Friday Facts #424 - Gleba Pentapod Enemies

[GregoriusT]

I told you, I have a real phobia, and I just deal with it. I don't make other people do dances around me.
Same as like people with claustrophobia in my family simply don't ride in elevators, and don't inconvenience anyone by demanding container-sized elevators.
Just because you live the western snowflake culture, does not mean, that everyone has to, or that it is the only alternative-less culture.
In the case of video games you literally overcome your phobia by not playing the game which triggers you. Exactly the reason why jump-scary-games simply warn people in advance, that there will be flashing images, and potential to trigger epilepsy, so that the people in question can avoid the game.

Ah so the little bit of 1-5 minute Dev effort needed to just "add an option to not render the legs" should be replaced by an enormous warning when starting the game, warning you about Gleba? A warning mind you, that everyone sees, not just the people that get hit by phobias, and more importantly takes way more dev time to add than this little bitty option to accommodate people, which just so happens to reduce the amount of refunds? In case you did not know, accommodating people like this is actually fucking profitable.

Edit: I just realized Spidertron is on the damn Main Menu... yeah that one is probably even an issue currently...

[aka13]

No, a screenshot of the enemies is a sufficient warning to decide, that you don't like the artistic direction, and it's not a thing for you to play, since it does not pose any danger to health whatsoever.
Also, in my opinion, this is devolving into offtopic, and I kinda feel bad about it, so I won't fuel the debate further.

[GregoriusT]

No, a screenshot of the enemies is a sufficient warning to decide, that you don't like the artistic direction, and it's not a thing for you to play, since it does not pose any danger to health whatsoever.
Also, in my opinion, this is devolving into offtopic, and I kinda feel bad about it, so I won't fuel the debate further.

1. Most people dont check the FFFs so they dont know what will hit them.
2. This is very ontopic, do not try to write this off as offtopic, this thread is specifically about the new Enemies, which happen to cause this exact issue.
3. It actually DOES pose a danger to health, because the people that pass out from phobias may fall from their chairs and get hurt, which is a real problem that does happen a lot.
4. As i said accommodating people is not only profitable but also reduces refunds, which will take away some of the profit through fees.

[aka13]

I'd love to see your data on dangers of chair-falloffs, refunds, and profitability, before I spend time replying.

[GregoriusT]

I'd love to see your data on dangers of chair-falloffs, refunds, and profitability, before I spend time replying.

it is enough to witness in person when someone is getting hospitalized in real life because of "it's just a prank bro"

As for the refunds, people already mentioned that one before, as for profitability: refunds take away more money than what was given, easy logic

[CyberCider]

I too, play with biters disabled. Since these aliens and their eggs are now an absolutely vital part of the Space Age process on Gleba, and they seem to be mandatory to progress, this is most disturbing news.

Keep in mind only the spawners drop eggs, not the enemies themselves. So with enemies off, the devs could simply make spawners appear on the planet but not create any enemies. Basically turn them into a tree/rock that drops a resource. It’s such a simple and obvious solution, I think it’s very likely they will just do this.

[Tertius]

No, a screenshot of the enemies is a sufficient warning to decide, that you don't like the artistic direction, and it's not a thing for you to play, since it does not pose any danger to health whatsoever.
Also, in my opinion, this is devolving into offtopic, and I kinda feel bad about it, so I won't fuel the debate further.

1. Most people dont check the FFFs so they dont know what will hit them.

I suffer from motion sickness, and I thoroughly check every game for offending engine behavior before I buy, because it's not fun to buy a game I cannot play but instead get severe migraine. Everyone who has some disability issue of such kind will check their games before buying. If they don't do this, it's their fault. It's always me who is responsible for my own health, nobody else. It's frustrating if I detect I'm unable to play a certain game, and I tell game developers what behavior specifically makes me sick, but I have to live with that if they choose to not do anything about it. There are so many games out there, I'm not dependent on a specific game. Sometimes, it's possible to mod away offending behavior. Skyrim is one of that. Sometimes, it's a core part of the game engine and design. I never played the Tomb Raider series and Bioshock because of that. Frustrating, but it's just not possible.
Space Age is probably one of the games where the visuals are moddable, so I don't understand the problem.

