This isn't me trolling by the way, honestly curious because I've seen that games like Factorio are very popular. I'm definitely a simulation type gamer, I never really could get into Rollercoaster Tycoon and other similar games and it looks like these indie titles like Palworld as well are an evolution of that. Kind of surprised that these have largely taken over the indie space and it seems it's the 'thing' right now to play.
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People like solving problems. People will do a crossword, you know?
Nobody tell her about Zachtronics games. She'd throw a shit fit about someone having fun in a manner she does not approve of.
Or Shapez. It's basically the most distilled conveyor game.
Have you ever played with Lego Technic or mechano where you spend hours building something like a vehicle or crane and enjoy just the minutes if not seconds or playing with it finished?
It's that on a wider scale, it's that part of the largely male mind that LOVES land management, taking some area of land, claiming it and making highly productive under your watch. It's why I can confidently say most of the men on this board would be happier if they had a garden big enough to grow things on.
I love those kinds of games, so I get the appeal if that's what it's like, I feel like conveyor belts are pretty restrictive in what you can do with them though, I'm definitely more of a community builder or manager type with my gameplay.
It's pretty standard that you get more advanced functionality than simple A to B belts as you progress through those kinds of games.
Filters, splitters, programmable switches etc. Then there's separate fluids, logistics and power networks with their own tricks and restrictions to figure out too
They are technically restrictive in that there non-functional possibilities, that's the basic premise of an open ended puzzle game. But they're not restrictive in that there's not much you can do with them. After all a processor is just a handful of types of logic gates and an absurd number of connecting lines, which are the same basic tools as conveyor belt games.
I feel like these are the types of people who should maybe get into circuit board making lol.
My brother-in-law is an appliance engineer, and he plays Factorio in his spare time. It's just his thing.
Oh yeah definitely a huge overlap.
You could probably crowd source some ingenious miniaturisation solutions if you reversed your needs into factorio game terms and made it a challenge map
So build a train network or transport robots instead.
Some people can do it where others can't
Give you a perfect example, started playing Fallout 4 again just to REALLY do some crazy settlement builds. For the life of me I can't do the conveyor belt and production stuff but you can see some on YouTube that create the most insane factories with it.
IMHO it's part of the charm. You have restrictions but building around these with say robots and train systems to make it better and better is what makes these types of games great. You start with shit belts and that's it, you get further and further unlock new stuff and optimise again. It's a constant thing which is always fun.
Part of the fun from conveyor belts is that restriction, at least I think it is for those that enjoy it. Its the act of coming up with a solution but having to use tools that are somewhat clunky and difficult to use, the challenge of it.
Easy. You start the game and something is tedious. Then you upgrade or optimize something to make it less tedious. You get a dopamine hit.
You create a cool building full of machines networked together to do a previously very complex task. You get a dopamine hit every time you see your cool building on the horizon.
A train passes by filled to the brim with resources you used to have to travel across the map for. You get a dopamine hit.
How in the fuck are you a software developer and incapable of understanding the appeal of Factorio?
It's not the first time he doesn't understand why people enjoy certain genres of games just because he doesn't personally enjoy them. He strikes me as someone who wants to make games his way disregarding player preferences and feedbacks and the psychological basis behind the gameplay loops, he just likes to scoff at 'popular trends' like a fedora neckbeard
I'm kind of ok with that because if he gets off his ass and actually puts his autism to work building the perfect game for his own tastes it'll probably be a really good product for the tiny market of people who have the same tastes as him. That's more of what we need frankly, opinionated people who know what they like and are willing to disregard everyone else in order to build their magnum opus. Trying to get something to have mass appeal is how you get the never ending torrent of gray sludge that the industry churns out these days. Fuck that noise, give me the phone booth full of developers who know what they want to build and are gonna do it regardless of if it has mass appeal because those are the guys who are gonna make something good. You might not enjoy it, but for the people who do enjoy it, it'll be a grand work.
Because I obsess over weirdly specific niches developers don't make anymore okay? lol
Can you be more descriptive? What is conveyor belt gameplay? Factorio, Rollercoaster Tycoon, and Palworld are all very different games.
Sounds like he is describing Management Games. Which is a very large umbrella term that includes many other genres/sub genres of games.
It's the conveyor belt mechanic in particular which yes, management games are a pretty broad genre usually but they all seem to have conveyor belt mechanics devs insist on nowadays.
But what is the conveyor belt mechanic you keep referring to? I'm honestly serious here.
If you just mean "has a conveyor belt and some type of automated crafting" in it, then we're talking both Minecraft and Fallout 4, at which point there's basically no coherent discussion that can be had because they're vastly different games.
Also,
raises further questions, because if there is some breakout trend of factorio-esque games I've seen and heard absolutely nothing about it. What games on the top 50 or top 100 games on Steam would you consider having the conveyor belt mechanic and falling into this category?
