, planning, cooking, programming, music, etc. Smaller things, smaller scope, smaller scale, is always better.
And this change aligns with my belief, we break the game content apart into a set of smaller and more approachable challenges.

The thing is, advanced processing now lumps the multiple outputs concept in with lubricant, electric engines, blue belts/undergrounds/splitters, modular/power armor, power armor modules, rocket fuel, and bots, and those are just the ones that are direct relations. There are even more different concepts and technologies (such as lasers, processing units, nuclear power, production science etc.) happening around the same point in the tech tree. Is that really spreading out new concepts, or just sweeping some of them into a different pile to be encountered later on?
In addition, why was it the multiple outputs concept that got the boot? If your goal is to spread out complexity by shuffling things around, why not delay fluid wagons, for example, by having some oil patches in the starting area? I can understand the general idea of redistributing the concepts for a smoother difficulty curve, but the 0.17.60 implementation strikes me as neither an effective, nor an optimal method of doing so, given the many potential alternatives.

[Antaios]

it just kicks the can down the road

That was the intent

Kicking the can down the road doesn't solve the problem

You must be referring to a different problem,

Delaying the multiple output recipe spreads out the introduction of new concepts,
We felt that the problem is too many new concepts at once, the oil harvesting, fluid wagon, refineries, chemical plants, etc.

We think and feel that the changes break the process down into more digestible chunks,

At its introduction now, you only need to deal with Crude -> Petroleum -> Plastic + Sulfur

Then later the more advanced recipes and fluids are introduced after blue science

To me, I feel like this isn't 'kicking the can down the road', its breaking up a concept from a large and more complex item into smaller and more manageable pieces.
I always believe, in Factorio, work, life, planning, cooking, programming, music, etc. Smaller things, smaller scope, smaller scale, is always better.
And this change aligns with my belief, we break the game content apart into a set of smaller and more approachable challenges.

Crude>Petroleum>Plastic+Sulfur is not difficult in the slightest, it's not hard to manage. Nothing is learnt at this stage now, only more of the same is setup.
Pumpjacks, are a concept familiar enough with the player, from miners.
Fluid wagons are a concept familiar to the player from regular wagons, exposed to regardless in the red/green era, as they expand for mining.
Refineries are indeed a new concept.
Chemical plants at this stage are not a new concept, they work like assembling machines, only they take fluids.
All but the refinery have an analogous to regular processing that the player has already done, the only difference is that these input and output some fluids

And Fluid handling is introduced earlier, perhaps tanks are somewhat new but that's about it. The concept of fluid handling isn't even difficult in and of itself anyway, as pipes are actually far in a way simpler than belts. Their throughput is hardly limiting, they flow in both directions, and pumps aren't something the player really has to contend with for managing the flow of fluids yet if ever. They're connect and go.

You know what I was thinking the first time I set up my refineries?
"This is too simple, there's something about pipes I'm missing, surely they don't just work, what's their throughput like, is it enough, something's going to break because there's something about pipes I missed...
Oh, it worked, huh."
I'm not kidding.

Now the introduction of three fluids, the only real new concept, and their interactions is introduced at the same time a new player is thrown two cracking recipes, and lubricant, and is expected to go learn and setup all of that all at once, then almost immediately ramp it up to max speed to feed the new blue science technologies they're using. All whilst not actually knowing how much of each fraction they might use, because they haven't used any yet.

I explained more previously why the previous basic oil processing teaches a good amount, not too much. It introduces new concepts, such as the refinery backing up (though I also explained why this in and of itself is not a difficult concept to grasp, if it is shown apparently to the player), that need to be taught and prepared before the ramp up to full production that will inevitably happen in blue science.

The green/red era is long, but it's not necessarily a problem, players can tackle whatever part they want in whatever order they want, that's part of it's fun, that's why there are multiple research branches in the same tier. Not to mention it's been explained and linked to plenty of times why the green/red era is long, and oil is only a small part of that. I've covered several ways to deal with specific actionable complaints about the red/green era. With the existence of these multiple things you seem to want to cover, it seems like you all either can't agree what the actual problem you want to address is, or the problem list is quite long and you are trying to tackle it all with a singular sweeping change.

