Does this make DF a 'bad' or 'not-so-great' game? Maybe, maybe not. It's all the matter of personal opinions. I see games, just like movies and music, as an experience rather than a sum of its whole. Which means it gives room for individual problems or errors a chance to make up for the mistake. Humans are not perfect, naturally, their creations are not so much different. It's bound to have errors. Judging from the past works of Maxis and EA, I think its safe to say that they are doing on okay job of fixing and reducing those errors over the course of years. Sims series has been improving by a mile, sim city improved from the first title to their latest installation sim city 4,
The game that most of us are here for on the site isn't DF5, and we don't have a DF4 that its replacing that might be different on certain areas.
That is what i think the biggest complaints are about, not what's new and improved, but what areas the game has
moved away from in others. And i think moved away from explains it perfectly, This is a game that is going to appeal to a different group of people than SC4. There are different priorities and game play focuses, and less focus on other ares. Mainly, social interaction is the new focus, realism and huge cities is less so. A city builder that's easier to get into is the focus, modding is less so. In the end, this probably means that SC5 will have a bigger audience than SC4 does. But it doesn't mean I can build something like
this, so its probably not the game for me personally, but i'm not going to say other people won't enjoy it.