Why make your own game impossible to play?

[258789553873]

The map generation was clearly changed dramatically since I last played. I somehow managed to win the game even get a few achievements, despite spawning in a desert with biters on my starting coal patch (seriously). Just now I decided to try for the remaining achievements. Somehow, I managed to roll a forest with it set at 100%. This is the first time in literally over a hundred tries I got a forest. Of course, my starting area was crowded with cliffs. In fact, I had more cliffs than tress, and there wasn't a single rock around. my stone patch was so stinking small I couldn't even see it on my map. I continued anyway because I know full well now that better maps are impossible. Of course, to add insult to injury, I had 3 biter 'camps' in my starting area. I managed to take out one, after they leveled all my burners right before I finished building my first weapon (I started with military tech, which you have to now, no more starting with automation). I tried to take out the second, but its just too massive. It has 4 nests and a freaking worm. I tried twice and just couldn't do it. With my current gear, I simply can't kill the biters faster than they spawn, let alone that worm. Inevitably, they leveled everything and killed me before the game even did its first auto-save.

Seriously, why do developers do this to their own games? This thing is literally unplayable now. I mean, what am I supposed to do with biters in the starting area? I can't even get the tech fast enough to do anything about it. And this isn't just bad rng; literally every game is like this. Last game I only ever had one burner running at a time, and I was solely reliant on rocks to get coal. That was painfully slow though, for obvious reasons so I decided to have 2 burners this time. That was too much and the biters overwhelmed me just a few minutes into the game. What the crap am I supposed to do about this? This is a joke. I can't out-trade anything with my current gear, heck I'm struggling to even make enough ammo to take out nests. What, am I supposed to just tolerate spawners in my starting area until I get red ammo? Seriously? I don't even see the point in giving this stupid program yet another try. You literally can't play it. This program wasn't even originally like this. Biters didn't spawn within your stating area. Forests had a 50% chance of coming up rather than 1% even if the bias is set to 100%, You didn't have so many stinking cliffs that it was impossible to build anywhere near your starting patches. Why did they change this? Wasn't this program merciless enough already? This is by far the most merciless game I've EVER played. With the recent patches that seemed to have come in those years I had this thing uninstalled, they made it just utterly futile. Seriously, why? Are they already developing a sequel and trying to kill this game just so it sells? Why? Why do companies always do this? I literally have dozens of games on steam, but only Skyrim LE is still playable due to everything else getting updated to the point its impossible to play them. Why do companies keep doing this? Why???? Who the hell in their right mind would even buy a game these days with companies doing everything in their power to destroy what you paid good money for? I have far better things to spend $50 on than a game that I'll only be able to play for a few months at best. Why? I can buy freaking movies for less than that, and I can watch them over and over again to my heart's content and the people who made the movie can't do a damned thing about it. Why why why???

[Hurkyl]

If you're accurately describing your experience, it sounds like you changed the map generation parameters.

When creating a new freeplay map, make sure to select the "Default" map generation preset to reset all of the parameters to the default settings. Or select one of the other presets if you prefer (e.g. Rail World. Maybe even manually adjust the various map generation parameters to further tailor the map generation to your liking.

If you use the "Map preview" option, you can quickly generate a lot of different starts until you get a starting area to your liking, using the "random seed" button.

[258789553873]

I am using default settings. I tried railworld a few times, but quickly grew sick of all my starting resources being stupidly far apart. The only setting I've been changing is the moisture bias in sheer desperation to get the stupid thing to NOT spawn me in a freaking desert. That hasn't done me much of any good.

[Hurkyl]

Originally posted by IXBlackWolfXI:

Somehow, I managed to roll a forest with it set at 100%. This is the first time in literally over a hundred tries I got a forest.

The tool tip for "Terrain type" says higher bias = more desert.

So, forests being rare sounds right.

Of course, my starting area was crowded with cliffs. In fact, I had more cliffs than tress,

You can disable cliffs if you don't like them.

and there wasn't a single rock around.

Rocks don't usually spawn in forest biomes, do they? I don't know too much about their generation, though.

