Meaningful Content Update

[Mythoss]

While I enjoy reading the blog and seeing small tweaks and graphical updates to the game, none of it is enough to really pull me back into the game. I've been reading the Friday blog for years now, and I can't help but be a little disappointed that there hasn't really been many new features.

I keep hoping for new, significant, impactful features, some random ideas:

New bitter enemies with interesting ai. Flying biters, burrowing biters that can bypass walls, new anti air turrets to deal with the new threats. Boss biters that only rarely show up but are a significant threat.

Structures you can build on or underwater that have items in the production chains.

New vehicles to combat the threat.

More upgrades, items and weapons.

New biomes that actually feel alien and weird. Instead we have basically earth biomes.
The biomes don't even seem to really matter or have different resources to gather from. Biomes are really just a reskin, though admittedly pretty.

A single player (coop?) campaign with interesting goals and objects that can't be found in sandbox.

Mobile bases with trains with new cabs to build. Imagine if a cab could unpack and work as a factory or smelter? Maybe a turret or defense focused cab in addition to the artillery. So much cool stuff you could do with trains.

Maybe a whole new alien threat that isn't biters?

A tower defense modes with challenging waves of enemies that progressively gets harder as time goes on. This could be designed around coop with 4 people or something.

I realize it's a small team and making a quality game takes time, but sometimes I have to wonder if your priorities are in the wrong place. I really don't care about better switches, or railroading pathing, mod debugging, ect. After years of small updates the game needs some more meat on its bones to get players back.

[Durentis]

I realize it's a small team and making a quality game takes time, but sometimes I have to wonder if your priorities are in the wrong place. I really don't care about better switches, or railroading pathing, mod debugging, ect. After years of small updates the game needs some more meat on its bones to get players back.

Many of us care a great deal about these things. Depending on how long you've been gone, I think you're glossing over many very not so small new features and updates, either because you don't care about them or because they'd be inconvenient to mention. Many of the graphical updates and performance improvements have been pretty large undertakings with awesome results. Many of the updates are subtle, but very impactful.

Which players left who really matter if they come back? Most people who have stopped playing most likely didn't leave when or for the reasons you did. The game isn't sold on a subscription, and it's still one of the few most popular on Steam with like 98% positive reviews. I think they're doing just fine. I'm ashamed to say that I came back recently with only about 700 hours on my account.

Probably, you're not drawn in because the gameplay just isn't your thing currently and you're upset because you nostalgically remember it being so and want it to again. And probably new features aren't really going to scratch that itch for more than a few hours.

Most of what you're asking for as big features are firmly in the realm of mods and/or a Factorio 2.0 at this point. I'm not sure I'd like Factorio 2.0 if it went in some of the directions you suggest, but there are definitely existing mods that cover most of them. Some of the mods are complete overhauls of the game, including graphics, enemies, weaponry, vehicles, etc. You just have to do a little of the legwork yourself to find them in the mod portal.

There is already a wave defense scenario, I believe.

I don't agree with all of the changes, and still hope for some further rail-related improvements, but their priorities seem pretty damn solid to me. As far as I've seen among game developers, their communication via the FFF and forum interaction is second to none and much appreciated.

[Koub]

Don't expect new concepts in the game before septembre. The devs have said their next goal was to polish enough the existing game to raise it to 1.0 standards and release in september.
I'm not saying there will be no new feature, but any feature will only be what the devs see as necessary to call the game 1.0 some day.

[Bauer]

I know that the last 20% take 80% of the time and that I got way more for my money than I could ever expect.
But I'm also getting slightly tired of watching the devs polish the game.
I'm not complaining, I'm not demanding.
It's up to them what they do with their time (and given their success, they're most likely doing the right thing).
Just saying... I'd be delighted to see some fresh, new, game enhancing content.

[Kinson25]

If you need something new try out industrial revolution or krastorio 2, they are awesome.

[Oktokolo]

But I'm also getting slightly tired of watching the devs polish the game.

Apart from mods there are also other games you could play.
Waiting for 1.0.0 is a valid strategy for satisfaction maximization.
1.0.0 will be quite shiny and most mods of all categories did not even start development as their developers are yet to buy the game.

