Quality killed this game for me

[CheeseMcBurger]

One thing I loved about Factorio was the immense replayability, because it was so easy to improve previous layouts and factories. You quite quickly reach the point where you get advanced oil refining, assembler 3 or stack inserters, so that you can really start tinkering and optimising.

I feel like all of that went down the drain with qualities. This is mainly because they are available so late in game, and only in steps, that it is hard to reach the point where you start to truly optimise. In Factorio 1, a lot of times I was just in creative mode, improving on designed, that I then used in my ongoing playthrough. This all feels pointless now, because when doing it now, hours later I unlock qualities. Then hours later another quality level, and then later the next quality level. I'm now 100 hours in my save game and still have not reached epic qualities, so what's the point in sitting down and improving anything? By the time I actually reach epic, I'm probably just bored, or give up due to too many possibilities. Same with platforms / ships. Qualities are absolutely crucial to get a good and compact design. I loved designing my first ship, but then suddenly it felt pointless putting in too much effort, because a lot of the puzzle would be solved with rare. Then you get to rare and the cycle repeates.

I'm not saying the game is bad. There's for sure many people who like it this way. But for me, I just feel lost in the game and the interesting bits feel like they never pay off, because too much is still changing. Qualities is one of those ideas that sound great in theory, but just don't work for me in practice.

And I hate Gleba.

[TheFrizz]

I both agree and disagree. In general I agree that one of the greatest weaknesses of 2.0 + SA is the lack of particular kind of distinct satisfaction. In regular Factorio, you start as a newbie and you make some giant pot of spaghetti. But you pull through, and after you have some experience tucked under your belt, you shake your head shamefully at your former self and then plunk down rows of neatly designed beauties that you blueprint with pride.

With 2.0 + SA, you are wiser, you already know Factorio and wanted more, so you purchased more. And as you are playing you are well aware that some time in the future, this design will be deprecated because new building will be available and the entire shape will change. This is true for quality, but is not restricted to just quality. In my opinion, the even worse culprit is productivity research. "Eventually I'll have +300% plastic productivity and I will only need one cryo plant per X whatevers, so this design is just temporary."

I just think it eats away at the sense of accomplishment for designing great things, when eventually they will be no longer applicable. I guess, said another way. Factorio Space Age would be a better game if along the way, clever design tricks felt like achievements worth saving and benefitting from in the future. You have the ability to "invest" in good designs now and reap the rewards for the rest of your playthrough. Of course this concept is still true in the game to some degree, but the number of buildings / productivity techs / quality / shipping from other planets combine to dilute and water down this feeling to the point where it doesn't exist until the very very end game.

[CheeseMcBurger]

> I just think it eats away at the sense of accomplishment for designing great things, when eventually they will be no longer applicable. I guess, said another way.

Very well said.

> until the very very end game.

And that's several dozen hours into the game. A point where a serious question is raised: Do you even want to continue playing then?

[NineNine]

It sounds like you want a shorter game. You can always play 2.0 if you don't like how long Space Age is.

[Kyralessa]

Quality is a mod.

You can turn it off.

[Panzerknacker]

No you cannot, Space Age depends on Quality.

[Kyralessa]

No you cannot, Space Age depends on Quality.

Just tested, and you're right: If playing Space Age, it won't load without quality.

Quality is optional, though. One can choose not to research it and not to use it.

We have made it so that quality is 'invisible' in the game until quality modules are unlocked, so you won't see anything related to quality if you haven't researched quality module or are playing the base game. This includes all the GUIs and interactions as mentioned earlier.

It's also worth noting that while it's a lot of fun to play with quality, using it is completely optional. The expansion is balanced in a way that using quality can be beneficial, but it is reasonable to finish the game without touching quality at all. Typically, people who want to just finish the game are more likely to not touch quality much, while those who want to build a big factory will have very good reasons to use it.

From https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-375

[quineotio]

It sounds like you want a shorter game. You can always play 2.0 if you don't like how long Space Age is.

Quality is optional, though. One can choose not to research it and not to use it.

I don't think these types of responses are valid. Yes you can just not use quality. You can just not get the productivity upgrades. You can just not use the new buildings for their productivity. You can just not use bots. You can just not use faster belts or stack inserters etc.

And yes, you can just not play Space Age. But this is not a defense of Space Age or quality.

What the OP is talking about is something I feel also. SA is designed in a way that discourages actually playing. By far the easiest way to play is to use bots for everything, because by doing so you bypass many of the problems the OP brought up. But using bots for everything removes one of the central parts of the game - making interesting designs and routing resources.