Seriously, why do developers do this to their own games? This thing is literally unplayable now.

I don't think they changed map generation since release. I expect you'd have to go pretty far back into the early access period to find any major changes.

I mean, what am I supposed to do with biters in the starting area? I can't even get the tech fast enough to do anything about it. And this isn't just bad rng; literally every game is like this. Last game I only ever had one burner running at a time, and I was solely reliant on rocks to get coal.

Honestly, it sounds like a skill issue. And I suspect you changed the map generation settings to require a lot of skill in this regard.

Are they already developing a sequel and trying to kill this game just so it sells?

Not a sequel: it's an expansion to the base game.

[Hurkyl]

Originally posted by IXBlackWolfXI:

I am using default settings. I tried railworld a few times, but quickly grew sick of all my starting resources being stupidly far apart. The only setting I've been changing is the moisture bias in sheer desperation to get the stupid thing to NOT spawn me in a freaking desert. That hasn't done me much of any good.

Try reinstalling Factorio, or at least having steam check the integrity of your installation. The experience you say you're having is so incredibly divergent from the norm that if you aren't unknowingly doing something to sabotage yourself or are just exceptionally bad at the game, it can only be explained by there being something wrong with your actual installation.

Or mods. You might have a mod that's messing things up. Disable those if you have any!

Maybe it would be worth watching some youtube videos/twitch streams of gameplay to see if the maps other people are getting on default settings resemble what you get. And if so, to see how they deal with the start.

[Nonotorious]

You know you can preview the map before you spawn right? If its all yellow that's a bad seed.

[258789553873]

That's how I found out the game's highly biased towards desert. Re-rolling literally dozens of times never got me a forest. I just got lucky this one time. And not a single map it spawned was decent. They all had the same damned problem. Cliffs everywhere, biters on or near the starting patches, and of course every map being desert. Its why I started accepting crappy maps, because I couldn't get a better one to spawn.

[knighttemplar1960]

Achievements can only be unlocked in the default game mode, called Freeplay. Any scenarios, such as the tutorial or custom scenarios disable achievements. Furthermore, using script or cheat commands in the console disables achievements, however the user will be warned about this the first time they try to run such a command. Within the freeplay game, enabling peaceful mode or setting enemy bases to anything lower than default disables the following achievements: There is no spoon, No time for chit-chat, Raining bullets and Steam all the way. Any other changes to map generation or using the debug modes does not disable achievements.

A separate instance of achievements will be used when mods are installed and earned achievements will not register with Steam. In multiplayer, achievements can only be earned if the player has spent more than 50% of the time online.

You can modify any other settings to your heart's content without disabling achievements. Desert starts are challenging but not impossible. I'm disabled and have poor motor control and I can handle desert starts on default settings.

Forests don't have many rocks but deserts have many rocks both the small ones and the large ones that also contain coal. This gives you a quick start. Mine and craft as much as you can by hand to keep pollution down. Place your smelters against any stand of trees that you may have to absorb as much pollution as possible.

Use excess stone to make extra stone furnaces and use them as defensive walls until you can research and produce stone walls. Prioritize military technologies (like turrets) and keep your initial start base small enough that your ammo supply can defend it until you have enough surplus to expand. Avoid taking out spawners until you absolutely have to, to keep evolution down as long as possible.

[258789553873]

Well, turns out, auto-save did fire ONCE. Right when I was trying to kill a biter nest right on the edge of my pollution. I don't know how to share saves, so here's the string:

