Friday Facts #375 - Quality

[Atraps003]

I have in far to many situations seen Do this 100 times and one person gets 35 legendary items, person 2 gets 10 and person 3 gets 4 all for the same work and effort (looking at you Diablo 3)

Not even remotely comparable to diablo 3. In d3 automating the grind (aka botting) is a bannable offense. In factorio botting is the game.

[NastyFlytrap]

This is one of the worst ideas you've ever had, easily beating 'needing to gather artifacts from dead biters to progress'

Randomized loot in factorio is sacrilegious.
The DLC just went from 'yea i wanna buy it' to 'absolutely never in a million years'.

Not only i personally hate randomized tiered loot, but it absolutely has no place in a game like factorio.

[Khagan]

I noticed they don't mention anything related to science packs, an oversight? Or is science unaffected by quality. If so, just ignore quality for science. This probably leads to more distributed manufacture, bottom up.

Yes, I think you are right. Apart from some of my very early games, my own builds have always tended to have mostly separate (and monolithic) production chains for science and construction. But this feature seems like a strong incentive to have shared production, so that you can skim off the good items for construction and use the ordinary ones for science (or other consumables, but science is the big one).

I don't understand all the complaints about the randomness: it will average out as the factory grows.

(I do agree that the names are off-theme, but that's a trivial fix.)

[EvanT]

.. I am just taken aback with changes shown so far, and am upset, that while supposedly the FFFs are back, the developers are not.
Only discussions on bugfixes, not in the FFF topics, which upsets me, since it hasnt always been this way.

Given the amount of salt and negativity I would wait a day or two too before giving an emotional response. The devs have answered questions in the last FFF. So I bet they are doing some sort of statistics on the posts so they get the correct ratios.

[aka13]

This is one of the worst ideas you've ever had, easily beating 'needing to gather artifacts from dead biters to progress'

Randomized loot in factorio is sacrilegious.
The DLC just went from 'yea i wanna buy it' to 'absolutely never in a million years'.

Not only i personally hate randomized tiered loot, but it absolutely has no place in a game like factorio.

Laser roomba gameplay felt so "alien" that it felt like a placeholder, which would soon go, and it did, thankfully.
God I hated those pink balls.

[toman]

Yeah but no the "it's optional" argument doesn't really work. I dislike many modern games because of season/battle passes, cosmetics, loot boxes etc. even tho I have barely bought anything in game. So yes they are optional but they can still ruin a game and the experience.
...

I do not understand the comparison to season/battle passes, cosmetics, loot boxes at all.. The one thing about these mechanics is that you usually have to pay real money for them - which is understandably annoying and not fun. Games are made specifically not to interfere with the "real" world and its problems.
I understand that this features "feels" like mainstream gaming to some. While it is true, I really don't think it is something bad per-se. Maybe people are just gatekeeping factorio as a non-mainstream type of game or something...
Considering the involvement of community into the development process: yes, you are totally correct. I just think it is better to provide an elaborated argument on WHY you don't like a feature or HOW It can be improved rather than just "I won't buy it" (which is still better feedback than none)

The comparison was about features that make games less desirable, not that the feature here is like the feature in those other games.

[Kalixt]

Not a fan of this idea, scrap it in recycler and move on please.

[CaveGrinder]

i'm cautiusly optimistic on this, based on some detailed decisions.

i once thought that quality is a must-have and made a mod near identical to what is shown.
(4 quality levels, recycling, bonus for entities)
i did not release it because it wasn't fun. but my main problems was what i couldn't do
with the modding APIs, most notably that quality is only enabled through modules.
if used everywhere it indeed just becomes a tedium. but this design i think will cause:
- we will not use quality for science packs. instead productivity, just like before.
so the mass production bus will stay. (just upgraded over time)
- we will built a first mall in normal quality which initially serves everything, and longterm just belts etc.
- we will built a second mall in high quality. that one no longer siphons off the science bus.
meaning we also need to built a secondary high quality ingredient section purely for the second mall.
the effect is, i think, that we will most likely put the raw ores on the bus too so that
a small but high quality built picks them for the second mall.

i definitely want to give it a try the way its implemented now so i hope the mixed reception
doesn't cause a re-doing. after all they have a pretty solid understanding about whats fun in the game
so lets see where this goes. also considering its moddable, we will see a day 1 mod that removes it from the game, so if you hate it with a passion, just wait 24h before you purchase the dlc and someone will fix it for you.

the names though... maybe you can do a community poll to pick it?

