About Marathon difficulty and the development of Factorio

[Panzerknacker]

So I have been a Factorio player now for only about 3 years and my first Freeplay game as well as my first rocket launch was on Marathon difficulty. Since then I have played many more maps, both on Marathon and also on Default settings. After many hours in the game I came to the conclusion that I enjoy Marathon just so much more than Default and it will be the only mode I play from now on. In so many ways it feels like this is the way the game is truly meant to played. It's because of many little things that add up together.

For example, the rate at which your unlock new technologies feels much more in balance with how fast you can actually implement them in your factory, compared to how on Default, you just race through the tech tree unlocking things so fast that you don't even have time to build something before the next tech is already available.
The amount of pressure you receive from enemies is far greater, forcing you to do at least SOME military upgrades.
The order in which technologies come available suddenly starts making sense. Just to name one, why are Fast inserters a very early game upgrade? Because on Marathon, it's actually possible to build setups that require them so early on in the game. On Default, I have never found Fast inserters to be of any use until maybe T3 assembling machines or beacons are available so I never understood why you could research them from the start.
Also I like how you are forced to expand, while on Default you can always finish the game with just the starting resource patch, even if it takes ages that way.
Factory layout complexity also hits some kind of sweet spot for me, on Marathon. Certain builds really push the limits of what fits next to each other, I never really had that challenge on Default (note that I almost always play to finish a map quickly, take the shortest route towards launching a rocket).

So thinking about this, I wonder if Marathon difficulty was always the personal favorite of our lead dev, Kovarex, and the one that the game was ultimately balanced around.

It also seems to me that Marathon is not very popular amongst other players. Almost every layout thread or blueprint posted is about Default difficulty. Or am I wrong about this one? Why do you prefer Marathon over Default or the other way around?

How about the expansion? I really hope they will include a Marathon mode in there as well, and I hope it will be as carefully balanced as the one in the current game.

[mmmPI]

I think marathon compete with overhaul mod in players attention because they have the same target audience. When i play with mod that increase challenges or complexity, i would use default settings not marathon.

Otherwise I think it's very enjoyable too as set up, because i think also i have experience in the game which makes me do setup that are working quite well and do not feel like like i have to wait for a setup to finish its product "forever". And such profile may be over-represented in the group of player that make recommendation compare to the general player base where many player are still trying to figure out how to launch a rocket or even don't reach that stage.

I'm not sure the game is "balanced around that mode", but that mode is indeed 'well-balanced" imo, expensive tech/recipe or both.

[Tertius]

Marathon is the game variant that uses the expensive version of the recipes, isn't it? I'm not interested in this, because it appears for me as if it's just a more tedious version of the same game. Needs a different factory design of course, because the ratios are different, but the same game in general. My assumption is that it is for people who feel more tedious games are more challenging games, and they want to play more challenging games. Don't get me wrong, but I see this a kind of masochism. They hurt themselves for no reason, because something being more tedious is not what I feel is fun.

By giving the players more room for their creations, because they operate more easily, it opens the room for more builds, for more variety. This is more fun. With more expensive recipes the player has less freedom, because he cannot build inefficient setups. Instead, he is forced to design efficient designs. He is not only constrained by the implicit laws of ratios and logistics alone, he is also constrained by lack of resources. And the more constrained I feel in Factorio, the less fun the game is for me.

May be you don't understand the picture, but in all such "hard modes" I see developers holding whips in their hands and pushing the players in front of them. I just want to play the game and relax, I don't want to be pushed around by force. Good difficulty in games comes from good and challenging game mechanics, not from higher numbers to achieve.

[NineNine]

I'm doing a Megabase right now in a marathon game, and I love it. Because everything is much more expensive, you have to keep pushing out to find newer (and bigger) resource patches. And, I put production modules in everything possible (to save resources), and that is a decent resource strain, too.

I agree. I think Marathon is "balanced" nicely.

[mmmPI]

Marathon is the game variant that uses the expensive version of the recipes, isn't it?

That's how i understand it, expensive recipes + expensive technologies.

I wanted to share view on why it doesn't necessarily feel like masochism for me although i can understand why it would look like it, and have sometimes claim it myself , unfairly bragging about a harder challenge, when really sometimes instead of "longer" it just feel "slower" , in a good a way, in a way that allow to have more time to take decisions during the different steps. I think it is the worst in early game, the first hour maybe 2, if you play solo, but when you are past the manual crafting of burner drills, start to get electricity, it can feel like in curling where it look like overzealous preparation of the path, that would be a super safe and monitored progression.