>>>eNpjZGBkCGAAgwZ7EOZgSc5PzIHxQJgrOb+gILVIN78oFVmYM7mo
NCVVNz8TVXFqXmpupW5SYjGKYo7Movw8dBNYi0vy81BFSopSU4uRRbh
LixLzMktz0fUyMH67L/i5oUWOAYT/1zMo/P8PwkDWA6BfQJiBsQGiEi
gGBYyyyfl5JUX5ObrFqSUlmXnpVrn5mcUlpUWpVkmZicUcBnqmBiDAm
pyTmZbGwKDgCMROIFMYGRmrRda5P6yaYs8IMUvPAcr4ABU5kAQT8YQx
/BxwSqnAGCZI5hiDwWckBsTSEqAVUFUcDggGRLIFJMnI2Pt264Lvxy7
YMf5Z+fGSb1KCPaOhq8i7D0br7ICS7CDPM8GJWTNBYCfMKwwwMx/YQ6
Vu2jOePQMCb+wZWUE6RECEgwWQOODNzMAowAdkLegBEgoyDDCn2cGME
XFgTAODbzCfPIYxLtuj+wMYEDYgw+VAxAkQAbYQ7jJGCNOh34HRQR4m
K4lQAtRvxIDshhSED0/CrD2MZD+aQzAjAtkfaCIqDliigQtkYQqceME
Mdw0wPC+ww3gO8x0YmUEMkKovQDEIDyQDMwpCCziAgxsmC00byw//Fw
EAD+6wQQ==<<<

This is normal maps for me, minus being in a forest for freaking once. And yes, my starting resources have also been spawning super far apart which obviously doesn't help things. The first attack was on my copper smelters while I was up by my boilers (I was feeding more science into them I think). Such is my luck. How the ♥♥♥♥ am I supposed to play when all I get are maps like these? I had three freaking biter camps within vision from the start of the game. Wtf?

Oh, and for more info, here's the string for the desert start I actually won somehow:

>>>eNpjZGBkCGAAgwZ7EOZgSc5PzIHxQJgrOb+gILVIN78oFVmYM7mo
NCVVNz8TVXFqXmpupW5SYjGKYo7Movw8dBNYi0vy81BFSopSU4uRRbh
LixLzMktz0fUyMLofYBdpaJFjAOH/9QwK//+DMJD1AOgXEGZgbICoBI
rBAGtyTmZaGgODgiMQO4GkGRkZq0XWuT+smmLPCFGj5wBlfICKHEiCi
XjCGH4OOKVUYAwTJHOMweAzEgNiaQnQCqgqDgcEAyLZApJkZOx9u3XB
92MX7Bj/rPx4yTcpwZ7R0FXk3QejdXZASXaQP5ngxKyZILAT5hUGmJk
P7KFSN+0Zz54BgTf2jKwgHSIgwsECSBzwZmZgFOADshb0AAkFGQaY0+
xgxog4MKaBwTeYTx7DGJft0f0BDAgbkOFyIOIEiABbCHcZI4Tp0O/A6
CAPk5VEKAHqN2JAdkMKwocnYdYeRrIfzSGYEYHsDzQRFQcs0cAFsjAF
TrxghrsGGJ4X2GE8h/kOjMwgBkjVF6AYhAeSgRkFoQUcwMHNzIAAwLT
RtKpnMQABC6EI<<<

And here's a string for a railworld game I abandoned early on due to biters being too close to my starting point also.

>>>eNpjZGBkCGCAAHsGhgP2HCzJ+Yk5q1etsmNgcHBgYGiw50rOLyhI
LdLNL0pFFuZMLipNSdXNz0RVnJqXmlupm5RYnAriwjBHZlF+HroJrMU
l+XmoIiVFqanFyBq5S4sS8zJLc9H1MjAeTOlXbGiRYwDh//UMCv//gz
CQ9QDoFRBmYGyAqASKwQBrck5mWhoDg4IjEDuBpBkZGatF1rk/rJpiz
whRo+cAZXyAihxIgol4whh+DjilVGAMEyRzjMHgMxIDYmkJ0AqoKg4H
BAMi2QKSZGTsfbt1wfdjB+wY/6z8eMk3KcGe0dBV5N0Ho3V2QGl2kD+
Z4MSsmSCwE+YVBpiZD+yhUjftGc+eAYE39oysIB0iIMLBAkgc8GZmYB
TgA7IW9AAJBRkGmNPsYMaIODCmgcE3mE8ewxiX7dH9AQwIG5DhciDiB
IgAWwh3GSOE6dDvwOggD5OVRCgB6jdiQHZDCsKHJ2HWHkayH80hmBGB
7A80ERUHLNHABbIwBU68YIa7BhieF9hhPIf5DozMIAZI1RegGIQHkoE
ZBaEFHMDBzcyAAMC0sWTfxV8ArJyptg==<<<

These are all normal maps for me. I can't get anything better. On a side note, I can't import strings. I tried to start a new game from the railworld world to see if its the seed I think it is (I think it may be the one where I had a biter nest on my starting coal patch, or maybe it was the one I won, I don't know). I apparently can't copy-paste while in-game. What, am I supposed to type in all this gibberish by hand?

