How do you fight the burnout?

[Inkidu]

I just cannot get back into this game (I bought it on EGS pretty much the day it went live) by the way). I've enjoyed it for a long time, but after only a short while it just feels like a job I'm not getting paid for doing. It feels like busywork. I can hardly summon the elan to even bother gathering 50 space plates (or whatever they're called) to unlock tiers 3 and 4 because it's just... not there.

The satisfaction of seeing a line working at 100% efficiency just isn't there anymore.

I think after a while it loses its immersion. It's just watching numbers get bigger and it becomes less and less satisfying. It doesn't help that there's very little to do in the way of exploration or actual survival.

And I'll still say this after hours and hours of playing putting organizational stuff behind the awful idea of the AWESOME Store was a bad idea. These are things that might keep new players playing, but are just locked behind literal grinding.

I guess I'll just wait for it to leave EA, maybe enough stuff will change that it'll feel worthwhile enough to hop back into.

[Werric]

Take a break and play other games that are completely different. When I first started I played for several hours a day every day. Now I play for several hours maybe twice a week.

I'm still yet to make it past tiers 5/6 because I get burned out. I have to admit though each time a restart my layouts get better and I get quicker. This time I just might make it to the next tiers.

[Inkidu]

Yeah, the problem with this burnout is that it just... I mean I thought I got past it, but it just caught up to me. This most recent stint did come after a long absence from the game.

[Werric]

My problem is I really like the start of most games. That's when you usually have to work hard to progress a little at a time. Once you get past that stage a lot of games become predictable to me.

With this game sure each tier introduces new stuff with new challenges but basically it is the same game play over and over that you figured out by the time you were ready to go to tier 3 or maybe 5.

[Skipper]

If you're trying to force enjoyment out of something that used to be fun then that's more like a habit than a real choice. Listen to your brain, it's telling you to try something else. Move on to other games, or even another hobby entirely for a while if nothing is sticking. You might never feel the same spark as you did with this game again, but there's more games (and other hobbies) out there! At least wait until the full release and try again imo.

Werric also makes a good point in that the beginning of most games is usually the most fun, because you're learning and coming up with new strategies and seeing new things constantly... after a while it's just routine, memorization and mostly the same ole' stuff you've already seen.

I'm terrible at not finishing games and just re-playing the early parts again and again, then moving on to something new...

[Twisted]

I have 3000+ hours in Factorio but I'm struggling to stay interested for more than a few hours in this game. I think it's the first person view and no grid that makes the building feel more like work than fun.

[Brack]

Personally I had no trouble staying motivated to keep going while there were still tiers to unlock. Then I set about getting every hard drive and as many power slugs as I could find with the object scanner. Finally I finished exploring essentially all of the map.

At this point, I'm losing motivation to continue playing myself. I wish there was some sort of endgame goal, like supplying a city with certain power levels and supplies or maybe getting orders in for large quantities of random materials.

[The Big Brzezinski]

It's not a forever game. It's only got so much content, and it's a bit on the shallow side at that. If you've exhausted your curiosity, set it aside and move on. Come back after a new update qualitatively changes the game.

[Vault Traveler]

Play other games, when you experience different things you start to appreciate older stuff more.

[Maehlice]

If you have to fabricate or actively seek enjoyment, you probably should just stop playing. Find something where fun comes naturally.

I can at least tell you what I've been doing that has kept my interest:

Impose limits on yourself, like 5x5, megabase, Biofuel only, no long belts, etc.

Be creative. Instead of focusing on the numbers, build aesthetically. Don't let any two buildings have the same layout, size, shape, appearance, etc.

Build just for the sake of building. Make a rollercoaster, build a hypertube cannon, build a spaceship, copy an IRL building in the game, etc.

[Inkidu]

Well, regardless of how I continue I would like to say that I generally think the AWESOME Store was a truly God-awful idea. I get why it's there, it's to give a lot of late-game players something to grind for, but the trade-off was that they took a lot of enjoyable building things out of mainline progression which means that new players or returning players like myself are stuck with the most boring stuff or have to set up deliberately long production chains and leave the game running in order to grind out tickets.

It's just not a smart move.

[Mojo]

Originally posted by Inkidu:

leave the game running in order to grind out tickets.

You really dont need many tickets to unlock pretty much all you will need, and you get those fairly easy and quick. Unless you are going for the trophies the tickets become pointless or if using them for materials you dont produce like aluminium sheets, gas filters etc. For me though, I could care less about the tickets now. I like the sink because it gives me a way to keep lines constantly running without any backup on lines.

[Maehlice]

Originally posted by Inkidu:

... AWESOME Store ...

I feel like the awesome store was a byproduct and necessary evil of the awesome sink.

Tuning oil lines to keep residue from backing up used to be effectively impossible. Eventually, there was an end product with nothing to do but store it and periodically delete/flush it.

Instead of just introducing a simple vaporizer, they gave it extra purpose with the store.

IDK. Just a hunch.

[Inkidu]

Originally posted by Mojo:

Originally posted by Inkidu:

leave the game running in order to grind out tickets.

You really dont need many tickets to unlock pretty much all you will need, and you get those fairly easy and quick. Unless you are going for the trophies the tickets become pointless or if using them for materials you dont produce like aluminium sheets, gas filters etc. For me though, I could care less about the tickets now. I like the sink because it gives me a way to keep lines constantly running without any backup on lines.

Sure if you focus, but for curiosity's sake I tore down my starter base and essentially fed as much of everything at and below the caliber of reinforced iron plate and rotor into two sinks and it still took a couple of hours to get 18 tickets which are enough to buy everything (as of this post) in the organization category and the coffee mug.

Maybe it comes from the fact that they took stuff out of normal progression and put it behind progression but with extra steps that irks me. Instead of making something new they just took useful stuff and gated it even harder.

[ERROR_404]

BLUEPRINTS and ROBOTS in Factorio.

[Maehlice]

Did they actually take stuff out and move it to the shop? I thought they only just started adding new stuff to the shop is all.