biters NEVER attacking makes for some depressing gameplay

[Smee]

Increase the pollution levels of the game by a magnitude of 10, biter evolutionary speed and spawn, and how often their bases pop up.

It's not so simple as that. Doing so just means everyone HAS to play like Muzzy and minimise pollution or get overwhelmed - not really what we're looking for. Of course if you just mean as an additional 'super hard mode' option or a mod then that's likely fine.

There's no such thing as a "more perfect" victory. There's only victory and no victory; any path that leads to victory is already a perfect victory.

Why is Muzzy-bear frowning at the non-straight path to victory then - if it's just as perfect as the direct path?

Obligatory : Only a Sith thinks in absolutes

I think there's plenty of 'grey' in what constitutes a 'perfect' victory. Plenty of Olympic ice dancers have achieved gold medal victory without receiving perfect '6's across the board. Sure they have victory, but not 'perfect' victory, at least in my (non-Sith) eyes.

In Factorio my first games are on peaceful mode. I can't imagine any victory I achieve there could be considered 'perfect' considering there is absolutely no threat to me at all, compared with those on the hard mode option games (unless of course you consider putting it on 'peaceful' mode the equivalent of doing "7 throws in a row" - play to win ).

But we're probably down to just discussing semantics here. Hope you find something in the mods.

Happy Playing

[muzzy]

Increase the pollution levels of the game by a magnitude of 10, biter evolutionary speed and spawn, and how often their bases pop up.

It's not so simple as that. Doing so just means everyone HAS to play like Muzzy and minimise pollution or get overwhelmed - not really what we're looking for. Of course if you just mean as an additional 'super hard mode' option or a mod then that's likely fine.

Yes, that'd suck. Maybe turn that -30% effectivity into -8% or something more reasonable. Minimum drilling pollution with level 1 modules is just insanity considering how strong impact it has. Or maybe electric mining equipment needs tiers too, the first one with no module slots at all (or just one, but definitely not three!)

Why is Muzzy-bear frowning at the non-straight path to victory then - if it's just as perfect as the direct path?

The bear isn't frowning at going for the non-straight path, he's frowning at not taking the straight path. There's a difference, really. It's about the attitude, about not taking the game seriously.

Also, if the other path is also 100% certain victory, it's also a straight path.

I think there's plenty of 'grey' in what constitutes a 'perfect' victory. Plenty of Olympic ice dancers have achieved gold medal victory without receiving perfect '6's across the board. Sure they have victory, but not 'perfect' victory, at least in my (non-Sith) eyes.

A score system will let people define their own goals. If you aim for the maximum score, anything below maximum means you lost (better luck next time). Sometimes people want to beat their own record and consider it a victory if they do. Not possible or meaningful with Factorio.

[slay_mithos]

Once again though, this game does have a victory screen, but the main aim of it is as a sandbox, giving us a lot of tools to create cool contraptions, mostly useless as a whole.

Not aiming to clear the "victory" screen has nothing to do with taking the game "seriously", really, because a lot of us play it as a sandbox, where you set your own goals, like being able to automate the creation of every single item in the game, fitting all your machines with high tier productivity modules just to get more from your resources, making lots of bases all over the map, and dedicating each to a different task, having tons of robots flying around, a lot of trains being automated and transporting things all over the map, having fun blowing away every bitter base you can get your hands on with all your cool weapons...

Or even modding the game to add things that you find are missing.


You seem to imply in your messages that your way to play is the only viable way to play, at all, not just for yourself, and that we should all aim for the same things, including the devs.


I strongly suggest that you keep yourself away from games that are considered sandboxes, because even if some have goals, they are mostly about the play, not the goal, and you will find yourself not having a fun time "beating" those, because most of the game is not designed around that idea to begin with.

[muzzy]

You seem to imply in your messages that your way to play is the only viable way to play, at all, not just for yourself, and that we should all aim for the same things, including the devs.

