Let’s talk about map changes

[eitan]

Hi Groundbreakers,

We’re seeing lots of complaints here about our choice to break up the map, and how it makes the world feel smaller. We understand where those complaints are coming from, so I’d like to take a moment to explain the decision process behind this change. Maybe you’ll still disagree with the decision, but at least you’ll understand why we did it.

We made the change for several reasons:

• As a narrative game, we wanted to add more story. We do this by adding more locations of interest with story triggers tied to them. We can’t add these to an existing map, as it would break saves. So every time we want to add story we need to make more map, which is much easier if we can add new levels
  
• The open world design heavily discouraged most players from building outside of the Victor zone due to a very high bar to connect remote bases. That’s not to say there weren’t players who did, but by and large everyone made Victor their home base and the open world design effectively made it harder and harder to expand. By switching to the elevator format, players are encouraged to make large factories in different locations, and try different set ups, and it makes expansion easier. With the elevator’s level split up, we have been able to get the automation gameplay to synergize with exploration rather than compete against it.
  
• Interest in Techtonica had waned, and we needed to attract new players. Behemoths like Factorio and Satisfactory exist, so we wanted to entice players with different automation challenges to help differentiate us. We felt that the design around a central bus (the elevator) was interesting and different, and we liked the gameplay that came along with that.
  
• Our active player count had dropped off, and we felt that a fresh new challenge would help bring old players back.
  
• We had additional complaints, like getting lost in the world and performance gripes, that splitting up the map into different levels helped with.

The first levels in particular do feel small, we get that, they’ve been reworked to serve as more of a tutorial area. However later on the levels really open up in the mid and late game.

We knew that there would be some blowback here but we felt it was worth making the change because of all the other benefits we would get. New players wouldn’t notice and would probably like it, and we hoped old players who had exhausted the content would enjoy the new challenge.

We really feel strongly that 1.0 is much more fun than the old versions (and early testing confirmed this). For those of you reading this with an open mind, we ask that you try out 1.0 and see how you like it. If you can’t get past this change then we’re sorry to have disappointed you. I just posted here how to access 0.5, so you can play that.

Thanks for reading and understanding where we’re coming from.

[delerium76]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Stellaris Ignis:

*snip for length*

I guess I worded my issue incorrectly. I didn't mean "there's nowhere else to build your factory." I meant, "There's no reason or incentive to build anywhere but Victor"

Here are my reasons for that assumption:

1. Victor is the first large space you come across that has iron, copper, stone, and water for your water wheels.
   
2. By the time you need a resource from another level (Atlantum) you have probably already established your base
   
3. Because that base is established, moving your base is more hassle than it is worth. There is no blueprint system. There is no copy/paste for layouts. Everything is manually built.

I'd even go as far as to say, "there's little reason to split up your base between levels" aside from maybe performance, or a small gathering point for atlantum on x-ray or one of the other levels. That is until you hit the "grind" that is level 12+. Once I hit that, I had to build a huge fuel plant on 11.

"There is an alternate source of power for the sand floors you just have to discover it."
I'm working on draining the sand from floor 13 and have yet to encounter an "alternate source of power." That has taken me a good 8 hours of draining sand on floor 12 to get to this point. The fact that I have to wait that long before given a source of power is ridiculous. That is something that should have shown up a few hours into draining floor 12.

"Your last jab was unneeded. The game had proper objective testing, but the August update was given to us as the change we were to work with."
My last jab was absolutely needed. It wasn't directed at you, but more toward the devs in how they set up testing. The devs didn't try and test any other methods to solve the problem. They chose an implementation, sent it to testers and said, "this is what we are using. test it out, but we aren't changing it." Part of proper testing is for the devs to be willing and able to scrap something that doesn't work instead of going with a sunk cost scenario, which is absolutely what they did.

I could go through their entire patch message you posted to give reasons for that, but I'll pinpoint a few:

"Fundamentally there has been an issue with the game’s exploration progression being completely unblocked as soon as players access the MOLE. After finishing LIMA, there is a giant rush of possible exploration in every direction, followed by nothing else left to explore and a giant factory to build. We would much rather exploration be a reward for expanding the factory."
It's been shown to be very easy to steamroll straight to level 12 really quick just by feeding drill heads to the elevator, pretty much bypassing the need for any sort of factory until you get to 12 and hit the grind. That's exactly what they describe they are trying to fix! That never came up in testing? It should have.