You have your "slow" factory, and you have time to inspect everything several time when searching for a tech, you don't really need the research queue nor are you regularly prompt with distracting questions about which tech to research next. It makes it easier to "plan" for further in the "future" like 5 or 10 hours later, because everything is "slow" you don't feel like rebuilding parts of your factory every so often, so it feels "more worth it" to invest time into a build for me, where i could maybe only manage to get a sloppy setup if the tech were searching faster and have less time for it. It gives me more incentive to do malls and automate everything, to not be lazy, in a way my factory end up "better" on average an the end.

The ressource penalty ? one can offset it by putting richer ressources ! often time i reduce size and increase richness, i'm still on the lazy side when it comes to outposting

To me it feels a bit similar to game like civilization, where the "marathon" mode makes everything super slow, giving player more occasion to micro manage, and they can send rocket to space in the 1600's ( in 900 turns), whereas when the game is faster, it's harder to beat the timeline and reaching space occurs in the 1900's( in 300 turns), it's actually "easier" in marathon !

There are several mechanism acting similarly i found, like if you die in a 8 hour game and you have an extra 5 minutes walk of shame to your body ( three of four time for good measure), in % you "waste" more than in marathon where the game is 80 hour and 10 or 20 minutes of walk of shame is not that much. Same if you try to make a build, and make a mistake, but only realize at the end , and need to redo it, the "wasted time", for 1 setup is roughly the same in "minutes", be it a marathon or regular game. In % it feels like you are "wasting" less time when making mistakes, you are not 3 tech later when you have redone your failing setup.

I just want to play the game and relax,

That's also when and why i use marathon sorry for the long ramble, i realized afterward that maybe this part was not well written :

When i play with mod that increase challenges or complexity, i would use default settings not marathon.

That's because in my mind, those overhaul mods, most of them, already make the game "longer" /"slower", it would be redundant, like Py or space exploration are already balanced to last longer than vanilla game, adding marathon on top to me would be unecessary i think, i don't see it done often in multiplayer or in picture of their bases or video player posts.

I thought it was also an explanation of why 'seemingly' not many players play "vanilla marathon" compared to vanilla or "overhauled". as player that may be interested in "longer game" as "marathon vanilla" would offer, may be tempted to instead play an overhaul mod, and thus be posting setup about it rather than vanilla expensive tech setups.

when i want a quicker "more intense" game, i would not go for marathon, but to relax and take my time ? yes

[aka13]

Over the years I grew to enjoy deathworld marathon the most. I just checked, and I don't have "normal" savegames younger than 6 years or so.
There is a certain truth to what Tertius says, that at times, it is punishing, but I don't feel like it's punishing too much, where the game becomes too tedious.
There is a thrill to having a death race with the biters, although it is certainly more stressfull than not having them enabled.

In my view, what really is punishing, is that point-to-point logistics aka bots which made factorio stand out in the old days with how elegant the system is (and still does, to me it's a signature factorio thing like the two-sided belts) are really tiresome to get to. As soon as you have bots, it becomes more fun, since you can automate your malls in a much nicer way.

"Normal" difficulty is a very balanced experience, and I would never advocate against it, it is just complicated enough to see what factorio is about and reach all the cool stuff, but it lacks replayability in a sense. While you can certainly, as Tertius say, build "unoptimal builds", you reach the blue belts, electric furnaces and late-game equipment so fast, that you can just skip non-t3-items. Sure, an average person will spend more than the 15 hours to launch the rocket, but neither the biters, nor the science require you to go out of your way with your builds to move really fast. Quintessentially, normal can be played even with "1 assembler for every item", like Saphira123456 complained about in other threads.

I'd say that the real difference between marathon and nonmarathon is that trains become the backbone of your production. On vanilla it feels like trains are something you can get into, if you wish, on marathon, you have to think in terms of "manufacturing centres" where you drive plates in, and drive products out. With the coming of 2.0 and finally trains becoming even better to use, I can see myself sinking in another couple hundred hours into another deathworld marathon save, provided that the removal of marathon to a mod will be the same experience.
I am also fairly certain, that quality will also do wonders for the marathon modes.

EDIT:

How about the expansion? I really hope they will include a Marathon mode in there as well, and I hope it will be as carefully balanced as the one in the current game.

The expensive mode currently is really complex to work around for the devs and the mods, so the "expensive" recipes will get moved to being a separate "mod" like the quality/SpaceAge is going to be.
I am also optimistic, that the new DLC will get some expensive mode love.

