Factorio 2.0 vs Space Age

[NineNine]

The forums are now flooded with Space Age discussions. It's very difficult to find information that's about 2.0 (and not Space Age). On top of that, every Space Are post is full of spoilers.
Does it make sense to split the conversations between those talking about Space Age, and everybody else?

[Koub]

This seems difficult, especially 3 weeks into the release. It would have been possible if it had been prepared beforehand, but now, unravelling everything that has been posted is unrealistic : there's so much posting that I can barely keep up with just moderating, even though I'm on holiday, and spend most of my free time moderating.

[NineNine]

I agree. It's probably too late now, without a whole lot of work being done to move all of the conversations. Space Age should've probably have gotten its own sections of the forum. Perhaps big spoiler messages should be at the top of all of the forums, since Space Age stuff is sort of scattered all over?

Another thought: what about new players playing 2.0, but not Space Age? They are going to be very confused by the forums. I hate to be the one to bring this up, but the more I think about it, the more of a problem I think it will be for any new players.

[Panzerknacker]

I'm gonna put it more extreme and say that 2.0 atm is non-existant. Reason is there have been made major balance changes to the game in order to keep it in sync with Space Age in certain ways but it is not in favor of the game imo. Stuff like removing Rocket control units, Space science research, only having 1 spot to drop Space Science from orbit, new rails being incompatible with existing bases, the list goes on. Also, major features like the expensive recipes and simulated fluid system have simply been removed from the game. Let's not forget about the many bugs that are in 2.0 right now, even tho they will be fixed in the future.

Unless you really care a lot about QoL (I personally don't), 2.0 without expansion is a straight downgrade from 1.1. I really hope the devs also see the problems, before they force 2.0 upon Nintendo Switch users where you're gonna be stuck with 2.0 once you do the update.

Maybe we should have a dedicated forum instead for players that are stil playing 1.1.

[Loewchen]

Even if we would create a dedicated subforum for non-expansion topics, would it be Gameplay help? General discussion? Show your builds? ... It would either mix quite a wide range of topic types or require the duplication of several subforums each with very few posts, both are undesirable.

I think the best approach is, to post the topic in the existing subforums but tag the title to make it clear that this is a base 2.0 only discussion.

[NineNine]

Even if we would create a dedicated subforum for non-expansion topics, would it be Gameplay help? General discussion? Show your builds? ... It would either mix quite a wide range of topic types or require the duplication of several subforums each with very few posts, both are undesirable.

I think the best approach is, to post the topic in the existing subforums but tag the title to make it clear that this is a base 2.0 only discussion.

You're right. There's a lot of different content. It would almost need to be two entirely different message boards.

Perhaps tagging posts [1.1] or [2.0] or [SA] would be the best way to go forward. I don't know if there's any realistic way to enforce, that, though.

[Loewchen]

Perhaps tagging posts [1.1] or [2.0] or [SA] would be the best way to go forward. I don't know if there's any realistic way to enforce, that, though.

Well, nobody would be required to tag their newly created topic if they do not want the discussion to be limited to either. If a topic is tagged though and somebody makes a comment not following the tag you can report it and it will get removed.
The real question is, if there even are enough people who want to discuss in non-expansion topics in general.

[NineNine]

Perhaps tagging posts [1.1] or [2.0] or [SA] would be the best way to go forward. I don't know if there's any realistic way to enforce, that, though.

Well, nobody would be required to tag their newly created topic if they do not want the discussion to be limited to either. If a topic is tagged though and somebody makes a comment not following the tag you can report it and it will get removed.
The real question is, if there even are enough people who want to discuss in non-expansion topics in general.

I mean, if Factorio doesn't expect to ever gain new players who are going to play the base game, then I guess it's fine the way it is. But if a new player comes here looking for help and they're playing 2.0 before they play Space Age (which I think most people will do, especially based on how pricing is), they're going to see stuff about planets and ships and not know what in the heck is going on.

I agree that many current players are all playing through SA now, but that's not going to last forever. I imagine a lot of people will want to play in 2.0 without SA going forward.

It's essentially a mod that's being discussed in the main forums. Up until now you guys have made the decision to keep mods separate, and I think that makes good sense from an organizational standpoint. Now with SA mixed in with all of the rest of the discussions...

[BlueTemplar]

I'm gonna put it more extreme and say that 2.0 atm is non-existant. Reason is there have been made major balance changes to the game in order to keep it in sync with Space Age in certain ways but it is not in favor of the game imo.

It's just unrealistic to expect Wube to be able to balance for both.
(Consider the issues with the scenarios for instance (long before 2.0), especially the PvP scenario balance. Not that they never gotten a pass, but it was just very low priority.)

Stuff like removing Rocket control units, Space science research, only having 1 spot to drop Space Science from orbit, new rails being incompatible with existing bases, the list goes on. Also, major features like the expensive recipes and simulated fluid system have simply been removed from the game.

At least, thankfully none of these are going to be an issue for new (non-SA) players.
(Which IMHO should still be playing 1.1 instead, for all of the other reasons.
Speaking of which, is the demo still on 1.1 ? I heard that tutorial scenarios got some issues too with 2.0 ?)