[EvanT]

Not a fan of this idea, scrap it in recycler and move on please.

If science is unaffected by quality. The only things where it is important are those assembled in a mall. Mainly Assemblers and personal gear. So it will be a wonderful feature to improve the mall from one-assembler-per-item to something interesting.

[Atraps003]

This is one of the worst ideas you've ever had, easily beating 'needing to gather artifacts from dead biters to progress'

Alien artifacts were required to win the game. Alien artifacts couldn't be automated.

[factomight]

A Kovarex-like process for the majority of all ingame items is a horrible idea. What are you guys thinking?
The quality improvement process is easy to automate and will be the same for every item you end up to actually need to improve to boost factory output. This is not complexity, its just a tedious resource sink and a pointless drain on UPS.

[linktothepast83]

Generally i like the idea and a lot of things i would like to address was already said by others.

The one thing i would like to ask is about blueprints and quality. How will blueprints work when you use quality buildings and structures? Would you need to build multiple blueprints for every building quality for every item made (making things a bit tedious there)? So you would need to make a ton of blueprints for every possible combination of quality and modules or constantly alter every single blueprint you have.

Personally i thing that quality makes blueprints less useful or a logistic nightmare. I would like to see how you will or can adress that if possible.

[Svip]

Respect to the developers for off-loading the more controversial features of the expansion up front. Though, I have to wonder how controversial they thought this one was going to be. I feel for the developers, being up front about your game development can be a huge double-edged sword, we all saw what happened to Ron Gilbert when he revealed the Return to Monkey Island trailer. Rough stuff.

I will reserve full judgement on this feature, until I have a chance to try it. It's hard to speak to the specifics, since numbers can be tweaked, and - I'd imagine - tiers can be added and removed. That being said, I actually like the fundamentals in this concept. My perspective boils down to; if it can be automated, it's Factorio.

I also appreciate the opportunities for mods, who already do more tiered stuff. It would allow them to consolidate all their tiers into simpler types, and thus produce less clutter in my filters.

Looks like WUBE have been working on this feature for at least three years, I am sure they have given it plenty of thought. Noted in the post are at least two full LAN playthroughs before any of the expansion stuff, suggesting this has gotten plenty of testing.

I trust WUBE to know what Factorio is about, even if I am not always able to see it. Besides, it's their game, they can do what they want.

[MatHack]

In general I like this idea, it adds new options and/or complexity to the end game. I also like the fact that it's optional, if it was forced I'd think it would introduce too much complexity in the mid-game. I also very much like the recycler. Currently I have my own (private) mod that adds recycling recipes for items that you would need in the early/mid-game, but after that you'd just have to keep in a chest (most burner phase items, lower-tiered armors, etc.). It's very likely I'm gonna forsake my own mod for the recycler when the expansion is available.

Like most people I don't like the names, they are too fantasy-genre like. I'd love something more industrial. Luckily names of items are relatively easy to change, so it would not be a lot of work for you
Another minor thing is the information shown on the splitter. I think the equality sign (lesser-than, greater-than, etc.) is too small when I watch the video in the FFF.

[sleepx732]

I see two sides to why this would be added; it gives players something to do in moments of down time & it increases resource consumption (at least in the short term). It also adds layers of math that can be hard to compute.

Mods that plan this out go against the spirit that is factorio! Frankly I'm surprised there aren't more players who relish the challenge.