PS: If you are a marathon mode enjoyer, I don't get it, why you were so pissed off about the fluids. It is propably the most tiresome aspect of marathon, since you need shittons of oil, ti say goodbye to pipes alltogether and only to use underground-pump-underground

[mmmPI]

Deathworld marathon feels very different than just marathon to me or marathon train world ( the later is relaxing not the first one )!

[Panzerknacker]

I think marathon compete with overhaul mod in players attention because they have the same target audience. When i play with mod that increase challenges or complexity, i would use default settings not marathon.

I have no experience with mods but I can imagine that most of these overhaul mods that you are talking about are designed and balanced as they are, as in there is only one difficulty setting in them that they are designed for. I think this because Marathon recipes are not just a simple modifier over the Default values, every recipe is carefully rebalanced individually. It must have taken years of playing the game to come to these final values as they are in the game now. Maybe there are mod creators that are wanting to go through that same process but I can imagine that it is not interesting for them to do so.

This very reason is also why I'm wondering about space age. Reading the FFF and about how the dev team had only several full playthroughs of the expansion, it seems already a daunting task to balance the Default mode, let alone ship a Marathon mode from the start. I really hope they will add it later tho, if it's not in there at launch.

May be you don't understand the picture, but in all such "hard modes" I see developers holding whips in their hands and pushing the players in front of them. I just want to play the game and relax, I don't want to be pushed around by force. Good difficulty in games comes from good and challenging game mechanics, not from higher numbers to achieve.

Well, that is your picture then. I can understand it tho, you want to as you say, relax. If you choose a higher difficulty, you will need to be more on your toes which is less relaxing indeed. But what if you want more of a challenge instead of relaxing, you pick the higher difficulty, you understand my picture? I'm just trying to say, after playing both modes, Marathon is the mode that feels most in place somehow, like the game balance and design was mainly done around that mode.

PS: If you are a marathon mode enjoyer, I don't get it, why you were so pissed off about the fluids. It is propably the most tiresome aspect of marathon, since you need shittons of oil, ti say goodbye to pipes alltogether and only to use underground-pump-underground

Well I think it's part of the challenge to supply stuff with oil. As you point out, you work more with "manufacturing centres", that make particular items. If that item requires oil you build the centre not too far from an oil source. If I was looking for a easier game I wouldn't play Marathon in the first place.
Aside from the difficulty aspect of the fluid system I also like how it brings it's own unique mechanic where it really simulates fluid behaviour in a heavily simplified but neat way. I really believe the tradeoff between realism/complexity/computing power requirements hit a sweet spot with the current fluid system. I just like to have different systems in the game to play with, not make it basically the same as the electric network because then you might as well remove it all together imo. So yeah, again, I really hope they keep the old fluid system in 2.0 or at least have the option for it.

As for Deathworld Marathon, I am absolutely planning to give that a try but right now I feel like I'm not ready for it yet. My point of the thread was really the difference between Default and Marathon though, as that is a huge one which must have taken a lot of effort to balance while the Death World modes are just 'simply' higher difficulties that increase only the parameters related to biters.

[Tertius]

But what if you want more of a challenge instead of relaxing, you pick the higher difficulty, you understand my picture?

I guess I understand, but if I want a higher challenge, I decide to build a bigger factory or a more complex factory. It's something I decide on my own. I don't need more expensive recipes for that - that's just the same game with bigger numbers. If I want higher numbers, I rather build to operate 2 rocket silos instead of 1. That feels like a better achievement than just continue to build 1 rocket silo but consume twice the resources in expensive mode. That doesn't feel like an achievement: it's the same. Just 1 rocket silo.

And about biters. If I want a challenge of dexterity, I fire up some action oriented game. Some shooter or similar combat action game.
I learnt to like biters, if they stay cannon fodder. They create a reason for all the military items in the game. Together they are a nice addition for entertainment. Why build walls, if there is nothing to keep out? Why build turrets, if there is nothing to shoot down? Shooting down things is kind of relaxing, too, if it stays the way that I am the hunter and the biters are the cannon fodder. But if they become real enemies that actively build pressure to make me build a more efficient factory, it destroys the fun and the game becomes work instead of leisure.

[Panzerknacker]

Yeah sure everyone got their own way/reason to play the game. But one little thing about your comparison regarding the expensive recipes, the whole point is that the layout of the factory becomes different, not just more of the same. Using direct insertion is harder because for example you need 4 copper wire machines feeding a single green circuit machine instead of only 1.5. So in fact the factory does get more complex with expensive recipe, it's not just bigger numbers. Bigger numbers imho is when you stack the same build over and over again which you will also need to do on Marathon a lot :p

And yes, you can build your factory more complex on your own of course. Some people like to have a reason to do so other than their own reason. Myself, I like to build as efficient as possible, meaning as little energie consumption and polution as possible while keeping my designs as simple as I can and minimizing the amount of researches done. This makes a difference on Marathon because the biters will evolve at least double as much as on Default.

