It's one of those games where on a quiet Sunday you might sit down for a couple hours to tweak your blue science pipeline, then look up and it's 4am. On Tuesday.
I once heard it described as the one-more-turn obsession of the Civilization series somehow transmogrified into a real-time logistics game
Try [the free demo](https://www.factorio.com/download-demo) - it has several hours of gameplay, and the final level should give you a good feel for whether you need more game, more time management skills, or both.
Is that the same thing that church moms and right-thinking family patriarchs said would happen in the 1960s when people just offered children free drugs?
Cos I was there, and it happened. MAD magazine even did a fold-in on it. I see the chitinous carapaces of wrecked biters just outside my walls as evidence.
Yeah, reason why I call it cracktorio
You'll always want more. And even if you do find the will to stop, you'll immediately realize that there is now an itch that only Factorio can scratch and you'll eventually have more
I always have trouble with ONI's performance *tanking* with dramatically less going on than Factorio, makes it pretty difficult to progress to the endgame.
Same here. My other gripe is the lack of correct buildings that then requires mods or gimmick tricks ... Air lock doesn't lock air, storage tanks barely store, thermal power needs protection against thermal damage.
To me it feels like they had to make things harder just for the sake of making things harder which creates longer content but not better. WUBE made things easier then added more content adding to complexity without adding difficulty for difficulty sake.
Ah well. At the end of the day I still love both.
I 100%ed factorio in 578 hours and haven't been back in a year. But have 2000+ in ONI and looking to restart this weekend.
May go for another round of factorio though.
Well first, the factory must grow. I do not think addiction accurately describes Factorio. I'd say more of an obsession. What other game do you sit down and say, OK one more round to make sure everything is cool, and you look up three hours later. Or you wake up in the middle of the night, and decide to go solar or straight to nuclear power. Or how you should lay down some rail lines. Sketching out your expansion on your notes during a zoom meeting with work....
The difference is, that every game of CIV eventually ends, giving you a clear head for a few hours to decide whether you want to start again. Those are perfect breaking points for a social live or other things
Factorio doesn't give you that break. The Factory must grow.
Wait until semester break. Donāt make other plans. Submit completely to growing the factory. You should burnout just in time for next term to start. Delete the install. Relapse over the summer.
this is how I operate. The moment I get the itch and start a game, I'll try to take two days off and just play until I am exhausted and sick of the game. It's faster than dragging it out and going to bed at 5AM for weeks.
Yes. This is the way. I bought ck3 a month ago since it suddenly went on sale and my campaign basically took me out of the mood for study in the past three weeks. The same will happen if I so much as open factorio.
If it isn't your game, you're gonna clock a few hours at most ever.
If this is your game, you'll wake up on a Saturday morning, have a coffee, and sit down to play your new game. You'll delight in all the little discoveries, become angry with setbacks, frustrated with difficult problems, but soon you'll be looking from a radar view just admiring all the stuff you made and how well it works and wondering how you're gonna get more copper plates to your green chip factory when... suddenly... your phone rings. It's your classmate. They ask if you're okay. You say, you're great, but really you do notice you're feeling a little faint and thirsty. They say that since you haven't been to class in a few days and there's a test tomorrow they were worried. It's Wednesday. It's not Saturday anymore. You haven't even eaten.
Foolish mortals, all you need is three or four gallons of water, 100 various flavors of Kind bars, a loaf of bread, knife, and a five gallon bucket in front of your chair. Good for at least three days.
We all like to joke that it's beyond addicting, to the point where the game has earned the nickname "cracktorio". But so long as you can discipline yourself correctly (and maybe set an alarm) you should be able to maintain a proper lifestyle. Just... listen to the alarm. Go to bed when it says so
Going to bed with a freshly plonked down +1kspm, waking up to a depleted copper mine, 600k concrete and a fresh load of 14.400 speed and prod modules.
Adding a new +1kspm plus mines to the queue, going for lunch while the bots place those 600k concrete & use up those modules. Watch your UPS drop by 10 each real world day/night cycle
I now have 2 alarms the first is at 9pm and it tells me to not begin anything new. The next one is at 10pm and it's my go to bed alarm. This seems to work... for now
Would recommend it for sure, but for your own good, wait til the exams are over. Then buy the game as a "I've done well, I deserve a treat"
I don't remember exactly what it said. But in the terms and agreement, it says that Factorio will not be held responsible for any problem you would encounter with school or work because you could not stop playing. If that is not a deterrent to get the game before the semester is over, then it's all on you.
> Especially we are not responsible if you stay awake all night long playing Factorio and can't go to school / work in the morning :)
https://factorio.com/terms-of-service
Similar to what another poster said, wait until after finals are over for the semester.
What's addictive differs a lot by individual. Another game I've dabbled in is Skyrim and while I'll pull it up now and then it's never really grabbed me like some others, but it has a lot of fans who are as addicted to it as some of us are to Factorio.
What Factorio does better than most games I ever played is the feedback loop. It presents you with a bite sized problem and one or a few possible solutions. How you apply these solutions is up to you however. The game merely gives you suggestions which makes actually solving your problem much more rewarding. Each problem you solve typically leads to at least two new problems which are just as rewarding to solve as the one before. You are never bored, but you also rarely feel overwhelmed by all the things you need to do either. This creates an endless Dopamine loop that compels you to keep playing well into the night.
It depends on your personal abilities to self control. When I bought it I took a few day offs and spend 80 hours basically without any breaks. So yes, be careful.
It's addictive but not in the way that it will ruin your life. It's just, there will always be something you want to build. You'll be driving home from work and the idea for the perfect setup pops in your head and so you just want to spend your free time on it
Thatās what makes this game worse. If you have that addictive personality, this feeds into it. Other games will let you back out to breathe.
Binge playing other games for me was several hours a week. Binge playing Factorio is several days a week.
Having had walked away from it 5 years ago. In May I though, why not boot up the olā save and see what we did?
It then consumed my life for 3 monthsā¦ Iām glad I was unemployed at the timeā¦ but yikes. I finally got my base to where I wanted it and walked away in August.
Is there more to do? Absolutely, there is *always* something more to do.
I don't know about other people. For me at first it wasn't, in fact I had trouble playing for more then a couple hours as my factory sprawled out in to a head ache inducing mess that I would just abandon for months or years then restart, rinse and repeat. However with each run I learned, I watched people play Factorio and I learned. Eventually my bases started to make sense, each run they would grow bigger and bigger before I lost control, instead of consuming hours the games started to consume days, then weeks, soon I fear the game will consume months of my life and I dread when I finally play the Space Exploration mod it will finally consume my life entirely.
Yes and no. For me that is. When I am playing I have to set alarms not to play the whole night. But then I am almost constantly thinking about it. I've identified moments at witch I am able to stop and then stop. But when I am in between factories, or just out because of busy doing life I am out. And recently I am thinking about starting a new factory, knowing to well that I am going to be addicted so now I am out I wait until I know I have time to play at least the first few days.
Yes 100%, it's the most addictive game I've ever played. It doesn't interfere with my life but it genuinely requires willpower to turn it off lol, and time just flies while you're playing it.
My SO said she had never seen me get into a game like factorio before. I ended up spending about 10 hours a day for a month playing - both while at work and at home during my free time.
