I feel guilty about it, but can't help thinking what I think about issues such as this. I do
try and go into what I say (in such circumstances) rather than "AOL"-it.
I also don't like the "If you don't like it, then don't play it" idea, but (as I think I said in my own posts) if
I ever don't like the way DF is going then
I will stop playing it (or keep with the version I still did like[1]...), so I can't blame others for taking that route due to
extant failings that they perceive (rightly or wrongly, and it's all YMMV anyhow).
Some things I say may even sound elitist. It's not my intention, but then there's entire populations of Elitists that never consider themselves that, so who knows whether that's what I convey myself as, in this type of discussion. All I know is that you can get what you put into the game. It's complicated, and that's more or less what the game's about. Is it surprising that the playing of the game is
also complicated? I also have Progress Quest running on this computer, as a possible antithesis to DF (which I don't currently or indeed
often have working on
this computer, BYGTI), and would certainly be so if it had better graphics...
Horses for courses, and if equine flesh aint on your menu I'm not forcing you to eat it, is all I'm saying. And it can't be surprising that the most likely people to frequent the boards often enough to come in and swamp a thread such as this are people who haven't given up on that particular diet yet, and may indeed quite like it. Some of us may prefer it raw and tenderised beneath our saddles, some would prefer using a BBQ, some probably go for a more varied diet and occasionally go for horse-flesh within a stew of many meats, highly seasoned and boiled so that any bugs that infest it are just denatured protein and can be effectively forgotten about. People who don't think they can handle it needn't, and I'm not going to force-feed any vegans or pretend that there's a direct Quorn-like equivalent for those that
think they would like the kind of food but can't handle the inevitable ramifications. To extend that analogy to breaking-point and beyond.
So, yeah, not surprising that a DF forum (or, to be precise, the DF-subset of the Bay12 forums) has a lot of people who like DF
roughly the way it is (albeit with their own subset of ideas about how it would be more perfect than it already is). And I'm not sure what we can (if indeed we
should) do about that, especially when someone happens to stumble in and say "Hey, what about we do <what a number of people before have suggested>", without realising that there's oft-repeated reasons why it's not going to be done that way, or at the very least that the guy who'll know whether it's likely isn't really so behoven to any particular individual (pre-agreed sponsorship issues aside) that he'll change (or maintain) his mindset according to the whim of a such a forum thread. If the 'droves' go, it'll probably be a game-changer, but I would expect people to be leaving in them only if 'unfavourable' game-changes are happening in the first place, and presumably the idea would be that this'd be bringing in
new droves. And, still, it's Toady's prerogative, so all power to his eight little fingers and two thumbs and the occasional forehead-bounce off of the keyboard, as well, no doubt.
But I probably witter on too much.
TL;DR;? Erm. Yeah, it's Toady's baby, as already said. The world (this bit of it, anyway) turns on this fact and I personally like it that way, and I don't think I'm in a minority so I'm not sure if you could expect a much different 'balance' of views represented here. And... erm.... ideas are good, but research them beforehand if they're biggies like "Make it commercial", m'kay?
Oh, and Codepage437 FTW! (Just to add a bone of contention to such a homogeneously like-minded thread of rebuttals
)
[1] I was originally hedgy about the whole introduction of Vampires, but as I haven't suffered from them yet (even though[2] I spent ages changing my fortress-digging scheme to produce a "Panopticon"-style reception area to keep an eye on all new immigrants) and I've succesfully Adventure Moded against these and the werebeasts without significant problems. I've also hardly touched minecarts yet, but I don't
need to, so again the concern of anything game-changing (stone and mineral drop-rates aside) is so far postponed and doubtless I'll soon get into that properly.
[2] Or because?