Version 0.17.60

[FuryoftheStars]

What you are saying is to make note of this percentage, wait a month, then look at the new stat? This is still comparing to all history.

No.

Wube surely gets absolute number of players at any time (developers have access to a lot more statistics, details and exact numbers, not a simple rounded percentage). Even if they only got a percentage, if it isn't rounded they can easily convert that to absolute numbers.

Example with made-up numbers:
Number of copies sold in February 1, 2019: 2.222.000
Number of copies sold in March 30, 2019: 2.224.000
Rocket Achievements on April 1, 2019: 123.000
Rocket Achievements on April 1, 2019: 123.456

means 456 players in Apri 2019 got the rocket achievement when approximately 1000 new players per month tried the game. So approximately 45,6% of new players have reached the rocket achievement.

Do the same for November 2019 and you have history-free numbers to compare

If they have access to these, then yes, you are absolutely correct. But we don't know if they do or not.

[Astrella]

the UI is something I can arange myself with, still imho it robbed the game of its charm. now it looks like a sleek thing that apple would sell and has no personallity whatsoever.

Picks are not an issue for mods, lol. meaningful simplicifaction - in a game that is all about COMPLEXITY! wrap your head about that. just once.

I find it more offputing that the core issue as why there is struggle with those mechanics is dealt with in this manner. Oil was simpler than anything that needs solids, fluids and then some. If you can't handle 3 inputs and the same amount of outputs, then, by all emans, you dont have gotten the gist of the game in all the hours before.
And making the game simpler because players don't want to play, but to just coast along, is the wrong way of development. it kills the game. i have seen that plenty a time.

The removal of picks meant mods couldn't take advantage of them being a thing anymore iirc.

[FuryoftheStars]

Not sure about that one. This could means many older player got to launch their first rocket unmodded, and 0% new player launched a rocket.

While technically correct, the chances of a sudden shift of that magnitude is low.

[BlueTemplar]

means 456 players in Apri 2019 got the rocket achievement when approximately 1000 new players per month tried the game. So approximately 45,6% of new players have reached the rocket achievement.

Not sure about that one. This could means many older player got to launch their first rocket unmodded, and 0% new player launched a rocket.

Yeah, this would mostly work for major releases, when there's a large influx of new players (and few remaining old ones that have not unlocked that achievement...

[Koub]

Imagine everyone had to write their posts with the mouse and a virtual onscreen keyboard until 100 posts, then real keyboard use gets unlocked.

That's how I see (the lack of ) vanilla early game bot(s).

I laughed hard, but also totally agree on this. The only time in my FActorio life I haven't missed the construction bots is until my first succeseful playthrough.
As soon as I experienced bots once, all the subsequent maps I have started felt terribly frustrating for me until I had con bots (or just gave up, which happened many times).

I know there are mods, but I'm a vanilla guy when I can. As someone said in one of the FFF threads, I don't like having to use mods to compensate for what I consider being a design flaw.
I'll have plenty of time to experience mods when I'm done with vanilla content and I want moar boosters of Factorio.

[crambaza]

...mining picks removal is only really an issue for mods, it didn't add any logistical challenges to the core game...

Mining picks and assembler limits together with lazy bastard was a very nice challenge. That with "Get on track like a pro". But also later for oil refinieries, which could be only crafted in assembler 3. I do miss it.

I made sure to get my Lazy Bastard before the simplification, so that it meant something more.

Sure, that means I just wasted more time mining by hand, but my knuckles have never looked better.

[mmmPI]

means 456 players in Apri 2019 got the rocket achievement when approximately 1000 new players per month tried the game. So approximately 45,6% of new players have reached the rocket achievement.

Not sure about that one. This could means many older player got to launch their first rocket unmodded, and 0% new player launched a rocket.

Yeah, this would mostly work for major releases, when there's a large influx of new players (and few remaining old ones that have not unlocked that achievement...

The 0% is unreal, but how would you know ? you can't, that's my point. "on average new player launch rocket after 3 month" , (just imagine i'm not saying it's a fact, it's just show how much data is missing for initial assumption to be correct) "During winter this time is /2", "same during the every holidays ", the list of things that makes this very unreliable is wide and impactful, how would you measure anything meaningful from steam stats have been discussed in many publications, it's not that simple.

[meganothing]

means 456 players in Apri 2019 got the rocket achievement when approximately 1000 new players per month tried the game. So approximately 45,6% of new players have reached the rocket achievement.

Not sure about that one. This could means many older player got to launch their first rocket unmodded, and 0% new player launched a rocket.

