But Minecraft and Terraria do not cost 32€, do not have a DLC costing as much as the basegame and gave us what,15 years of free Content updates? So this is not even close to a fair comparison, if anything, this further proves my point that Factorio is overpriced
That was not the point. The point is that Factorio is in a similar level of quality. That is the top one. If you believe that 3X€ is too expensive for a top game, then you are saying that every game out there that is >30€ is overpriced.
If you believe that, you are honestly way out of touch with reality. 30€ is on the low side of a price for a game. Most AAA games are >60€.
But Factorio has just good gameplay. No hyperrealistic graphics, beautiful reflections, high quality sounds and smooth, detailed animations, which is what makes AAA so expensive. Even Satisfactory, which delivers simlar gameplay with, while not at AAA, at least at AA level, costs 40€, and that looks, sounds and feels amazing. There I can at least see why they charge that price.
Factorio essentially kickstarted the genre. Satisfactory was inspired by it. I totally dig what Satisfactory has done but having a blueprint that is proven to work is skipping a lot of risk.
There is an inherent tradeoff between graphics and gameplay. Both have good reasons to focus on. Factorio has optimized it’s graphics and logic to an insane degree. Far beyond what is typically expected of an AAA game. You just don’t see that directly, since it provides value by absence. The game doesn’t even start to slow down until you are hundreds or thousands of hours in.
There is a reason AAA games frequently run badly even on top tier hardware, it’s because they prioritize graphical fidelity over all else. Optimization is often an afterthought, since programmers are expensive, and optimization doesn’t provide the immediately apparent value that graphics or new features do. Factorio had to take that risk though, because the game would not be fun if it couldn’t scale past the first ten hours.
Highly detailed graphics are very skillfully produced as well, but it’s a misunderstanding that a game’s code cannot be of similar quality and depth. A sort of graphical AAA vs functional AAA. Factorio took a lot of highly skilled programmers to pull off, while a graphically intensive game put those resources into their artists.
No AAA value? It’s up there with Minecraft and terraria as one of the best games.
I’d say it’s better than any AAA if you consider the games above “indie”
But Minecraft and Terraria do not cost 32€, do not have a DLC costing as much as the basegame and gave us what,15 years of free Content updates? So this is not even close to a fair comparison, if anything, this further proves my point that Factorio is overpriced
That was not the point. The point is that Factorio is in a similar level of quality. That is the top one. If you believe that 3X€ is too expensive for a top game, then you are saying that every game out there that is >30€ is overpriced.
If you believe that, you are honestly way out of touch with reality. 30€ is on the low side of a price for a game. Most AAA games are >60€.
But Factorio has just good gameplay. No hyperrealistic graphics, beautiful reflections, high quality sounds and smooth, detailed animations, which is what makes AAA so expensive. Even Satisfactory, which delivers simlar gameplay with, while not at AAA, at least at AA level, costs 40€, and that looks, sounds and feels amazing. There I can at least see why they charge that price.
Factorio does have high quality graphics, sounds an animations. It is just in 2D instead of 3D.
But if you price a product based on its cost instead of its value, you do you.
I prefer to pay 30k€ for a car than pay 60k€ for a worse car that happens to have a steering wheel made out of solid gold.
There’s some key details to not forget.
Factorio essentially kickstarted the genre. Satisfactory was inspired by it. I totally dig what Satisfactory has done but having a blueprint that is proven to work is skipping a lot of risk.
There is an inherent tradeoff between graphics and gameplay. Both have good reasons to focus on. Factorio has optimized it’s graphics and logic to an insane degree. Far beyond what is typically expected of an AAA game. You just don’t see that directly, since it provides value by absence. The game doesn’t even start to slow down until you are hundreds or thousands of hours in.
There is a reason AAA games frequently run badly even on top tier hardware, it’s because they prioritize graphical fidelity over all else. Optimization is often an afterthought, since programmers are expensive, and optimization doesn’t provide the immediately apparent value that graphics or new features do. Factorio had to take that risk though, because the game would not be fun if it couldn’t scale past the first ten hours.
Highly detailed graphics are very skillfully produced as well, but it’s a misunderstanding that a game’s code cannot be of similar quality and depth. A sort of graphical AAA vs functional AAA. Factorio took a lot of highly skilled programmers to pull off, while a graphically intensive game put those resources into their artists.