[MeduSalem]

But I'm also getting slightly tired of watching the devs polish the game.

1.0.0 will be quite shiny and most mods of all categories did not even start development as their developers are yet to buy the game.

I am already curious if there even will be that huge Factorio "Renaissance" that some people are expecting with 1.0.

To be honest I kinda have my doubts... since most people into the genre probably already got the game since it is one of the most well received early access titles ever. And those who haven't bought it yet will probably need more convincing than there just being a 1.0 slapped on the package.

I am ready to be proven wrong though. Hence why I am curious.

[5thHorseman]

I'd be delighted to see some fresh, new, game enhancing content.

And I'd be delighted to run across a suitcase full of cash with a note that says "Please spend all of this on yourself!"

Eventually you must accept that Factorio is - for all intents and purposes - a complete game. And I must accept that I won't stumble over any monetary travelware.

[MEOWMI]

While those features would be very cool, I think the team would be doing themselves a disservice if they didn't polish up the game as a whole, with how thoroughly crafted many of its parts are. Not to mention, it's about time they work on getting a full release for the game.

They have mentioned adding additional scenarios for more content after the full release, akin to what you mentioned, something similar to the old campaign, which is something I look forward to a lot as well.

Your best bet is indeed mods, though some of those features could be quite hard to mod in well.

I think the game aims to sell with its very solid gameplay, and I think it does that well.

[Mythoss]

For example look at Rimworld, it's been adding polish while also pushing meaningful content updates at the same time. Plenty of indie developers have been able to balance the two (Risk of Rain 2, Satisfactory, Prison Architect are other examples) . I've been waiting over a year for Factorio to really push something to get me back into it. Don't get me wrong, it's a great game and that's partly why I am so excited to see future updates. I'd gladly pay for an expansion or something.

[conn11]

For example look at Rimworld, it's been adding polish while also pushing meaningful content updates at the same time. Plenty of indie developers have been able to balance the two (Risk of Rain 2, Satisfactory, Prison Architect are other examples) . I've been waiting over a year for Factorio to really push something to get me back into it. Don't get me wrong, it's a great game and that's partly why I am so excited to see future updates. I'd gladly pay for an expansion or something.

Rimworld released their Royalty Expansion only well after releasing 1.0.
I don‘t really get this thread. We have an announced release date a few months from now. Little suprising there won‘t be any major content update before that.
After that, I agree, it‘s hopefully time for expansions.

[Bauer]

I don‘t really get this thread. We have an announced release date a few months from now. Little suprising there won‘t be any major content update before that.
After that, I agree, it‘s hopefully time for expansions.

It feels like we're a few months before release since 0.16 now...

[conn11]

I don‘t really get this thread. We have an announced release date a few months from now. Little suprising there won‘t be any major content update before that.
After that, I agree, it‘s hopefully time for expansions.

It feels like we're a few months before release since 0.16 now...

True and maybe exactly this was the reason for announcing the release date on 25.09.
Nearly by definition further focus only on polish isn’t expected after 1.0.

[tamanous]

I got way more for my money than I could ever expect.

When asked about factorio, I always embed this kind of phrase. If every other developer/s would do slightly as well as wube, the game industry would rule the world.

[Oktokolo]

since most people into the genre probably already got the game since it is one of the most well received early access titles ever. And those who haven't bought it yet will probably need more convincing than there just being a 1.0 slapped on the package.

Yes, that may be the case with Factorio. It is somewhat special in that it is an early access game wich now is so long in prerelease state, that it indeed may have exhausted the patience of potential buyers.
But there are a lot of gamers out there who never ever try a beta. They want to start with the full experience, not something wich is "unfinished".
As Factorio is a really polished game with a shitton of quality mods and multiplayer servers already out on release day, no one will be put off by any negative press. So whoever did indeed not buy just because of the prerelease status, will surely buy the moment the status changes from "early access" to "released".

It feels like we're a few months before release since 0.16 now...

Yeah. They could actually have released a less gorgeous 1.0.0 years ago. But that wasn't how they rolled.
This time it is different. They are pushing hard to get to 1.0.0. The most work likely is invested in preventing certain team members from adding more and more content to vanilla - because that is, what prevented 1.0.0 from happening in the past...