"At certain points some Excavator Bits will no longer be able to dig through harder terrain, and players will need to upgrade to crafting higher Excavator Bits. Upgrading earlier will help players dig faster. Excavator Bits upgrades will get more and more expensive and complex as the game progresses. They are proving to be a far better resource sink than PTs."
I can't remember the exact levels that this happened on, but the need to use better bits is not balanced well AT ALL. All elevator expansions all the way to 11 use bits that require very little setup of a factory, and all of the bits you need to get to 12 are given to you during the last bit of story before you head to 12. The recipes to make valid bits don't get complicated until 12, at the same exact time EVERYTHING gets complicated. This is just bad balance, again something testing should have fixed.

"The Elevator is a giant “main bus” system running between many different cave systems (we are calling these Strata) stretched vertically throughout the world. With this, it is incredibly easy to send all of your ore to Strata 4 to be smelted, or make all your fuel in Strata 6 and distribute it evenly to every other Strata. Ever feeling buried in spaghetti? Try working with a clean slate on another Strata. Everything is incredibly easy to manage."
The funny part is, I'm fine with having this, and it's useful once you figure it out, but not at the expense of exploration as a whole. This was a core game mechanic that isn't something that should have been changed in the middle of development, let alone a month or two before release. If it was built that way from the beginning, that's great. sell that game. but we didn't buy that game, we bought one that featured open world exploration. They should have tried to meet their goals without rewriting their game loop, and they didn't.

My main gripe with the elevator as a function is that it's one-way. You can send items to other floors, but you can only retrieve items from the floor you are on.
There are times I would much rather store whatever items a floor is producing in the storage for that floor, and then any other floor retrieve items from that storage space. An example is bio-fuel. When a new floor needs bio fuel, I now have to go to my bio fuel factory, and set up a new line to send bio fuel to that floor, and make sure production is balanced enough between the floors it sends to. This seems counter-intuitive when it would be much easier to just go to the new floor, tag the "bio fuel" floor, and grab fuel from it.

[stefanda]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Lunaceon:

ngl the whole "levels" choice clearly reeks of: made for gamepass players. so the game would function better on xbox.

And ... PS5

[Nekogod]

~1: Fundamentally there has been an issue with the game’s exploration progression being completely unblocked as soon as players access the MOLE. After finishing LIMA, there is a giant rush of possible exploration in every direction, followed by nothing else left to explore and a giant factory to build. We would much rather exploration be a reward for expanding the factory.
~1: Too few automation resource sinks to push the player along. PTs do not push players to automate as they are static goals which stop consuming resources once the player upgrades a PT. We want players to feel like the goals we set for them compound, and their prior automation efforts support their future automation efforts.

Both interesting points, for me as for others that exploration was one of the main draws, having it arbitrarily time gated is not as good and i certainly preferred the exploration rewards more factory growth opportunities rather than factory growth rewards more exploration opportunities.

I don't think they landed the second point at all, PT's were static goals but so are the first 11 levels of the elevator so suffer from the exact same issue, you can get all the way to the sand levels without automating anything.

They also seem to have not done much if anything with the UI/UX

The rest of their points are good though.

I think it could still be made much better and I hope they continue to work on it post 1.0, UI/UX improvements, a smoother ramp up in complexity/grinding (currently basically 0 until level 11 then ramps up dramatically), needs a dialogue pass as it often triggers at the wrong time or talks about things that make no sense with the new map, better tech tree balancing (somethings unlock way too late) and add new machines to custom game mode settings.

[robot797]

I still think they could have kept the map the same
and just use the elevetor for the new maps

[RobbedofLife]

Diposting pertama kali oleh eitan:

Hi Groundbreakers,

We’re seeing lots of complaints here about our choice to break up the map, and how it makes the world feel smaller. We understand where those complaints are coming from, so I’d like to take a moment to explain the decision process behind this change. Maybe you’ll still disagree with the decision, but at least you’ll understand why we did it.

We made the change for several reasons:

• As a narrative game, we wanted to add more story. We do this by adding more locations of interest with story triggers tied to them. We can’t add these to an existing map, as it would break saves. So every time we want to add story we need to make more map, which is much easier if we can add new levels
  
• The open world design heavily discouraged most players from building outside of the Victor zone due to a very high bar to connect remote bases. That’s not to say there weren’t players who did, but by and large everyone made Victor their home base and the open world design effectively made it harder and harder to expand. By switching to the elevator format, players are encouraged to make large factories in different locations, and try different set ups, and it makes expansion easier. With the elevator’s level split up, we have been able to get the automation gameplay to synergize with exploration rather than compete against it.
  