[Splitframe]

The devs really should at least make a minimum effort to help people with arachnophobia play the game.
In my opinion it's enough to have the warning that there are spider(like) creatures in the settings beside the spider related options.
It should be prominent and eye catching there though and not buried.
Even two checkboxes "No legs" and "No eyes" would probably help a ton already.
It shouldn't take the developers much more than 2 hours to implement this and would have a huge impact for these people.

I have a friend with really bad arachnophobia when he sees a big spider in the evening he cannot sleep that night.

[GregoriusT]

Space Age is probably one of the games where the visuals are moddable, so I don't understand the problem.

While this is true, you wont be able to have Achievements at all, which is still important to a lot of people. That and Clientside-only Mods do not exist for Factorio, so you cant even have the Mods in Multiplayer unless the Host decides to add them, which then hits all the Players, unless there is an option to disable it.

This is why i suggested the Option to just not render the Legs at least. Because that one is super easy and absolutely trivial to add, and would inconvenience the least amount of people.

[CyberCider]

I suffer from motion sickness, and I thoroughly check every game for offending engine behavior before I buy, because it's not fun to buy a game I cannot play but instead get severe migraine. Everyone who has some disability issue of such kind will check their games before buying. If they don't do this, it's their fault. It's always me who is responsible for my own health, nobody else. It's frustrating if I detect I'm unable to play a certain game, and I tell game developers what behavior specifically makes me sick, but I have to live with that if they choose to not do anything about it. There are so many games out there, I'm not dependent on a specific game. Sometimes, it's possible to mod away offending behavior. Skyrim is one of that. Sometimes, it's a core part of the game engine and design. I never played the Tomb Raider series and Bioshock because of that. Frustrating, but it's just not possible.
Space Age is probably one of the games where the visuals are moddable, so I don't understand the problem.

You’re right, that last part is important to bring up. Factorio has high quality and user friendly mod support. People have already made arachnophobia friendly visual mods for biters and spidertrons. I’m sure it won’t take long at all for modders to give pentapods the same treatment after space age drops. Mods do disable achievements, but imo those are really not important in this game. I sometimes forget they even exist.

[AveryCorvus]

Don't forget that Factorio also exists on the Switch, which doesn't have native mod support.

The idea of modding out a problematic feature or graphic worked previously, but since the team has expanded their business into unmoddable platforms, that just doesn't work anymore.

A small option buried in a menu to hide rendering of legs / use an alternate non-eye sprite doesn't hurt anyone. If there truly is someone who is hurt by the potential of a developer helping those suffering a debilitating fear, guess I know who I want to see suffer in this scenario.

Honestly this doesn't just help those in need, either. About 1 in 6 adults have trypophobia; about 3-5% have true arachnophobia. Reducing your market by about 20% seems silly; small developers need to cover their costs, and a low-effort solution to make sure 20% of their population purchase the expansion and don't ask for refunds is just good business.

[MeduSalem]

As for the refunds, people already mentioned that one before, as for profitability: refunds take away more money than what was given, easy logic

That assumes that Wube even care about the additional profitability, which some artists/creators (which a game development studio also definitely falls into) sometimes simply don't care about because sometimes "it is not about money", but the project also represents a personal "vision" they have and they would not want to part with it just to make a fraction of people who don't like it happier. Rightfully so. Because that is what makes art more unique in the first place and why there are many different styles and tastes.


Also, while I don't know how costly (time/money) it is to change the things some people voice their "phobias" about with the new aliens for Factorio (I assume it would likely be just a few lines of code so not thaaat bad)...

... you should not forget that there is ALWAYS also an economical aspect about such things. Because you always have to divert resources to do research to plan for such things ahead, or make required changes later. It surely depends on the type of project and the amount of time & resources such endeavors take, but you have to put that in comparison to what you gain out of it. And there are cases where it just does not pay off. So saying "it is profitable" is simply not always true. There are things where it is not.

I know that from experience with my own real life projects (I am a civil engineer & architect) where clients or government wanted certain extras / special things and me having to protect their interests, I had to be reasonable & tell them "no" for their own good because it would have blown the projects out of proportion both time & budget-wise just to make a fraction of people happier. Projects always are trade-offs. That is how it is.

