Friday Facts #444 - 2.1 Experimental release

[Jap2.0]

I may be wrong but I've kind of gotten the impression that the team wants everything to be more "professional" (for lack of a better word) the past couple years, which undoubtedly makes FFFs take longer to write. And, well, they've done 444 of them already...

Apropos taking longer. If one FFF needs 4-5 hours to plan and write (and I'm quite sure most of them need more than that), writing 444 FFFs are about one man year's work.

And they keep doing it even when we use it to complain at them!

(I say very much tongue in cheek)

[Cygnus]

Loving the new features for 2.1, I thought I would mention 3 other small things I think would suit it since you guys said you weren't finished working on it:

1. Minimum robot requests inside a Roboport.
We can set minimum robot requests inside of Roboport, but not maximum like we can in other logistic groups. This would allow an inserter inserting new robots into the system to be more consistent; Right now if one tries to insert lots of robots at once, the Roboport fills up and there is no way to add more without creating a large robot request to get those clogged robots moving and out of the loading Roboport. This was never much of an issue as robots are usually added gradually, but I noticed it when trying to upgrade to quality robots. This way one could set a maximum number of 0 construction bots in this Roboport and as new robots are loaded in, they move into other Roboports automatically until either, robots stop being inserted or all Roboports are full, at which point a warning would be given to the player indicating there is no Roboport space for robots.

2. Turret priority groups
Thanks to logistic groups, players no longer have to spend much time copying and pasting request settings. Once exception to this, however, is turret priorities. Turret priority groups could fix this and make things more consistent with logistic groups. Another feature that would also be excellent would be a check box inside turrets that says, “ignore order of listed targets”. This would allow more fine control if, say, one wanted to prioritise huge asteroids with railgun turrets over other asteroid types but not care about which type and just shoot the closest huge asteroid.

3. Circuit output separation.
I absolutely love the new changes to circuits in 2.1, but one thing the changes do not account for is that multiple outputs from a machine can combine and contaminate each other. The only instance of this I can think of is the “read ingredients” and “read contents” setting inside machines, but it means that one cannot practically do both with one machine. The only solution was to create a second “dummy” machine that only read ingredients but never had anything inserted into it. This feels weird and given that combinator variables can already be isolated “piecewise” (i.e. one can specify which wire colour should be considered for a condition individually for each variable), it feels to me that it would be more consistent to make circuit specifications inside machines piecewise too, rather than one isolation option for all outputs and one for all inputs. Having said that, given that I’m pretty sure that “read ingredients” and “read contents” are the only examples of where this can occur, so maybe an exception could be made for just them rather than for all variables in all machines, but that would feel arbitrary.

Thanks for all your hard work on this update!

[quineotio]

There is none so entitled as the guy who's paid a whole fifty-five bucks for a game.
Once you've forked over that kind of money, you're practically a part-owner of the company, and should be consulted on every decision.

Entitled? Factorio wouldn't exist without the community. Wube wouldn't exist without the community. Without the support, feedback, suggestions, bug reports, guides, mods, discussions and countless hours of free marketing in videos.

And then they drop SA without any consultation and go silent for a year and a half. There was a relationship. There was love. And then one half of the relationship turned the cold shoulder.

There are some people who put forward the idea that artists don't owe their audience anything. This is bullshit. You owe gratitude and respect. Yes, I and others paid money for Factorio. But do you really think this is about money? For you perhaps.

If I didn't care I wouldn't be here. If the community stops caring they won't be here either, and neither will Wube, and neither will their next game.

[GregoriusT]

And then they drop SA without any consultation and go silent for a year and a half. There was a relationship. There was love. And then one half of the relationship turned the cold shoulder.

Brave to assume there was no consultation with the community, did you like not read any of the FFFs leading up to the release of Space Age?

And after Release they focussed on bug fixing and letting Modders do their thing, because that's what to do right after a Release.