And by far the easiest way to increase your factory's output is to change nothing, and let your research upgrade things for you, occasionally replacing buildings with quality upgrades as they become available (but without actually changing any designs). Playing this way gets you deep into infinite research without much effort, but there's barely any gameplay beyond the initial setup.

The fact is, SA is a constantly moving target, so there's never a point where you can sit down and refine what you have unless you actively ignore parts of the game, or alternatively you wait until you have legendary everything and +300% productivity on everything. But at that point, why would you bother - you've already finished the game.

[mmmPI]

If you don't like quality, not using it sounds like a straightforward option to me.

[NineNine]

It sounds like you want a shorter game. You can always play 2.0 if you don't like how long Space Age is.

Quality is optional, though. One can choose not to research it and not to use it.

The fact is, SA is a constantly moving target, so there's never a point where you can sit down and refine what you have unless you actively ignore parts of the game, or alternatively you wait until you have legendary everything and +300% productivity on everything. But at that point, why would you bother - you've already finished the game.

Just because you have everything upgraded, doesn't mean that the game is "finished". As with the rest of the game, there are going to be new challenges that you haven't run into before. For example, I have legendary almost everything (trying to make quality producing systems on Aquillo is going to kill me), and my latest challenge is trying to get enough throughput of science back to Nauvis. You can call the game "finished" at any time you'd like.

[Tertius]

so what's the point in sitting down and improving anything? By the time I actually reach epic, I'm probably just bored, or give up due to too many possibilities. Same with platforms / ships. Qualities are absolutely crucial to get a good and compact design.

Quality is one thing too much with all what the game offers until you know how to deal with it and when to deal with it. I ignore quality in my Space Age walkthrough completely, so I don't get bogged down by it. The game works well this way. Quality ISN'T crucial for platforms. You're not going above ~300 km/s, but that's ok. Instead of going to 600 km/s, you just deploy 2 platforms instead of 1. With everything else, use speed modules+beacons instead of quality items.

Reaching solar system edge and building a promethium platform with just normal components works. No issues.

Space Age has different milestones and game goals: the player is constantly unlocking things and improving his factories. But at no game stage except the very late game where you already have everything it's possible to build "maximum factories", production lines that cannot be improved any more. With the base game, this is possible after unlocking tier 3 modules. In Space Age, you first need almost everything unlocked to have all required tech for a maximum factory, and after that you need to build up maximum (quality) items, which cannot be just crafted like a tier 3 module. The goal is not to duplicate your maximum factories to increase output, it's to build up the items for maximum factories.

[quineotio]

Just because you have everything upgraded, doesn't mean that the game is "finished".

This is technically true, but in practice "finished" means there's no motivation continue. You can keep building and go for a million SPM or whatever, but that doesn't mean SA in its current state is ideal. It could be a lot more fun (and a lot more replayable) if certain changes were made.

[mmmPI]

Factorio cannot be ideal, it belong to the physical world and as such is subject to its nature. When reading changes people proposes to make the game suit their desire sometimes it appears that the proposition are going in opposite direction because players enjoy different things in the game, and would wish to alter remove others differently.

This is why mods are great imo ! Quality being an official mod has this 'optionnal' status to me. But player can change it , or not use it if they don't want to. I am using a mod to renamme the quality level at everygame to something ridiculous, and so far i haven't been bored.

[mrkev]

... For example, I have legendary almost everything (trying to make quality producing systems on Aquillo is going to kill me)...

Just btw, there is no need to make legedary production on Aquilo. All you need it import legendary holmium plates. Main solid resource on Aquilo is Lithium, but that is made from holmium plates and two "qualityless" liquids (ammonia, lithium brine). Quantum processors can be done in space (IMHO better solution) and everything else Aquilo specific (cryo plant, fusion reactor & generator) can be done with bots.

[mrkev]

... Same with platforms / ships. Qualities are absolutely crucial to get a good and compact design. I loved designing my first ship, but then suddenly it felt pointless putting in too much effort, because a lot of the puzzle would be solved with rare. Then you get to rare and the cycle repeates.

Qualities are not crucial to get a good compact design, You don't actually need quality at all. IMHO, there is no point in chasing it like this.
I have decided early on, that I'm gonna go for normal + legendary builds, nothing in between. Which meant starting it somewhat late (just before "winning the game"). And it was fine. I've 13 ships, first 7 were build with 100% normal items, 3 ary a hybrid and 3 are 100% legendary.

