Version 0.17.60

[FuryoftheStars]

I think the progression is less linear now, before it was essentially mandatory to sprint for advanced oil processing,

I think Deadlock989 hit the cooking thing, but I did want to further expand on this bit.

It isn’t actually required to rush AOP. This is merely a perception by many because they don’t notice solid fuel or feel as though it’s not worth making for some reason.

Or, if you want to argue that a new player may not have enough stuff out to consume solid fuel to make it worth it, then the other solution was to better balance the use of the products. Having two heavy hitters (sulfur and plastic) both pulling from the same fluid is a core reason for the others not being used fast enough and blocking up production.

I still believe that the below changes could have fixed a lot of this without being such a drastic action:

• Move sulfur production to heavy oil
• Redo Solid fuel from light oil to require 20 oil but produce 2x solid fuel. Many people do not notice the actual ingredient count requirements (some have even outright stated that they couldn’t tell the efficiency difference the first time), but they will notice the top most line of the recipes as they look down through: “Solid Fuel”, “2x Solid Fuel”, “Solid Fuel”.
• Further improve the gui to alert a player when fluid has backed up. I know... there are a few things in already. Obviously it’s not enough if we had people posting saying “I didn’t see that”/“It’s too subtle”.
• A fluid/oil tutorial

I also agree with Deadlock989 that the handholding should be done in the campaign/NPE. That’s why it is even there and called the “New Player Experience”, yes?

[usafphoenix]

Overall, the changes were poorly conceived, executed, and do not "solve" the problem they attempt to address, but instead, created the very "rage quit" scenario the changes THOUGHT they'd prevent.



....Good job.

[Klonan]

Overall, the changes were poorly conceived, executed, and do not "solve" the problem they attempt to address, but instead, created the very "rage quit" scenario the changes THOUGHT they'd prevent.

Well, you state this as a fact, but it seems like its more of an opinion,
Only time will tell if your feeling about this change will last

Also, not to give false hope, but to give some hope, (but not giving any hope),
This game isn't finished, so things might still change further,
Only by playing with the changes and becoming familiar with them will allow a player to really evaluate the changes to the fullest

[frostig]

My first map after the changes told me to go back to rush Advanced which was not necessary anymore with 0.17. I just dont understand that changes at all. I still trust Wube but after ignoring two 35+ pages threads I feel like Factorio will go downwards from now on. Atleast there will always mods and I hope Wube will not decide to make Factorio unmodable in the future.

[Klonan]

I still trust Wube but after ignoring two 35+ pages threads I feel like Factorio will go downwards from now on.

We didn't ignore any of the feedback

[Aflixion]

I still trust Wube but after ignoring two 35+ pages threads I feel like Factorio will go downwards from now on.

We didn't ignore any of the feedback

You still haven't addressed Antaios's post which has been linked multiple times now. You're even continuing to promote ideas that he specifically refuted with evidence. Kind of contradicts your statement here.

[Light]

Right, that's why when I cook dinner today, I still cook it exactly the same simplistic and trivial way that I tried to cook it the first time I ever cooked dinner, mostly because I don't have any other more complex dinners available to me any more, because someone put them all in the bin with minimal warning.

And because I every time I make a dinner, I forget how I made it the first time, apparently. So I have to start off with beans on toast every time, just because the first time caused me to exercise a brain cell.

Furthermore, everyone else who starts to make a dinner is forced to make it that early learner way every single time forever at first, every single time they make a new dinner from scratch, until about halfway through when they throw the dinner out and replace it with something better.

No. A world of no. That's a godawful analogy.

As someone who cooks for the family, I have to say I love you. I had a great laugh at how on point that entire statement is.

I can't recall the last time I decided that it's too risky not to try doing more with food. Mainly because cooking is dull if you don't spice things up or try new more complex recipes to break out of that comfort zone and actually learn how to be a good cook.

Dinner time would suck for everyone if I stayed within my safety bubble and never deviated from being told what to do. Hell, some people I know think a microwave is actually cooking something because "that's what the box says" so they don't even consider other options because they're not taught any better. That is until they're shown how to do it differently and they start to get excited with experimenting and trying new things for themselves.

You know, like a tutorial or something...

[Klonan]

I still trust Wube but after ignoring two 35+ pages threads I feel like Factorio will go downwards from now on.

We didn't ignore any of the feedback

You still haven't addressed Antaios's post which has been linked multiple times now. You're even continuing to promote ideas that he specifically refuted with evidence. Kind of contradicts your statement here.

I don't think its reasonable to expect us to respond to every single post or idea,
Not responding is not the same as ignoring

[Aflixion]

I still trust Wube but after ignoring two 35+ pages threads I feel like Factorio will go downwards from now on.