All the while the Devs were definitely still communicating with the Community.

This is the thing with Communitys, everybody in them wants something different, so if you happen to be part of the people who dont like what the rest of the Community likes, then it isn't the Devs fault, its the fact that everybody is different, and you are no exception to that difference between people.

[radical_larry]

Entitled? Factorio wouldn't exist without the community. Wube wouldn't exist without the community. Without the support, feedback, suggestions, bug reports, guides, mods, discussions and countless hours of free marketing in videos.

And then they drop SA without any consultation and go silent for a year and a half. There was a relationship. There was love. And then one half of the relationship turned the cold shoulder.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

[Eulenberg]

Think about me what you want, call me a noob because i was pro-casino, call me a cheater because i think the concrete changes are one of the most ludicrous changes imaginable, call me what ever you want, i could not care less. What i care about is a Game i put the majority of my free time in over the better part of the last 10 years.

Factorio is a community founded game, Factorio is a game that became a genre defining and leading game, because of dedicated and trusting community that, supported and trusted the developer, a game were every single player paid the full price, because we new it would be worth every single cent, because there was real communication between developers and players.

But these times are gone, and they most likely never come back, FFF 444 proves again that Wube has disconnected with its player base, what ever comes from Wube in the Future wont be ether.

This game became so good as it was, because of one important relation, devs trying out new things and giving thoughts on there decisions, players giving feedback, and devs again iterating over feedback and giving context on what and why things were changed, trying to find the best possible path given the feedback, in the worst cases of the past we were given a technical analysis on certain aspects of the game have to be in a specific way or why a certain solution was picked. This created a very healthy back and forth feedback-loop that made this game as brilliant as it was at its peak.

However since SA release, there is no communication any more, at best very little, Wube is dictating, how they want there players to play the game. Rather it be changes to platforms, quality or what not.
I want to stress out here that my main concern is not that things are not getting reverted, not a single balance change from 2.0 - 2.1 could not be "fixed/reverted" with a single line of lua code. Its about the communication and the acknowledgement of feedback, that is a very cornerstone of this Game and therefore a cornerstone of the company Wube itself. Ever since the FFF 442, and especially with all of the undisclosed changes of 2.1.7, there is a growing group of people who want to know what the thoughts behind some of these changes were, ever since 2.0 the reasoning for most controversial changes can be summed up with: "This is how it is/we want it, deal with it.". And its totally Wubes right to do it that way, in the end its there game.

This is or was the last time we as a player base could impact the development of the Game, since Factorio will move to maintain status and Wube will work on WoWtorio, (There own words: "Our next game will be to WoW, what Factorio was for Minecraft").
And the transition could not be better, Blizzard Entertainment used to be a company with a dedicated group of developers, producers and artists, that created games, they wanted to play them self, and people knew that there games had a certain standard, there was development and careage for and with the playerbase and the players paid it back by pre-ordering there games years before release and sometimes before seeing the first trailers even, 15-20 years ago you would say "Its a Blizzard game, of cause it will be good." and you were certainly right in this assumption. This could be said for Factorio prior to 2.0, too. If there were any major issues within the game, they would be addressed sooner or later, and there was clear communication on when and how it would happen. One of the major reasons of the downfall of Blizzard is certainly there hubris, thinking they know better what there players want, not listenling to feedback or at least acknowledge feedback, and this behaviour can be observed with current-age Wube, too. Dont get me wrong there is more to the downfall of Blizzard sure. But the main reason they went from Industry defining to a footnote in a annual Financial Report, is the fact they played Roulette with the trust of there player base.

Right now there is very little word of reasoning or shared iterations and attempts to improve these controversial aspects of the game. Instead threads in forum are getting deleted or closed.

Its about how things are handled ever since SA, the fact that most of 2.1 features are long overdue or holdback, that make me come to a final conclusion: "This is all an attempt to buy goodwill from us the players, to bridge the time till WoWtorio, with as little as possible effort." and I am no longer supporting this.

