Friday Facts #375 - Quality

[XT-248]

It's a RPG / MMORPG trope. I never played World of Warcraft, but I know this Normal/Uncommon/Rare/Epic/Legendary thing from another games, like Secret World. You find loot killing enemies, and harder enemies drop better loot. Legendary loot is very hard to find and requires a lot of time.

It works great because every RPG player recognize this immediately without any explanation needed, regardless (?) of the game they play (maybe not) (but I think a lot of games took this Normal/Uncommon/Rare/Epic/Legendary thing)

EDIT : what's amusing is that it's so recognizable that players thought Wube was RPGing the game, which is not what's happening.

My main problem with the naming scheme is not that it is easily recognizable or a standard scheme that is intuitive and easy to understand.


It concerns the theme that the name conveys to the players. Legendary Item is something that is powerful and has a story behind it. Examples are Blade of Azzinoth from Warcraft, The Master Sword from Zelda, and Skyrim's Mehrunes' Razor and Wabbajack.


Moving back to Factorio, can you imagine trying to craft or obtain a legendary iron plate with a legend behind it on the same level as those items I cited above? Then multiplied many times over to everything else that can be upgraded to legendary?

There have been many suggestions already on how to replace the naming scheme. There is no point in repeating them here.


I would like to see a different name scheming where the Item doesn't have a legend or story behind it in a video game about quality control, mass production, and automation. I don't believe anyone is under the illusion that WUBE is trying to introduce a Role-playing theme into Factorio.

[DanGio]

[...]

Normal
Good
Enhanced
Exceptional
Perfect

Ok. That's my naming suggestion, made up of many of the previous suggestions.

So, "Good big electric pole", oh yeah, "Enhanced advanced circuit", what ?, "Exceptional small electric pole", huh, is it exceptionnaly small ? Sorry, it sounds wonky to me. Just IMO.

My main problem with the naming scheme is not that it is easily recognizable or a standard scheme that is intuitive and easy to understand.


It concerns the theme that the name conveys to the players.

Factorio is industry-themed, right. But it is primarily a game that WORKS amazingly well. I think the RPG names WORK better because those identifiers are immediately recognizable, so they should be used. Plus, I think it's really fun

[Tertius]

[...]

Normal
Good
Enhanced
Exceptional
Perfect

Ok. That's my naming suggestion, made up of many of the previous suggestions.

So, "Good big electric pole", oh yeah, "Enhanced advanced circuit", what ?, "Exceptional small electric pole", huh, is it exceptionnaly small ? Sorry, it sounds wonky to me. Just IMO.

Oh, I didn't try to combine the qualities with item names. That was short-sighted. But it depends on how the game will use and combine these names. If qualities are used as labels or tags, not as name prefix, all is good. If they are used as name prefix, my suggestions are not good. But since we already have adjectives as name components, no quality name will look good as prefix.

[RTC]

I was excited to try skimming Uncommons from my factory to save for power armor, but ... you would divert some Uncommon ore, then take another chance on Basic ore that smelting could make an Uncommon plate. Then take another chance on gears and steel, that smelting could make those Uncommon. You also get Rares randomly in your Uncommons, and have to separate them. So you can't divert high-quality things to a separate belt, unless you're making a mess of diverting 2x every time. Unlock Epic, and it gets worse. You will loop them all back to some starter area for sorting.

This is not sane, even for people who like complexity. Quality on intermediaries should be unlocked with the recycler.

they have shown that splitters get advanced filter conditions to deal with quality
like, you can set "greater than uncommon" condition on a splitter and it will separate out every quality above 0 from your mixed belt, don't need a dedicated splitter for each possible quality

[XT-248]

My main problem with the naming scheme is not that it is easily recognizable or a standard scheme that is intuitive and easy to understand.


It concerns the theme that the name conveys to the players.

Factorio is industry-themed, right. But it is primarily a game that WORKS amazingly well. I think the RPG names WORK better because those identifiers are immediately recognizable, so they should be used. Plus, I think it's really fun

I feel like you are missing the point.

Let me try to re-phrase clearly as much as I can.


The problem is not that the WUBE's current RPG-theme name scheming would work.

Factory-theme game and RPG-theme names do not mix well. It leads to immersion-breaking moments where you just crafted a "legendary iron plate of Nauvis" that doesn't quite fit into the Factory theme in any shape or form and breaks you out of the game itself in a non-fun way.


