Adding additional skins?

[charmanderpants]

Hey there!

I bought factorio the other day, and have already poured 20 hours into it, the game is great!

One thing, I was playing with a skin mod, to play as a girl character, and this disabled steam achievements, (yeh I'm a sucker for steam acheivements)

Would be amazing if you could add additional player models (etc), I had to disable the mod and start over to reobtain the achievements I'd got so far...

[eradicator]

Another testimonial for why achievement addiction makes everything worse *sigh*.

[NotRexButCaesar]

Why must every game have skins? What is wrong with the engineer as it is now?

[ickputzdirwech]

For the same reasons why you can already change the color of your character.
1. To make it distinguishable from other characters.
2. The player feels more attached to the character (because it better represents himself).

I am fine with just being able to change the color but I understand why some people aren’t. I think in general it is quite important that you can somehow personalise your skin/character.

[NotRexButCaesar]

I think in general it is quite important that you can somehow personalise your skin/character.

Why do you believe this to be important?

[Koub]

I think in general it is quite important that you can somehow personalise your skin/character.

Why do you believe this to be important?

I care.

[ickputzdirwech]

I think in general it is quite important that you can somehow personalise your skin/character.

Why do you believe this to be important?

For the reasons stated above. (And now below as well:)

1. To make it distinguishable from other characters.
2. The player feels more attached to the character (because it better represents himself).

[NotRexButCaesar]

Why do you believe those things to be important I mean?

[eradicator]

Just for the record: I'm totally pro skins. I'm actually working on better mod support for skins. But @OP and many many other people have been brainwashed and aquired a serious addiction problem that prevents them from enjoying mods. Fuck you "industry standard".

[Koub]

brainwashed and aquired a serious addiction problem that prevents them from enjoying mods.

For those who are not familiar with eradicator yet, he's not the greatest supporter of achievements

[ickputzdirwech]

Why do you believe those things to be important I mean?

1. It’s easier to distinguish other players in multiplayer that way.
2. If people feel attached to their character they might feel more inclined to play the game (same as when reading a good book).

[eradicator]

brainwashed and aquired a serious addiction problem that prevents them from enjoying mods.

For those who are not familiar with eradicator yet, he's not the greatest supporter of achievements :mrgreen:

Conditioned/Trained would've been a better fit than "brainwashed". What i'm talking about is the effect of becoming addicted by being exposed to achievement-induced hormone releases over an extended time period.

The main reason i am opposed to this is because it strongly encourages players to play games in ways that they do not actually enjoy. I.e. "The journey is the reward" is replaced by a short-lived reward. Exactly like drug addicts enjoy the "high" phase but often don't consider the unpleasant hangover afterwards.

The @OP seems to be a prime example of this as they have - by their own accord - stopped using (skin-) mods that they enjoyed(!), because they are unable to withstand the withdrawl symtomps of not getting achievement-induced short-term hormone releases.

Also most people don't realize that the whole concept of achievements is the result of psychological engineering to increase "user interaction", because time=money. Achievements were never intended to be "fun", they were made to trick people into staying longer and spend more money. Which is why it makes me so sad when even small indie companies copy such systems due to tenacious pressure from the already addicted users.

Basically it kills self-motivated behavior and replaces it by chasing-the-carrot. As can be seen by the many affected people who play a game exactly until they have filled the achievement check-list - regardless of if they still have fun after that, or if they were already long bored by the time they got there.

It's a vicious circle that ultimately leads into a demotivational loop where "achievements" become more important than actual gameplay.

Ok..that was really long and off topic. But it's difficult to explain any shorter.

Official support for "skins" would actually be great, as modding them naively means removing the original skin - forcing everyone in multiplayer to use the same skin. And any mod trying to make the "skin" changable during gameplay actually has to manage a bunch of hidden characters and swap them into place when the player clicks a button. Which is all a horrible hack during which so many things can go wrong. And indeed *do* go wrong when i look at the state of current mods that do this.

[NotRexButCaesar]

1. It’s easier to distinguish other players in multiplayer that way.
2. If people feel attached to their character they might feel more inclined to play the game (same as when reading a good book).

But why is it important to be able to more easily distinguish players than it is now.
Why is it import that people feel attached to the character/are more inclined to play than the way it is now.

I'm not asking what, I'm asking why.

[Koub]

I'm not asking what, I'm asking why.

I'll answer you if you can tell me why you like what you like.

[NotRexButCaesar]

I'll answer you if you can tell me why you like what you like.

I like things which are useful because as a human, I have a sense of value and desire valuable things. I am asking how it would add value to the game, not why he holds certain opinions.

[Koub]

I'll answer you if you can tell me why you like what you like.

I like things which are useful because as a human, I have a sense of value and desire valuable things. I am asking how it would add value to the game, not why he holds certain opinions.

The character is the only entity I'm guaranteed to always have on the screen while not in a vehicle (I'll assume here I'm not doing some planning in sandbox mode). The more the character will fit my liking, the more pleasure I'll get, because I'll be seeing it almost continuously for my whole play time.
Therefore, being able to choose the aspect of my avatar is of very high value to the game, because it will make more pleasurable every single instant I spend playing the game.

[eradicator]

I'll answer you if you can tell me why you like what you like.

I like things which are useful because as a human, I have a sense of value and desire valuable things. I am asking how it would add value to the game, not why he holds certain opinions.

It adds aesthetic "value", which is subjective exactly like every other type of "value".

[NotRexButCaesar]

I'll answer you if you can tell me why you like what you like.

I like things which are useful because as a human, I have a sense of value and desire valuable things. I am asking how it would add value to the game, not why he holds certain opinions.

It adds aesthetic "value", which is subjective exactly like every other type of "value".

Value is quite concrete if viewed as the usefulness in completing a goal.

[eradicator]

Value is quite concrete if viewed as the usefulness in completing a goal.

Did you want to say anything concrete there? Maybe you should start by stating the goal of your questions. And don't forget to define the metric by which you evaluate the value of potential methods to reach that goal. Because from my viewpoint your question barrage is indistinguishable from trolling.

[MassiveDynamic]

Allow me to interject and perhaps build a bridge between the two ideologies here. As a grown man who is pragmatic, reasonable, and generally logical in my approach to things, I realize that it really does not matter in the least what my character looks like, or whether my video game enemy is an overgrown cockroach or an adorable puppy. In reality none of these graphical features changes the game in any meaningful way If I enjoy the basic mechanics of the game; i.e. Factorio.
On the other hand, I have spent some time (hours maybe) customizing my character in all of the games I have enjoyed playing (Minecraft, Ratchet & Clank, and Factorio - in that I do always change my color to green). The fact that I know that these aesthetic changes are essentially meaningless does not preclude me from making these changes anyway, if for no other reason than because I can - and I want to.
So while not adding intellectual value, gameplay advantage, or any other tangible value to the game, character customization appeals to all of us who are human in a personal, fanciful, even existential way that probably can’t be “measured” by any kind of universal metric scale.

Now let’s all hug this out.