In the maze comic, the other guy says he's "solving a maze" but he obviously isn't. If he's in fact not solving a maze, then anything goes.

My problem is that I've been playing this quite a bit now, starting new game every time a patch gets out to see how the game feels, even though there isn't that much replay value. It gets horribly depressing after a dozen games that go almost exactly the same way with nothing new to do (or worse, there are new things but they don't turn out to be game changers).

The game lacks fun goals. The randomness is only in map generation (resource locations) and there isn't enough decision making required to play.

I strongly suggest that you keep yourself away from games that are considered sandboxes, because even if some have goals, they are mostly about the play, not the goal, and you will find yourself not having a fun time "beating" those, because most of the game is not designed around that idea to begin with.

Factorio is too addictive to stay away from, lol, I'll rather pester the devs to add something that can be used as a goal

Or I'll do some modding. I've been reading the lua scripts a little but since the default aggression mechanics seem to be hardcoded, it'll be a lot of work to change the aggression mechanics... I'll try to find some other way to add more fun.

[kovarex]

As I started to collect ideas in this matter, I feel like some polished parts of the text could be fff material as it is tomorrow, so sorry if some of you read it twice

There is nice article about gamer types here:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6 ... hp?print=1

The op is obviously mainly an achiever (same as I'm, maybe more like %50 achiever 25%explorer 25%killer), so I would rather try to take this as inspiration what could the game offer to achiever than to just tell to him (and thousands of potential other players), that this is just a sandbox, so it is their problem when they are not satisfied.

As achiever I understand his feelings in this matter, and one of the (many) things I wanted to have for Factorio to be different than just industrially modded minecraft was the satisfaction for achievers like me. This is the reason why the player is under pressure of biters that evolve over time instead of having all the time on the world to play and fiddle with factory setups. Achiever wants to fight through the obstacles to the goal, but the goal has to be difficult to get, because it is not interesting enough otherwise. When I played Starcraft II mission on brutal and I won on the first try, I was dissatisfied, because it was too easy. When I had to fail 3 times to understand the level mechanics and requirements to be able to beat the level after another 2 tries, that was the thing I loved. I loved that I had to thing about timings and different approaches of problems and combine my choices in a way that works.

And how to do it? How to satisfy us, achievers, in Factorio? How to do it, so non-achievers or beginners will not be discouraged?

a) Provide much more balanced starting conditions on freeplay (some way of balancing nearby resources to contain the same amounts at least), or/and provide way to share starting conditions (string containing the starting random seed and settings) and play on the predefined settings.
b) Add difficulty settings for the freeplay (they are not now) that would really make a difference in more aspects of the game, like enemy evolution/expansion speed, aggressiveness, pollution spread etc.
c) Provide something measurable that could be achieved (apart just finishing the game), trying to minimize the time seems like one of the possible solutions, because I really love the kind of thinking, what should I invent first, and what should I automate first, timings etc, when everything matters, because every minute will affect the final score.
d) Provide something like achievements, It is quite mainstream these days, but I believe that there is good reason for it. It just satisfies us, achievers, and gives us directions. If these achievements really meant something, like finish the game under X hours on preset settings. Finish campaign missions under X time. Finish game without killing single biter nest. Accumulate 1 000 000 electronic circuits under X hours (or fastest possible time), or the other way around, accumulate the biggest amount of something in specified amount of time. Make online leaderboards of the these on our site (as we have already accounts for players). And I'm sure there is much more we can do in this direction. Wow, the more I think about this, the more I want this

The good part is, that this will still not conflict with non-achievers to play on peacful/easy mode without stress. Just doing the factory for the sake of it. It is important, because the more types of players we can interest, the better for Factorio.

[slay_mithos]

I'm not saying achievers should stay out, because it is such an addictive game, an there is potential for them in there too (the simple facts that there is a victory screen and that death does have consequence point that way).

What I'm saying is that, from what I see on the forums, youtube, and other sites is that the majority of players seem to enjoy it as a sandbox where you can potentially automate nearly everything (no self aware AI bots that expand the factory by themselves).
If the base game starts to go too 'hard', it would loose quite a few people, and get contradictory publicity.