For not giving the player the tools to 'deal' with oil fractions, which keeps pressure to advance high and makes some people nervous about sustainability:
Make cracking a red/green science. A small cracking only science in red/green isn't going to make red/green any longer than it already is, since that's not where the time sink lies.

For giving the player more sustainability before cracking:
Balance the basic oil processing ratio, reducing light and heavy oil output, reducing the pressure to get something sustainable going, evening out the difference between blue science solid fuel usage and light/heavy production and giving the player more time, perhaps unlimited time, before their tanks back up. Though, their tanks should back up, it's an incredibly good teaching moment.

For if you really wanted to smooth the progression and shorten the red/green era:
The only true way to do this is to give some more carrot in the red/green era to keep the player going. Split green and some blue science into a new science pack. There is simply no way to reconcile the increase in logistics required for blue science into some reasonable complexity/production jump, the resolution is too low, it requires another step.
This would be the perfect opportunity to make the 'chemical' science pack actually require mostly chemicals from oil processing, giving the player a nice carrot shortly after setting it up. Given the other activities of the red/green era, the other pack would fit well as an exploration/expansion themed pack. This is a big balance change, but you seem ok with those right now, it makes sense internally in the game, and it is truly the only way to smooth the 'reward curve' if that's what you want to do.

[Tricorius]

To me, I feel like this isn't 'kicking the can down the road', its breaking up a concept from a large and more complex item into smaller and more manageable pieces.

I pretty clearly had my refinery process broken up into discrete blocks. It seems that a perhaps better choice might have been to guide the player into discrete blocks of technology so they didn’t have to learn it all at once.

Instead of unlocking all of oil with one (or two) techs, you could unlock it in a series of 7 or 8. In order to learn the “old” basic oil, it could have unlocked the just the refinery.

Modern oil refining facilities are gigantic, sprawling beasts with a massive amount of storage.

The refinery recipe could be modified to take three (or more) fluid tanks in addition to whatever else it should take. Make it a bit painful to build. You did that with nuclear, you notice and *feel* it when you setup a nuclear plant. Make the player pay attention to oil too. And I expect it wouldn’t be too tough to modify the fluid boxes to store up to a tank’s worth of each output.

The new recipe guides the player toward storing fluids in tanks. Storing excess fluid would be far better than invisibility burning excess off. Plopping an additional refinery down would then allow that one to process up to another set of tank’s worth of fluid. Examining a refinery would show a huge amount of stored fluid and hopefully trigger a thought, oh..hey I could just pull this out and store it in additional tanks. (Or better yet, start using it from some of these recipes I’ve been unlocking.)

You could then introduce techs that unlock the various options for given recipes and hopefully that can help them think, hmm...plastics, I can make that out of petroleum now..oh, hey sulfur...hmmm...lubrication.

These small milestones are already in the tech tree, they just need to be emphasized. I think part of the problem at this stage too is that you probably have a decent automation for science so you can kinda shuffle through a bunch of techs without really noticing what you have been unlockin and not realize that it has anything to do with helping your oil system.

Edit: you could even have two refinery recipes to call it out even more clearly. You could have the standard refinery and a “high-capacity” refinery that takes a standard refinery and 9 fluid tanks or such. (If you got a lower capacity vs the number of tanks you put in, it would also encourage the player to build out and use tanks separately for better efficiency.)

This would lead pretty well into the cracking recipes, and you have all this stored fluid in your refineries that you can use to kickstart that process. And you don’t feel like you wasted a bunch of resources.

[Aflixion]

it just kicks the can down the road

That was the intent

Kicking the can down the road doesn't solve the problem

You must be referring to a different problem,

Delaying the multiple output recipe spreads out the introduction of new concepts,
We felt that the problem is too many new concepts at once, the oil harvesting, fluid wagon, refineries, chemical plants, etc.

We think and feel that the changes break the process down into more digestible chunks,

At its introduction now, you only need to deal with Crude -> Petroleum -> Plastic + Sulfur

Then later the more advanced recipes and fluids are introduced after blue science

To me, I feel like this isn't 'kicking the can down the road', its breaking up a concept from a large and more complex item into smaller and more manageable pieces.
I always believe, in Factorio, work, life, planning, cooking, programming, music, etc. Smaller things, smaller scope, smaller scale, is always better.
And this change aligns with my belief, we break the game content apart into a set of smaller and more approachable challenges.