• Interest in Techtonica had waned, and we needed to attract new players. Behemoths like Factorio and Satisfactory exist, so we wanted to entice players with different automation challenges to help differentiate us. We felt that the design around a central bus (the elevator) was interesting and different, and we liked the gameplay that came along with that.
  
• Our active player count had dropped off, and we felt that a fresh new challenge would help bring old players back.
  
• We had additional complaints, like getting lost in the world and performance gripes, that splitting up the map into different levels helped with.

The first levels in particular do feel small, we get that, they’ve been reworked to serve as more of a tutorial area. However later on the levels really open up in the mid and late game.

We knew that there would be some blowback here but we felt it was worth making the change because of all the other benefits we would get. New players wouldn’t notice and would probably like it, and we hoped old players who had exhausted the content would enjoy the new challenge.

We really feel strongly that 1.0 is much more fun than the old versions (and early testing confirmed this). For those of you reading this with an open mind, we ask that you try out 1.0 and see how you like it. If you can’t get past this change then we’re sorry to have disappointed you. I just posted here how to access 0.5, so you can play that.

Thanks for reading and understanding where we’re coming from.

Give us big maps back. No one wants an elevator simulator.thats not what we paid for we paid for a factory exploration game. Hell most of the appeal was in the exploration of the giant ass map but now that's gone. We didn't ask for that and your excuses are about as good as the crap that comes out my back side.

[McRib]

Diposting pertama kali oleh RobbedofLife:

Give us big maps back. No one wants an elevator simulator.thats not what we paid for we paid for a factory exploration game. Hell most of the appeal was in the exploration of the giant ass map but now that's gone. We didn't ask for that and your excuses are about as good as the crap that comes out my back side.

If you look under beta tabs you can now access the Version 0,5 with the bigger map if you want to play on bigger map that is the way to go.

[Llyria]

I'm a new player and until I came to this post I didn't know about the big map change that everyone is complaining about and although I understand the frustration about such a big unexpected change, I'd just like to shime in that I like it, it's different, makes moving between parts of the map quick, creates a nice feeling of progression after each unlock, makes for a nice logistical challenge.
My one complaint is trivial, I find the fullscreen pink unlocked tier screen very bright and aggressive and would like some option to tone it down (apart from changing my monitor settings and making the whole game bleak )
Great job from the devs for me, after 1k+ hours in satisfactory this is a refreshing experience!

[Stellaris Ignis]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Llyria:

I'm a new player and until I came to this post I didn't know about the big map change that everyone is complaining about and although I understand the frustration about such a big unexpected change, I'd just like to shime in that I like it, it's different, makes moving between parts of the map quick, creates a nice feeling of progression after each unlock, makes for a nice logistical challenge.
My one complaint is trivial, I find the fullscreen pink unlocked tier screen very bright and aggressive and would like some option to tone it down (apart from changing my monitor settings and making the whole game bleak )
Great job from the devs for me, after 1k+ hours in satisfactory this is a refreshing experience!

Have you tried to turn down gamma in-game while in fullscreen mode?

[Arcanestomper]

I just want to say that I got the game when it first released and played up to the freight elevator. Then let it sit until the 1.0 update. And I like the new map changes. Using the elevator as a bus system works fine for me. And scattering different portions of my factory across floors is easy enough.

Also it lets me section off the exploration. Which some people might not like, but I remember making extremely long tunnels into nowhere because there was a speck on the map. Being guaranteed that that isn't necessary is nice.

[stefanda]

another thought about "we as the game's developers don't like that players did stick to victor for their main factory"

...

that's why victor had inserter slots (and xray monorail depots), to incentivise players to stay nearby to automatically supply repair materials for the terminal and also quickly interact with terminal and radio.
we are the ones that soft-forced players to stay there.

[Llyria]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Stellaris Ignis:

Diposting pertama kali oleh Llyria:

I'm a new player and until I came to this post I didn't know about the big map change that everyone is complaining about and although I understand the frustration about such a big unexpected change, I'd just like to shime in that I like it, it's different, makes moving between parts of the map quick, creates a nice feeling of progression after each unlock, makes for a nice logistical challenge.
My one complaint is trivial, I find the fullscreen pink unlocked tier screen very bright and aggressive and would like some option to tone it down (apart from changing my monitor settings and making the whole game bleak )
Great job from the devs for me, after 1k+ hours in satisfactory this is a refreshing experience!

Have you tried to turn down gamma in-game while in fullscreen mode?

Thank you for the suggestion will try that!