More to the point, if somebody wanted this kind of RPG-theme naming scheme, they could mod it, and no one would stop them.

But please don't make it not as fun to have breaks in immersion for the rest of us who don't like the RPG-theme naming in a Factory-theme game by using it as the default name scheme.

[eclay42]

Why do we even need names for the different quality levels? Why not just use numbers? Makes translation much easier and conveys the necessary info without potentially immersion breaking and nonsensical tier names.

[Dragony]

Why are you disappointed?

Don't you guys have phones????????????

[FuryoftheStars]

[...]

Normal
Good
Enhanced
Exceptional
Perfect

Ok. That's my naming suggestion, made up of many of the previous suggestions.

So, "Good big electric pole", oh yeah, "Enhanced advanced circuit", what ?, "Exceptional small electric pole", huh, is it exceptionnaly small ? Sorry, it sounds wonky to me. Just IMO.

Grammatically speaking, if it were meant to descibe how small it is, it would be the word exceptionally and not exceptional.

That said, it doesn't have to be "Exceptional Small Electric Pole", but could be "Small Electric Pole, Exceptional", or any of a number of different ideas. Including this:

Why do we even need names for the different quality levels? Why not just use numbers? Makes translation much easier and conveys the necessary info without potentially immersion breaking and nonsensical tier names.

(Edit: I do get your point, though, on the current names being fast to recognize, but what my (and probably some other's) brain does even faster than that is associate it with games like Diablo and the rest, which is not the game I want to be playing when playing Factorio.)

[AirForce1]

Every single time you want to have a quality version of an item, you *must* build a disassembler loop.

I would like to point out a disassembler loop is a brute-force method of getting quality items.

I would like to point that this would be the way how everyone will use this quality nonsence. Alternatives exists but its so much complicated that loops at the end of production are only ways to go

[NumberNick]

The upgrade chances don't look quite right to me for how it was explained in the article for a 1% quality boost

out of the 1000 gears, 9 would be uncommon and 1 rare.

I believe these are the correct chances instead for the 10% quality boost of 4 regular tier 3 quality modules:

[mmmPI]

Every single time you want to have a quality version of an item, you *must* build a disassembler loop.

I would like to point out a disassembler loop is a brute-force method of getting quality items.

I would like to point that this would be the way how everyone will use this quality nonsence. Alternatives exists but its so much complicated that loops at the end of production are only ways to go

Considering how many different buildings you can produce just with iron gear, iron plate, and green circuit, i think it can be simpler to create some high quality of those instead of looping all the buildings, that's just getting good quality iron and copper plate. so 2 loops ? if you recycle basic ammo and copper wire ? and then all the way down the chain you have high quality gear, high quality circuit, and the buildings without dedicated loops.

I don't think loops at the end of production is so appealing, i would agree it is a brute-force method to use loop in the first place, and as such i wouldn't want to multiply them everywhere.

[Khagan]

Normal
Good
Enhanced
Exceptional
Perfect

Ok. That's my naming suggestion, made up of many of the previous suggestions.

I like the way you worked through this. I'd go for 'Excellent' rather than 'Exceptional', though; 'Exceptional' still has too much connotation of rarity rather than quality. And 'Enhanced' is a little weak; I'd like to see 'Precision' in there, for the industrial and engineering flavour.

[escfoe2]

Overall, I love this! But I also hate the names! I expect you will make them moddable though, right? I'd name them something like Crude/Low (and you only realize the quality wasn't even good before you unlock quality modules and see it), Normal/Nominal, High/Great, Exceptional/Superior and Pristine/Perfect.

I second this. The naming convention Wube chose is more for rarity, not quality. I prefer the quality aspect and a naming convention that suits. Please consider using names like:

MVP (Minimum Viable Product) | Nominal | Production | Exceptional | Legendary

[AirForce1]

Overall, I love this! But I also hate the names! I expect you will make them moddable though, right? I'd name them something like Crude/Low (and you only realize the quality wasn't even good before you unlock quality modules and see it), Normal/Nominal, High/Great, Exceptional/Superior and Pristine/Perfect.