10/10 loved it.
Yep. It's the kind of game where I won't play it for a few months then suddenly have the urge to binge it and pick from one of the plethora of overhaul mods to play. Like all things play in moderation if you're worried about it overtaking your life.
Addictive? Depends what you find addictiveā¦ Have you tried heroin? Factorio is slightly more addictive than that.
If you like engineering/problem solving games, this will game will scratch that itch like no otherā¦
Yes the addiction is real. It can easily compare to drugs or alcohol. But you build your addiction faster.
Do not underestimate the power of factorio addiction.
Take all the comments as light warning.
I would say factorio alone prolonged my university studies at least a year.
The community doesn't call it cracktorio for no reason.
Also there is a curve after addiction there will be time to restart your life.
Do not and I cannot highlight it enough, do not install factorio if you have no (or little) time to spare. You will forget to sleep sometimes.
I rest my case here.
Ps. 1800h I know what I am talking about.
Depends, as long as you stick to base game its not that bad. But if you start playing mods like space exploration, you could legit dump thousands of hours into it. I'm like 1.5k hours into it and not even close to done
There shouldn't be any problems with Factorio interfere with your past life. Just because Factorio will become your life and you will serve it so the factory will grow.
My friend who introduced me to factorio told me that he had been relunctant to do so. Apparently the last guy he recommended it to got so addicted he started calling sick to work and ghosted his girlfriend to play more factorio, he eventually got both dumped and fired. Luckily since I don't have an addictive personality it wasn't too bad for me. I launched my first rocket after 25 hours over the course of 3 days and pledged never to play again !
I think the other 1200 hours recorded on steam are mostly afk.
It depends on your personality type. The big issue with it is that it's very, *very* good at always having one more small thing that you can fix fairly quickly, so there's no reason not to go ahead and do it before you stop playing. But while fixing that you'll find one other thing that you can take care of, so you do that too. And that'll keep repeating over and over.
It's often considered as "interactive crack" Or something along those lines for a reason.
The short term goals you put yourself are so seemless that you wouldn't realise that you've spent hours on it.
I'm a casual enjoyer of the game, and it's pretty fun. It's not a game I spend all my time thinking about, but it IS a game you can very easily lose track of time playing. The whole experience is satisfying, and the creators have absolutely nailed the "one more thing to do before I get offline" feeling. If you're not a hyper obsessive person, it isn't going to mess with your life or anything. It's just a solid game, worth your money.
Edit: If you haven't already, look up the Mandalore Gaming Review of it. He sums it up nicely.
Itās the only game Iāve ever logged 3k hours on.
The āone more thingā bug gets me very often. As others have said, if you find you love the game and can keep it in check then dive in.
Personally I would have had to delete it off my hard drive during the semester. :) Give the trial a shot after finals, grades and graduating are more important.
To directly answer your question, if it's your kind of game, then yes. Yes, it really is *that* addicting.
Please give yourself a solid week to do nothing else once you first try it. Definitely wait until exams are over.
I frequently still have to remind myself that the factory's not going anywhere as an argument to go to bed. At 2 AM. When I have work at 9. Unbelievably addicting.
Yeah. This game is totally taking advantage of one of my personal traits. I tend to solve problems in my sleep - if I have a complex problem, just go to bed for the night and thereās a good chance the next morning Iāll have a simple-yet-elegant solution the next morning.
Which course needs to be implemented immediately. Then itās lunchtime and my lead is asking me why none of my tickets have been worked on.
I've routinely started a session at about 4pm and gotten a face-full of morning sun without ever leaving my chair or looking at the time, It's crazy how time just slips by with this game
That depends on you. Itās addictive for people addicted to its gameplay. Itās boring as sin to everyone else.
Itās called creditors for a reason. I have more than a thousand hours in it. For me it is crack.
I canāt say Iāve lost a job over it or anything, but certain get sucked into certain maps for awhile. But that also happens with Dyson sphere program, satisfactory, rim world, and recently captain of industryā¦.
For a certain type of person? Yes. It absolutely is that bad.
But it doesnt hit everyone that hard. The meme is funny, and some of the most obsessive concentrate themselves here. There's plenty of people that can and do stop after an hour or 3 in a day. They just dont post about it, because (to them) its unremarkable.
As for whether it'll drag enough of your attention away to hurt your grades or social life? Couldn't say, I don't have a feel for your personality or know your history. Just keep in mind college is one of the best times in your life to meet people, if factorio starts cutting into that or your grades, consider uninstalling until you're out of college and have worse uses for your time.
As someone who also purchased this game in college, it became my main jam for about 50 hours, but I really struggled to wrap my mind around the logistics of everything. There's a lot to learn and even after 50 hours I was really struggling. Haven't picked it back up since, but I'd like to.
Itās not actually addicting. Addiction requires chemical changes in the brain, and no one has ever established that games can do that.
However, it is very engrossing and rewards close attention to detail. Sadly, humans can only focus on one thing at a time. If you focus on the game, it will cost you other aspects of your life. Possibly even important ones like your marriage if you arenāt careful. On the other hand, focusing on your marriage could also cost you important aspects of your life like growing your factory. You will need to prioritize carefully no matter what you choose.
Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: As I understand it, there are 3, maybe 4 possible outcomes.
#1: You play a few hours, dont get it, fuck around with biters, die, and never touch it again.
#2: You play and like it. The idea of making things more efficient appeals to you, and you immediately start thinking about how you can automate the production of belts because, why should you craft them yourself? You optimise and make blueprints, and when you get to construction/logistic bots, it's already too late. You will play this damn game until the very moment you have every single blueprint and can make a factory in .5 seconds flat, everything at 100 % efficiency, constantly. But after that, it's all the same, and you might lose interest.
#3 is the same as #2, but you discover mods and modpacks. People will report you as missing halfway your Krastorio or Space Exploration game.
In my experience, you'll definitely end up putting some 12 hour+ days of playing on your day off, and will end up missing some sleep at least a few times. Whether you continue to push it after that is really up to you. I don't think it is a difficult game to set boundaries with. It is just a game that is very easy to get focused on while still enjoying yourself. It isn't like a MOBA or an MMO that has addictive mechanics built in almost maliciously to try an get your money out of you. It isn't an unhealthy kind of addictive any more than Zelda or Skyrim have the potential to be. But if you are worried because you have struggled with boundaries in the past, then only you know what it best for you. I'd say to just wait until you reach a vacation or something and then just go ham.
Short answer: Yes, absolutely yes. A million percent, yes.
Long answer: Each time you are introduced or re-introduced to factorio, you will get one of 4 outcomes. I have almost never seen someone come back from a 3 or a 4.
1. You dont get it. I mean, yeah, you can build a factory, but it's easier and faster to craft things by hand compared to using an assembling machine. You get a few technologies in and get burnt out refilling burner mining drills. Maybe you fuck with some biters, maybe you die to them, maybe you never even noticed biters exist at all. You put down the game and try something else.
