Joefesok wrote:I mean, anybody who does even cursory research into Factorio knows it's already basically feature-complete. It's another case of Prison Architect syndrome: They could've released the game a year ago, feature complete, but instead they kept adding cool things to make it a really great game.
When that's the case, Early Access is more a sign that the game still has places to go, and new things to do. It's not a sticker that says "this game is not completed" anymore, it's a sticker that says "this game will have more content and updates."
There are games out there that already got released and still receive content updates.
In the case of Factorio, I'd argue the game isn't actually as complete as one might think. Relatively bug-free and graphically stunning, yes, but gameplay-wise, there are still some details to flesh out. Just read the top negative review on Steam, it's actually quite constructive even though it treats the game like it's a finished product and mostly exists just to get the same point I'm making across, not so much because the guy actually doesn't recommend the game.
I personally think the absolute biggest shortcoming of the game is the aliens - they
still feel very tacked-on. That's not something that can be fixed by just adding more weapons and more aliens - to be more precise, it can be fixed by adding more weapons and aliens, but in an intelligent fashion. There ought to be some kind of counterplay there. Right now biters are just something that goes to die in turrets every now and then. The new flamethrower turret is a step in a good direction, it has it's strengths and flaws in actual combat, as opposed to autoguns and lasers whose flaws come mainly from operating requirements rather than combat situations. The way they kill aliens is practically identical (everything that enters their range dies). Choosing between those two turrets is just a matter of preference, and it can be argued that laser turrets are objectively more powerful and a favorite pick for most. And even if the turrets worked all against different sorts of aliens - where's the significance of using one over another, when every sort of aliens attack at once all the time?
A possible solution to that would be having specific alien nests that spawn only one type of alien, this could be communicated to the player in an intuitive fashion by having different aliens inhabit different biomes. Forest biome spawns alien A countered by turret 1, desert biome spawns alien B countered by turret 2, snow biome spawns alien C countered by turret 3, and perhaps with variations of each alien type that require the occasional fielding of a turret 4, 5 and 6. You know which turret to research and build relative to where you live, and learning what to use when and then making those decisions can be quite fun - more so than "do I spam laser turrets or laser turrets?"
And bam, suddenly we have a laundry list of features. New aliens, new turrets, new weapons, new biomes. Just to get basic counterplay going.
Sadly that's just one random example. Factorio still has ways to go when it comes to feature-completeness - especially endgame content, which is a nebulous concept that encompasses mostly functionally different and complex high-tier versions of existing concepts, like energy generation (imagine a nuclear reactor with a new uranium ore resource to boot). It could take years. I mean making that all that happen might technically count as "piles of cool stuff" anyway, but it's important to know why that cool stuff gets implemented in the first place - not to add piles of cool stuff, but to flesh the game out. It's all about filling those gaps, to make the game complete. 0.13 did a pretty good job making circuit network relevant, trains kick absolute ass now and the new turret as I said is a little step in a very good direction, not to mention rock-solid multiplayer at last, mod portal and achievements, but there's
still so much more work to do just fleshing those new features out - which is kinda funny since those were added to flesh the game out overall. But things like RTS - I mean, I'm actually a huge supporter of the RTS idea, but the current combat needs to get better first and realistically I don't see RTS elements happening. Planes, trucks - perhaps nice to have, but is it worth the trouble? Does it solve any issues of the game? Nukes? Aren't the current weapons OP enough? (who needs nukes when you have cluster grenades?
)
So anyway, hut-hut devs, fix them bugs and get to it while I figure out the warning lights on my train stations
/also about the aliens, I think I wrote this exact thing already... Well it's worth saying again