I second this. The naming convention Wube chose is more for rarity, not quality. I prefer the quality aspect and a naming convention that suits. Please consider using names like:

MVP (Minimum Viable Product) | Nominal | Production | Exceptional | Legendary

I think that 5 qualities is too much and makes lots of unessesarly issues. 3 Qualities would be much more better and would make more sence and make game more clear.
I you have to do this feature at all cost then do only 3 quality types and it could be like:
Q1 = Low quality
Q2 = Standard quality
Q3 = High quality

So Q1 as low quality would be basic components ad 2 more qualities would be better quality. Also the chances to get some better quality is very low and should be much higher. something like 50% to stadard and 10% to high from low quality input and maybe 30% high from stadard input.
BUT! If you want to make it more like real factories or similar then it is absolutely wrong like this!
Real factories produce with very high quality production set by stadards with very low defects. Its about 95% and more. So this kind of RNG gamble with absolutely insane low chance of high quality products are wrong.

The solution would be to have special factories or if we already have that quality modules then use this that would be very hard to craft and if you use it with facotory then you could set quality standard as fixed value with about 95% chance of this quality output and of course higher the quality (and lower the input material) the longer time to craft and maybe a little more input materials. This would make sence way much more!

[valneq]

[…]
So, "Good big electric pole", oh yeah, "Enhanced advanced circuit", what ?, "Exceptional small electric pole", huh, is it exceptionnaly small ? Sorry, it sounds wonky to me. Just IMO.
[…]

In the FFF the devs already show how the quality will be displayed: as "Solar Panel (Legendary)". Therefore "Small Electric Pole (Exceptional)" would be the suggested alternative. I don't think there is any reasonable chance of mis-understanding either way.

On a side note, your reasoning also applies to "Legendary Small Electric Pole". Could be misinterpreted as "Legendarily small electric pole". But as I said, this is not how it will be displayed in-game – at least according to the FFF.

[DanGio]

Oof, I read the fff several times and I remembered clearly seeing quality before item name. So yeah, after all, I don't care about the quality names...

[draslin]

I like the idea in principle, but the randomness of the quality seems contradictory to the nature of engineering. IRL, Nobody would tolerate building a car, which randomly attains the desired quality, and subsequently recycling multiple runs of it until it comes out perfect by chance.

I'd rather see the quality randomness at the bottom rung of a production loop, at the furnaces, refineries, etc. Similar to the way nuclear material is produced, you'd aim to produce higher quality base materials and from those materials you can always get items of a specified quality. It should be possible to bring it out with the same end balance, and it might even solve some of the net positive recycler problems.

[pointa2b]

I think that 5 qualities is too much and makes lots of unessesarly issues. 3 Qualities would be much more better and would make more sence and make game more clear.
I you have to do this feature at all cost then do only 3 quality types and it could be like:
Q1 = Low quality
Q2 = Standard quality
Q3 = High quality

I'm of the opinion there should be even more qualities. The prospect of getting some godlike one in a billion item would take this aspect of gameplay and make it even more exciting for the people who want to go deep into it. Either way though, I'm sure there will be mods that will help players go in either direction, less or more quality levels. There was someone a couple days ago on the Discord server starting the artwork for a mod that supports 16 total quality levels.

[AirForce1]

I think that 5 qualities is too much and makes lots of unessesarly issues. 3 Qualities would be much more better and would make more sence and make game more clear.
I you have to do this feature at all cost then do only 3 quality types and it could be like:
Q1 = Low quality
Q2 = Standard quality
Q3 = High quality

I'm of the opinion there should be even more qualities. The prospect of getting some godlike one in a billion item would take this aspect of gameplay and make it even more exciting for the people who want to go deep into it. Either way though, I'm sure there will be mods that will help players go in either direction, less or more quality levels. There was someone a couple days ago on the Discord server starting the artwork for a mod that supports 16 total quality levels.

If you want to do this with some extra mods why not. I have no issue with this but there should not be so many qualities in vannila because its getting overcomplicated very fast. 3 qualities is more than enough to complicate this very much.

[pointa2b]

I have no issue with this but there should not be so many qualities in vannila because its getting overcomplicated very fast. 3 qualities is more than enough to complicate this very much.

I can't disagree with you on the complexity part lol. Not sure if you're part of the Discord server, but since Friday, theres been endless discussion going over the numbers, making python scripts testing various configurations, different spreadsheets, etc.... Its a labyrinth if you want to get serious with it. But I guess depending on the person that is a good thing or a bad thing.