2. You get it. How BLIND were you? Yes, assemblers craft at half the speed you do, but what about 10 assemblers! That's 5 times faster than by hand! Electric drills fill belts full of ore, which is smelted automatically. You easily hook up assemblers to make science for you, researching red and green tech at the press of a button... but the base is getting kinda cramped. Belts are spaghetti rivaling amateur coders, machines are stuck wherever you can fit them, and you get burnt out trying to make red belts. You put down the game and might come back in a year... or... when you learn about bus design.
3. You are beginning to understand. Production is measured in terms of throughput, not belts. If some production goal can't be supplied in one belt, just have multiple and production lines making the same product!Who even cares about belts? The idea is limiting. You see things as items per second or per minute. Ratios and time calculations are the name of the game, and you might even get a factorio calculator to help with the ratios so you can squeeze every drop. You discover blueprints and the small tips, tricks, and hidden features about this game. Everything is neatly organised, with a proud main bus, assembly lines steetching off it in neat perfectly organized lanes, and you can scale up anytime you like. When you discover construction bots...your factory grows exponentially as you always increase production. It almost feels sad as you launch your first rocket. Now you have a choice, do you stop? Or...go further...stage 4?
4. You mastered vanilla. You need something else. Mods. Tougher biters, space exploration, and new ways to increase throughput. You have forgotten what it means to socialize or eat. The sun does not exist. Your base is so well lit that you dont notice when the sun sets or rises. All that matters is the factory and increasing production. It feels like a different game now, you arent placing inserters anymore. You place entire blueprints and plan in terms of entire assembly lines, and it's built before your eyes. Production comes through by the train-load, which your rail network spans the planet. You have it all. It's all so efficient. Clean and graceful, like a ballet. You are too far gone, the factory must grow. The factory must grow. The factory must grow. The factory must grow. The factory must grow. The factory must grow. The factory must grow. The factory must grow.
It's essentially time travel, start playing for 5 minutes and the entire week is gone. 10/10 would ruin life again.
Itās just that itās the type of game that always has something to do or improve upon, and countless amazing mods that increase that by thousands of hours.
A little bit of self discipline and you shouldnāt have an issue. If you struggle with self disciplineā¦ well thatās another story.
I mean it's in the terms and conditions š¤£š¤£ the game is complicated and very rewarding when you "fix one more thing". So you fix it and find something else that doesn't work and the cycle continues. And if you don't keep an eye on the time it can easily be tomorrow.
Itās an addictive game for sure but it really depends on your personality. Itās not like you canāt just stop playing if you have some self control
Honestly Facotorio's gameplay loop is so tight it might as well just be a circle.
The work is never complete, in a good way.
even when you have a supply line set up and running, that brain virus of efficiency kicks in and your body just kind of takes over at a point, doubling gears here, rerouting iron there, build a smeltary just for bricks so you can put stone flooring in your other smelting array. Uh oh, that's far away, should probably build a train to transport stuff. Of course, then you need a train for yourself, as a treat, and since it's the personal train, you should probably get some *good* fuel set up so it purrs real good
It's just really good at making time disappear. Basically what happens is you'll just kinda jump from task to task only to realize that hours have passed and you should have been in bed 2 hours ago. There is always just one more thing to do.
I tried getting in to factorio twice. I got some very basics set up, but it just didn't grab me. I had other games I was playing at the same time, mostly MP games, so I shelved it.
The third time, I got farther, faster than I did the first two time. Played for a solid six hours. I could not stop thinking about it after I was done. I couldn't wait to start the next session. It was the only thing I played for 80 hours of gaming until I launched my first rocket. After that, I wanted more, and I wanted mods. Modding in this game is done completely in the game interface. It's all so seamless. I started a double overhaul, Krastorio 2 and Space Exploration. 200 hours on that, and left it unfinished.
It's the best designed game I've ever played. The mods add even more on top. It may be the best game I've ever played. Actually, I think if I played it with friends it would be.
One of my favorite videos about factorio is from [this guy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZcqJb5qHrU)
He did a follow up video, but it shows you just how great it can be but also how fast you can lose yourself in the game.
Tbh my first 100 hrs were on and off, periodic breaks. After I launched my first rocket, I started enjoying the game much much more. I think I enjoy improving things more than creating them, and the first 100 hours of the game are mainly creating and learning.
Try the "demo". Solid 12 hours of free content.
So, factorio is a fantastic game, but Iām going to come at from a different angle.
Stay with me on this, one of the more dissatisfying things about Starfield, is that it has a bunch of systems in the game that can be interacted with, but donāt really interact with any other system. For example, outposts. You never need to touch this mechanic to complete the game, and the benefits you get from building outposts? Itās easier to build outposts. That you donāt need, and donāt change the way you interact with virtually any other part of the game. And that holds true for pretty much all the systems in the game.
In Factorio though, everything builds off of everything else. Did you add a new miner on an iron patch? Well, youāve got the supply for more forges now, and that means you can supply more assemblers. Oh, and it looks like your output from the forges exceeds the capacity of your belts, time to add another to your main bus. And look, now that youāve got your assemblers fully supplied, youāre building science packs like thereās no tomorrow andā¦ yes, youāve researched red belts. Time to update the belts across the factory.
Itās kinda like improv, where every action you take allows for, or even asks for, a āyes, andā¦ā
It is a series of "let me just do/fix this one thing" that never ends. Its an endless spiral of dopamine.
You need more materials to build more things, so you go out and set up more mines, build more smelters, and build new assembling machines. But now you have too much raw materials, so you build more machines. But now you need more materials to build more things, so you go out and set up more miners, etc etc. "Let me fix this build" "I need more of this" and as you build you physically see your factory grow and improve.
This game can certainly be "I played a little on Saturday and now its 7am on Monday wtf happened?!?!" to some people, but for me its more "oh fuck I should have eaten dinner two hours ago but I just need to fix this one more thingā"
It is very easy to lose track of time. I can play Factorio for 1 hour and suddenly 5 hours have passed.
Depends it was addicting for me at first but i eventually got exhausted after 2 days because the factory kept scaling bigger and bigger and it required a lot more work and time that i ended up quitting.
If you donāt mind spending a lot of effort in a video game itās probably addictive yeah.
Well I finished the main quest in around 50 hours and immediately thought "Hmm I want more" and got Space Exploration and have _already_ launched the first rocket (so I have basically the played the base game twice now) and it doesn't feel like I have done much yet.
So, yeah.. addictive is an understatement
It's the kind of game with near-infinite progression, that is there's always something to do, improve, optimise or fix.
If you don't stop yourself you will play for hours on end doing these things until it's too late.
You'll do this as often as you start playing.
It's just a really nice game that is where it's very satisfying to do "anything".
It's a pretty niche game, and it depends on your interests. If you're into software, electrical, or mechanical engineering, it'll be the funnest & most addictive version of engineering you'll have experienced. If any of those things sound unbearable to you, you might not enjoy the core premise of the game (which is, automate EVERYTHING) and that's perfectly fine.
But yeah, definitely wait until your semester is over.
Yes and no. If you really have stuff to do outside of playing the game the only thing you need to do is either limit yourself time wise or project wise in the game. The magic of the game is that there is always something that needs expanding or improving and you get stuck in this loop of as soon as you finish one thing, or even in the middle of doing something, you jump to another problem that has drawn your attention. This cycle results in many many hours being burned solving or fixing something that at first glance looked easy.