Yes, and a poll before an election could ask only voters of one party and get a totally wrong prediction of 0% voters for the other party. In reality it doesn't happen. Statistics works.

Naturally a few of those 456 might be old players who incidentally play an unmodded game and suddenly got the itch to start a rocket. But

1) It is likely that it is a relatively constant number. in just one year the number of old players playing the game is not changing that much. So it would skew the percentages of both intervalls in the same direction, making the observed trend smaller but not change it.

2) Only a very small fraction will suddenly get such an itch. Sure, we don't know the numbers, if old player achievements were much higher than new player achievements in a month it could make the the statistic unusable. There are statistical methods to find out those numbers, by comparing months with relatively few sales with months where promotions increased the number of new players.

[nafira]

And you could face a wall, you were stuck before you had resolved the "oil-challenge" which is dealing with pipes, scaling up the factory for blue science, understanding that you need a circuit control cracking system after you beeline Adavance oil processing , also making sure the output of the refinery aren't full, and making the production chain for the 3 different fluid.

This was altogether put on the player at the same time, what you call the delay of 5h is maybe too short it is in a way supposed to help the players focus on less things at a time.

I totally agree on that point : 3 pipe for a beginner is a challenge.
But 1 pipe is like...removing the technology

This could have been 2 pipes, which is challenging, but not hard. Adding a bit of Light Oil would have help the player both ways :
* starting dealing with 2 outputs and so outputting on sides
* starting making solid fuel for trains, helping fuel transition from coal to solid fuel

Also, I nearly never have the need for logic for cracking until 30h after getting Oil, because you use every drop of it.
Then, you start being overfed with Oil, and you have to crack and put logic, but it's quite simple

So why this decision ? The only response we got for that is "the player is going to be saturated with light oil". But if you craft Fuel, it's not true.
Just output even 5L each cycle. I really don't care, but don't remove the "more than output" scheme. It's the thing making you learn.

[netmand]

These new changes just got more exciting for me. Come on guys, a recipe that only outputs petroleum? How could you not like that? This change potentially enhances the game even after Advanced oil processing tech has been earned.

A way I've made supplying large amounts of metals was to make them at the mining site, so my trains are delivering 4k iron plate instead of 2k iron ore. Of course this sort of thing was too complex for me for oil outposts because there are too many materials involved, but no longer! why ship crude when you can ship petroleum:

Basic oil processing: 100 crude oil yields 45 petroleum which can contribute to make 4.5 plastic bars
Advanced oil processing: 100 crude oil yields 55 petroleum which can contribute to make 5.5 plastic bars

So shipping 25,000 crude from the oil outpost by tanker yields 13,750 petroleum using Advanced oil processing at the refinery/main factory which can contribute to make 1,375 plastic bars.

BUT shipping 25,000 petroleum from the oil outpost by tanker can contribute to make 2,500 plastic bars AND I don't have to deal with the logistics of the other materials (Water in, Light and Heavy Oil out). Of course at the outpost I'm using Basic oil processing but that doesn't matter since I'm still filling the tanker.

I dunno guys can we get out of some of our tunnel vision we have in proclaiming this change a total one way or the other? Can you come up with a way to make this change work for you?

[crambaza]

These new changes just got more exciting for me. Come on guys, a recipe that only outputs petroleum? How could you not like that? This change potentially enhances the game even after Advanced oil processing tech has been earned.

A way I've made supplying large amounts of metals was to make them at the mining site, so my trains are delivering 4k iron plate instead of 2k iron ore. Of course this sort of thing was too complex for me for oil outposts because there are too many materials involved, but no longer! why ship crude when you can ship petroleum:

Basic oil processing: 100 crude oil yields 45 petroleum which can contribute to make 4.5 plastic bars
Advanced oil processing: 100 crude oil yields 55 petroleum which can contribute to make 5.5 plastic bars

So shipping 25,000 crude from the oil outpost by tanker yields 13,750 petroleum using Advanced oil processing at the refinery/main factory which can contribute to make 1,375 plastic bars.

BUT shipping 25,000 petroleum from the oil outpost by tanker can contribute to make 2,500 plastic bars AND I don't have to deal with the logistics of the other materials (Water in, Light and Heavy Oil out). Of course at the outpost I'm using Basic oil processing but that doesn't matter since I'm still filling the tanker.

I dunno guys can we get out of some of our tunnel vision we have in proclaiming this change a total one way or the other? Can you come up with a way to make this change work for you?

No, my tunnel vision only sees construction bots, and now they are harder to see.

Give me an army of pre-Blue Science based bots, and I don't care 1 iota about the Oil change.