Crude>Petroleum>Plastic+Sulfur is not difficult in the slightest, it's not hard to manage. Nothing is learnt at this stage now, only more of the same is setup.
Pumpjacks, are a concept familiar enough with the player, from miners.
Fluid wagons are a concept familiar to the player from regular wagons, exposed to regardless in the red/green era, as they expand for mining.
Refineries are indeed a new concept.
Chemical plants at this stage are not a new concept, they work like assembling machines, only they take fluids.
All but the refinery have an analogous to regular processing that the player has already done, the only difference is that these input and output some fluids

And Fluid handling is introduced earlier, perhaps tanks are somewhat new but that's about it. The concept of fluid handling isn't even difficult in and of itself anyway, as pipes are actually far in a way simpler than belts. Their throughput is hardly limiting, they flow in both directions, and pumps aren't something the player really has to contend with for managing the flow of fluids yet if ever. They're connect and go.

You know what I was thinking the first time I set up my refineries?
"This is too simple, there's something about pipes I'm missing, surely they don't just work, what's their throughput like, is it enough, something's going to break because there's something about pipes I missed...
Oh, it worked, huh."
I'm not kidding.

Now the introduction of three fluids, the only real new concept, and their interactions is introduced at the same time a new player is thrown two cracking recipes, and lubricant, and is expected to go learn and setup all of that all at once, then almost immediately ramp it up to max speed to feed the new blue science technologies they're using. All whilst not actually knowing how much of each fraction they might use, because they haven't used any yet.

I explained more previously why the previous basic oil processing teaches a good amount, not too much. It introduces new concepts, such as the refinery backing up (though I also explained why this in and of itself is not a difficult concept to grasp, if it is shown apparently to the player), that need to be taught and prepared before the ramp up to full production that will inevitably happen in blue science.

The green/red era is long, but it's not necessarily a problem, players can tackle whatever part they want in whatever order they want, that's part of it's fun, that's why there are multiple research branches in the same tier. Not to mention it's been explained and linked to plenty of times why the green/red era is long, and oil is only a small part of that. I've covered several ways to deal with specific actionable complaints about the red/green era. With the existence of these multiple things you seem to want to cover, it seems like you all either can't agree what the actual problem you want to address is, or the problem list is quite long and you are trying to tackle it all with a singular sweeping change.

For not giving the player the tools to 'deal' with oil fractions, which keeps pressure to advance high and makes some people nervous about sustainability:
Make cracking a red/green science. A small cracking only science in red/green isn't going to make red/green any longer than it already is, since that's not where the time sink lies.

For giving the player more sustainability before cracking:
Balance the basic oil processing ratio, reducing light and heavy oil output, reducing the pressure to get something sustainable going, evening out the difference between blue science solid fuel usage and light/heavy production and giving the player more time, perhaps unlimited time, before their tanks back up. Though, their tanks should back up, it's an incredibly good teaching moment.

For if you really wanted to smooth the progression and shorten the red/green era:
The only true way to do this is to give some more carrot in the red/green era to keep the player going. Split green and some blue science into a new science pack. There is simply no way to reconcile the increase in logistics required for blue science into some reasonable complexity/production jump, the resolution is too low, it requires another step.
This would be the perfect opportunity to make the 'chemical' science pack actually require mostly chemicals from oil processing, giving the player a nice carrot shortly after setting it up. Given the other activities of the red/green era, the other pack would fit well as an exploration/expansion themed pack. This is a big balance change, but you seem ok with those right now, it makes sense internally in the game, and it is truly the only way to smooth the 'reward curve' if that's what you want to do.

I agree with almost everything in this post. If you really want to isolate the teaching of oil processing, do so by making a completely new science pack that requires ONLY oil products without the massive ramp up in resource requirements from the other raw materials. Don't remove all the interesting parts of oil and claim you fixed the issue.