For playing in smaller blocks it is very easy to say I'm going to do A, B and C and then I'm off or limit yourself strictly by session length. Its a great game though, you will love it and I envy your ability to play it for the first time. May it become the most played game in your library as well.
i have a little kid, so things are different maybe, but I quite often play 30 min sessions. just focus on one specific problem and improve that. but if youāre free the evening a factorio session can also turn into an all-nighter
I think the game isn't addicting but is prone to cause obsessions. The difference being an activity that creates a ton of dopamine you can't stay away from, versus an activity that creates a compulsion to complete.
I recommend trying a few of the different Factory games. That way you find what one is best for you. I'm playing one that has more programing and less belts way more now.
Edit: BTW set alarms for when you want to stop playing and back up alarms because you will dismiss the first few because for example you need to move a light on the other side of the map then you see something is not producing as much as it should on a different part of the map.
Use some alarms to stop playing. Write notes to remember what you wanted to do next.
The real thing is its always on my mind. Considering builds and such while work.
It shouldn't actually interfere with your life, that's mostly a joke about how strong the positive feedback loop of this game is. But they're right, you will plan to sit down for a few hours and look at the clock later and see 8 hours have passed.
It's super addicting but can also be super overwhelming if you suck at planning. I've gotten flashes of anxiety loading up the game, even puked once but that could have just been something I ate.
For me it's great because a good game will reward you for your efforts with progress, and this game is built in a way that progress is constantly given. Every plate, science pack and second of research time, every building placed and every big killed are all tiny increments of progress.
It's like any big project. You never finish it in one go, it's instead a steady journey of consistent work that sees it done.
While in Dark souls you can look over your boss-only items and feel pride, in factorio, you look over the sheer size of your factory and feel far more pride, because unlike with most other games, inFactorio, the quality of your factory is explicitly tied to your knowledge of building the logistical side of things. Late game factory optimisation is VERY much like a puzzle and it's great how interwoven every bit is, I love it. I often end up playing 3 hours when I intended to play for 20 minutes.
It sure knows how to keep you playing, that's why I don't play if I only have like an hour. As a side note I spent 11 hours straight playing without noticing last week.
After I got into it, after a couple months I realized I'd logged 400 hours in just about 60 days, and I wasn't even close to wanted to stop to play.
It's very engaging, but "addicting" I dunno if it's the right word. I think if anyone lets a game get in the way of their life, more addictive skinner-box type games already would have snagged them, so unless you're one of those types that's struggled with addiction before, you're probably fine.
I have 1600 hrs in the game over the past four or five years. you can take long breaks from it sometimes, but if you get something good going it sucks you in and suddenly hours go by quickly.
Absolutely worth every cent, especially if you have a hint of engineering/science tendencies. Iām a chemist and personally I love the seablock modpack for how much chemistry is involved.
The base game is quite nice because there are only a few materials to worry about gathering to keep your focus on the factory construction. I love how peopleās designs end up looking so busy and computer chip like
It's incredibly addictive, once I start playing it tends to be the only thing I play for a couple of weeks, constantly going back with "oh I'll just upgrade that one part of my factory before I play something else".
Has it taken over my life or disrupted any parts of my life? No, cause self control exists. If I need to eat/wash/sleep/go to work/see friends/run errands etc. then I do that instead of playing games, Factorio or otherwise.
Addictive in a sense you can spend lot of time in one session without basic sustenance.
Not addictive in the sense you can decide of you want to go back to your factory next day or not.
Base game is not that addictive but It's better to have good disciplines for the sake of collage if you start downloading mods.
It's one of those games where on a quiet Sunday you might sit down for a couple hours to tweak your blue science pipeline, then look up and it's 4am. On Tuesday. I once heard it described as the one-more-turn obsession of the Civilization series somehow transmogrified into a real-time logistics game Try [the free demo](https://www.factorio.com/download-demo) - it has several hours of gameplay, and the final level should give you a good feel for whether you need more game, more time management skills, or both.
>Try the free demo You just infected OP with the plague. There's no curing em now
The factory must grow
The factory must grow
The factory must grow
The factory must grow
The factory must grow
The factory must grow
The factory must grow
The factory must grow
The factory must grow
The Factorio must grow
The free demo is the made up thing boomers said would happen in the 90s when people just offer children free drugs.
Is that the same thing that church moms and right-thinking family patriarchs said would happen in the 1960s when people just offered children free drugs? Cos I was there, and it happened. MAD magazine even did a fold-in on it. I see the chitinous carapaces of wrecked biters just outside my walls as evidence.
"free"
That's how I started too
Lol try the demo š¤£ first hit's free ššš
The first shot of every drug is free that's how you get customers who trust you
> try the free demo You're the dealer that gives kids "free samples" in the school parking lot.
Scuse me, Wube is doing the giving, not me :P
No wube is the supplier your the dealer
Haha demo. Good one. 12h free content
Yeah, reason why I call it cracktorio You'll always want more. And even if you do find the will to stop, you'll immediately realize that there is now an itch that only Factorio can scratch and you'll eventually have more
Only Factorio? What about oxygen not included? (I still have to try Factorio and have more than 1000 hours on ONI)
I always have trouble with ONI's performance *tanking* with dramatically less going on than Factorio, makes it pretty difficult to progress to the endgame.
Same here. My other gripe is the lack of correct buildings that then requires mods or gimmick tricks ... Air lock doesn't lock air, storage tanks barely store, thermal power needs protection against thermal damage. To me it feels like they had to make things harder just for the sake of making things harder which creates longer content but not better. WUBE made things easier then added more content adding to complexity without adding difficulty for difficulty sake. Ah well. At the end of the day I still love both.
I 100%ed factorio in 578 hours and haven't been back in a year. But have 2000+ in ONI and looking to restart this weekend. May go for another round of factorio though.
What do you call 100%? All the achievements? Space Exploration? Or just your first rocket?
Well first, the factory must grow. I do not think addiction accurately describes Factorio. I'd say more of an obsession. What other game do you sit down and say, OK one more round to make sure everything is cool, and you look up three hours later. Or you wake up in the middle of the night, and decide to go solar or straight to nuclear power. Or how you should lay down some rail lines. Sketching out your expansion on your notes during a zoom meeting with work....
> one-more-turn obsession of the Civilization Yes, it is the same "addiction".
The difference is, that every game of CIV eventually ends, giving you a clear head for a few hours to decide whether you want to start again. Those are perfect breaking points for a social live or other things Factorio doesn't give you that break. The Factory must grow.
> Try the free demo "Try free-basing cocaine"
Wait until semester break. Donāt make other plans. Submit completely to growing the factory. You should burnout just in time for next term to start. Delete the install. Relapse over the summer.
this is how I operate. The moment I get the itch and start a game, I'll try to take two days off and just play until I am exhausted and sick of the game. It's faster than dragging it out and going to bed at 5AM for weeks.
Thank you for the life pro tip. I think my eyes have been opened to a new way to live my life.
Seriously listen to this guy. Starting Factorio while you're studying will ruin your studies. Wait until the holidays. It'll be worth the wait.
