So there I was, bad-mouthing Elite Dangerous for being grindy and having no real goal. Factorio, could be possibly worse. Though it’s not a game you have to play online, the complexity is…mind-blowing.
The game has an end point, which is to launch a rocket (after going through hell and back to make the required parts). However, I’ve been playing for 2+ weeks and I haven’t even started collecting alien artifacts. Mainly because when I started, I’m playing on peaceful (aka I haven’t been killing Biters, destroying their nests and taking their artifacts). But then came a point where the Biter nests were getting in the way of a future outpost to get more Copper Plates into the factory). But to be honest, I actually feel sorry for the Biters.
How can I possibly feel sorry for an enemy? The fact they lived a peaceful life until the player character showed up and started polluting everywhere as if he was living on Earth… with no fucks given to their well-being. The only way they can stop this intruder, is by destroying their work (which is running up and being rekt by turrets). And the game gives the player character LOADS of ways to kill the innocent creatures. And then their forced to evolve into larger, harder to kill versions. All in a brave effort to stop the pollution-spewing factories.
How about creating peace of the Biter population? Yet I doubt they want peace. They just want the player to get the fuck off their home and stop polluting their planet, which in my opinion is a reasonable request.
But this isn’t about the Biters (or the fact you can completely remove them from the map with mods/console commands). This has to do with the difficulty of the game. Granted, this is welcomed difficulty by many. And many kudos to these people that enjoy beating their heads into a wall of trying to figure out how to get the best output out of a resource. You really have to be a special breed of human to handle it.
But if you were to ask me (which you probably aren’t, but yet why are you even reading this blog post?)… actually, let’s just pretend you asked me. Here, I’ll give you a fake $100 bill and you say you asked my opinion! That should grab your attention. 🙂
Anyway, my opinion.. well, enjoy that fake $100, because you’ve already heard my opinion. It’s really quite obvious, with ramblings of all my other blogs. How I don’t like being challenged. Especially to this magnitude.
Blue Science, was a headache for me. I had to ask for help. I had to get a random person on the Internet (aka the Factorio Steam forum), to help me set it up. The guy is from Russia of all places (absolutely no offense against Russian people by the way), yet types in fluent English (which is good for me).
The guy’s a pretty good builder. He even showed me around his own factory (and if I thought Blue Science wasn’t a nightmare.. a mod collection called “Bob’s Mods” that make the game EVEN HARDER… ffs.
Obviously, the demographic of game devs is changing as the changing of people. Elite Dangerous is a clear example of this. People seem to want more rewarding games, with lots of challenge to help them there. And I’m falling in-between the cracks, still wanting things to be ‘simple’ and ‘easy’. Hence, why I feel “there’s no games out there for me”.
I have nothing against Factorio. It’s DAMN good at what it does; offering a plethora of challenges while keeping the gameplay fun and rewarding. Some even say “it’s what Minecraft should had been”. And it clearly shows good changes that should had been made.
However, Modded Minecraft also has things that are better than Factorio (in my opinion). The prime example, being having multiple ways of acquiring, and processing a resource. And alternate means of power. Factorio’s mods, seem to all be to improve the base game. Only a few (such as Bob’s Mods), offer any real alternatives to acquiring and processing resources. Where Modded Minecraft has TONS.
For example, instead of mining, you can go to The Deep Dark and set up a Quarry, and have your resources taken to you. I have not seen ANYTHING like this in Factorio.
Of course (and I actually hope), that as the game ages and eventually gets fully released, mods will be like Biters and eventually evolve into alternate resource processing means. Just today, I saw a Roboport-like device that drones will mine resources for you. These kind of things, I want to see more of.
I just want to win the fucking game already. I feel like I’ve been playing on this map for far…far too long and making hardly any progress. Yet to do so, I need tons of Purple Science (which comes directly from Alien Artifacts). And what I hear for the components of making the Rocket Silo, it makes Blue Science as easy as Green Science (in terms of complexity).
.
$20 well spent, though. This game has possibly kept me active in it than any other game in history. I guess, feeling that “Ohhhh!!” moment when you finally figure out an issue, is quite rewarding.
That, and.. it has trains. I like trains. *looks around for a sudden train going through his room to run him over*