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What is interesting about Factorio

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Re: What is interesting about Factorio

#71

Post by debaserab2 »

mosiuerbarso wrote: post #43
jfim wrote: post #2

> It's also extremely addictive to engineers. Quite the understatement. Pretty much every engineer that I've introduced to the game has played for at least 40 hours.

I'm a former engineer. Toolmaker to be precise. I just could not get into this game no matter how long I tried. I love making stuff as a hobby, and reading all the good reviews this game had it seemed like a great way to kill a few spare hours. But I just couldn't gell with the game.It just seemed like I was back at work but now not getting paid for my time. For me, Rimworld is where it's at.

I feel the exact same way. It's interesting that you mention Rimworld - I dived into Rimworld when I first got it and came to appreciate the way little things add up in that game and make the simulation more interesting (be it positive or negative). The complicated UI is slowly unraveled and becomes intuitive as you learn the game because there are simple feedback mechanisms for actions that affect your colonists.

Everyone tells me I'd love factorio. Every time I load up the intro tutorial I have the intention of finally diving in and just.... nothing. I can't get into it. I don't feel an incentive to learn the building and crafting UI's. It just feels like work. I'm not even sure why I'm building the things I'm building, or what the aim of the game is.

Maybe rimworld sucks me in because I can immediately empathize with the plight of the survivor, whereas factorio seems to be all about building efficient machines for the sake of building efficient machines.

Re: What is interesting about Factorio

#72

Post by Melting_Harps »

fouc wrote: post #6

As someone that stopped playing games in university, I've found it weirdly hard to get back into games many years later. Factorio seems like the type of game I would've liked as a teenager, but now it just feels like work to me. As do most interesting games. It seems like there's a learning curve to games that I don't want to spend the time dealing with anymore.

> As someone that stopped playing games in university, I've found it weirdly hard to get back into games many years later.

> Factorio seems like the type of game I would've liked as a teenager, but now it just feels like work to me.

Same. I was an avid AoE, Survival Horror and Gran Turismo nerd (quitting right before the GT academy happened to my dismay) and I held quite a few records during the outbeak days. But it fell off my radar entirely after sophomore year in University.

I got into Factorio for a week after Steam allowed Bitcoin purchases and I had a go as it looked interesting; I ended up playing like 6 hours a day only to come to the same conclusion you did: this is work, with clearly little to no ROI or ultimate gratification.

So with that in mind, I went on youtube, saw the ending and got over it and stopped a time sink right away.

Even when I thought I'd try to create a solar only Factorio factory, only to see one on Youtube and hearing the guy sunk 1000s of hours into it and scoffed at the idea.

I uninstalled it entirely when I realized how the gaming Industry was migrating toward a free-ware micro tx based business model that relies on in game purchases for upgrades like Fortnite.

These things are designed and optimized for targeting those with addictive behavioural patterns.

I still want to build a driving simulator like this one day, but half the process and challenge will be the build itself:

https://www.carscoops.com/2020/04/this-guy-turned-a-mini-coo...

I actually located an ideal candidate on craigslist: a Focus hatchback with a blown drive train for $700 that I wanted to convert to Colin McRae's Martini Livery WRC car from the 90s.

Re: What is interesting about Factorio

#73

Post by tdy721 »

Factorio is my current favorite train set. Community feedback and a very long development cycle made it awesome.

You asked is it devils? But forgot the parts about nuking bugs. Shooting bugs, killing all the bugs

Re: What is interesting about Factorio

#74

Post by zo1 »

TylerE wrote: post #62
pmoriarty wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"all the inventory management is just super awkward with weird UI" That's funny, for me Factorio has one of the best and well-thought-out UI's I've ever seen in any game (especially for a game this complex).[1] [1] - With the exception of the circuit network, which is too easy to turn in to spaghetti code and a nightmare to debug.

Part of it, frankly is that I hate pixel art. Give me antialiasing and decent kerning, dammit!

It's not pixel-art. All their "entities" are actually 3d models that are rendered into isometric images. And they've also slowly been regenerating all their images with high-resolution models + renders.

Re: What is interesting about Factorio

#75

Post by badpun »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #22
jfim wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certain game types basically are puzzles that are similar to the kinds of puzzles one would encounter during engineering things. Factorio is one of them, but other puzzle games such as topological ones (Spacechem, Opus Magnum, Infinifactory, Molek-syntez), programming (Shenzhen IO, TIS-500, Human Resource Machine, Silicon Zeroes) or logic ones (Baba is you) kind of scratch similar itches. As for doing engineering for…

Well I guess the idea behind engineering at home for fun is that it doesn’t have to be boring tasks. And I tend to work on completely unnecessary things such that there’s no time pressure. That makes it a lot more fun and rewarding than working at the office. Like I recently designed a pair of headphones from scratch. They sound better than any of my other headphones which are all a bit cheap. It totally didn’t need…

(I know nearly nothing about audio equipment).

Weren't you afraid that you'll somehow botch the headphones and they'll play an excessively loud sound, which will permanently damage your hearing or give you tinnitus? Or can that risk be ruled out somehow?

Re: What is interesting about Factorio

#76

Post by TylerE »

zo1 wrote: post #74
TylerE wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of it, frankly is that I hate pixel art. Give me antialiasing and decent kerning, dammit!

It's not pixel-art. All their "entities" are actually 3d models that are rendered into isometric images. And they've also slowly been regenerating all their images with high-resolution models + renders.

It’s rendered to fixed resolution sprites. That’s pixel art.

Re: What is interesting about Factorio

#77

Post by 7777fps »

TylerE wrote: post #29
kennu wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to give the game some time. If it's good (like Factorio is) it might just pull you in. You also need to be in the right mood for that particular game. Sometimes you have to try a game many times until get pulled in.

I’ve tried several times but it just repels me. It has the worst tutorial I’ve ever seen and all the inventory management is just super awkward with weird UI. That’s coming from someone with hundreds of hours in OpenTTD and the like

I agree, and I dropped Factorio for a year before going back to it and sinking a few hundred hours into it.

What changed? Well partly some UI improvement, but mostly it was a mindset change.

The inventory is rubbish because you're not supposed to have inventory.

It's a game about JIT supply chains.

Instead of building things and working out what to build from them, start from the end and work backwards.

I also had to learn to not get bothered by overproduction and stop trying to buffer overproduced goods.

Re: What is interesting about Factorio

#78

Post by pmoriarty »

For anyone here who's only played vanilla Factorio (ie. Factorio without mods), you should really try it with mods.. the mods enhance the game in so many ways (from eliminating annoyances, to making things more convenient, to adding way, way, way more content).

I absolutely loved the base game, but the mods made it 10 times better for me.

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