Legendary items are usually 2.5x faster. Which means you need 5 normal items, where you'd use 2 legendary. That's not that big of a deal. You can get simmilar results with modules. Ofc, the combination of legendary modules, legendary beacons and legendary items makes the biggest difference.

[Green Cat]

WTF are Some of you talking about???

First of all, we PAID for the quality system so it being decorative OR use mod to fix is not acceptable, people are freaking telling other to avoid this unless you are end game and get access to everything, why? Because you need to have a gambling addiction to not see what's the issue.

So, what did we get? The devs' GAMBLING addiction.

I don't know if someone said the devs said or the devs themself really said that they added quality to reduce UPS load and more— but that was one of the main reason why people wanted quality. As in, we PAID to have access to quality of life. Instead, we get what???? 1%... if you want more, you need to get the second module (unlocked later), and the third even further down the line. Until then, you can go max 3%, because higher is also locked, and let's hope you have access to epic... oh wait, if you insted focuse on unlocking Legendary you won't waste hours. Did you ever use a mod that makes the default % be 10%? Guess what—you’re still gambling to get a little quality. So where is the Quality Factory? Where is the Quality of Life people expected to get via quality? Without mods, the game reflects the “enjoyment” of people who are suffering from gambling addiction.

The quality system should have added a way to guarantee higher quality so we could enjoy it from the start instead of almost finishing the game. It’s just a MASSIVE waste of time, resources, and more, to even bother with quality before unlocking Legendary.

I don’t know who said that the devs added quality as a way to enable better builds without needing to add more buildings, but as far as I can see, this failed massively. Instead of the rotten gambling addiction being forced upon us, people would have loved it if there were MK2 or even MK3 versions of buildings. But not the quality BS that just adds a logistic nightmare in case you made a mistake (robots deconstructed a container or similar) and the items get spread around.

Regarding why I said it’s a rotten gambling addiction:

As mentioned, we are absolutely screwed if we want quality. There is no recycling. There’s no Epic or Legendary until much later. And even with modules, you unlock a miserable 1% extra on module 2. And only a 25% increase on module 3??????? On top of that, they give speed penalties—and the speed module REDUCES the quality????

Recycling? from the start they have 0.5 speed, only 4 modules, and 25 destruction???? IF they added more modules slots, or at least unlock via research, heck here is even a better ideea: normal 0 quality bonus, rare 10%. With the Legendary havign 60% default quality, so with modules, you'll get 100% quality, on top, if the ration are good, you can add a speed module. That or a MK2 recycling with quality. But no, we don't even have access to recycling until much later so any kind of quality farming is on hold until you unlock that, because as I mentioned, the devs only wanted to recreate the "pleasure of gambling" insted of adding ways to get access to quality wihout mod or gambling.

We paid for a DLC where the devs forced us into their gambling addiction. They make it as clear as possible that you are NOT supposed to have access to quality unless you do mass recycling—just like in gacha games and other online gambling mechanics.

For anyone who says, “just use a mod,” this is a freaking paid mod—why does it NOT include the ability to adjust the % before starting the game? Like they did with spoilage. And of course, at 100% (NO gambling), you put in a module and you get higher quality—no more gambling BS.

But no, there is nothing but gambling. There are mods that allow the use of Prometheus for a 100% quality upgrade. And if that were unlocked via visiting Shattered Planet, that would have made visiting that place meaningful. But again, by then, the question is: do you even need Legendary quality? After all, what you wanted was to use it from the start—without gambling.

Oh yes, here’s a solution: if a tick box is checked before the start of the game, the “100% quality upgrade” using Prometheus would be unlocked from the beginning, and Prometheus asteroids would spawn around Nauvis—giving you access to no-gambling, 100% quality from the start. But hey, it’s not like we paid for this, so let’s just turn it off if we don’t like participating in gambling.

I don't know if the devs work on a Factorio 3.0, but all they need to do is add tickboxes and such with new options to get rid of gambling aspect that only people with gambling addiction enjoy, no one else. And last hopefull usefull sugestion: Research to increase the %, infinite one so we can combine quality with speed moduels.

[Tertius]

So, what did we get? The devs' GAMBLING addiction.

Everything you wrote has already being mentioned in the Quality announcement discussion thread: 108611

To make a long story short: no, it's not gambling. It's math, and to be precise, it's statistics.

If you "gamble" to create a legendary mech armor from normal ingredients, or if you even expect that's the meaning of Quality, you're dead wrong.

If you want some legendary item, the proper way is to create legendary ingredients, then create the item without any gambling: just use the legendary recipe.