[Hurkyl]

The keyboard shortcut for pasting is CTRL-V. (and copying is CTRL-C)

At least, this works on Windows (and these are the standard Windows shortcuts for those operations). I dunno if Factorio behaves differently on other operating systems.

[Hedning]

There is some valid criticism here. The cliff algorithm is very strangely biased to put a lot of cliffs in the starting area and if you turn them down you only get cliffs around the coast everywhere else.

They should improve it to make hills in the middle of landmasses and not have a bias for the starting area.

And yes, my starting resources have also been spawning super far apart which obviously doesn't help things. The first attack was on my copper smelters while I was up by my boilers

If the water is a fair bit away from your ores and the boilers are polluting nests you can try just piping the water closer to your mines. However this isn't really that far. Literally can see all on one screen.

And here's a string for a railworld game I abandoned early on due to biters being too close to my starting point also.

Lol, just two spawners. Try just killing them. You don't need any tech to kill two spawners. Also there's lots of coal rocks on that map, so you don't even need to mine coal next to those biters at the start. Use the deconstruct planner to find them. A single coal miner won't trigger the nest, so you can put one down anyway. That seed is not very good because of the distance between the coal and the iron, however if you think in general biters spawn too close you can increase the starting area.

It seems you are looking for the perfect start with no challenges. Do you think it is a good game design to have no problems to solve at the start?

[Hurkyl]

Originally posted by IXBlackWolfXI:

Last game I only ever had one burner running at a time, and I was solely reliant on rocks to get coal. That was painfully slow though, for obvious reasons so I decided to have 2 burners this time. That was too much and the biters overwhelmed me just a few minutes into the game.

I can't play on those maps at the moment due to some arm pain, but I did think a bit about how I'd start it.

I suspect your approach is counterproductive.

It takes time for pollution to spread -- time you can spend building up resources and infrastructure. So if you aren't throttling your production enough so that all of the pollution is absorbed by the environment, then I suspect you're wasting that time.

[🆄🅽🅲🅻🅴 🅹🅾]

You could off course, design your own map and customize it to your liking.

[258789553873]

Looking at the railworld seed, yes that's the one where I had freaking biters on top of my coal. What I did was rely solely on coal rocks for coal, which worked quite well actually. I only ever ran ONE burner. I was literally mining iron BY HAND and manually feeding it into furnaces, seriously. Turns out, furnaces don't generate a lot of pollution. I had to amass 200 ammo like this just to take out EACH NEST. That run ended like 8 hours in after my car hit a rock I couldn't see (which I complained about before already), resulting it being destroyed along with me dying, losing my entire inventory and the game.

And yes, I did try to take out the biters on my new map. I took out the one with 2 spawners first, but it ate like 50 ammo. I tried to take out the four spawner one, but I simply couldn't kill the biters fast enough to keep up with their spawn rate. Besides, I also found I couldn't out-trade the worm. It just hit me way too damned hard and I dealt far too little damage to it. I actually had to retreat because it was obvious that I didn't have enough ammo to finish it off. I quit after my second attempt with more ammo wasn't any more successful. It was obvious that with just yellow ammo and no upgrades, those spawners were just going to have to stay there. What, am I supposed to manually craft 200 red science so I can research the damage techs? I was actually thinking I would be better off just wandering off somewhere and finding a better spot FROM THE START OF THE GAME.