We didn't ignore any of the feedback

You still haven't addressed Antaios's post which has been linked multiple times now. You're even continuing to promote ideas that he specifically refuted with evidence. Kind of contradicts your statement here.

I don't think its reasonable to expect us to respond to every single post or idea,
Not responding is not the same as ignoring

I see your mind is made up and you won't be addressing any of the points he made for why oil shouldn't have been changed. This is just further evidence that you started with the idea that oil needed a change and figured out the how and why later rather than analyzing what people were actually struggling with at that point in the game and addressing that instead.

Good luck getting your game to 1.0. I've already uninstalled it and will stop promoting it among friends and acquaintances.

[BlueTemplar]

I still trust Wube but after ignoring two 35+ pages threads I feel like Factorio will go downwards from now on.

We didn't ignore any of the feedback

You still haven't addressed Antaios's post which has been linked multiple times now. You're even continuing to promote ideas that he specifically refuted with evidence. Kind of contradicts your statement here.

Which parts have they not addressed, and even before his post ?

[Klonan]

I see your mind is made up and you won't be addressing any of the points he made for why oil shouldn't have been changed. This is just further evidence that you started with the idea that oil needed a change and figured out the how and why later rather than analyzing what people were actually struggling with at that point in the game and addressing that instead.

Not really, I think we were very reasonable in our approach, we had an idea for changes, discussed them with the community over 2 Friday facts, continued reading and evaluating the feedback from the threads, and made our decision considering all the factors.
I think you decided you don't like the change, and you rationalize your decision by stating feelings and hypotheses as facts, and then asking ask to argue against your facts.

The root of your displeasure comes down to the fact you don't like the change, and you feel frustrated that you can't override us as the dev team on this decision,
How are we supposed to make a game and grow if we have to make sure nobody gets upset by anything we change?

[Aflixion]

I still trust Wube but after ignoring two 35+ pages threads I feel like Factorio will go downwards from now on.

We didn't ignore any of the feedback

You still haven't addressed Antaios's post which has been linked multiple times now. You're even continuing to promote ideas that he specifically refuted with evidence. Kind of contradicts your statement here.

Which parts have they not addressed, and even before his post ?

His post was an exploration of what the challenges are with blue science, where everyone seems to get stuck. He pointed out the massive logistical expansion of the factory necessary to support blue science as a much bigger concern than oil processing. No dev response since his post has even mentioned that point, let alone provided a counterargument or a reason why it's invalid. There's even a post after the changes were released where V talks about the 2-output variants of BOP changes not addressing the complexity, tedium, and pacing issues at blue science, and the author of the long post (Antaios) responded to that by saying "I literally refuted all three of those even being issues caused by the previous oil system in a very lengthy post." No response to that.

[Aflixion]

I see your mind is made up and you won't be addressing any of the points he made for why oil shouldn't have been changed. This is just further evidence that you started with the idea that oil needed a change and figured out the how and why later rather than analyzing what people were actually struggling with at that point in the game and addressing that instead.

Not really, I think we were very reasonable in our approach, we had an idea for changes, discussed them with the community over 2 Friday facts, continued reading and evaluating the feedback from the threads, and made our decision considering all the factors.
I think you decided you don't like the change, and you rationalize your decision by stating feelings and hypotheses as facts, and then asking ask to argue against your facts.

The root of your displeasure comes down to the fact you don't like the change, and you feel frustrated that you can't override us as the dev team on this decision,
How are we supposed to make a game and grow if we have to make sure nobody gets upset by anything we change?

I mean, you're right that I don't like the changes, but that's not my point here. You've (whole dev team, not necessarily you personally) made plenty of changes to the game that I personally disagree with but at least understand your reasoning and can agree that you made a sound decision to improve the game. A good example here is removing oil as a starting area resource. I personally think oil should be a starting resource because I hate building rails without construction bots, but if every resource necessary to launch a rocket is available in the starting area the the player has no reason to go exploring. I still believe that the decision you made on that issue is the correct one for the game going forward.

However, this is the first time I feel like you made a decision to simplify one of the more challenging and rewarding systems in the game not because there was anything wrong with it but because there were too many people complaining about it. It's the first time I feel like you made a change to get more game sales rather than to improve the game. It's the first time you removed a challenge that was actually interesting and not just a meaningless button click or a superfluous item craft (like the pickaxe). That's why I've been so vocal about it, because it signals to me that you're no longer making decisions for the good of the game but for the money that comes with new game sales, and that affects the quality of the game.