The ingredients are many, and the ingredients to create the ingredients are very many. And here it's statistics that kicks in, since you process vast amounts of items. On every ingredient level (ore, plates, intermediate, intermediate-intermediate and so on), you're creating "upgraded" versions of the product. These are what you use for the next level of refinement. Additionally, you recycle the not upgraded trash you create while doing that. Since recycling also can produce upgraded ingredients, you get a benefit from that as well. It's not gambling, it's just some long specialized production line or lines.

Eventually, you get all legendary final ingredients for your armor. Or you skip one level and build from epic ingredients and hope you don't need that many tries to get an upgraded legendary output. That's also not gambling, since one level higher just needs a few crafts instead of hundredths and thousands.

[Kyralessa]

WTF are Some of you talking about???

I don't get the anger.

There are two ways to get a legendary item: Through luck, from a lower-quality item build with quality modules; or through creating it from legendary components. You can do either one.

It's simple enough to create a set of assembly machines and a recycler to churn through and upcycle lower-quality items in pursuit of a better one. You can set a speaker to notify you when the legendary item is ready. Until then, just let it run and forget about it. Once you have good ingredients and your machines have legendary quality 3 modules, your chances are very good: 100% for a legendary item with legendary ingredients, but also a 24.8% chance for legendary from an epic item with epic ingredients.

I mostly set up this quality churn on Fulgora, since it has an abundance of materials anyway, and I make it mostly bot-based. Vulcanus is a good option too, since iron and copper and steel are essentially infinite.

It's not gambling, because I'm not sitting around pulling a slot machine. It's automated. It's not perfectly deterministic, to be sure, but it doesn't matter because you can set it and forget it.

If you can't stand the non-determinism, I'm sure there's a mod out there that'll change it for you. When I search for quality, there are 11 pages of mods, so there's got to be something there that'll change quality to the way you prefer it to work.

[mrkev]

So, what did we get? The devs' GAMBLING addiction.

Sorry, but this is pure nonsense. Here is my quality built:
You can easily build something like this to get all the basic resources (iron, copper, sulfur and coal). There is no gambling, it's all about simple probability and everything that can be recycled can be upscaled.

[Shirasik]

It's math, and to be precise, it's statistics.

Nope.

Probabilities are independent so for piece items like character equipment that's pure luck. That's why people feeling whole system as gambling. This is the first cornerstone.

The second cornerstone is for the items produced in vast quantities (consumables, such as ammunition, repair packs, science packs) productivity modules offers better results if you compare even theoretical prod/raw results against quality/raw results. In order to make prod modules obsolete you need to reach high tier prod repeatables. That's the "research for the sake of research" playthrough not ordinary fun runs.

The third cornerstone is uneven quality proc distribution leads to unmanageable surplus of items you have nothing to do with. E.g. 100 electric furnaces processing iron ore and 100 electric furnaces processing copper ore. All packed with common tier1 quality modules so player expecting same quantities of improved metal plates in the outcome: 2%. Okay, we need relevant production quantities. We talking about statistics. Out of 1000000000000 ore chunks processed player expecting 20000000000 metal plates to be of improved quality. 20000000000 improved iron plates and 20000000000 improved copper plates. In reality player will get numbers like 15000000000 improved iron plates and 25000000000 improved copper plates. Plus extra layer of randomness to distribute that plates between available quality levels. Player can't even automatically get rid of delta of that items until player progressed Fulgora. So player which touches quality prior to Fulgora ends up stockpiling endless stream of unwanted, nothing to do with surplus of unusable items. And even with Fulgora's recyclers quality gives just worse result/raw ratio than productivity.

The fourth cornerstone is whole system is designed not to allow ingredient quality mixing even with strict restrictions like recipe result quality to be measured by lowest quality of ingredients used. So either make layers over layers of item sorting to manage unpredictability of quality and destroy surplus in recyclers, or build quality-dedicated factories that destroys, reprocess or recycle everything what not the top tier quality item. Layers over layers of sorting is not the approach for consumables. Quality-dedicated factories aren't for consumables either.

Quality never pays off when used in day-to-day-stuff production lines in Factorio. Quality is needed to produce piece items (equipment of any kind) quantities of which are never big enough to talk about statistics. And due to limited amounts of equipment needed you need top quality equipment only so any quality lower than legendary is the food for recycler.

All in all instead of adding more depth, quality system adds overcomplications that never pays off in mass production lines no matter how you automate that. While Factorio is the game about automation of mass streamlined production.