In terms of video game development, like for many other products, I can also imagine that from an economic perspective it can be totally worth it for companies to live with a certain amount of complaints & resulting refunds because that is still overall more economical and more maintainable than trying to accommodate everyone.



Anyway I don't know which of the above applies to Wube, if they do things more for artistic reasons or for economical reasons, I am not the judge. Just saying that there are such possibilities. And if they make the decision to accommodate for such things then that is their good will, not because people are entitled to it. Also we live in a free market after all, no one is forced to buy the product and there often are alternatives and even niche products catering to exactly such specialties.

[GregoriusT]

Also, while I don't know how costly (time/money) it is to change the things some people voice their "phobias" about with the new aliens for Factorio (I assume it would likely be just a few lines of code so not thaaat bad)...

You said it yourself, just a few lines of code, and if its that then maybe one entire hour of work could be assigned to that, and if even one sale or one non-refund happens because of this, it is already profitable, maybe two or three sales since their pay is actually good, which i assume it is.

As for the eyes, that might cost a slight bit more work.

Anyway if they make the decision to accommodate for such things then that is their good will, not because people are entitled to it.

It has nothing to do with entitlement, and all to do with just being nice to people and having some common sense to avoid needlessly hurting people. Like why are people even arguing FOR the side of the argument that wants to fucking hurt people?, seriously why? You do not get any benefit out of PREVENTING people from having a nice time, and neither does anyone else...

[AveryCorvus]

Also, while I don't know how costly (time/money) it is to change the things some people voice their "phobias" about with the new aliens for Factorio (I assume it would likely be just a few lines of code so not thaaat bad)...

You said it yourself, just a few lines of code, and if its that then maybe one entire hour of work could be assigned to that, and if even one sale or one non-refund happens because of this, it is already profitable, maybe two or three sales since their pay is actually good, which i assume it is.

As for the eyes, that might cost a slight bit more work.

Anyway if they make the decision to accommodate for such things then that is their good will, not because people are entitled to it.

It has nothing to do with entitlement, and all to do with just being nice to people and having some common sense to avoid needlessly hurting people. Like why are people even arguing FOR the side of the argument that wants to fucking hurt people?, seriously why? You do not get any benefit out of PREVENTING people from having a nice time, and neither does anyone else...

I get where MeduSalem is coming from though. Nobody obliges a company, even a small one, to be considerate of its users; and there is always a cost to any change. I might assume that since the legs are rendered separately from the head for tracking purposes, and since creatures aren't rendered when off-screen, a line could be inserted that culls the legs prematurely if an option is ticked. But programming is often fickle, and adding an option like that could create a huge rabbit hole of development--maybe not a lot, but, if it turns into a THING, a full day of a programmer's time is expensive, about $400. Is it worth it to them to dedicate even a single day?

My answer is: arachnophobes are the sort of people who, if they see a game with bugs (biters count) quickly search things like "Factorio Arachnophobia" and make a purchase decision based on the results.

If 10% of Factorio's self-reported 3.5 million users were the potential market of the DLC (350,000), and just 3% of those people don't buy it, that's about 10,500 lost sales. At, say, $10 direct income per sale (more or less depending on the split of the particular sale platform), that's $100,500 lost to arachnophobes.

Also, the PR the Grounded game got when they added a similar system was enormous, and helped propel that game. Such PR would be tremendously valuable to the bottom line.

And bad reviews hurt the bottom line...

My point being, it's a free market as MeduSalem says, but we as a community can let the company know exactly what the market will do to their bottom line, so that even if they choose not to do the altruistic thing, they can at least do the selfish thing.

[GregoriusT]

Just realised something regarding Efficiency Modules, do they reduce the Mushroom Spores or not?

Efficiency Modules will still be useful to reduce Power consumption so you can run purely rely on Spoilage (maybe) for Fuel, especially since the Modules are light on Rocket Transport so you can get more of them. But how do they do Spores?

And how do Speed and Productivity Modules influencing Pentapod Allergens? Does their +Pollution Modifier apply to the Spores?

[MeduSalem]

You said it yourself, just a few lines of code, and if its that then maybe one entire hour of work could be assigned to that, and if even one sale or one non-refund happens because of this, it is already profitable, maybe two or three sales since their pay is actually good, which i assume it is.