[CheeseMcBurger]

I realize it's a small team and making a quality game takes time, but sometimes I have to wonder if your priorities are in the wrong place.

This game is still in early access and going to be 1.0 soon. If you believe than polishing the game is a wrong priority, then I'm glad you're not project manager at Wube Software.

I really don't care about better switches, or railroading pathing, mod debugging, ect. After years of small updates the game needs some more meat

Subjective and debatable.

on its bones to get players back.

Factorio is not a game with monthly fees or an ingame store. Returning players hold no direct financial value, only indirectly and even that is arguably little. So it is only appropriate to work towards 1.0 and leave early access to market the game to new players, before implementing more game elements for the existing player base.

[conn11]

Right now the status of early access is doing more harm than good. It’s highly undeserving of the current state of development, considering how bad of a name EA got.

Don‘t get me wrong, I‘m all for new content. If only looking at some of the mods made by the devs themself like construction drones or edit blueprints, both are screaming to be Vanilla.
But it‘s long overdue to call the solid base we already got, what it is.
That this team is actually doing the polish and is not leaving the last pixulated entity in game, speaks for itself. Others might have pushed out a 1.0 -as some sort of marketing trick- sometimes down the road, with such issues left to be unresolved most likely.

[Hannu]

For example look at Rimworld, it's been adding polish while also pushing meaningful content updates at the same time. Plenty of indie developers have been able to balance the two (Risk of Rain 2, Satisfactory, Prison Architect are other examples) . I've been waiting over a year for Factorio to really push something to get me back into it. Don't get me wrong, it's a great game and that's partly why I am so excited to see future updates. I'd gladly pay for an expansion or something.

As far as I know there will be no significant new content in Factorio, at least before official release. In my opinion it is OK. Vanilla Factiorio is solid game with value of hundreds of hours. Far more than expensive popular games from large companies. Its content is well balanced to teach this mechanic and give advice to choose suitable mods for personal preferences to go on after vanilla begins to be easy and boring. For example I would not like your additions, which would move game focus from building and logistics towards warfare. I would prefer more complex building chains, more raw materials, intermediates and products, more challenging conditions to take into account. Something which would probably be not so fun for you. Fortunately there is high quality mods to enhance warfare and give more complexity and almost anything anyone want.

It is good decision to finalize game officially now (which could be made immediately if devs were not perfectionists and Factorio would easily be the highest quality game I have ever seen with current content and bugs). Devs have used years in this project and many want probably to make something new. Maybe it a new game or DLC with some new idea.

[MeduSalem]

For example look at Rimworld, it's been adding polish while also pushing meaningful content updates at the same time. Plenty of indie developers have been able to balance the two (Risk of Rain 2, Satisfactory, Prison Architect are other examples) . I've been waiting over a year for Factorio to really push something to get me back into it. Don't get me wrong, it's a great game and that's partly why I am so excited to see future updates. I'd gladly pay for an expansion or something.

lol... Prison Architect. To be honest after years of following them I am kinda disappointed of Introversion. In my opinion they are one of the perfect examples on how NOT to do it. At least if you want to maintain a loyal playerbase for future projects.

It may be somewhat a long rant about Introversion yet I still think it fits the topic and explains why I think Wube are taking a better stance on it (even if they are maybe the other extreme with being a little bit overly careful of their baby).

Admittedly Introversion added tons of content to Prison Architect yet they only ever fixed some major game breaking bugs between releases while a lot of minor bugs still remained even from the early days all the way after they dared to call the bug-fest officially 1.0. The minor bugs usually were just annoying on their own but the sheer amount of them is what made me get fed up soon after each major release. Especially since a few other people and me had reported a lot of them on their bug tracker several times over already back when it was still alpha. Some of the minor bugs if left unchecked for too long also sometimes caused game breaking problems later forcing you to edit a save file manually or to abandon a map entirely because there was no other fix.

Eventually the main developer and the producer officially said on their YouTube stream that they are getting tired of the project... haha... no wonder if you keep expanding at the cost of accumulating bugs. Maybe it also didn't sell all that well anymore to justify any more motivation put into it, I don't know. Yet what personally threw me off the most is how their personality and stance had changed from humble to arrogant over the course of the last few developer streams, like they did the greatest product in history full in denial of the questionable state the product was in. They were obviously already eager to sell off the IP no matter the state the game was in... and found Paradox and now they left them to deal with the problems.