[panzylol]

Im also not a huge fan of this.

In a way, it's unintuitive and somewhat immersion breaking.

Like, an epic circuit board? What is that even? Or a legendary iron plate? Unless it was used by Charlemagne himself, this just sound gamey and weird.

I 100% checked internet to see if they did April's fools in early September in the Czech Republic.

The thing I would love to see more in factorio, is some form of campaign, or any reason to explore the world. More random stuff to make the world feel more alive. Greenflags scenario mission pack, really should be a base game feature, as it's just SOO good and interesting to play!

[morhp]

While I was also sceptical at first when starting to read the article, I think I really like the concept.

Regarding some points I've read here, I think many have misunderstood the concept.

1. I don't think you have to worry about different random quality items polluting belts and blueprints and stuff. Unless you insert quality modules in assemblers, all products will be completely predictable, i.e. an assembler with a normal gear recipe will always take normal plates and produce normal gears, an assembler with an epic gear recipe will always take only epic plates and produce only epic gears. Miners and furnaces and stuff also won't give you random quality items.

The only randomness you get is by inserting quality modules, which gives you randomly higher output than the base recipe would give you. So unless you have an assembler which explicitly produces higher-quality power poles using high-quality ingredients, or you have inserted a quality module in the power pole assembler, you will always get predictable output. I assume you'll want to use the quality modules only in specific sub-factories to get epic stuff for space travel and so on. It wouldn't make sense to pollute a main bus with such items, unless you really can automate the production of high-quality items in a very large scale.

I have two questions though, seeing the green circuit build there seem to be recipes specific for the qualities? As in Q2 wire + Q2 iron => Q2 circuit (or better).

Yes, that's exactly how it works, and the "(or better)" part only applies if the assembler has quality modules itself.

It would be nice if we could toggle this feature on a per-assembler basis.

But you do. If you don't specify a quality-recipe and insert no quality modules, you have disabled that feature for that assembler.

What happens if you craft something using different quality ingredients?

You probably can't.

2. To the people who think 5 qualities are too much: You unlock 3 qualities at first. The epic qualities will be something you can optionally unlock for the very late end game if you want to expand at this point.

I don't understand this part: "the legendary items are 56 times more expensive than normal items".
Isn't it the case, that (with 300% productivity recycling) the material cost is the same and you just use more time and electricity?

I'm unsure if you can really recycle with 300% productivity and loose no items, that sounds like it could create a positive feedback loop. In any case, the example showed recyclers with quality modules in them, not productivity modules and in that specific scenario, it's 56 times more expensive. Without the quality modules in the recyclers, the quality increases would be slower.

I agree with the criticism on the quality names. I think I would prefer a less-fantasy and more factory-like scheme.

I agree with the scepticism that it makes sense that a recycler can output higher quality items than it gets as an input. While I obviously haven't playtested this, I think it would be more balanced and conceptually simpler to not have upgrades for the recycler (except maybe speed and other more harmless ones).

[Artman40]

I feel like this thing would be slightly too RNG-based though I assume it could average things out.

It's also that anything between lowest and highest tier seems to be something that'll be just skipped over.

I would have preferred smaller auxiliary buildings of sorts that would enhance the main buildings to produce higher quality stuff instead. Or make the main building higher tier.

[gGeorg]

this feature seems like a strong incentive to have shared production, so that you can skim off the good items for construction and use the ordinary ones for science (or other consumables, but science is the big one).

Current mega factories are about stamping still the same city blocks. Adding randomness adds back a "spagetty flavour" to suck out better items, then refine them even more. I think, that people complain about grind, see only one option of play, split factory into two sections :
1. science spam = the same factory as now
2. the high quality factory = full of loops and recyclers

(I do agree that the names are off-theme, but that's a trivial fix.)

Yes, The names should offer industrial_flavour rather than fantasy_RPG.

[Germara]

How do you handle quality of liquids?