As for the eyes, that might cost a slight bit more work.

I also wrote "I assume" that it might only be few lines of code. Because while I know some programming from a much earlier career choice, I have nowhere the experience they have.

If it is only a few minutes worth of code work, I agree, it would likely pay off and be reasonable to do something.
But if it takes them days or weeks to change all kinds of different assets (like graphics) to make it work, then likely even 100 sales more will not pay for that extra effort because of the man-hours that went into it.

If it is the latter then they would definitely be doing it out of good will and not because it is profitable.

It has nothing to do with entitlement, and all to do with just being nice to people and having some common sense to avoid needlessly hurting people. Like why are people even arguing FOR the side of the argument that wants to fucking hurt people?, seriously why? You do not get any benefit out of PREVENTING people from having a nice time, and neither does anyone else...

Well, I argue that way... because I am both artistic & economic in my own work.

Just as described in my previous post, certain things I do because they represent my vision of how I want it to be. Sometimes, especially when we are full with contracts already, I have no issue to tell people to hire someone else if none of the options I provide them click with them. For me that is acceptable.

And during active projects I am also interested in keeping things within a scope of what can be realistically be done with the time & resources available because it would be detrimental for everyone involved if a project explodes. Would be totally reckless not to give a damn with the sums involved. But it also sometimes means the client will not be 100% happy (and neither I am if I had to cut a corner with an idea) because some things don't end up exactly as they wanted it for cost/time reasons.

And that has nothing to do with "hurting people" on purpose. As a company you provide a service/product to clients/customers.
Sure, companies are interested to make customers happy, because if everyone is happy then it makes for better future business as well.
BUT that does not mean companies have to bend over backwards like Neo in the Matrix, and forget about their our own happiness.


Sure there are people who think "customer is always king", but I think that way of thinking is somewhat entitled and illusionary. And mind I am not saying you in particular think like that, but there definitely are some people on this forum who do. I apologize if you felt attacked, because that is not my intention.

Anyway it goes both ways... the same way a customer can choose to buy a service/product at another company, some companies are also in the position that they have other customers and don't necessarily need to cater to everyone.

That is why I already wrote, projects are a "tradeoff"... it is a compromise. Only in rare cases everyone gets absolutely everything they want. It is like everything else in a society.

[mmmPI]

I play with a group of friends, one of them doesn't want to see creatures with 0 or 1 leg like snake, beause of crippling phobia, another one doesn't want to see creatures with more than 2 legs, for the same reason, and i don't want to shoot biters that have 2 legs only, so it would be nice if devs could find an appropriate number of legs for the ennemies so that we can all play together thank you !

/sorry

[MeduSalem]

I play with a group of friends, one of them doesn't want to see creatures with 0 or 1 leg like snake, beause of crippling phobia, another one doesn't want to see creatures with more than 2 legs, for the same reason, and i don't want to shoot biters that have 2 legs only, so it would be nice if devs could find an appropriate number of legs for the ennemies so that we can all play together thank you !

/sorry

[wizcreations]

I play with a group of friends, one of them doesn't want to see creatures with 0 or 1 leg like snake, beause of crippling phobia, another one doesn't want to see creatures with more than 2 legs, for the same reason, and i don't want to shoot biters that have 2 legs only, so it would be nice if devs could find an appropriate number of legs for the ennemies so that we can all play together thank you !

/sorry

I think you need a new friend group to play with

[bobucles]

New type of pollution mechanic? Nice! Not quite what was expected, but it'll work. I hope we get gigantic fans to focus and blow pollen directly where we want it.
5 legs? Gross! Very few regrets with fire based treatments.

Wait, if the atmosphere is all carbon dioxide and such, how will fire turrets catch fire? That might be a neat idea to explore, different turrets gaining bonuses or penalties from their planet. A thick atmosphere or high gravity could very well reduce bullet range or damage, lack of atmosphere means no ion trails for tesla turrets, lack of oxygen means nothing to burn, extreme smoke blocking lasers, soft soil means replacing walls with chicken wire(snare effect), stuff like that. It also helps gate player progress so they can't just grab their favorite gun and dominate all planets, each planet needs its own layout to function.