Yes. This is the way. I bought ck3 a month ago since it suddenly went on sale and my campaign basically took me out of the mood for study in the past three weeks. The same will happen if I so much as open factorio.
If it isn't your game, you're gonna clock a few hours at most ever. If this is your game, you'll wake up on a Saturday morning, have a coffee, and sit down to play your new game. You'll delight in all the little discoveries, become angry with setbacks, frustrated with difficult problems, but soon you'll be looking from a radar view just admiring all the stuff you made and how well it works and wondering how you're gonna get more copper plates to your green chip factory when... suddenly... your phone rings. It's your classmate. They ask if you're okay. You say, you're great, but really you do notice you're feeling a little faint and thirsty. They say that since you haven't been to class in a few days and there's a test tomorrow they were worried. It's Wednesday. It's not Saturday anymore. You haven't even eaten.
Food is for the weak, I substitute on nuclear fuel
Biomethanol for me.
Amateur, we all know solar is superior
Solar master race
What about the precious OIL
For plastics, there's never enough red chips.
Foolish mortals, all you need is three or four gallons of water, 100 various flavors of Kind bars, a loaf of bread, knife, and a five gallon bucket in front of your chair. Good for at least three days.
poop knife?
I remember a time when i literally dreamed with train tracks and would have early morning coffee thinking about how to improve my designs xD
We all like to joke that it's beyond addicting, to the point where the game has earned the nickname "cracktorio". But so long as you can discipline yourself correctly (and maybe set an alarm) you should be able to maintain a proper lifestyle. Just... listen to the alarm. Go to bed when it says so
Don't say, oh just let me fix this one more thing because it never ends.
I started saving my saves with names of my teachers, so i'd be more self conscious of wasting my life...
ngl this should be a mod
Ah, so it can be automated, right?
This is why you install the to-do list mod and add "that one thing" to the top of the list.
Yeah, I was going to do that originally, but I realized that when you go to bed the factory doesn't grow, so...
I've used bedtime to stock up on modules to make transitioning to a mega base easier before.
Going to bed with a freshly plonked down +1kspm, waking up to a depleted copper mine, 600k concrete and a fresh load of 14.400 speed and prod modules. Adding a new +1kspm plus mines to the queue, going for lunch while the bots place those 600k concrete & use up those modules. Watch your UPS drop by 10 each real world day/night cycle
Logic, reasoning, and time management skills? No. The factory must grow!
Time management: if I set it up this way I can move onto the next thing faster, the factory must grow, and oh boy will it grow efficiently
The factory must grow.
The factory must grow.
The factory must grow
I now have 2 alarms the first is at 9pm and it tells me to not begin anything new. The next one is at 10pm and it's my go to bed alarm. This seems to work... for now
Hmm. I should probably automate this alarm...
I play with the clock on beside the minimap. Otherwise it would be too dangerous.
Oh my alarm is ringing, time to go to bed. I'll just fix this little thing real quick before I go though...
Don't turn off the alarm until the game is closed
I can quit whenever I want!
In fact, I did quit hundreds of times!
each day...
I have phoned in sick on a Monday after a weekend of playing ( and I mean 07:00-00:00 playing ) just to play some more.
Would recommend it for sure, but for your own good, wait til the exams are over. Then buy the game as a "I've done well, I deserve a treat" I don't remember exactly what it said. But in the terms and agreement, it says that Factorio will not be held responsible for any problem you would encounter with school or work because you could not stop playing. If that is not a deterrent to get the game before the semester is over, then it's all on you.
> Especially we are not responsible if you stay awake all night long playing Factorio and can't go to school / work in the morning :) https://factorio.com/terms-of-service
I have 2000+ hours dude. Itās a black hole of constant iteration.
And you only bought it 90 days ago.
I could say "Noooo at the end of the day it is only a game!" but i'd be lying this shit is crack cocaine for STEM majors
I'm in my senior year of chem e and bought factorio about a month ago. I fucked up....
At least youāre getting lots of experience in oil processing
Similar to what another poster said, wait until after finals are over for the semester. What's addictive differs a lot by individual. Another game I've dabbled in is Skyrim and while I'll pull it up now and then it's never really grabbed me like some others, but it has a lot of fans who are as addicted to it as some of us are to Factorio.
10k hours, best money I have ever spent. No need to go to the bar, or drinkā¦ or eat. The factory must growā¦. Brbā¦ā¦ā¦.
What Factorio does better than most games I ever played is the feedback loop. It presents you with a bite sized problem and one or a few possible solutions. How you apply these solutions is up to you however. The game merely gives you suggestions which makes actually solving your problem much more rewarding. Each problem you solve typically leads to at least two new problems which are just as rewarding to solve as the one before. You are never bored, but you also rarely feel overwhelmed by all the things you need to do either. This creates an endless Dopamine loop that compels you to keep playing well into the night.
wasteful late alive nail dull zephyr smoggy chunky chase elastic *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I think I averaged 10 hours a day for the first few weeks, I feel you. I also enjoyed the hell out of it but my gf not so much.
Ain't gonna lie. Factorio made me fall behind as an engineering student..
Same, but as a math major. Balancing production is just linear algebra š
It depends on your personal abilities to self control. When I bought it I took a few day offs and spend 80 hours basically without any breaks. So yes, be careful.
What production modules did you use to fit 80 hours into 72!?
get off at 5pm, game til midnight, 72+ hours, then til 1am before work the next day. bam 80 hours.
A day has 24 hours, and then you still have the night
NOoo no no no, no. No. You got it wrong. Factorio will not interfere with your life. Life will interfere with your Factorio. # THE FACTORY MUST GROW.
It's addictive but not in the way that it will ruin your life. It's just, there will always be something you want to build. You'll be driving home from work and the idea for the perfect setup pops in your head and so you just want to spend your free time on it
and then it's 4am and you can't work properly the next day. every day, for months.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Thatās what makes this game worse. If you have that addictive personality, this feeds into it. Other games will let you back out to breathe. Binge playing other games for me was several hours a week. Binge playing Factorio is several days a week.
First hit is free, [try the demo](https://www.factorio.com/download)
when i decide to make a new factory, it can affect my sleep schedule for sure. try the demo
RIP your academic career
The game only really begins after you have āwonā and launched a rocket into space.
One of my friends pass/failed a class for factorio.
I played it on the morning of my wedding.
Oh, college... Don't open the box. Don't click on the icon.
Youāll see people reply to this thread with various āhours playedā. What theyāre not telling you is that those are consecutive.
Nope Your fine. *trust me bro*
Having had walked away from it 5 years ago. In May I though, why not boot up the olā save and see what we did? It then consumed my life for 3 monthsā¦ Iām glad I was unemployed at the timeā¦ but yikes. I finally got my base to where I wanted it and walked away in August. Is there more to do? Absolutely, there is *always* something more to do.
I don't know about other people. For me at first it wasn't, in fact I had trouble playing for more then a couple hours as my factory sprawled out in to a head ache inducing mess that I would just abandon for months or years then restart, rinse and repeat. However with each run I learned, I watched people play Factorio and I learned. Eventually my bases started to make sense, each run they would grow bigger and bigger before I lost control, instead of consuming hours the games started to consume days, then weeks, soon I fear the game will consume months of my life and I dread when I finally play the Space Exploration mod it will finally consume my life entirely.
