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[Wieniawa]

I first tried DF in 2012 or 2013, don’t remember, and it seems mostly the same. I haven’t tried every version, though. I tried the current. There are some new features like libraries and taverns that both seem lacking depth, and trees, but no groundbreaking changes. Adventure mode is as awful as ever, an unplayable mess. Am I missing something? Am I alone in thinking that? Is it likely to change faster in the future?

[Shonai_Dweller]

If you hated it then, you still will now. Not much point in forcing yourself to play something you don't like. Bit weird really.

[Bumber]

Sending out raids is pretty groundbreaking, isn't it? (Too bad there's a corruption bug with it that causes the game to crash.)

You can build a site in adventure mode.

Villainous plots and the emotions system are new, but are horribly broken in fortress mode.

The myths and magic arc should change a whole lot of things, whenever that actually gets worked on.

[Salmeuk]

This seems like a disingenuous question, and you really just wanted to share how awful you think the game is. Which is cool, opinions are opinions. However it's a massive waste of our time to 'defend' the game against the vague criticisms of an escaped lunatic.

Yes, the game has changed. How much? Depends on your perspective. As an example, the internal elements of racing cars are changed every year, in an attempt to harness the latest technology, but the outside often looks very similar, and an uninformed observer might not notice the difference.

[FAA]

Most changes are apparently “under the hood” and not very noticeable, apart from some obvious changes in fortress mode. If you want a game that evolves fast and aims to feature complete things before moving on to others, this isn’t the game for you. DF development is dictated by what devs feel needs doing and is generally very buggy. It often stays buggy, too, like the catsplosion that lasted for years iirc.

Try Cataclysm DDA for quick evolution and development. It adds new stuff all the time, but the experimental version can be quite buggy sometimes. Its main mode, the only mode, is also more polished, has more features and a more realistic feel to it. It’s a game, DF is an experience and a journey. Come back in 15 years, adv mode might be on Cata levels by then.

[Leonidas]

Minecarts.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Minecarts.

They were around 7 years ago.

[kaijyuu]

Raids are gamechanging for me. Being able to steal artifacts and completely destroy civs that are sieging me adds a lot to do once a functional fort is set up. Corruption can be avoided with sufficient save backups too.

[Wieniawa]

I suppose it depends then. Fortress mode doesn’t seem fundamentally different. In many early access games, including those developed by one- or two-men studios, returning to it after a year or two can be shocking, with dozens if not hundreds of new features. Returning to DF after some years doesn’t feel this way at all.

Adventure mode is still barebones and unplayable. Nothing new here.

[Wieniawa]

If you hated it then, you still will now. Not much point in forcing yourself to play something you don't like. Bit weird really.

I love DF, I’m just surprised that it hasn’t changed much after 8 years of continuous development. I am not familiar with how it is developed so the main question is whether it’s likely to change, as in - have some features deemed essential but largely irrelevant to gameplay, like world gen, complete so more gameplay can be added.

[Shonai_Dweller]

If you hated it then, you still will now. Not much point in forcing yourself to play something you don't like. Bit weird really.

I love DF, I’m just surprised that it hasn’t changed much after 8 years of continuous development. I am not familiar with how it is developed so the main question is whether it’s likely to change, as in - have some features deemed essential but largely irrelevant to gameplay, like world gen, complete so more gameplay can be added.

World gen is the game.

Making fortress mode relate more to the game, yes that's coming along with raids and such, but still a fair way to go yet. Like I say, if you don't care to play the game, don't expect anyone here to try to sell it to you. It's not worth it. I see huge differences between now and 7 years ago, but that's because I play the game.

Explaining on a forum the difference visitors, taverns, temples, automated vein mining, priority designations, stress, new necromancer lead races, raiding, artifacts, adventurer parties, adventurer sites, impersonation, kobold sites and optimisations that make the game faster than it was 7 years ago to someone who doesn't even try to play the game to see what's changed is kind of pointless.

And, as I said, it's now a world simulator with a living world going on outside your fortress as you play. Everything which happens in the world effects your game. To me, anything pre-2014 is just some quirky bug-filled site management game. There's tons of those around on Steam with graphics and with less bugs.

[Moeteru]

World gen is the game.

I agree that a lot of features have been added, but I'd argue that the vast majority of fun and stories to come out of Dwarf Fortress have very little to do with world gen. When you're playing fortress mode most interactions with the outside world aren't easily distinguishable from completely random or scripted events, and some parts of the simulation are simply turned off. The whole complex history simulator could be replaced with a static procedural world generator plus a simple AI for managing alliances/warfare and most players would hardly notice a difference.
Adventure mode lets you interact with the world more directly, but most of the fun still comes from its absurdity rather than its deep and realistic history. It hardly matters who your civ's king's grandparents were when you're busy throwing fluffy wamblers at people, practicing wrestling on an undead badger, or collecting dozens of shields to turn yourself into a one-man shield wall.

[FAA]

Couldn’t agree more! There is a lot of effort to make DF a great system to build procedural worlds, but it often fails when it comes to basic gameplay features. I wouldn’t mind a much more static and less detailed legends generation game if we got realistic-looking towns and structures instead. I don’t care if villagers have detailed backstories if their homes are simple placeholders.

For some reason gameplay features don’t take precedence over obscure worldgen features most players don’t care about. It was great when Toady made cats lick themselves and get drunk in the process, but that’s not meaningful at all. It doesn’t make the game better at all and 99% of players will never see or care. The best example - modders, in their spare time, can easily add crafting to adventure mode, something we’ve been asking for for years now, and the base game still doesn’t deliver. He didn’t even integrate those mods to the base game which should be super easy.

[Uthimienure]

Tarn and Zach have made DF the way they wanted to, and I say more power to them for making their dream game without pandering to and becoming slaves to the players' wants and suggestions. Yes, they do listen and implement suggestions, I'm not saying they don't, but there's a distinction between that and being completely driven by the suggestions. We can play the game or not, it's our choice. What they've created is a monumental thing, buggy or not. Relating to the title of this thread, whether it looks like it changed or it doesn't look like it changed sounds like a view from the outside looking in. Playing it for days, perhaps weeks or months (not just a few hours) reveals the game's changes and how far those changes reach into corners of game-play and the lives of the dwarfs. LONG LIVE DWARF FORTRESS!

[AliceRed]

Dwarf Fortress is an auteur developer's art project to create a world generator, always has been and always will be. If you don't like it, this project isn't for you, and you can stick to other games.