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General discussionFactorio price change coming(71 posts)(71 posts)
(71 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted April 14, 2018
I tried the demo and I liked it so much that I bought it here.
If you like the gameplay from The Settlers (2) you will like this as I found it quite similar.
Posted April 15, 2018
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hedwards: That's largely my point, if the developers don't know what alpha, beta and release candidates are, then that's not a good sign. A designation of .17 is typically alpha, it typically indicates that it's not feature complete or stable and as such an alpha release. A beta release will usually have a larger number like .9 and be feature complete, and largely stable, but not necessarily complete.
Just an addition to my previous post on the subject, here's the changelog:

https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?t=678

You can clearly see they went from 0.9 to 0.10.
Posted April 15, 2018
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Strijkbout: I tried the demo and I liked it so much that I bought it here.
Can't say i enjoyed it nearly as much... on stage 4, and it's egging me to connect things together with pipes, and i can't tell what i'm suppose to build or connect where to get it going. Then random attacks from animals...

I'm just getting annoyed.
Posted April 15, 2018
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Strijkbout: I tried the demo and I liked it so much that I bought it here.
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rtcvb32: Can't say i enjoyed it nearly as much... on stage 4, and it's egging me to connect things together with pipes, and i can't tell what i'm suppose to build or connect where to get it going. Then random attacks from animals...

I'm just getting annoyed.
I had trouble with it too but I eventually solved it and agree the game could use indicators where the inlet and exhaust go and I still have a lot of trouble with the robotic arms which don't seem to do what I want.
Posted April 15, 2018
LOL, 50% increase in price? from $25 to $38. NOT EVEN WORTH IT.
Post edited April 15, 2018 by DreamedArtist
Posted April 15, 2018
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DreamedArtist: LOL, 50% increase in price?
One game : We Happy Few .
Posted April 15, 2018
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rtcvb32: Can't say i enjoyed it nearly as much... on stage 4, and it's egging me to connect things together with pipes, and i can't tell what i'm suppose to build or connect where to get it going. Then random attacks from animals...

I'm just getting annoyed.
Press Alt, thank me later.
Posted April 15, 2018
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hedwards: That's largely my point, if the developers don't know what alpha, beta and release candidates are, then that's not a good sign. A designation of .17 is typically alpha, it typically indicates that it's not feature complete or stable and as such an alpha release. A beta release will usually have a larger number like .9 and be feature complete, and largely stable, but not necessarily complete.
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SirPrimalform: Just an addition to my previous post on the subject, here's the changelog:

https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?t=678

You can clearly see they went from 0.9 to 0.10.
As a math person, I hate when people do things like that. It's not so bad when they're also having an additional decimal point, but that is kind of confusing as normally .17 is a smaller number than .9.
Posted April 15, 2018
Fuck em. I think Shovelware...err shovel knight did the same thing. I just took it off wish list or watch list and moved on. I am perfectly ok with never playing the game even though it has been on my wish list for a real long time.
Posted April 15, 2018
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hedwards: That's largely my point, if the developers don't know what alpha, beta and release candidates are, then that's not a good sign. A designation of .17 is typically alpha, it typically indicates that it's not feature complete or stable and as such an alpha release. A beta release will usually have a larger number like .9 and be feature complete, and largely stable, but not necessarily complete.

Regardless of how slavishly you stick to the convention, completely skipping a release candidate phase is a sign that the developer doesn't know what they're doing as the RC is the last chance to catch bugs before the 1.0 release. Often times the RC will wind up being the final release, but not always, sometimes you have to go through a couple.

This is how professionals and people asking for money in exchange for a product are supposed to deal with this. It communicates to the user what state the code is in and if they're skipping milestones, that's not a good sign.

This wasn't really a common problem before about 10 or 15 years ago. People knew what the convention was and they used it to communicate what state their code was to other programmers and random users. About that time, you got asinine things like Google's practice of having huge numbers of major version bumps without cause and various other deviant numbering practices that just served to confuse the users. Before that, they might refer to something by a year, but there would also be a version number that followed the convention in most cases because it's a really helpful way of keeping track of changes between versions and how closely you need to check when evaluating upgrades to newer versions.
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amok: so.. your problem is not what the game is, how complete it is, or how good it is, but they did not number the updates in a system you approve of. got you. so if they did number the updates as you want, but the game is exactly the same, then you would have been fine with it...
Sigh, this isn't whether or not I approve, the size of the price hike and doing it prior to the full release are more or less sufficient to ensure that I never buy. This is just digging themselves in deeper. There's also the issue of being at $30 and not having it ever go on sale. I might have bought it for less, but definitely not for $30 and probably not the current $20 as that's more than what I'm willing to pay for that kind of game.

Whether you like it or not, how you communicate to the customers about your product has a huge impact on whether or not anybody buys. The version numbering scheme exists purely for the purpose of communicating to end users what state your code is in and what patches will be necessary when they are released.

It's why every software program you use has some method of finding out the version number. The developers don't really need that information typically as they're going to be using whatever patch level or revision their source control is using as that's what's really relevant to them.