[FuryoftheStars]

I totally agree on that point : 3 pipe for a beginner is a challenge.
But 1 pipe is like...removing the technology

This could have been 2 pipes, which is challenging, but not hard. Adding a bit of Light Oil would have help the player both ways :
* starting dealing with 2 outputs and so outputting on sides
* starting making solid fuel for trains, helping fuel transition from coal to solid fuel

Also, I nearly never have the need for logic for cracking until 30h after getting Oil, because you use every drop of it.
Then, you start being overfed with Oil, and you have to crack and put logic, but it's quite simple

So why this decision ? The only response we got for that is "the player is going to be saturated with light oil". But if you craft Fuel, it's not true.
Just output even 5L each cycle. I really don't care, but don't remove the "more than output" scheme. It's the thing making you learn.

I still say, if a simplification of the number of outputs was needed, then heavy + gas would've been the better way. Moving light to advanced is the least disruptive between the different options.

[mmmPI]

means 456 players in Apri 2019 got the rocket achievement when approximately 1000 new players per month tried the game. So approximately 45,6% of new players have reached the rocket achievement.

Not sure about that one. This could means many older player got to launch their first rocket unmodded, and 0% new player launched a rocket.

Yes, and a poll before an election could ask only voters of one party and get a totally wrong prediction of 0% voters for the other party. In reality it doesn't happen. Statistics works.

Yes because people that does the poll are professionnals and use properly the statistics. ( and even sometimes they get it wrong because they start with wrong assumptions that they admit after fact did biaised their judgment)

What you do would be the opposite of your example, you have the % of voter and you try to deduce from that how many man or woman, which age , which revenue, which job ect, just having the % of who voted for one side and who voted from the other. Sure you can say, but statistic work ! It doesn't answer the fact that the methodology proposed is not adapted to answer the question as you explain it.

You would need to take in account many more things that may or may not have a bigger impact on what you are trying to measure, you would also need a way to see if your method can produce reliable results a few times before basing any kind of decisions on it. It's not impossible but you can't improvise it as suddenly giving a meaning to a set of datas. You'd need to have set-up long before you start gathering them , the differents things you need to extract the meaning.

(but this going off-topic )

[meganothing]

If they have access to these, then yes, you are absolutely correct. But we don't know if they do or not.

Yes.

I can say I know for a fact that developers get a lot more statistic information than the general public. I heard a developer praising steam for their statistical information.

The rest is conjecture: It is safe to say that numbers without any precision are as useful as a blunt razor. What is the chance that steam (a service for players and developers of games) would make it impossible for their customers (i.e. developers) to get any relevant data out of all the numbers?

The only reasons I can think of at the moment would be
1) if they show the exact numbers only if the developer pays more for it. If that were true, it would also be safe to say that practically all EA developers would pay.
2) or if there is some law (privacy etc.) that would demand it. The first suspect, EU data protection law, definitely doesn't demand that, there is no private data in accumulated player numbers. Any other law? Don't see one.

Any other reason you can think of why steam could devalue one of their services so much?

[Antaios]

I dunno guys can we get out of some of our tunnel vision we have in proclaiming this change a total one way or the other? Can you come up with a way to make this change work for you?

The fact that you 'do not have to deal' with these other products is one of the reasons many of these people don't like the change.

[nafira]

These new changes just got more exciting for me. Come on guys, a recipe that only outputs petroleum? How could you not like that? This change potentially enhances the game even after Advanced oil processing tech has been earned.

A way I've made supplying large amounts of metals was to make them at the mining site, so my trains are delivering 4k iron plate instead of 2k iron ore. Of course this sort of thing was too complex for me for oil outposts because there are too many materials involved, but no longer! why ship crude when you can ship petroleum:

Basic oil processing: 100 crude oil yields 45 petroleum which can contribute to make 4.5 plastic bars
Advanced oil processing: 100 crude oil yields 55 petroleum which can contribute to make 5.5 plastic bars

So shipping 25,000 crude from the oil outpost by tanker yields 13,750 petroleum using Advanced oil processing at the refinery/main factory which can contribute to make 1,375 plastic bars.

BUT shipping 25,000 petroleum from the oil outpost by tanker can contribute to make 2,500 plastic bars AND I don't have to deal with the logistics of the other materials (Water in, Light and Heavy Oil out). Of course at the outpost I'm using Basic oil processing but that doesn't matter since I'm still filling the tanker.

I dunno guys can we get out of some of our tunnel vision we have in proclaiming this change a total one way or the other? Can you come up with a way to make this change work for you?