There are many dedicated and talented modder in this community that will carry the torch onward, at least i hope so.

But if not the 21th October 2024, then it was the day of this very FFF, when Wube went from genre defining and one the most acclaimed game makers, to mediocre and replaceable, i could not be more happy if im wrong looking back at this predictions in some years, but if not i did what i could to stop it.

[GregoriusT]

Why do I feel like the real complaint is not lack of communication, but that this is the end of new features for Factorio?

Every Game will inevitably reach the point where the design is locked in, due to needing to keep old stuff working as is, which will force any developer into a corner where they simply CANNOT make any significant changes to the base game, and HAVE to rely on Modders for new features, since meaningfully changing the Base Game is flat out impossible after some point without destroying the Game in the process.

[Eulenberg]

Why do I feel like the real complaint is not lack of communication, but that this is the end of new features for Factorio?

Every Game will inevitably reach the point where the design is locked in, due to needing to keep old stuff working as is, which will force any developer into a corner where they simply CANNOT make any significant changes to the base game, and HAVE to rely on Modders for new features, since meaningfully changing the Base Game is flat out impossible after some point without destroying the Game in the process.

The only thing i anticipated for 2.1 was the fluid rate changes and thats the only thing that mods cant really do in the same way the devs who can change the engine, if 2.1 was only the fluid rate and maybe the visable plantes, at least it would have been a honest farewell, any feature from SA release to 2.1 was predated by a mod, so i think it fair to say we dont need Wube for new and exiting features, only to refine them and make them accessible for players that dont have access to mods or dont want or can for what ever reason use them(Switch, Servers etc). For what ever reason they cant revisit the controversial aspects of the quality mods so they removed them, they for what ever reason cant make recycle times consistent, so they claim its working as intended and double down on it in 2.1. Dynastically changing certain aspects of the game, for the better or worse is debatable and subjective.

I dont want to open the whole discussion about again, but removing Casinos didn’t fix the fundamental issues within the quality mod, nor did the removal of concrete voiding. If more they made it more obvious how flawed the underlying systems truly are, imo.
You said yourself :

" since meaningfully changing the Base Game is flat out impossible after some point without destroying the Game in the process."

So I think I would have been fine if we got only these overdue and holdback features, and give this Game the farewell it deserved leaving it to the community and modders to decide what to do with it.

[foxiest_engineer]

The assemblers are looking stylish!

[hawkeey]

If there's one big thing I'd like re: communication, its for Wube to explain what the intention for Factorio is, and explain design decisions, and do a post mortem about the design. Because you're asking for feedback, but from what I see you don't care at all about feedback and are just doing what you want. There's no consistency or justification, just you telling us what's been done.

A big topic would be quality. A lot of people don't like various things about it. What's your response? Why are you asking for feedback when you've already received a lot of feedback and done nothing with it? At the very least make the statement "we have no intention of changing anything", because otherwise it's disrespectful to ask for feedback - you're just wasting people's time.

As it stands, I'm basically done with not only Factorio, but Wube as a company. I'm in disbelief at the way SA has been handled. I don't feel anything anything but negativity toward you, which is a shame because the base game is amazing and I was really looking forward to SA - which could be easily twice as good with some different choices.

I do not really see where you are coming from. They have very clearly communicated what the intention for Factorio is. It's pretty much done. If you do not like quality, they have just provided a way to turn that off while still being able to play the rest of Space Age. It's clear they wanted to give us some very different mechanics to work with, and I think they have succeeded.

They have changed a lot in response to feedback. I'm amazed at how much we are getting in Factorio 2.1, and how much they have reacted to feedback. I was not expecting anything beyond bug fixes at this stage. Thank you, Wube.