This issue of alpha to beta to release candidate to release exists for a very good reason and if they're muddling them together like that, it doesn't encourage me to trust them enough to pay money for it. Even more so when they're doing it on what appears to be a release candidate and they're taking that view
Posted April 15, 2018
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hedwards: That's largely my point, if the developers don't know what alpha, beta and release candidates are, then that's not a good sign. A designation of .17 is typically alpha, it typically indicates that it's not feature complete or stable and as such an alpha release. A beta release will usually have a larger number like .9 and be feature complete, and largely stable, but not necessarily complete.
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kbnrylaec: Version number is nothing.
You could assign any number to what ever version you want.
For example, ver 3 -> ver 3.1 -> ver 3.14 -> 3.141.

Many commercial stable releases have version numbers that are not 1.0.
As long as developers know what they are doing, they could make any version number a stable release.
Sigh, I hate post-modernism.

Version numbers exist purely for the people using the code. The developers likely are using numbers based on whatever source control system they're using. But, the version numbers are what tell the end user what patches apply, whether the current version is newer than the one they have and is an indicator of roughly how far along the code is.

Having to go from .9 to .10 isn't a good indication. Either they screwed up their road map or they screwed up their numbering. No amount of handwaving is going to change that fact. Version numbers are supposed to increase over time, not decrease like that.

There is a certain amount of variance in terms of what exactly separates a major release a minor release and a patch, but the concept is relatively straightforward. It's not a beta if it isn't feature complete. And it's not a release if it's still buggy and unstable. The numbering is just something that helps people that don't know the code know roughly what to expect.

And yes, some commercial stable releases are like that and it's stupid when they do it. Conventions only really work when people follow them. In the current era where people are, arguably, even less computer literate than in the past, it's even more important to clearly communicate the state of your code because before people actually buy in enough to install it, all they have is the version number, screen shots and description. That's it.

I shouldn't really have to be explaining this to people. This is how it was for decades and the system worked quite well even if there were the occasional corner case where the guideline had to be slightly adjusted.
Posted April 15, 2018
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hedwards: [...]
This issue of alpha to beta to release candidate to release exists for a very good reason and if they're muddling them together like that, it doesn't encourage me to trust them enough to pay money for it. Even more so when they're doing it on what appears to be a release candidate and they're taking that view
the point here is that 0.16 (which comes after 0.9.... by 7 updates) is the pre-release build (or what-ever you want to call it). this is the last stable feature full version, leading into 0.17, the release candidate. no new major features will be added, only big fixes and tidy it up. So this is exactly what you are talking about, just not using the same numbering / terminology.

I see no reason to complain about that, except pedantry and justification.
Posted April 15, 2018
I'm in the same boat as many others, version number are fine as they are. Nowadays there are so many conventions. It doesn't impact the actual game, perhaps as a software engineer it might irk you but that's the way the world works.

As for the game, I'm not sure if the price hike is justifiable. One thing I do know is that at 20 usd/euros it is definetely worth it. You get a game with hours of tinkering on assembly lines, defending against aliens and constantly discovering new things you can build. Purely from the hours of entertainment it's quite a cheap product, as most games tend to be. The good thing about Factorio is that unlike most games out on the market (including 70 usd/euros+) it actually provides a decent demo.

My only tip is: Pretty much everything can be automated with the correct factory designs. That whole manually filling machines with coal should only be for a very short period of time.
Posted April 15, 2018
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hedwards: [...]
This issue of alpha to beta to release candidate to release exists for a very good reason and if they're muddling them together like that, it doesn't encourage me to trust them enough to pay money for it. Even more so when they're doing it on what appears to be a release candidate and they're taking that view
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amok: the point here is that 0.16 (which comes after 0.9.... by 7 updates) is the pre-release build (or what-ever you want to call it). this is the last stable feature full version, leading into 0.17, the release candidate. no new major features will be added, only big fixes and tidy it up. So this is exactly what you are talking about, just not using the same numbering / terminology.

I see no reason to complain about that, except pedantry and justification.
It's not pedantry here though. First impressions matter. I see something with a number like that and I shouldn't be expected to do the research to find the release notes to determine that the developer isn't using a base 10 numbering scheme in the decimal places.

Whether it's fair or not, having no or bad screen shots, a bad title and or a version number that's too low is going to influence the number of people that look into it deeper.

Usually when I see numbers like that, the software isn't anywhere near production ready. If a developer doesn't want to follow the typical schema, it's well within their rights to do so, but it does represent a barrier to potential customers that are looking for an excuse to not buy the product.

And in this case, pairing that with such a large price increase and a promise of no sales isn't doing them any favors. Presenting potential customers with an ultimatum like that is rarely a good idea.
Posted April 15, 2018
A no sale policy. Good luck with that. I'm not as interested in the game to buy full price so I just skip it, like many other games. I'd probably pick it up at 75% off.
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionFactorio price change coming(71 posts)(71 posts)
(71 posts)