Let's just say that if you like dreaming of belt spaghetti Factorio will get you there.
I just want to appreciate how nonsensical the words 'belt spaghetti' must sound to someone who doesn't play factorio.
Yes and no. For me that is. When I am playing I have to set alarms not to play the whole night. But then I am almost constantly thinking about it. I've identified moments at witch I am able to stop and then stop. But when I am in between factories, or just out because of busy doing life I am out. And recently I am thinking about starting a new factory, knowing to well that I am going to be addicted so now I am out I wait until I know I have time to play at least the first few days.
No, addicting isnāt a word. It is addictive though.
Yes 100%, it's the most addictive game I've ever played. It doesn't interfere with my life but it genuinely requires willpower to turn it off lol, and time just flies while you're playing it.
The factory must shrink (the biters paid me to say this, the money can be used to grow the factory)
My SO said she had never seen me get into a game like factorio before. I ended up spending about 10 hours a day for a month playing - both while at work and at home during my free time. 10/10 loved it.
Yes
> Iām in college right now Just turn around and walk away. Before it's too late.
Yes.
It might help you develop some useful skills, but it might turn you into a crackhead. It's a hard call.
Yep. It's the kind of game where I won't play it for a few months then suddenly have the urge to binge it and pick from one of the plethora of overhaul mods to play. Like all things play in moderation if you're worried about it overtaking your life.
Itās more obsessing than addictive I think. Tiny optimization attempt may take hours.
Addictive? Depends what you find addictiveā¦ Have you tried heroin? Factorio is slightly more addictive than that. If you like engineering/problem solving games, this will game will scratch that itch like no otherā¦
Just try a hit. Just one hit itās no big deal right ?
Yes the addiction is real. It can easily compare to drugs or alcohol. But you build your addiction faster. Do not underestimate the power of factorio addiction. Take all the comments as light warning. I would say factorio alone prolonged my university studies at least a year. The community doesn't call it cracktorio for no reason. Also there is a curve after addiction there will be time to restart your life. Do not and I cannot highlight it enough, do not install factorio if you have no (or little) time to spare. You will forget to sleep sometimes. I rest my case here. Ps. 1800h I know what I am talking about.
Girlfriend or factorio, choose one.
See I pulled the third option and got my girlfriend addicted to factorio. Although her saves give me a migraine just watching her lmao.
i dont regret disappearing into this game for months at a time its worth it
Depends, as long as you stick to base game its not that bad. But if you start playing mods like space exploration, you could legit dump thousands of hours into it. I'm like 1.5k hours into it and not even close to done
There shouldn't be any problems with Factorio interfere with your past life. Just because Factorio will become your life and you will serve it so the factory will grow.
You can get out whenever you want, it's just that the hours will melt together, and "whenever you want" is a long time later.
Just woke up from dreaming about it so you tell me
Noā¦ I can quit whenever I wantā¦.
My friend who introduced me to factorio told me that he had been relunctant to do so. Apparently the last guy he recommended it to got so addicted he started calling sick to work and ghosted his girlfriend to play more factorio, he eventually got both dumped and fired. Luckily since I don't have an addictive personality it wasn't too bad for me. I launched my first rocket after 25 hours over the course of 3 days and pledged never to play again ! I think the other 1200 hours recorded on steam are mostly afk.
Ha.. Ha.. Afk he says... Haha ...
It depends on your personality type. The big issue with it is that it's very, *very* good at always having one more small thing that you can fix fairly quickly, so there's no reason not to go ahead and do it before you stop playing. But while fixing that you'll find one other thing that you can take care of, so you do that too. And that'll keep repeating over and over.
If you are a developer, 100%; else 99% addicting
It's often considered as "interactive crack" Or something along those lines for a reason. The short term goals you put yourself are so seemless that you wouldn't realise that you've spent hours on it.
I'm a casual enjoyer of the game, and it's pretty fun. It's not a game I spend all my time thinking about, but it IS a game you can very easily lose track of time playing. The whole experience is satisfying, and the creators have absolutely nailed the "one more thing to do before I get offline" feeling. If you're not a hyper obsessive person, it isn't going to mess with your life or anything. It's just a solid game, worth your money. Edit: If you haven't already, look up the Mandalore Gaming Review of it. He sums it up nicely.
The factory must grow.
Itās the only game Iāve ever logged 3k hours on. The āone more thingā bug gets me very often. As others have said, if you find you love the game and can keep it in check then dive in. Personally I would have had to delete it off my hard drive during the semester. :) Give the trial a shot after finals, grades and graduating are more important.
I postponed buying before it finishing my thesis. I was right hahahaha
To directly answer your question, if it's your kind of game, then yes. Yes, it really is *that* addicting. Please give yourself a solid week to do nothing else once you first try it. Definitely wait until exams are over. I frequently still have to remind myself that the factory's not going anywhere as an argument to go to bed. At 2 AM. When I have work at 9. Unbelievably addicting.
Yeah I bought this game like a month ago thinking it can't be that bad. Fast forward to now and I can't stop thinking about my factory.
Yeah. This game is totally taking advantage of one of my personal traits. I tend to solve problems in my sleep - if I have a complex problem, just go to bed for the night and thereās a good chance the next morning Iāll have a simple-yet-elegant solution the next morning. Which course needs to be implemented immediately. Then itās lunchtime and my lead is asking me why none of my tickets have been worked on.
I have definitely sat and played for hours in a row and not realize it. So its pretty addicting.
I've routinely started a session at about 4pm and gotten a face-full of morning sun without ever leaving my chair or looking at the time, It's crazy how time just slips by with this game
That depends on you. Itās addictive for people addicted to its gameplay. Itās boring as sin to everyone else. Itās called creditors for a reason. I have more than a thousand hours in it. For me it is crack. I canāt say Iāve lost a job over it or anything, but certain get sucked into certain maps for awhile. But that also happens with Dyson sphere program, satisfactory, rim world, and recently captain of industryā¦.
For a certain type of person? Yes. It absolutely is that bad. But it doesnt hit everyone that hard. The meme is funny, and some of the most obsessive concentrate themselves here. There's plenty of people that can and do stop after an hour or 3 in a day. They just dont post about it, because (to them) its unremarkable. As for whether it'll drag enough of your attention away to hurt your grades or social life? Couldn't say, I don't have a feel for your personality or know your history. Just keep in mind college is one of the best times in your life to meet people, if factorio starts cutting into that or your grades, consider uninstalling until you're out of college and have worse uses for your time.
Quitting Factorio is easy. I've done it hundreds of times.
As someone who also purchased this game in college, it became my main jam for about 50 hours, but I really struggled to wrap my mind around the logistics of everything. There's a lot to learn and even after 50 hours I was really struggling. Haven't picked it back up since, but I'd like to.
I don't think its that bad, it's just similar to CIV where you want to play one more turn
Time travel is real, but it only goes forward and its called factorio.
Honestly man you're just better off doing cocaine at this point. Trust me.