I admit though, I was impatient this run. I was trying for the speedrun achievements, and I didn't want to sit there for literally AN HOUR manually mining resources and amassing 200 ammo THREE TIMES before I could start building my base. I had two burners for copper and 6 or 8 for iron, plus 10 mining coal and another 4 mining stone. Yeah, I wasn't doing a repeat of that stupid railroad world. And as I said, that's the way all my railworlds have been, with starting resources ultra far away. Its why I quit doing them, because I got sick of having to build ultra long conveyer belts covering a distance that honestly I would normally use a TRAIN FOR.

Regarding my recent map, if it matters, I was thinking of building to the east just past the cliffs (though I never got around to exploring that area). I also thought about going west, though I wasn't sure I would have enough room or not. I was planning on going 11.25 spm so I could run everything on one belt. I normally run at 45 spm, but that requires too much building for a speedrun and my research far outpaces my ability to build. My research always stalls completely when I'm working on the next tier of science just because everything researches so fast. The biggest gap in research tends to be when I'm setting up oil so I can do blue science. I was looking to see what would happen if I quartered my normal spm so I could run on one lane of each resource rather than 4 (well, I found out recently that I only needed 3 iron for 45 spm, assuming that steel has their own iron lines, which is technically a total of 6 iron lines but half of those are feeding directly into steel furnaces via inserters).

Either way, this is the way all my maps are and I can't seem to get one that's halfway decent. Everyone else gets coal right next to their freaking metal, giant patches that are close together (note the tiny little patches I had all over the place in the starting area), no biters, no cliffs, and all on default settings like I'm trying to run. It wasn't even like this in the past. And yes, I've re-installed the game multiple times do to me uninstalling it half a dozen times this week alone swearing to never play this stupid worthless disgusting SCAM again. I tried to refund the game after playing just three sessions, and it was too much time for me to return it. Complete and utter disgusting. This program is an obvious scam, and developers from my understanding are freaking psychopaths, and I paid like $30 or something I don't even remember. I even promised to buy something else on steam with the money once but got refused. This program was the last thing I EVER bought on steam, and I still see no reason to ever do so again. Honestly, at this point I don't think I even let all this go even if I did get my money back. You think after all I've been through I would be willing to shut up for money? Getting my hard-earned money back now would honestly constitute a bribe. ♥♥♥♥ factorio and whatever shady company made it.

[Galileus]

Originally posted by IXBlackWolfXI:

Either way, this is the way all my maps are and I can't seem to get one that's halfway decent. Everyone else gets coal right next to their freaking metal, giant patches that are close together (note the tiny little patches I had all over the place in the starting area), no biters, no cliffs, and all on default settings like I'm trying to run. It wasn't even like this in the past. And yes, I've re-installed the game multiple times do to me uninstalling it half a dozen times this week alone swearing to never play this stupid worthless disgusting SCAM again. I tried to refund the game after playing just three sessions, and it was too much time for me to return it. Complete and utter disgusting. This program is an obvious scam, and developers from my understanding are freaking psychopaths, and I paid like $30 or something I don't even remember. I even promised to buy something else on steam with the money once but got refused. This program was the last thing I EVER bought on steam, and I still see no reason to ever do so again. Honestly, at this point I don't think I even let all this go even if I did get my money back. You think after all I've been through I would be willing to shut up for money? Getting my hard-earned money back now would honestly constitute a bribe. ♥♥♥♥ factorio and whatever shady company made it.

You need help, mate.

Either way, if you hate everything, changing settings to fit you is beyond you, you want them to change on their own to fit your FRIGGING MIND by radio waves, and devs killed your hamster... Don't play the game. Don't want to get help? Don't bother people asking for it. Save yourself some time. Actually, who cares about you, save OTHERS some time.

I would love a refund for the time spent reading this crap.

[schnappkatze]

Originally posted by Somewhat Frontal Admiral:

I would love a refund for the time spent reading this crap.

If someone on the other hand enjoys reading this kind of "this game SUCKS!" ramblings, I recommend checking out their post history. I remember OP from the Civilisation 4 Steam Forum where they had comparable problems to engage with... well, the game's core mechanics.