I've given Factorio dozens of shots now, and have played for hours and hours with people who are great at the game, but it just isn't for me. I get bored in the monotony of the early game, and I'm too stupid to keep things going in the mid game.
For me, I think it would me a fun game if there was more strategy or something else to do besides build the factory. It seems to me the progression system is actually really linear.
> I get bored in the monotony of the early game, and I'm too stupid to keep things going in the mid game.
This is my other big issue. I don't like putting in much effort when playing video games. It seems like just getting blue science takes hours of work, and those hours were fun for the first factory, but now it's just repetitive.
I think though that making train networks is my big pleasure with the game. Very satisfying.
That being said, I understand the sentiment. I have been playing lots of modded Minecraft and Factorio over the past decade, and lately I felt a bit of guilt because I feel I could be working on some other, more meaningful, project.
That being said, I do enjoy it at LAN parties because I just build walls and hunt biter nests
* "This game is scratching the same itches as my day job, but with more dopamine and less bureaucracy - how can I play this all the time?" * "This game requires me to expend the same brain-effort as my work/side-projects, but I don't even get anything tangible out of it? Why would I ever 'play' this?"
Neither of them are wrong - and I suspect that the same person might even have different reactions at different points in their life.
I can't easily "refactor" parts of my factory without fearing it will break some pipeline that depends on the changes. I wish there was a way to "write" "tests" or do mass changes safely. Blueprints and robots help automate things, but it's not that flexible.
I wish I could use a "debugger" and step through the execution and play with changes to see how it affects the factory.
And then I finally get to the conclusion that this would all be easier from a text editor using proper programming tools, and more enjoyable to work on a real project that could have tangible benefits (and then never finish that either...).
Robots at least make it somewhat bearable.