There were many suggestions for how to deal with the supposed brick wall that is oil processing without compromising what makes oil processing interesting and compelling, yet you chose to proceed with a set of changes that some have described as a sledgehammer rather than a small set of tweaks or better visual indicators that something was wrong with the refinery. Rather than fix the UI problem of not knowing that oil processing had stopped prior to researching the superior AOP recipe, you changed oil processing so that a UI fix isn't necessary because a BOP refinery can't deadlock anymore. Rather than give the player the tools to detect that oil had deadlocked, you removed the deadlock challenge completely.

You could argue that the challenge of oil still exists with the AOP recipe, but that challenge is greatly reduced by virtue of the fact that the 3 outputs are produced at a much more desirable ratio than they were with the old BOP recipe, which means it's much less likely to deadlock (assuming reasonable play, anyone can intentionally deadlock their refineries).

[mmmPI]

However, this is the first time I feel like you made a decision to simplify one of the more challenging and rewarding systems in the game not because there was anything wrong with it but because there were too many people complaining about it. It's the first time I feel like you made a change to get more game sales rather than to improve the game. It's the first time you removed a challenge that was actually interesting and not just a meaningless button click or a superfluous item craft (like the pickaxe). That's why I've been so vocal about it, because it signals to me that you're no longer making decisions for the good of the game but for the money that comes with new game sales, and that affects the quality of the game.

This is highly subjective, it's legitimate to express ones feeling, but look around yourself and imagine if every other individual that has personnal feeling about the oil change would be pushing forwards its own emotionnal response and theory that often and insisting that much.

One could post everyday to say it's great now, that would never end, one could call out the good sides of the change always, like there's no more wall, the game teaches player in a less punishing way, the challenge is still there just later. One doesn't have to consider the other arguments even if they are/were true to overrides the positive aspects. So one could keep pushing forward the same 3 ideas in a loop until no-one bother to read anymore.

Keep saying it's not a good solution, or that the solution was to do nothing can't help, even if you can think that deep into yourself , and say it too.

There were many suggestions for how to deal with the supposed brick wall that is oil processing without compromising what makes oil processing interesting and compelling, yet you chose to proceed with a set of changes that some have described as a sledgehammer rather than a small set of tweaks or better visual indicators that something was wrong with the refinery. Rather than fix the UI problem of not knowing that oil processing had stopped prior to researching the superior AOP recipe, you changed oil processing so that a UI fix isn't necessary because a BOP refinery can't deadlock anymore. Rather than give the player the tools to detect that oil had deadlocked, you removed the deadlock challenge completely.

You could argue that the challenge of oil still exists with the AOP recipe, but that challenge is greatly reduced by virtue of the fact that the 3 outputs are produced at a much more desirable ratio than they were with the old BOP recipe, which means it's much less likely to deadlock (assuming reasonable play, anyone can intentionally deadlock their refineries).

You could argue that the challenge is not there , but it has just been delayed ... that's like a tennis match, you do not share the same opinion, at that point it has become clear, you're not the only one that too is clear.

One solution has been attempted, another one after that, you can't keep changing everyweek right ? those players who adapted their base to the new oil deserve a break right ? what is the new suggestion to consider ?

Maybe another one will be prefered in the end. But you got to understand that the oil change is something that even if you disagree may/will mostly likely happen ?

It seems like there's a railway being built, and you just don't think this tree should be cut, because the tree was there before , so no reason to cut it, lets just make the railway go around, this tree doesn't want change, it was really fine before. If your only argument is " don't touch that tree" , no-one will really care what you say when they discuss about the railway design.

[Theikkru]

However, this is the first time I feel like you made a decision to simplify one of the more challenging and rewarding systems in the game not because there was anything wrong with it but because there were too many people complaining about it. It's the first time I feel like you made a change to get more game sales rather than to improve the game. It's the first time you removed a challenge that was actually interesting and not just a meaningless button click or a superfluous item craft (like the pickaxe). That's why I've been so vocal about it, because it signals to me that you're no longer making decisions for the good of the game but for the money that comes with new game sales, and that affects the quality of the game.

This is highly subjective, it's legitimate to express ones feeling, but look around yourself and imagine if every other individual that has personnal feeling about the oil change would be pushing forwards its own emotionnal response and theory that often and insisting that much.

I redid the highlighting. Please don't pick up on the wrong point. This was providing justification for those feelings, so the most important part here is the justification, not the feelings.

It seems like there's a railway being built, and you just don't think this tree should be cut, because the tree was there before , so no reason to cut it, lets just make the railway go around, this tree doesn't want change, it was really fine before. If your only argument is " don't touch that tree" , no-one will really care what you say when they discuss about the railway design.

No, the argument is more like "don't touch that tree because it's a redwood over 1000 years old and is part of this country's heritage and culture, so please consider moving the train tracks a bit and making it a tourist attraction instead."