[Mike5000]

Sure, it's because those who are opposed to the change are VERY vocal, whereas those who appreciate it just post once to say they like the change.

Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.
Mark Twain

[Pi-C]

Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.
Mark Twain

OT: Geez, I thought I've read enough of Mark Twain to be familiar with his quips, but I still didn't get the joke for, like, an eternity! In vain I've been looking in dictionaries for a "Denial river" -- until I found this article and the penny dropped. It's probably still too early in the morning for my brain to function correctly! Also, according to that article it's rather questionable that it has been Mark Twain who coined the phrase …

Getting back on topic: In my first game (0.16.51), setting up oil wasn't such a big deal. I've had to redo the pipes when upgrading to AOP, but I remember that it was just a slight nuisance I could easily cope with. My real problem with oil was more getting the fluids from the outpost with the refinery back to the base in a timely manner. It was complicated because I wanted to use fluid wagons for crude oil only and cargo wagons with a mix of barrels for petrol/acid/lubricant. So, in my experience setting up oil was extremely difficult only because trains (and circuit networks, for managing the trains) were too so hard to get right.

[5thHorseman]

Sure, it's because those who are opposed to the change are VERY vocal, whereas those who appreciate it just post once to say they like the change.

Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.
Mark Twain

Use the Force, Harry.
Gandalf

I can't tell if you're agreeing with Koub or disagreeing. Do you think that the vocal minority are denying that this silent majority exists, or do you believe Koub is denying that those opposed to the change truly speak for the majority of players?

I like the change, myself. I've been pretty silent about it however. I just can't post on every page about it.

[Mike5000]

Do you think that the vocal minority are denying that this silent majority exists, or do you believe Koub is denying that those opposed to the change truly speak for the majority of players?

There is no reason to believe that the people who like Factorio as it was would be more or less vocal than the people who like the dumbed down direction Factorio has been taking in 0.17. Thus there is no reason to believe that the views expressed on this forum are unrepresentative.

Factorio was a phenomenal success when it peaked at 0.16. There is no reason to believe that a different dumbed-down game would be more successful. Indeed the likelihood is that it would move toward the norm.

Trains could have been better in 0.16 but there was not much else seriously wrong with it. 0.16 could have been released to great success. Hopefully Wube still has the 0.16 git branch and can start over from 0.16 to move 0.18 in a positive direction.

[BlueTemplar]

[...]
Delaying the multiple output recipe spreads out the introduction of new concepts,
[...]

That's what you thought the problem was?

Have you read the previous threads ? The issue has been discussed at length.

The thing is, advanced processing now lumps the multiple outputs concept in with lubricant, electric engines, blue belts/undergrounds/splitters, modular/power armor, power armor modules, rocket fuel, and bots, and those are just the ones that are direct relations. There are even more different concepts and technologies (such as lasers, processing units, nuclear power, production science etc.) happening around the same point in the tech tree. Is that really spreading out new concepts, or just sweeping some of them into a different pile to be encountered later on?
In addition, why was it the multiple outputs concept that got the boot? If your goal is to spread out complexity by shuffling things around, why not delay fluid wagons, for example, by having some oil patches in the starting area? I can understand the general idea of redistributing the concepts for a smoother difficulty curve, but the 0.17.60 implementation strikes me as neither an effective, nor an optimal method of doing so, given the many potential alternatives.

Hopefully the player will have a good enough grasp on the basic elements of the game, and be interested enough in all the toys that he sees opening up.
(And processing units, nuclear power and production science are all late blue science - blue belts even in production science.)

Fluid wagons are already delayed :

[...] car-barrelling oil is only a bad practice in mid-late game, once you can actually afford to research fluid wagons and lay down the rails.

As a reminder, some tech costs :

Code: Select all

(Engine : 100 R&G)
    Car : 100 R&G (you probably don't want a new player to skip that :
                   much more freedom than train when you don't know anything about trains !)
    Railway : 75 R&G
        Train Stops : 75 R&G
        Fluid Wagon : 200 R&G (note that you pretty much need train stops to be able to use fluid wagons,
                               hopefully the devs will fix that in one way or another...)
        (Train Signals : 100 R&G - pretty optional until MUCH later,
                                   also the tutorial doesn't unlock until you get blue science,
                                   hopefully the devs will fix that !)