[RobbedofLife]

Diposting pertama kali oleh McRib:

Diposting pertama kali oleh RobbedofLife:

Give us big maps back. No one wants an elevator simulator.thats not what we paid for we paid for a factory exploration game. Hell most of the appeal was in the exploration of the giant ass map but now that's gone. We didn't ask for that and your excuses are about as good as the crap that comes out my back side.

If you look under beta tabs you can now access the Version 0,5 with the bigger map if you want to play on bigger map that is the way to go.

Not on xbox you cant. On xbox your forced to play elevator sim garbage

[Lady Briar]

I saw this game and love exploration and factory sims, but saw the mixed reviews and started reading them and then wound up here...

Thanks ya'll for sharing your experiences and context about the changes.

This is definitely not the game I saw advertised, at least not anymore. Shame. I would've liked to have played that game.

I'll save my money, instead.

[Mazian]

There's a good point-by-point review (of the original post) back on page 3 which I agree with about 95% of the way.

• Narrative feels wrong because some dialog doesn't align with the last minute design decisions. (As previously mentioned "factory the size of a city" makes no sense inside a jack-in-the-box sized level surrounded by impermeable grating-- where Sparks tells you it cannot be damaged-- so how did the freight elevator get through these indestructible box walls?)
  
• Maps are more claustrophobic and exploration is reduced.
  
• Smaller maps means that your factory is going to be confined to a specific level still and not spread out because...
  
• Freight elevator as main bus is throughput limited by inserter speed-- in pre-1.0 early belts were 120 items/min but if the freight elevator is your main bus then throughput is more severely constrained. This is exacerbated by the limit of having to set a freight elevator port to be destined for a specific floor.) The design choice forces people to build into smaller cramped spaces.
  
• Interest waning is solved by releasing new content. 1.0 was released and player count has gone up. It doesn't justify the sweeping changes. That's misdirection, or conversational slight of hand, or lying.
  
• The "performance gripes" seem to have been completely overlooked by most users-- but I've noticed things like how the power grid changes work now. I remember the early access issues with rails, power connectors and power grids and I see that you've solved that by essentially treating everything connected to the elevator as a single power grid which eliminates some of the earlier problems that manifested in trying to treat them as separate but connected power grids. I also noticed that in my current 1.0 save, I've not had a single configuration issue with filter inserters that I had in early access (above a certain altitude, the hitbox for configuration stopped aligning with the object to be configured, so selecting some things was impossible.) I understand if these things were deemed unsolvable without the massive redesign but...
  
• You didn't forecast this substantial change and you didn't give the player base an opportunity for feedback.

Largely I'm disappointed in the handling, not so much every decision.

I'm also disappointed with the tools available to manage overflow and backups, and I'm disappointed with the "main bus" design for the freight elevator because of throughput limitations (at least until you get stack inserters). And then, you have a limited number of ports on the freight elevator (not enough for all of the myriad constructable items.)

Which again brings us back to the problem with the size of each level constraining you.

Currently on Level 12 Sierra and trying to figure out scaling issues because of things that are backing up and clogging the factory.

[Mazian]

Also, buried midway through the massive thread there's an observation that this factory game is more of an adventure story with a factory wrapper, and as such has limited replayability. I think that's a really good point worth repeating.

The limited replayability is most likely the cause of the "waning interest" that was used to justify the design changes. Which would suggest a mismatch between problem and solution.

And long term, if/when I beat the game, I will uninstall and never play again.

Having reached Level 12 Sierra and having to deal with the massive requirements to upscale fuel production and solve throughput constraints and overflow/excess.

Another one of those things I'm really disappointed in is the absence of belt priority when splitting. Factorio and Satisfactory both have the mechanism, but it seems to be lacking in Techtonica. (So that when I have too much plant matter I can overflow it to some consumer to prevent belts from backing up, but which I don't want to keep running when the flow of product is being fully consumed.)

Satisfactory solved this with a sink and splitter priority features-- Factorio solved this with combinator logic and splitter priority features.

The absence of these features in Techtonica make Level 12 particularly painful to scale and balance.



Where I spent over 3k hours with Factorio because of the variability of experience from different settings (casual, hostile, death world) and from mods-- that experience is not available in Techtonica.

While I don't begrudge laser tag being added, it holds no interest for me. (I did try to talk a good friend of mine into playing during early access, but the style wasn't for him... and trying to play out the story in multiplayer has some problems... and there are other multiplayer problems to boot. No idea if those were solved in 1.0 as my friend has not had any interest in returning. And neither of us would play laser tag in Techtonica. If that's the kind of gameplay we wanted, we'd go play something like CoD or some other FPS.)