[5thHorseman]

No, the argument is more like "don't touch that tree because it's a redwood over 1000 years old and is part of this country's heritage and culture, so please consider moving the train tracks a bit and making it a tourist attraction instead."

But who gets to decide if this is a 1000 year old Redwood or just a regular tree? You? Me? The developers?

Yes. The developers.

They've decided that that tree, no matter how much you like it, has to come down. It's their tree. They planted it on their property and regardless of how many summers you spent under it, they're ripping it out for the greater good.

But who gets to decide if it's for the greater good?

Yes. The developers.

[Theikkru]

No, the argument is more like "don't touch that tree because it's a redwood over 1000 years old and is part of this country's heritage and culture, so please consider moving the train tracks a bit and making it a tourist attraction instead."

But who gets to decide if this is a 1000 year old Redwood or just a regular tree? You? Me? The developers?

Yes. The developers.

They've decided that that tree, no matter how much you like it, has to come down. It's their tree. They planted it on their property and regardless of how many summers you spent under it, they're ripping it out for the greater good.

But who gets to decide if it's for the greater good?

Yes. The developers.

Of course, just like it's still the railroad company (or a government regulatory agency) that has the final say about the railroad. But it makes no sense to then act surprised when a significant portion of the populace erupts in riots or demonstrations if that tree is chopped down despite those pleas.

[mmmPI]

It's the first time I feel like you removed a challenge that was actually interesting for me and not just a meaningless button click or a superfluous item craft (like the pickaxe) at least for me . That's why I've been so vocal about it, because it signals to me that you're no longer making decisions for the good of the game but for the money that comes with new game sales, and that affects the quality of the game. to me

I redid the highlighting. Please don't pick up on the wrong point. This was providing justification for those feelings, so the most important part here is the justification, not the feelings.

I did redid the highlighting once again, and i even added some " to me " , just to point out what i still consider subjective.

No, the argument is more like "don't touch that tree because it's a redwood over 1000 years old and is part of this country's heritage and culture, so please consider moving the train tracks a bit and making it a tourist attraction instead."

I wish i had that feeling, this would be a valid point, proposing something, like a tourist attraction, you would not consider the idea of makings tracks as the problem on top of not willing to touch the trees, you could make compromise and understand the need of the railway.

( and If the solution would be a mod that could mean a bad thing like moving the tree at another location, but at least at the end the tree is not dead and the rail is there everyone happy)

The tennis match thing i see it as, " i made my mind and will bounce back every idea until i got what i want". Some aspect are not seen the same way, and repeating how you see it, when the other side don't see it the same, is not constructive i think. The devs are "accused" of being "stubborn" sometimes by people who just impersonate "stubborness" almost at the stereotypical level.

please undertand that you are not only adressing the devs, but there are also many other people who reads the topic and it feels a bit pointless/annoying when you read a full page without anything new, just more provocative way to present the same thing. or better explanation on how it made you feel inside. or why it made you feel that way again.

My post is the example of what i think is very boring to read, so i will avoid just posting my own feelings for now on unless i have a constructive criticism on the topic, and hopefully that seems like a reasonable options for other people !

EDIT: like the post just above is a fairly typical example.

[Deadlock989]

But who gets to decide if it's for the greater good?

Yes. The developers.

Of course it's their decision to make. We all respect that.

And when it's a bad decision and a bad choice and a stupid result, they get to own that and all of its consequences as well.

Welcome to being an adult.

[Conventia]

I'm not 100% for the changes, but I like the direction.

The previous design had one major issue for me, which is that between researching BOP and researching AOP, there's no effective way to deal with an oil deadlock. This is because:

1. Cracking isn't possible yet.
2. The ratios are such that you can't use the various oil products evenly.
3. There isn't a way to burn off oil products.

I think each of these is acceptable:

1. Cracking is conceptually advanced, so delaying it seems appropriate.
2. Attempting to have perfect ratios doesn't really work, since oil products can be used for things that aren't related to research (like laser turrets) and will mess with the ratio regardless. More importantly though, the solution to this is cracking and it only goes heavy -> light -> petroleum. I think that's important, because allowing conversions in both directions would unnecessarily complicate the game. Given that the direction of cracking is fixed, petroleum has to be the most used with light being the next most used, otherwise cracking simply wouldn't solve the deadlock anymore.
3. The ability to burn off oil products would simply eliminate the deadlock entirely.

The change seems well reasoned, the challenge is still there, just delayed (AOP will deadlock eventually, without cracking). Overall, I'm not sure it will help new players figure out the game (I try not to pretend that I understand how other people will perceive things). I do think that having the challenge (deadlocked oil products) and the tools to deal with the challenge (cracking recipes) at the same time is appealing, whether it helps with the new player experience or not.