Ideally, you could have many options to tweak everything, and mods that adapt the game for every taste.


I would also like to have a way to get a challenge for when I'm on the mood to just beat the game, but being pretty bad at planning, I usually hit the bitter attacks and the rest when I am on such runs, so I get that extra challenge, making the victory so rewarding in the end.

All in all, what would be great for right now would be a mod that changes the bitter's AI, meaning that it first needs to b open to modding (or rely on heavy scripting).


For example, you could see an option that removes the "don't expand anywhere where a player building is less than 3 chuncks away" (a simple chest can block a whole 3x3 from being hit by expansion.

This simple change would make bitters try to expand, even in your base, meaning that pollution would be less of a factor after a while, because bitters would still come, and attack.

But it's also good for it to only be an option, because blocking expansion is also a viable way to play for players that seek to be bitter-free, while still playing for the sandbox approach.

[muzzy]

Make online leaderboards of the these on our site (as we have already accounts for players).

The other ideas were fine, but this is a tricky one. Factorio is a trusted client game and anyone can mod their game to give themselves advantage, i.e. the player should not be trusted. Cheating would be too easy, rendering the leaderboards worthless. Even verification of replay files would be useless because those can be shared and modified, or the game could be botted.

Having a leaderboard might replace the goal of victory with the goal of ranking high on the leaderboard, something that is easily undermined by cheating. It could backfire and make it feel worthless to play at all when you can never compete with the cheaters.

So, please keep the achievement system personal and local only for now. Due to technological constraints, I believe sharing the achievement progress should be a social thing and not an automated system.

[ssilk]

a) Provide much more balanced starting conditions on freeplay (some way of balancing nearby resources to contain the same amounts at least), or/and provide way to share starting conditions (string containing the starting random seed and settings) and play on the predefined settings.

Not so sure. Let's take for example the problem with stranding on islands. It is in my opinion not your job to make sure, that the player is on a big enough island. Make sure he has a tree in the island to make a simple boat. Yes.
Or are there enough resources? In general there are always enough, the question is where. So make sure, the player know about where to search, which direction. Why not a world without any water? But there are small standpipes. Or oasis... Or a water drill...
What I mean (have said that sometimes before) is to enable the player to survive in any surrounding, and not changing the surrounding so that it is always fitting the players needs.

Ok, in the end it will be a compromise between the both directions, but I think this is obvious.

b) Add difficulty settings for the freeplay (they are not now) that would really make a difference in more aspects of the game, like enemy evolution/expansion speed, aggressiveness, pollution spread etc.

I would add: how much is already there. I mean: does the player begin with really nothing, or is he able to start with electricity immediately. Are there chances to find "leftovers", some former mining sites, assemblies, chests with stuff. Will exploration be honored?or does he start with a prebuilted small factory?

c) Provide something measurable that could be achieved (apart just finishing the game), trying to minimize the time seems like one of the possible solutions, because I really love the kind of thinking, what should I invent first, and what should I automate first, timings etc, when everything matters, because every minute will affect the final score.

I'm too old for that. I need to see that immediately. Otherwise I cannot bring cause and effect together.

d) Provide something like achievements, It is quite mainstream these days, but I believe that there is good reason for it. It just satisfies us, achievers, and gives us directions. If these achievements really meant something, like finish the game under X hours on preset settings. Finish campaign missions under X time. Finish game without killing single biter nest. Accumulate 1 000 000 electronic circuits under X hours (or fastest possible time), or the other way around, accumulate the biggest amount of something in specified amount of time. Make online leaderboards of the these on our site (as we have already accounts for players). And I'm sure there is much more we can do in this direction. Wow, the more I think about this, the more I want this

I would add achievements like in OpenTTD and may other games: mine everything in that area, ground outpost there, kill biters at this point, things, which happens during the game, which will bring you some small rewards.