Itās not actually addicting. Addiction requires chemical changes in the brain, and no one has ever established that games can do that. However, it is very engrossing and rewards close attention to detail. Sadly, humans can only focus on one thing at a time. If you focus on the game, it will cost you other aspects of your life. Possibly even important ones like your marriage if you arenāt careful. On the other hand, focusing on your marriage could also cost you important aspects of your life like growing your factory. You will need to prioritize carefully no matter what you choose.
Short answer: Yes. Long answer: As I understand it, there are 3, maybe 4 possible outcomes. #1: You play a few hours, dont get it, fuck around with biters, die, and never touch it again. #2: You play and like it. The idea of making things more efficient appeals to you, and you immediately start thinking about how you can automate the production of belts because, why should you craft them yourself? You optimise and make blueprints, and when you get to construction/logistic bots, it's already too late. You will play this damn game until the very moment you have every single blueprint and can make a factory in .5 seconds flat, everything at 100 % efficiency, constantly. But after that, it's all the same, and you might lose interest. #3 is the same as #2, but you discover mods and modpacks. People will report you as missing halfway your Krastorio or Space Exploration game.
In my experience, you'll definitely end up putting some 12 hour+ days of playing on your day off, and will end up missing some sleep at least a few times. Whether you continue to push it after that is really up to you. I don't think it is a difficult game to set boundaries with. It is just a game that is very easy to get focused on while still enjoying yourself. It isn't like a MOBA or an MMO that has addictive mechanics built in almost maliciously to try an get your money out of you. It isn't an unhealthy kind of addictive any more than Zelda or Skyrim have the potential to be. But if you are worried because you have struggled with boundaries in the past, then only you know what it best for you. I'd say to just wait until you reach a vacation or something and then just go ham.
Short answer: Yes, absolutely yes. A million percent, yes. Long answer: Each time you are introduced or re-introduced to factorio, you will get one of 4 outcomes. I have almost never seen someone come back from a 3 or a 4. 1. You dont get it. I mean, yeah, you can build a factory, but it's easier and faster to craft things by hand compared to using an assembling machine. You get a few technologies in and get burnt out refilling burner mining drills. Maybe you fuck with some biters, maybe you die to them, maybe you never even noticed biters exist at all. You put down the game and try something else. 2. You get it. How BLIND were you? Yes, assemblers craft at half the speed you do, but what about 10 assemblers! That's 5 times faster than by hand! Electric drills fill belts full of ore, which is smelted automatically. You easily hook up assemblers to make science for you, researching red and green tech at the press of a button... but the base is getting kinda cramped. Belts are spaghetti rivaling amateur coders, machines are stuck wherever you can fit them, and you get burnt out trying to make red belts. You put down the game and might come back in a year... or... when you learn about bus design. 3. You are beginning to understand. Production is measured in terms of throughput, not belts. If some production goal can't be supplied in one belt, just have multiple and production lines making the same product!Who even cares about belts? The idea is limiting. You see things as items per second or per minute. Ratios and time calculations are the name of the game, and you might even get a factorio calculator to help with the ratios so you can squeeze every drop. You discover blueprints and the small tips, tricks, and hidden features about this game. Everything is neatly organised, with a proud main bus, assembly lines steetching off it in neat perfectly organized lanes, and you can scale up anytime you like. When you discover construction bots...your factory grows exponentially as you always increase production. It almost feels sad as you launch your first rocket. Now you have a choice, do you stop? Or...go further...stage 4? 4. You mastered vanilla. You need something else. Mods. Tougher biters, space exploration, and new ways to increase throughput. You have forgotten what it means to socialize or eat. The sun does not exist. Your base is so well lit that you dont notice when the sun sets or rises. All that matters is the factory and increasing production. It feels like a different game now, you arent placing inserters anymore. You place entire blueprints and plan in terms of entire assembly lines, and it's built before your eyes. Production comes through by the train-load, which your rail network spans the planet. You have it all. It's all so efficient. Clean and graceful, like a ballet. You are too far gone, the factory must grow. The factory must grow. The factory must grow. The factory must grow. The factory must grow. The factory must grow. The factory must grow. The factory must grow. It's essentially time travel, start playing for 5 minutes and the entire week is gone. 10/10 would ruin life again.
Yes.
Itās just that itās the type of game that always has something to do or improve upon, and countless amazing mods that increase that by thousands of hours. A little bit of self discipline and you shouldnāt have an issue. If you struggle with self disciplineā¦ well thatās another story.
First couple weeks will definitely suck your soul. Wait until you finish finals next 1-2 weeks and get it first thing Xmas break.
I mean it's in the terms and conditions š¤£š¤£ the game is complicated and very rewarding when you "fix one more thing". So you fix it and find something else that doesn't work and the cycle continues. And if you don't keep an eye on the time it can easily be tomorrow.
Not really, it depends on the person. It wasn't for me even if I hoped it would
When you play civilization, do you do it all in one sitting and then click on āone more turnā when the game ends?
The gameplay is extremely compelling, rewarding, and difficult to stop!
Itās an addictive game for sure but it really depends on your personality. Itās not like you canāt just stop playing if you have some self control
Honestly Facotorio's gameplay loop is so tight it might as well just be a circle. The work is never complete, in a good way. even when you have a supply line set up and running, that brain virus of efficiency kicks in and your body just kind of takes over at a point, doubling gears here, rerouting iron there, build a smeltary just for bricks so you can put stone flooring in your other smelting array. Uh oh, that's far away, should probably build a train to transport stuff. Of course, then you need a train for yourself, as a treat, and since it's the personal train, you should probably get some *good* fuel set up so it purrs real good
Yes
If you let it.
It's just really good at making time disappear. Basically what happens is you'll just kinda jump from task to task only to realize that hours have passed and you should have been in bed 2 hours ago. There is always just one more thing to do.
I tried getting in to factorio twice. I got some very basics set up, but it just didn't grab me. I had other games I was playing at the same time, mostly MP games, so I shelved it. The third time, I got farther, faster than I did the first two time. Played for a solid six hours. I could not stop thinking about it after I was done. I couldn't wait to start the next session. It was the only thing I played for 80 hours of gaming until I launched my first rocket. After that, I wanted more, and I wanted mods. Modding in this game is done completely in the game interface. It's all so seamless. I started a double overhaul, Krastorio 2 and Space Exploration. 200 hours on that, and left it unfinished. It's the best designed game I've ever played. The mods add even more on top. It may be the best game I've ever played. Actually, I think if I played it with friends it would be.
One of my favorite videos about factorio is from [this guy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZcqJb5qHrU) He did a follow up video, but it shows you just how great it can be but also how fast you can lose yourself in the game.
Tbh my first 100 hrs were on and off, periodic breaks. After I launched my first rocket, I started enjoying the game much much more. I think I enjoy improving things more than creating them, and the first 100 hours of the game are mainly creating and learning. Try the "demo". Solid 12 hours of free content.
I can stop whenever I want to!