And remember that for new players trains are even harder to deal with than pre-0.17.60 oil processing !
Now, this is extra 350 R&G research that could be instead used on :

Code: Select all

    Fluid Handling : 50 R&G (will need this, of course)
        Oil Processing : 100 R&G
            Plastics : 200 R&G
                Red circuits : 200 R&G
            Sulfur : 150 R&G
                Battery : 150 R&G
                Explosives : 100 R&G
            Flammables : 50 R&G
                Flamethrower : 50 R&G&Mil
                Rocketry : 120 R&G&Mil (&Explosives)
                (Lubricant : 50R&G - useless in R&G science.)

I have no worries about players switching to better solutions, in my experience, moving oil by car gets old really fast !
And if they stick to oil barrels in trains, who can blame them ? (Considering the extra hassle, they will probably set up a fluid wagon on their second oil patch...)
[...]

[...]
Getting back on topic: In my first game (0.16.51), setting up oil wasn't such a big deal. I've had to redo the pipes when upgrading to AOP, but I remember that it was just a slight nuisance I could easily cope with. My real problem with oil was more getting the fluids from the outpost with the refinery back to the base in a timely manner. It was complicated because I wanted to use fluid wagons for crude oil only and cargo wagons with a mix of barrels for petrol/acid/lubricant. So, in my experience setting up oil was extremely difficult only because trains (and circuit networks, for managing the trains) were too so hard to get right.

I want to emphasize how hard trains are for new players, especially automatic trains using train stops, and especially fluid wagons : it was the first time that I had to get out of the game and search the Web for a solution to why I couldn't pump fluids in my trains - probably because I hadn't researched train stops at that point !
(P.S.: In 0.15 - I found mergeable three-part fluid wagons very cool, but it probably only hindered in finding out what the problem was...)

[...]
Pumpjacks, are a concept familiar enough with the player, from miners.
Fluid wagons are a concept familiar to the player from regular wagons, exposed to regardless in the red/green era, as they expand for mining.
Refineries are indeed a new concept.
Chemical plants at this stage are not a new concept, they work like assembling machines, only they take fluids.
All but the refinery have an analogous to regular processing that the player has already done, the only difference is that these input and output some fluids

And Fluid handling is introduced earlier, perhaps tanks are somewhat new but that's about it. The concept of fluid handling isn't even difficult in and of itself anyway, as pipes are actually far in a way simpler than belts. Their throughput is hardly limiting, they flow in both directions, and pumps aren't something the player really has to contend with for managing the flow of fluids yet if ever. They're connect and go.

You know what I was thinking the first time I set up my refineries?
"This is too simple, there's something about pipes I'm missing, surely they don't just work, what's their throughput like, is it enough, something's going to break because there's something about pipes I missed...
Oh, it worked, huh."
I'm not kidding.
[...]

I'll have to disagree on that. It's the first time that the player will have to deal with complicated/long pipe setups. (And getting stuck in pipes doesn't help...) Also, as already mentioned, probably barelling.

[Klonan]

Factorio was a phenomenal success when it peaked at 0.16.

I think it peaked at 0.12.

[Theikkru]

Hopefully the player will have a good enough grasp on the basic elements of the game, and be interested enough in all the toys that he sees opening up.
(And processing units, nuclear power and production science are all late blue science - blue belts even in production science.)

Advanced processing IS late chemical to early production science to a new player, and especially to the changes' target audience, which was previously struggling with basic processing. (You can bet it won't be within the first 5 chem sciences they tackle.) I'm also skeptical of whether anything in that tech zone is shiny enough to motivate them, since explodey things, train things and solar things were evidently insufficient. Keep in mind that the tasty stuff that's actually locked behind the obstacle in question (like bots) doesn't count as a motivator because players likely won't realize its significance until they get their hands on it after the problem is solved.

[Deadlock989]

Delaying the multiple output recipe spreads out the introduction of new concepts,

I thought it was called freeplay for a reason.