Maybe we should have a dedicated forum instead for players that are stil playing 1.1.

What about other major change versions like 0.16-0.17 or 0.14-0.15 (was that the one that removed alien science ?) Ok, granted, the big difference here is that the was no monetary cost involved...

[Loewchen]

But if a new player comes here looking for help and they're playing 2.0 before they play Space Age (which I think most people will do, especially based on how pricing is), they're going to see stuff about planets and ships and not know what in the heck is going on.

They will see stuff here they have not seen in game yet no matter what. Trains, circuit logic, bots, vehicles, are all later solutions to early problems. Each person can decide how important it is to them to not hear about late game gameplay, either figure it out on their own or look it up on the forum, the expansion does not change that.

There is a difference between not being able to find information about some 2.0 topic because the info does not exist / is buried under expansion stuff OR not being able to find it because you risk being spoiled about expansion stuff. The latter is not fixable and the former does not exist imo. The expansion contains almost the complete 2.0 content so you won't require a pure 2.0 answer to any specific question.

Up until now you guys have made the decision to keep mods separate, and I think that makes good sense from an organizational standpoint. Now with SA mixed in with all of the rest of the discussions...

We haven't really. It worked like this organically, posting about a fringe mod in a general forum just did not get the right audience, so posting in the topic of this very mod is more successful. Topics of more popular mods like SE or bobs are all over the forum.

[Tertius]

I mean, if Factorio doesn't expect to ever gain new players who are going to play the base game, then I guess it's fine the way it is. But if a new player comes here looking for help and they're playing 2.0 before they play Space Age (which I think most people will do, especially based on how pricing is), they're going to see stuff about planets and ships and not know what in the heck is going on.

From a new player perspective, that's a very important point. If I hear about Factorio, look into its Steam shop page and decide to give it a try, I guess I would first download the demo or buy the base game. If this looks good and I want more, I go buy the Space Age expansion. Both parts are full price and no discount for both as one package, so I will probably buy them separately, one after the other.

Personally, I did this with Rimworld. I bought Rimworld just after its first expansion was released. First, I just bought the base game to see how it works out. It was nice, and just when I was about to buy the expansion, I heard of Factorio and realized this was the factory builder I was looking for in the first place, and not more of Rimworld.

And in this case, I would welcome a forum that has a forum part just for the base game, and all expansion-specific discussion takes place in an expansion-specific forum part.

I propose 2 new subforums: one split for "General Discussion" → "General Discussion - Base Game" + "General Discussion - Space Age DLC", the other for "Gameplay Help" → "Gameplay Help - Base Game" + "Gameplay Help - Space Age DLC". The "Show your creations" section doesn't need a split, because it's not high traffic and more a library than a discussion forum.. For this section, I propose that threads get a "[Space Age]" and "[Base]" prefix in their subject, however I don't know if the forum can enforce this or how many people would do this on their own. For the bug reports section, it works.
For a start, all threads since Space Age release could be moved to the new forum, so it's not that empty at the start. The more time elapsed, the more difficult becomes this split, because the more base game questions come back.

[BlueTemplar]

Note that Rimworld has the same issue, with no sub-forums for its expansion packs, and the discussion typically assuming that you use the latest version with all the expansions (and latest mod versions, if appropriate).
https://ludeon.com/forums/

What game have you seen that managed to pull off the opposite ?

[...]
Topics of more popular mods like SE or bobs are all over the forum.

More popular mods also get their own sub-forums though.

[NineNine]

I mean, if Factorio doesn't expect to ever gain new players who are going to play the base game, then I guess it's fine the way it is. But if a new player comes here looking for help and they're playing 2.0 before they play Space Age (which I think most people will do, especially based on how pricing is), they're going to see stuff about planets and ships and not know what in the heck is going on.

And in this case, I would welcome a forum that has a forum part just for the base game, and all expansion-specific discussion takes place in an expansion-specific forum part.

I propose 2 new subforums: one split for "General Discussion" → "General Discussion - Base Game" + "General Discussion - Space Age DLC", the other for "Gameplay Help" → "Gameplay Help - Base Game" + "Gameplay Help - Space Age DLC". The "Show your creations" section doesn't need a split, because it's not high traffic and more a library than a discussion forum.. For this section, I propose that threads get a "[Space Age]" and "[Base]" prefix in their subject, however I don't know if the forum can enforce this or how many people would do this on their own. For the bug reports section, it works.
For a start, all threads since Space Age release could be moved to the new forum, so it's not that empty at the start. The more time elapsed, the more difficult becomes this split, because the more base game questions come back.

I think these are all really good ideas.

I really want these forums to continue to be valuable to both beginners and advanced players, and I'm really worried that right now they're being swamped by Space Age posts all over the place, to the detriment of both new and veteran players of 2.0.

[Stargateur]

if you don't want spoiler don't read social media. I didn't read forum and reddit until I was far into the expansion.

[BlueTemplar]

I didn't find the forums to be too bad about spoilers, unless you deliberately went into threads specifically mentioning a planet, but then that's kind of on you ?