I don't know if I could call it a trend but there was a spat of conveyor belt simulators that came out for awhile like Satisfactory among other titles the others were so easily forgetful because it looked like indie studios that had gone and clobbered together a survival clone with conveyor belt systems everywhere. It seems as though Factorio is the one true conveyor belt sim for most people these days.
Words, do they mean anything?
The boy ain't right.
A better example that people might be more familiar with would be some of the over the top automation setups people sometimes do in Minecraft. IE with hoppers and pistons iirc.
This is also probably where a lot of people started developing such an interest in conveyor belt type mechanics. Even more-so if you delved into any of the mods like IC2.
Certain demographics of people fucking love efficiency. Seeing a task done in a manner that is super fluid and making big number go up feels fucking great.
This is across multiple genres. Pikmin 4 just did the same thing so heavily it used the word "dandori" untranslated to push the meme of it. Clicker/idle games use it to see big numbers go up. RCT uses it to give management simulation a go. Palworld is literally a survival crafting game but with slaves to do the crafting for you.
You are looking at symptoms instead of the root, likely because you have a chronic case of "I don't like it therefore its stupid and ruining the industry," which is why you are missing the dopamine spikes it gives to people who love it.
Different strokes. I like the idea of many games, but I don't have fun playing them.
I think it appeals to people who are always thnking of ways to be more efficient. Which is ironic, since games are ultimately a waste of time. (I know from extensive time wasted) But... So are most hobbies.
It's fun to optimize and solve emergent problems.
I think game's like factorio are decent brain games. it's good to exercise your noggin.
Its also a great autism test.
Watch someone play and see how much their focus is on the main task at hand and getting stronger versus how obsessed they are with making the factory perfect, and you can even diagnosis the level of autism on top of it.
So what is the scale we are using for this? If only bare min then zero autism and if hyper efficient then there is no return?
If you are playing it then there is a foundational amount of autism to begin with. I think the level of efficiency into levels well beyond what the game needs is where we go up the scale into "capable of existing into normal society" all the way into "needs a disability check, cannot interact with humans."
Based entirely on my one friend who exists in the latter category, and his fucking mindboggling factory he bragged to me about once, I think that's a fair scale.
Shit, Oh well, at least I'm in the capable of existing into normal society, haha
And if you mod it would that indicate even more autism or less xD
If he's your actual friend, do advise him about autism and the speedrunner to troon pipeline. Do remember there is a strong link between autists and troonery.
He's an autism bomb so strong I don't think you can actually speak to him and have words enter his brain. Closer to a force of nature than a person. I'd be surprised if he even had sexual brain power to lead him to trooning.
But he hasn't begun speedrunning yet and is nearing 40, so I doubt he can physically manage it anymore either.
It's also a great ADHD test. I have diagnosed ADHD and I couldn't keep up with ANY of the shit in Factorio because there was too much shit to micromanage. I got bored of it quick and went back to playing Devil May Cry 4.
I play car simulators because I like to drive. I like to play Minecraft because I like to build and explore. I have no desire to play a farm simulator because that was some of the first jobs I had. I can understand why though. I know tons of people who want to build in different ways and this is their outlet.
And I like to play degenerate R18+ sex games because I have ---
wait, fuck.
I really like optimizing things. So not just conveyor belts, but making sure every thing on the conveyor belt has a purpose and every machine is spending time creating and things aren't backed up. It gets complicated after a while.
I still prefer city builders and things like Tropico more, but in city games I'm still just constantly optimizing.
You are the most identifiable poster on site and I absolutely mean that as an insult.
The factory must grow.
I gave up once my CPU became the bottleneck.
700 hour factory was a good run though.
My tism isnt big enough. I get to that point where you have to scale up production, realise it means ripping up most of what I've done and redoing it in a more orderly fashion, and I just despair at getting it done.
Ideally you hit that point right around the time you launch your first rocket, so when you start your second factory you have a much better idea of how to approach things and it's much easier with a completely clean slate. Or at least that's how it went for me.
My first factory was complete spaghetti. A couple haphazard rail lines, conveyor belts going everywhere, a veritable labyrinth of pipes to deal with all the oil and little construction outposts scattered all over with no rhyme or reason.
When I moved on to the second factory I had everything all in a big line scrunched together with construction peeling off from the main resource belt. I only kept that thing functional long enough to get trains up and running and from there I built a whole railway empire. Big orderly blocks of train based input and output. Every square a function with parameters and outputs all feeding into one another. It was beautiful.
Setting up infrastructure can be fun.
Sometimes it's just the logistics, planning, and structure that appeals to people. Other times it's maybe just the setting and environment having some kind of appeal.
And in some of these games there's sometimes a little bit of a creative design element to the gameplay, like when you try and design your own rollercoasters or other rides. Or building design in survival games like Minecraft.
There are a few games that are almost entirely centered on the conveyor belt gameplay though, which generally does not appeal to me at all. Satisfactory and Factorio are good examples of that.
When you said 'conveyor belt' gameplay, I immediately thought of Free Enterprise.
That's the sort of game you're talking about, right?