Imagine this. You simply wouldn't do something like that if you really cared and loved your project and saw more in it than making a quick buck.

Funny side note is that from what I have heard the game runs even better on consoles than it does on PC because the 3rd party company who did the port did a better job at fixing the bugs and performance issues than Introversion did themselves for the PC version. Which I still find ironic to this day. I still remember their devstream when they announced that they had talks with Microsoft and Sony for the ports and both of them straight forward told them in a well-behaved manner "Well... Whatever you do please get someone else to do the console port"... because they probably already knew that Introversion is a bunch of slobs and both Microsoft and Sony quality assurance departments didn't want the blame for a title being released to their consoles in such a questionable state.

To be honest I haven't played it ever since Paradox owns the PC licence, so I can't say how they fare with it except that knowing Paradox they will probably slice it up to be sold in a million DLCs, but it would surprise me if the poor people having to work on it now wouldn't want to bash their heads against the wall at least once a day for having to work with the code base. Okay, most programmers I know personally want to bash their heads against the wall at least once every other day even if the code base is good and well documented, but in PI's case probably even more so.

I am saying that because I have done some mods for the game back in the day, mostly for personal use because some of the management for large prisons got tedious and needed more automation than the vanilla game offered, yet while the C game code obviously can't be looked into I have had enough time to look into their Lua scripted code base and modding API and also save game organization to get a grasp of how things work... and from the observable mess Introversion did in the base vanilla game already it was enough for me to realize why the game was so buggy and suffered from performance problems in a lot of places because I can't imagine the C code behind it being of much better quality.

At least for me the order and structure of the observable says a whole lot about what the none-observable is mostly like. It is unlikely that you are orderly about one thing and chaotic about the other or vice versa. If you are chaotic you are likely chaotic all the way through.

So what it means is that they just added tons of mechanics on top of already outdated mechanics that were never intended to do all that... hence the mess and bugs. I even had some talk with the programmer in charge of maintaining the modding API on their forums when talking about additions to the same and we also came to talk about the save game file structure and he admitted pretty much the same that I already wrote... they were doing a lot of things that were redundant, outdated, never finished or work in progress hence why a lot of it was all over the place and they should have cleaned up a lot of things a long time ago but never got around to do it because there was no one who could ever be arsed to do it.

And that talk was shortly before the 2.0 release in 2016 where my suggested additions to the modding API made it into the game and their stance of "can't be arsed to clean up the mess" didn't change til the day they finished the sale to Paradox in early 2019 which was the last time I played. That says it all.

The game engine probably should have been completely rewritten from scratch at some point during the development... or call a feature freeze, fix the remaining bugs and call it a day and announce Prison Architect 2 with a new engine designed with the new features in mind out of the box.

TL;DR... Simply put Introversion took the quick and easy dark side path where new content is more of a short term sales argument than months of polishing and bug fix releases... and once the project started to get over their heads they packed and sold it off and left the mess to someone else.

[Mythoss]

For example look at Rimworld, it's been adding polish while also pushing meaningful content updates at the same time. Plenty of indie developers have been able to balance the two (Risk of Rain 2, Satisfactory, Prison Architect are other examples) . I've been waiting over a year for Factorio to really push something to get me back into it. Don't get me wrong, it's a great game and that's partly why I am so excited to see future updates. I'd gladly pay for an expansion or something.

lol... Prison Architect. To be honest after years of following them I am kinda disappointed of Introversion. In my opinion they are one of the perfect examples on how NOT to do it. At least if you want to maintain a loyal playerbase for future projects.

It may be somewhat a long rant about Introversion yet I still think it fits the topic and explains why I think Wube are taking a better stance on it (even if they are maybe the other extreme with being a little bit overly careful of their baby).

Admittedly Introversion added tons of content to Prison Architect yet they only ever fixed some major game breaking bugs between releases while a lot of minor bugs still remained even from the early days all the way after they dared to call the bug-fest officially 1.0. The minor bugs usually were just annoying on their own but the sheer amount of them is what made me get fed up soon after each major release. Especially since a few other people and me had reported a lot of them on their bug tracker several times over already back when it was still alpha. Some of the minor bugs if left unchecked for too long also sometimes caused game breaking problems later forcing you to edit a save file manually or to abandon a map entirely because there was no other fix.

