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[Alidus]

Is there a limit to FUN?

Losing is obviously fun. How fun is it though? At what point do you say "Ok, that's enough of that." and try to mitigate a certain type of FUN?

Being careful of cave ins and floods is obviously attempting to mitigate FUN. So is having a military, and booze, and well, building anything at all (unless you are building it for the purpose of watching it be destroyed by FUN)

If FUN is fun, in an absolute sense wouldn't the most fun be

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

giving everyone a pick and having them dig straight into HFS from the very start?

[bitesh]

As I see it, FUN is only fun when the outcome is uncertain. If you leave your fort unprotected, you know you're gonna get slaughtered, there's no point in playing. If you've been playing since, like, 40d and you already know how to deal with most shit that comes at you, that's not fun either. That's why you start embarking on evil biomes or making insane mega-projects and whatnot.

Going straight to the circus could be fun if your miners are also soldiers, and pretty experienced at that, otherwise you know you're gonna get your ass handed to you. There's no point. I don't think you can normally embark with good enough dwarfs for that to be fun.

[Leatra]

FUN is fun if there are enough creatures and dwarves to kill or get killed.

[lordcooper]

Desperately trying not to lose is fun!

[Anathema]

As I see it, FUN is only fun when the outcome is uncertain.

Insightful analysis, but let me expand on it slightly: FUN is fun when the outcome is uncertain, and you can do something to affect the outcome. That is the essence of DF's Fun: suspecting - but not knowing for certain - that you're screwed, and desperately scrambling to prevent the proverbial screwing.

Edit: An illustrative example - consider the old version 40d [spoiler metal]; mining it resulted in a random chance, every so often, for you to instantly get a "game over" screen. Thus the result was uncertain.. but not, by my definition at least, fun: you couldn't do anything about it. Compare to the new implementation of [spoiler metal], which I consider to be very FUN/fun: because even though you're probably screwed, you can do something about it. You at least have a chance to fight back, and as certain infamous forum stories attest to, it can be beaten - that fighting back with the desperate hope of success is the fun part.

[Alidus]

Yeah, uncertainty is definitely fun. Which is why (just personally) I try not to use stuff like reveal. My magma piston I'm working on went through all three cavern layers - two layers in the middle of a lake - because I didn't survey it, I just dug down. It was fun to plan out especially on the second and third cavern when I started seeing giant olms and crap running around, thinking "I want this done in a timely manner without scaring off my dwarfs. How many ways can I breach this, and which ones are the best?"

As for trying not to lose... I have to say "Do, or do not. There is no try."

[bitesh]

Except there is "try", in this context. The whole game is trying not to lose and failing.

[Alidus]

Except there is "try", in this context. The whole game is trying not to lose and failing.

See, that's the catch though. There's surely ways to not lose, at least presently. If you fail it, you either didn't actually try, or weren't experienced enough and it was rather inevitable.

Or preventing a loss itself isn't necessarily the goal to begin with. It's more preventing loss in ways that you find appealing.

[Loud Whispers]

If you leave your fort unprotected, you know you're gonna get slaughtered, there's no point in playing.

I'd beg to differ. Making the game rediculously hard, and surviving that. That's a good amount of fun for me.

[bitesh]

Well, I'M certainly "not experienced enough" so there's only so much insight I can give...

[expwnent]

Desperately trying not to lose is fun!

Seconded. If it's too easy, or too hard, you're not really trying. Effort is fun.

[Alidus]

Desperately trying not to lose is fun!

Seconded. If it's too easy, or too hard, you're not really trying. Effort is fun.

An intentional sub optimal effort isn't really effort though, is it?

For example, I can get a self sustaining and impervious fort by the end of year 1. This means an airlock and underground forest and pasture, and maybe even catching a GCS for silk if I feel like it. I can comfortably ignore sieges until they go away, if I want to. Nothing gets in unless I say it does.

On the other hand though, I don't usually feel like doing this. I choose to have a way in and guard it.  If something gets in and wrecks my fort, it definitely wasn't because I tried to keep them out. If I actually tried it would be successful.

So essentially if failure happens, it's because I allow it to.

[Qmarx]

On the other hand, if you really wanted to 'try' to avoid failure, you would just avoid running dwarf fortress to begin with.

[Alidus]

On the other hand, if you really wanted to 'try' to avoid failure, you would just avoid running dwarf fortress to begin with.

That too.

[i2amroy]

Going straight to the circus could be fun if your miners are also soldiers, and pretty experienced at that, otherwise you know you're gonna get your ass handed to you. There's no point. I don't think you can normally embark with good enough dwarfs for that to be fun.

Back in 40d if you timed your abandon right you could reclaim with up to like 80 skilled soldiers and tear through just about anything that wiped your old fortress out and then more. Those fun times vanished with 2010 though.