This is the exact opposite of what you are supposed to do, and for 2 main reasons :
1- Oil will dry out and you'll not use your refinery properly
2- Some recipe need crude oil

There's plenty other reasons.

Sure, at start it's easy money. But you don't learn the basics with this method, and when the time comes : Boom headshot ! *player left*
The new guy will get stuck in a problem of transporting different fluids, mixing them, for different purpose (like Sulfuric Acid which has now many uses).


That's the whole point : this gives bad advice to the player and don't teach him how to handle Oil properly. This is why we are complaining.
It's not for us, because we already know, it's for them.
Personally I have no problem with that. But imagine someone knowing that earth is round, seeing people tell "For now, just think that Earth is flat". It's a non-sense not to tell them "Earth is like a ball, but physics is for later, you're too young".

[lacika2000]

I laughed hard, but also totally agree on this. The only time in my FActorio life I haven't missed the construction bots is until my first succeseful playthrough.
As soon as I experienced bots once, all the subsequent maps I have started felt terribly frustrating for me until I had con bots (or just gave up, which happened many times).

I know there are mods, but I'm a vanilla guy when I can. As someone said in one of the FFF threads, I don't like having to use mods to compensate for what I consider being a design flaw.

I have suggested before to introduce a Game+ mode after successfully launching a rocket in a vanilla game, which would include a top armor and a player selected set of equipment in the armor (robos, bots, shield, etc.)... to which the devs answer was that there are enough mods to do this, if you want to use con bots from the get-go.

Good to know I am not alone with this feeling of missing the con bots in the early game after they have been unlocked already once in an earlier play through.

[BlueTemplar]

[...] imagine someone knowing that earth is round, seeing people tell "For now, just think that Earth is flat". It's a non-sense not to tell them "Earth is like a ball, but physics is for later, you're too young".

Can we at least agree that Nauvis is flat ?

[Adamo]

But this argument is counterproductive to my opinion, this basically means you prefer watching robots do a blueprint you got from internet/made once a few years ago when you started than play the game.

If you think placement of things generate gameplay, then robots are good when you copy/paste few parts here and there when you fiddle around doing one small build. This spares you the annoyance of switching materials lots of time.

You know I like you mmmPI, but this is wrong. The key to really doing factorio well is cutting and pasting. I almost exclusively build like this:

Make a small unit by hand. Use ctrl-c to copy, and ctrl-v to paste this into a line of stuff. Use ctrl-x to order my robots to pick up the line of things and then ctrl-v to order them to put it down where I want it to go.

This is peak factorio construction, and it's what I try to train my new players to do right away, because people are already very familiar with using ctrl-c/x/v to move things around in the rest of their computer work. Moving bots back does push this further away.

[meganothing]

Yes because people that does the poll are professionnals and use properly the statistics. ( and even sometimes they get it wrong because they start with wrong assumptions that they admit after fact did biaised their judgment)

What you do would be the opposite of your example, you have the % of voter and you try to deduce from that how many man or woman, which age , which revenue, which job ect, just having the % of who voted for one side and who voted from the other. Sure you can say, but statistic work ! It doesn't answer the fact that the methodology proposed is not adapted to answer the question as you explain it.

How should I know you have a grasp of the matter if you bring up the silly 0% ? I thought I needed a simple example of statistics from normal life. Sorry, you brought that upon yourself

I showed primarily the first step that removes any historical data from the equation. Because there was a discussion about this being not possible (and if Wube only gets rounded percentages since year 0 from steam, that would really be impossible).

This is only the first step. You have to find out more, for example you need an estimate of the number of old players who get the achievement (I also hinted at a way to get an approximation of that number in a previous post. If you want I can give some example numbers to demonstrate the principle). You have to calculate how much uncertainty that puts into your results. You get uncertainty intervalls and it is possible that they are too big. Sure. But there is nothing intrinsically impossible about this

You would need to take in account many more things that may or may not have a bigger impact on what you are trying to measure, you would also need a way to see if your method can produce reliable results a few times before basing any kind of decisions on it. It's not impossible but you can't improvise it as suddenly giving a meaning to a set of datas. You'd need to have set-up long before you start gathering them , the differents things you need to extract the meaning.

(but this going off-topic )

Yes, statistics is hard. But this is why it is often done by mathematicians and not car salesmen. Many people with computer science degrees also often have had a few courses in statistics and often can be trusted to not confuse a vote prediction with a steam achievement prediction ( ). I don't see it as my job as a forum user to find out the exact formulas, especially when I don't even have the knowledge of exactly what data Wube can access.

Wube has data of 7 years development accumulated. This is just raw data and it is work to extract meaning out of it. But it is hardly in the rocket science league.