Eventually the main developer and the producer officially said on their YouTube stream that they are getting tired of the project... haha... no wonder if you keep expanding at the cost of accumulating bugs. Maybe it also didn't sell all that well anymore to justify any more motivation put into it, I don't know. Yet what personally threw me off the most is how their personality and stance had changed from humble to arrogant over the course of the last few developer streams, like they did the greatest product in history full in denial of the questionable state the product was in. They were obviously already eager to sell off the IP no matter the sate the game was in... and found Paradox and now they left them to deal with the problems.

Imagine this. You simply wouldn't do something like that if you really cared and loved your project and saw more in it than making a quick buck.

Funny side note is that from what I have heard the game runs even better on consoles than it does on PC because the 3rd party company who did the port did a better job at fixing the bugs and performance issues than Introversion did themselves for the PC version. Which I still find ironic to this day. I still remember their devstream when they announced that they had talks with Microsoft and Sony for the ports and both of them straight forward told them in a well-behaved manner "Well... Whatever you do please get someone else to do the console port"... because they probably already knew that Introversion is a bunch of slobs and both Microsoft and Sony quality assurance departments didn't want the blame for a title being released to their consoles in such a questionable state.

To be honest I haven't played it ever since Paradox owns the PC port licence, so I can't say how they fare with it except that knowing Paradox they will probably slice it up to be sold in a million DLCs, but it would surprise me if the poor people having to work on it now wouldn't want to bash their heads against the wall at least once a day for having to work with the code base. Okay, most programmers I know personally want to bash their heads against the wall at least once every other day even if the code base is good and well documented, but in PI's case probably even more so.

I am saying that because I have done some mods for the game back in the day, mostly for personal use because some of the management for large prisons got tedious and needed more automation, yet while the C game code obviously can't be looked into I have had enough time to look into their Lua scripted code base and modding API and also save game organization to get a grasp of how things work... and from the observable mess Introversion did in the base vanilla game already it was enough for me to realize why the game was so buggy and suffered from performance problems in a lot of places because I can't imagine the C code behind it being of much better quality.

At least for me the order and structure of the observable says a whole lot about what the none-observable is mostly like. It is unlikely that you are orderly about one thing and chaotic about the other or vice versa. If you are chaotic you are likely chaotic all the way through.

So what it means is that they just added tons of mechanics on top of already outdated mechanics that were never intended to do all that... hence the mess and bugs. I even had some talk with the programmer in charge of maintaining the modding API on their forums when talking about additions to the same and we also came to talk about the save game file structure and he admitted pretty much the same that I already wrote... they were doing a lot of things that were redundant, outdated, never finished or work in progress hence why a lot of it was all over the place and they should have cleaned up a lot of things a long time ago but never got around to do it because there was no one who could ever be arsed to do it.

And that talk was shortly before the 2.0 release in 2016 where my suggested additions to the modding API made it into the game and their stance of "can't be arsed to clean up the mess" didn't change til the day they finished the sale to Paradox in early 2019 which was the last time I played. That says it all.

The game engine probably should have been completely rewritten from scratch at some point during the development... or call a feature freeze, fix the remaining bugs and call it a day and announce Prison Architect 2 with a new engine designed with the new features in mind out of the box.

TL;DR... Simply put Introversion took the quick and easy dark side path where new content is more of a short term sales argument than months of polishing and bug fix releases... and once the project started to get over their heads they packed and sold it off and left the mess to someone else.

I never noticed any bugs playing Prison Architect and the game ran great. Unless you own a toaster I doubt anyone had performance issues.

They were a tiny team that worked on the game for years so I can understand the fatigue.

The point I am trying to make is development is really, really slow with Factorio. Yet we have indie devolopers with similar games pushing out way more content in the same time span. Look, Patch .16 came out in December 2018, over two years ago. Since then we have like cliffs and some hd textures (which shoulda been hd from the start). Few other minor things like the artillery wagon. Not really impressive for two+ years of development.