[0.17.4] Campaign feedback

[pixelxeno]

Background:

I played Factorio for about a hundred hours around 0.14 or so, up to launching a rocket. I played the campaign a bit, but I gave up when I realized I needed to build a very large factory that probably meant to be deleted on the next level.

I was looking forward to trying the new 0.17 campaign, so I gave it a try as soon as I could. The long story short is I stopped playing fairly quickly.

My main issue with the campaign right now is that it really has little to do with what the actual game looks like. The tech tree is limited and very different. If the goal is to teach players how the game functions, I don't understand how this would work out. The UI is also different. The crafting menu isn't sorted out into tabs, and all of the items are placed differently as what freeplay would look like.

I'm going to try explaining a bit what I experienced there.

The first phase is basically locked up using only burners. This meant I spent a lot of time just running around filling up burners inserters, drills and smelters with things to burn. I almost burned all the wood in the starting area, causing me to be almost locked up on completing the goal of building electric poles. I know one friend who gave up during this phase, being frustrated having to run around. I almost gave up too, but I was a bit too interested in seeing where this would go. I thought the blackbox research thing was a kind of good trick to lock some of the basic tech.

When the next phase started, it made a lot more sense to me all of a sudden. I thought this was the moment it would begin being like the real game. But it wasn't. Very quickly, the game locks you up using only short inserters, with no belt splitter nor underground belts. I thought that I could start automating the whole thing, but these limitations meant that I couldn't properly automate feeding coal into the smelters. I was spending a lot of time building science packs by hand because I thought I would eventually get the proper logistics to properly automate the factory. I eventually reached the goal of building enough ammo (which I did mostly by hand), and then I got to when the game asks you to reach a certain amount of ppm of automated production, and I realized that, no, I wouldn't get some of the basic logistics to do this, and that the only way I would reach these goals would be with me running around shoving more coal into the smelters, or other similar very manual tasks. This is where I stopped playing, because, I thought to myself, if I wanted to play a game where I have to run around endlessly moving reagents around for crafting, I would play Subnautica instead.

My point is, to me, this game always has been about automation. This campaign wasn't, and it frustrated me out of playing it. If I compare with other games such as Starcraft, the campaign incrementally explains how to play the game in freeplay. Reaching the end of the campaign means having used every parts of the game and learning every tool in the toolbox. This isn't what this does, or at least, it doesn't feel like it to me.

I tried playing freeplay in 0.17 a bit. I got to automate the red science packs and associated research very quickly, which was much refreshing compared with what the campaign was. I would have expected something similar, maybe a tad harder or different. But this wasn't it at all. It ended up being too frustrating and I stopped playing it.

[PhilZero]

I got similars expectations. But it looks like the introduction scenario was made to introduce the player to the future campaign, not to introduce the player for freeplay. I wonder if we had no expectations at all, how would we had perceived this game, would it looks like a good game? That's hard to tell when you already know something better for you.

If I compare with other games such as Starcraft, the campaign incrementally explains how to play the game in freeplay. Reaching the end of the campaign means having used every parts of the game and learning every tool in the toolbox.

I got to admit that was what I tough the factorio campaign would be but it looks like its gonna take another direction and become distinct from freeplay.

Thanks for your comment. It helped me understand what exactly I was expecting.

[pixelxeno]

But it looks like the introduction scenario was made to introduce the player to the future campaign, not to introduce the player for freeplay. I wonder if we had no expectations at all, how would we had perceived this game, would it looks like a good game?

Right, and in the case of a new player, I would assert that this is currently doing a really bad job at showing what this game really is about, aka, automation. During phase 1, the game provides you automatically with a small factory that crafts iron plates, where you have to manually feed coal in. In phase 2, you're kind of expected to reproduce it. The game makes no effort or indication that you can mix iron and coal on a single belt to feed the smelters, so you're bound to reproduce the same scheme as in phase 1, aka running around manually feeding coal to smelters. Unless the robot drops for you some example factory that does this, I would put money on the table to bet that no new player who has never seen the game in action before would come up with this design on their own.

Plus, the belt mixing is tricky to do, and only a short-term, compact solution. And with no splitters, this means having to run more than one coal line to do copper, iron and bricks, and powering up the boilers. And then trying to tie a belt around for distributing ammo to turrets with no underground belts could only result in some of the worst spaghetti nightmare factory, or, you know, as I said, continue what you've learned from phase 1, and continue running around manually feeding everything.

This is not what this game's about, both for a player who never played the game before, and veterans.

I would strongly suggest giving splitters and underground belts for phase 2, and/or having the robot demonstrate mixed belts techniques, either in phase 1, or in phase 2.