The NPE got baby generators and other grossly simplified versions of freeplay concepts. Can't it get a baby fluid tutorial as well? Or some other scenario involving multiple output blocking. And then maybe freeplay wouldn't have to be a linear railroad for the noob train.

[Klonan]

Delaying the multiple output recipe spreads out the introduction of new concepts,

I thought it was called freeplay for a reason.

The NPE got baby generators and other grossly simplified versions of freeplay concepts. Can't it get a baby fluid tutorial as well? Or some other scenario involving multiple output blocking. And then maybe freeplay wouldn't have to be a linear railroad for the noob train.

Whether you are playing a tutorial, learning to drive, cooking dinner, memorizing a poem, you naturally break down the task into smaller pieces you can tackle.

Freeplay is no different, there are a set of technologies which dictate some progression, and you are free to research in any order you desire.
Freeplay does not just unlock all technologies and recipes together at once and tell you "you are free now".

I think the progression is less linear now, before it was essentially mandatory to sprint for advanced oil processing,
Now the player is free to keep the basic production running, while they explore the other technologies and features on offer.

[Deadlock989]

Delaying the multiple output recipe spreads out the introduction of new concepts,

I thought it was called freeplay for a reason.

The NPE got baby generators and other grossly simplified versions of freeplay concepts. Can't it get a baby fluid tutorial as well? Or some other scenario involving multiple output blocking. And then maybe freeplay wouldn't have to be a linear railroad for the noob train.

Whether you are playing a tutorial, learning to drive, cooking dinner, memorizing a poem, you naturally break down the task into smaller pieces you can tackle.

Freeplay is no different, there are a set of technologies which dictate some progression, and you are free to research in any order you desire.
Freeplay does not just unlock all technologies and recipes together at once and tell you "you are free now".

I think the progression is less linear now, before it was essentially mandatory to sprint for advanced oil processing,
Now the player is free to keep the basic production running, while they explore the other technologies and features on offer.

Right, that's why when I cook dinner today, I still cook it exactly the same simplistic and trivial way that I tried to cook it the first time I ever cooked dinner, mostly because I don't have any other more complex dinners available to me any more, because someone put them all in the bin with minimal warning.

And because I every time I make a dinner, I forget how I made it the first time, apparently. So I have to start off with beans on toast every time, just because the first time caused me to exercise a brain cell.

Furthermore, everyone else who starts to make a dinner is forced to make it that early learner way every single time forever at first, every single time they make a new dinner from scratch, until about halfway through when they throw the dinner out and replace it with something better.

No. A world of no. That's a godawful analogy.

It was no more mandatory to sprint for AOP than it was to sprint for anything else. Players will still want to rush for AOP, to relieve the tedium of the one-in, one-out recipe if nothing else, this giant 5x5 machine which is essentially a glorified pipe until you unlock the real deal. So you've solved nothing with this half-baked simplification, and made the game more trivial.

I will continue to enjoy Factorio freeplay, no question, but primarly because it has good mods available. I will tell other people to buy and play Factorio, but I will probably advise them to consider skipping vanilla once they've played the tutorials and get hold of some decent mods instead.

[5thHorseman]

Do you think that the vocal minority are denying that this silent majority exists, or do you believe Koub is denying that those opposed to the change truly speak for the majority of players?

There is no reason to believe that the people who like Factorio as it was would be more or less vocal than the people who like the dumbed down

I'm sorry I stopped reading this post here. I pretty much know your thoughts from what you said before the words I always stop reading posts at, though, so I know your stance.

As a satisfied customer of many things, and a provider of service to customers for many years, I can attest to you that people who like things are EXTREMELY less likely to speak out about them. There IS reason to believe it because it's true. I don't expect I'll convince you but that doesn't make it less true.

I am going to start posting daily about how I like the changes, though. So I'll be more vocal and seen by the developers.

[Deadlock989]

I am going to start posting daily about how I like the changes, though.

Sorry, I stopped reading your post there.

[Mike5000]

I can attest to you that people who like things are EXTREMELY less likely to speak out about them.

As a business owner and service provider I can attest that our positive feedback outweighs our negative feedback by two or three orders of magnitude.

Or look at the reviews/stars for any halfway decent product on Amazon.

0.16 was (thus far) peak Factorio.