[radical_larry]

I do not really see where you are coming from. They have very clearly communicated what the intention for Factorio is. It's pretty much done. If you do not like quality, they have just provided a way to turn that off while still being able to play the rest of Space Age. It's clear they wanted to give us some very different mechanics to work with, and I think they have succeeded.

They have changed a lot in response to feedback. I'm amazed at how much we are getting in Factorio 2.1, and how much they have reacted to feedback. I was not expecting anything beyond bug fixes at this stage. Thank you, Wube.

People buying Factorio at 10 - 30 bucks got years of content updates, constant communication, feedback was listened to and lots of things changed for the better.
People buying Factorio + DLC for 70 bucks, after listening to the above mentioned people raving on about how great Wube is, got some bugfixes and snarky comments on why they're playing the game wrong.
Yeah I wonder why people are mad.
Kovarex even said that Factorio sales are giving the company a healthy and steady cashflow. But instead of investing that money into Factorio it seems to be on extended life support, while the money is going elsewhere. And again, I believe the anger at the current dev team is misplaced. They seem to be hard at work to keep this running with the resources they have available. But the end result is still that development is moving like molasses.
For comparison, 2.0 was more than one and a half years ago.

During that same time frame, in 2013-2015, we got
- Multiplayer
- Trains
- Pollution and biters
- Modular armor
- Construction robots and robot network
- Oil and derivatives
- Blueprints
And 2015-2017 we got
- Combat robots
- Steam integration
- Concrete floors
- Personal logistics and roboports
- Combinators
- Rocket ending
- Stack (bulk) inserter
- Flamethrower turrets and fire
- Mod portal
- Achievements

I think you get the idea. Wube is cashing out on Factorio. Just because they aren't adding battle passes like other companies doesn't mean we have to be happy about it.
And no, the DLC is not finished. They should go finish it. But that's not likely to happen any time soon.

[mmmPI]

People buying Factorio at 10 - 30 bucks got years of content updates, constant communication, feedback was listened to and lots of things changed for the better.
People buying Factorio + DLC for 70 bucks, after listening to the above mentioned people raving on about how great Wube is, got some bugfixes and snarky comments on why they're playing the game wrong.

Player buying Factorio at 10-30 also played with a version that was not the current one, with no nuclear reactor nor artillery, without current performance optimizations, without steam for the early players, it wouldn't be correct to say there was bugs, it has always been very very minimal, but all those improvements you mentionned are also what justify the different price, the game has gotten much better over time that's also what you are buying when you get the full game and the expansion currently.

And if you just consider the expansion you don't have the DLC model , where the content is split is small part sold every now and then, you are being sold a product upfront that received quite the update already with 2.1, for free

They should go finish it. But that's not likely to happen any time soon.

So what do you want ? the end of the free updates or not ?

[Tertius]

However since SA release, there is no communication any more, at best very little, Wube is dictating, how they want there players to play the game. Rather it be changes to platforms, quality or what not.

A definite no to that. Completely and wholly.
The game sets environmental laws within the simulation and provides tools to build a factory, and the players are free to use them as they wish. Look at factory screenshots, they're all different (except the ones who use other people's blueprints, they all look like these blueprints). So there is no and never was any dictation of how the game should be played. Even more, significant developer resources have been invested at all times into a sophisticated and detailed modding API to explicitly let players do what they want beyond any dev control. From what I see, the modding API took probably 20-30% of all development resources. So many mods are providing buffs and cheats to ease up gameplay, so they're lifting any restrictions some players might feel.

About changes to platforms and in general changes with 2.1: almost all of them are implemented player suggestions. Multiple global communication radar channels. Platform requests can be set with circuits. Train fluid connections in curves. Input/Output selection with machine circuit connections. Cargo landing pad unloading not just from the pad itself. Temperature reading for heat pipes. Circuit control for heat exchangers. Even quality: quality wagons and storage tanks with increased slots.
And even such tiny gadgets like the new "Time" function of the selector combinator originates from player questions that ask how to throttle the factory at night.