[mmmPI]

I have no experience with mods but I can imagine ...
Maybe there are mod creators that are wanting to go through that same process but I can imagine ...
This very reason is also why I'm wondering about space age

I think you should try some of those overhaul you may be surprised to find some granularity in their difficulty with settings or optionnals mods to fine tune the modpack after the overhaul, with some smaller twist, the bigger overhaul mods have plenty of those. Maybe it would reduce your worry about space age !

I agree it takes a lot of time but when the balance of such overhaul mod is changed, the players using it can all participate in the feedback in the discord or the discussion thread, bugs are corrected quickly, balance problems are reported too. It will also be the case for Space Age i'm sure x). Like a month after release, there will already be years of playtime worth of feedback by millions of passionnate fans

As for Deathworld Marathon, I am absolutely planning to give that a try but right now I feel like I'm not ready for it yet. My point of the thread was really the difference between Default and Marathon though, as that is a huge one which must have taken a lot of effort to balance while the Death World modes are just 'simply' higher difficulties that increase only the parameters related to biters.

if Default => Marathon is a huge difference, => DeathWorld is extra very huge or something to me

I was intrigued to know if it was possible to complete a deathword marathon AND a overhaul modded game before the expansion is released. In around 2 months ?, or 60 days or 1200 hours as an order of magnitude. That seem a tough challenge already x) Considering playing only 16 hours per day on average, that leaves 800 hours of playtime, i think it's doable if one doesn't choose the longest overhauls and do not need many attempt for the deathworld, but if you drop to only 12 hours of playing per day, then 600 hours seem not enough time for me to complete say a full-PY-mod run AND a deathworld marathon. Too tough of a challenge.

I don't know if the balance for deathworld is ""'simply' higher difficulties that increase only the parameters related to biters."" or a subtle blend of pain suffering and agony that also took years to prepare, but if you go for this instead of overhaul to me you clearly are the kind of masochist Tertius described i would say it's how work feels, when you also play 12 hours per night

[Panzerknacker]

Of course it also took them time to balance Deathworld and Deathworld Marathon but it's not comparable to having to consider all the recipes going from Default > Marathon. At the moment I have no interest in mods as I still have a lot to learn in the base game I feel, it challenges me enough, not done with optimizing yet haha. Note that I never read things online about how to play or use other peoples blueprints, I enjoy figuring things out myself.

[SirSmuggler]

For example, the rate at which your unlock new technologies feels much more in balance with how fast you can actually implement them in your factory, compared to how on Default, you just race through the tech tree unlocking things so fast that you don't even have time to build something before the next tech is already available.

I can understand and to some degree agree with this part. While patiently waiting for the expansion I've been watching a lot of first time playthroughs on YouTube, and one "problem" they all seem to share is that they just throw things into the research queue without paying attention and forget half of what they have researched. That of course leads to problems when they come across a situation and have the tech to handle it, but have not actually read what the techs does so they have no clue how to use it or that they even have it avalible.
I've kind of blamed this on the existence of the queue it self (other than players having no patience and/or reading comprehension). But perhaps it is actually more to do with what you describe... or a combination of reseach going "to fast" and the avalibility of the queue.

[aka13]

the queue it self

Pretty sure, that the queue is only enabled after one successfull playthrough, or is set to not available per default.

[SirSmuggler]

the queue it self

Pretty sure, that the queue is only enabled after one successfull playthrough, or is set to not available per default.

That was the function when the queue was first implemented, but according to the change log is is on by default since version 1.1.92

"Changes

The research queue is enabled by default for new games."

[aka13]

"Changes

The research queue is enabled by default for new games."

Ooh, curious, thanks, I didn't know that. Not sure how I feel on that topic though

[GrumpyJoe]

It might not be marathon, but I absolutely love to increase research cost.

It forces you to build big from the start, kinda "rushing" rails

That way I'm not stuck in my usual progression paralysis, where you rush late game tec and wanna make a huge transition from your starter base to mega in one go, then wandering around aimlessly, cos nothing is running yet and you get frustrated.

Having a huge base working towards the end goal is more enjoyable then it being the goal.

I might try with more expensive intermediates on my next one.