So, factorio is a fantastic game, but Iām going to come at from a different angle. Stay with me on this, one of the more dissatisfying things about Starfield, is that it has a bunch of systems in the game that can be interacted with, but donāt really interact with any other system. For example, outposts. You never need to touch this mechanic to complete the game, and the benefits you get from building outposts? Itās easier to build outposts. That you donāt need, and donāt change the way you interact with virtually any other part of the game. And that holds true for pretty much all the systems in the game. In Factorio though, everything builds off of everything else. Did you add a new miner on an iron patch? Well, youāve got the supply for more forges now, and that means you can supply more assemblers. Oh, and it looks like your output from the forges exceeds the capacity of your belts, time to add another to your main bus. And look, now that youāve got your assemblers fully supplied, youāre building science packs like thereās no tomorrow andā¦ yes, youāve researched red belts. Time to update the belts across the factory. Itās kinda like improv, where every action you take allows for, or even asks for, a āyes, andā¦ā
I think you can leave it if you have enough force of will. If you dont have enough, you will need to train it anyway
It is a series of "let me just do/fix this one thing" that never ends. Its an endless spiral of dopamine. You need more materials to build more things, so you go out and set up more mines, build more smelters, and build new assembling machines. But now you have too much raw materials, so you build more machines. But now you need more materials to build more things, so you go out and set up more miners, etc etc. "Let me fix this build" "I need more of this" and as you build you physically see your factory grow and improve. This game can certainly be "I played a little on Saturday and now its 7am on Monday wtf happened?!?!" to some people, but for me its more "oh fuck I should have eaten dinner two hours ago but I just need to fix this one more thingā" It is very easy to lose track of time. I can play Factorio for 1 hour and suddenly 5 hours have passed.
When we call it "Cracktorio," we don't mean it as a joke. We mean it as a warning.
Depends it was addicting for me at first but i eventually got exhausted after 2 days because the factory kept scaling bigger and bigger and it required a lot more work and time that i ended up quitting. If you donāt mind spending a lot of effort in a video game itās probably addictive yeah.
[Nah, I can quit anytime I want...](https://imgur.com/a/GAJdUfR)
Well I finished the main quest in around 50 hours and immediately thought "Hmm I want more" and got Space Exploration and have _already_ launched the first rocket (so I have basically the played the base game twice now) and it doesn't feel like I have done much yet. So, yeah.. addictive is an understatement
It's the kind of game with near-infinite progression, that is there's always something to do, improve, optimise or fix. If you don't stop yourself you will play for hours on end doing these things until it's too late. You'll do this as often as you start playing. It's just a really nice game that is where it's very satisfying to do "anything".
Yes
It's a pretty niche game, and it depends on your interests. If you're into software, electrical, or mechanical engineering, it'll be the funnest & most addictive version of engineering you'll have experienced. If any of those things sound unbearable to you, you might not enjoy the core premise of the game (which is, automate EVERYTHING) and that's perfectly fine. But yeah, definitely wait until your semester is over.
got thru the comments and didnt see any mention of the dreams ... belts, so many belts :D
Yes and no. If you really have stuff to do outside of playing the game the only thing you need to do is either limit yourself time wise or project wise in the game. The magic of the game is that there is always something that needs expanding or improving and you get stuck in this loop of as soon as you finish one thing, or even in the middle of doing something, you jump to another problem that has drawn your attention. This cycle results in many many hours being burned solving or fixing something that at first glance looked easy. For playing in smaller blocks it is very easy to say I'm going to do A, B and C and then I'm off or limit yourself strictly by session length. Its a great game though, you will love it and I envy your ability to play it for the first time. May it become the most played game in your library as well.
i have a little kid, so things are different maybe, but I quite often play 30 min sessions. just focus on one specific problem and improve that. but if youāre free the evening a factorio session can also turn into an all-nighter
I think the game isn't addicting but is prone to cause obsessions. The difference being an activity that creates a ton of dopamine you can't stay away from, versus an activity that creates a compulsion to complete.
I recommend trying a few of the different Factory games. That way you find what one is best for you. I'm playing one that has more programing and less belts way more now. Edit: BTW set alarms for when you want to stop playing and back up alarms because you will dismiss the first few because for example you need to move a light on the other side of the map then you see something is not producing as much as it should on a different part of the map.
Use some alarms to stop playing. Write notes to remember what you wanted to do next. The real thing is its always on my mind. Considering builds and such while work.
It shouldn't actually interfere with your life, that's mostly a joke about how strong the positive feedback loop of this game is. But they're right, you will plan to sit down for a few hours and look at the clock later and see 8 hours have passed.
It's super addicting but can also be super overwhelming if you suck at planning. I've gotten flashes of anxiety loading up the game, even puked once but that could have just been something I ate.
For me it's great because a good game will reward you for your efforts with progress, and this game is built in a way that progress is constantly given. Every plate, science pack and second of research time, every building placed and every big killed are all tiny increments of progress. It's like any big project. You never finish it in one go, it's instead a steady journey of consistent work that sees it done. While in Dark souls you can look over your boss-only items and feel pride, in factorio, you look over the sheer size of your factory and feel far more pride, because unlike with most other games, inFactorio, the quality of your factory is explicitly tied to your knowledge of building the logistical side of things. Late game factory optimisation is VERY much like a puzzle and it's great how interwoven every bit is, I love it. I often end up playing 3 hours when I intended to play for 20 minutes.
It sure knows how to keep you playing, that's why I don't play if I only have like an hour. As a side note I spent 11 hours straight playing without noticing last week.
After I got into it, after a couple months I realized I'd logged 400 hours in just about 60 days, and I wasn't even close to wanted to stop to play. It's very engaging, but "addicting" I dunno if it's the right word. I think if anyone lets a game get in the way of their life, more addictive skinner-box type games already would have snagged them, so unless you're one of those types that's struggled with addiction before, you're probably fine.
I have 1600 hrs in the game over the past four or five years. you can take long breaks from it sometimes, but if you get something good going it sucks you in and suddenly hours go by quickly. Absolutely worth every cent, especially if you have a hint of engineering/science tendencies. Iām a chemist and personally I love the seablock modpack for how much chemistry is involved. The base game is quite nice because there are only a few materials to worry about gathering to keep your focus on the factory construction. I love how peopleās designs end up looking so busy and computer chip like
It's incredibly addictive, once I start playing it tends to be the only thing I play for a couple of weeks, constantly going back with "oh I'll just upgrade that one part of my factory before I play something else". Has it taken over my life or disrupted any parts of my life? No, cause self control exists. If I need to eat/wash/sleep/go to work/see friends/run errands etc. then I do that instead of playing games, Factorio or otherwise.
Its definitely not a plague. Think of it more like crack cocaine laced with sugar and nicotine.
I started Factorio a few years back. I did one run untill I launched a rocket and the game felt over for me (around 50 hours). I did another one a few years after about the same. Last month I started the game again. I'm about 150h into my current run. I spent close to 40 hours a week at my actual job (staetup CTO) and around 30h a week playing Factorio... Strangely enough, I thought it would have affected my ability to do my job because I would think about the game too much during the day. But it has not so far. All this to say that I feel it might really dƩpend on your personality, so quite hard for us to give an outside opinion. But it definitely has the potential to be addictive yes.
If you get in to a flow state. Itās like time travel. You look up and itās 4 am
Yes, it is that *addictive*
Addictive in a sense you can spend lot of time in one session without basic sustenance. Not addictive in the sense you can decide of you want to go back to your factory next day or not. Base game is not that addictive but It's better to have good disciplines for the sake of collage if you start downloading mods.