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[evanderep]

What is Dwarf fortress and other rougelike games in comparison to the mainstream games? In what does it stand out? With this i would like to make a list with the rougelikes on the right and the mainstream other games on the left 


MAINSTREAM                                                                                                                                                ROUGELIKES
You cant kill this character!                                                                                                                                      You can kill the entire population of the world, also the children 
You cant pick this random junk up!                                                                                                                             You can pick up every single thing in the universe
You can still walk with your legso shot to shit                                                                                                              You still have a legg? 



Please make this list bigger
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

[balrogkernel]

Mainstream:
We have an autosave for you entering every room!           
Roguelike:
Remember to save, and when you die, learn and start over.

Mainstream:
Our PR department wanted to include magic, so have some wacky spells!
Roguelike:
Magic may not even be optimal or even a choice, make your decisions carefully.  Some things aren't undone.

Mainstream:
Well, since everybody likes this popular game feature so much... But it's so hard to implement.  Eh, let's just string together some broken mechanics and give it pretty names and pictures. 
Roguelike:
I get the job done.

Mainstream:
Oh look at me here's your next goal!  Oh wait I meant this goal, I'll be happy as long as you keep walking around.  Look, we had to pay a lot of money for this scenery, so ENJOY IT.  ENJOY IT!
Roguelike:
If you can remember what has happened during the game, then the truth is self evident.

Mainstream:
Guess what... We completely crushed the spirits of the people who actually made this game, so they don't want to work for us anymore.  Oh well, we got all the money!  When's our next release?  Or even better... DLC!!!
Roguelike:
This game is still fun ten years on.

Mainstream:
See, we're indy gamers now!  I'll copy some stuff that other people did before, then buy a puppet who will promote the game and all I hear is money.
Roguelike:
Wow, it's quite a show in the gaming world.  Oh well, that was funny, back to working on some new concepts. 

Mainstream:
Always online.  All the time.  You must play online.  Make more friends.  More friends means more power.
Roguelike:
Save your game whenever, take a break, hey nothing much changed since you last left it if you're playing against the AI.  Also, just for the fun of it, have meaningful single player experiences.  If that's not enough, well we've got this thing called randomization.

[Loud Whispers]

Mainstream: Graphics
Dwarf Fortress: Alphabet

Mainstream: Beauty in simplicity
Dwarf Fortress: Beauty in complexity

Mainstream: General
Dwarf Fortress: Specific

Mainstream: The designers are pressured by monies
Dwarf Fortress: The architect is pressured by scamps

Mainstream: We're recycling old ideas
Dwarf Fortress: The game creates its own ideas

Mainstream: Strawberry [+10 health]
Dwarf Fortress: ‼Strawberry‼ [bleed to death]

[ChuckWeiss]

Mainstream: "Will be released November 2012." Released November 2012.
Roguelike: "I finished up the code that allows you to choose your walking speed. In the process, some old bugs in the combat code cropped up again." Still no release.

[Mickey Blue]

Should probably be noted that, in all honesty and while I love Dwarf Fortress and like Roguelikes, most roguelikes I've played are.. Well.. "Blah".  I mean I enjoy them, as I enjoy most games I've played in general, but if I looked back I can't say they (or, to be fair, most mainstream games) were anything special.  For every Baldur's Gate, Dwarf Fortress, X-Com and Cataclysim (the roguelike not WoW) there are a thousand Mario, Sonic the Hedgehog, etc, etc.  Good games, but hardly great ones and if you do have awesome memories of them (as, honestly, I do) it's probably nostalgia talking more than anything else. 

That said, the one big one I can say applies to most games regardless of quality or genre would be:

Mainstream:
-Simple to learn, difficult to master
-Friendly graphics and UI
-Limited in scope and style
-Handicaps imagination (mostly due to the above)

Roguelike:
-Difficult to learn, extremely difficult to master
-Unfriendly graphics and UI (if they exist at all)
-Broad in scope and style
-Fosters imagination (mostly due to the above)

Its the reason why any five year old can pick up Mario and play it but it takes adults dozens of pages of tutorial help, pictures and videos to even get started with Dwarf Fortress.  However it's also why when Mario jumps on a Goomba I picture a short man in red jumping on a brown monster while in Dwarf Fortress epic battles play out in my head even though its just one symbol blinking next to another symbol blinking while occasionally shifting positions.

[WaffleEggnog]

Mainstream: Headshot! 3x damage!
Roguelike: Headshot! You now have an arrow embedded in your brain!

Mainstream: Balls, I got shot! Better autoheal/take some heath items to survive!
Roguelike: I got shot! My arm appears to be gone. Better pass out from pain then die form blood loss!

[slothen]

Mainstream:  Improve core gameplay elements
Dwarf Fortress:  MORE gameplay elements!

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Mainstream:
'You have all these difficulty levels.'

Dwarf Fortress
'What's a difficulty level?'

Mainstream:
'We have a "steep" learning curve.'

Dwarf Fortress
'We have a learning cliff.'

[Hamsmagoo]

Mainstream:
Like being in an air-conditioned monorail, on a track, through Disneyland.

Dwarf Fortress:
Like floating on a tire in the middle of the Pacific.

[itisnotlogical]

Mainstream: Want to play? Too bad, have an insultingly easy tutorial level that doesn't fit in at all with the rest of the game.

Dwarf Fortress: Want to play? Wait from 10 minutes to almost an hour for an ENTIRE WORLD to be generated with history, famous pieces of art, kingdoms, and even extinct races sometimes.

[Itnetlolor]

Mainstream:
"We have tank units."
Tony Stark:
"We have a Hulk."
Dwarf Fortress:
"We have clowns and Bronze Colossi (which are weak against Fluffy Wamblers)."
Mainstream:
"We give you an airship/easy transport system by near-endgame to wrap up storylines and complete sidequests. Designs are limited to the graphic designer's imagination."
Dwarf Fortress:
"You get to build your own airship(s) whenever the hell you want; however the hell you want (even design the sucker yourself, engineering and everything; it's like your very own lego set), and make up your own storylines and sidequests *while it hangs in the air."

*For the time being. Until transportation, like boats and battering rams, wagons, and so forth, are implemented in DF, and airships are moddable as usable transports as well  ([TRANSPORT_FLYING] [ADV_FLYABLE] [FORTRESS_MOBILE] being included in it's potential raw tags).
Mainstream:
New Game, Same World; Same Story
Dwarf Fortress:
New Game, Same History, Same World, Loot your own corpse.
ALT.
New Game, New World, New History, New Story. By your will.
Mainstream:
Improper modding corrupts game data, and renders game unplayable.
Dwarf Fortress:
Improper modding corrupts game data, and renders the game more interesting than usual. Like Ice that sets you on fire, and gems made of eyeballs, and a race of cattle that eat flesh wearing slade leather. Unplayability depends on how long you can tolerate the nonsense.
Mainstream:
Modding is nearly as much heresy as pirating (or more accurately, by their interpretations, stealing) the game.
Dwarf Fortress:
Open to modding. Only the most important parts of the code (basically, everything Toady's working on) are locked out and hard-coded, and with good reason. All that aside, we have Fallout and My Little Pony as fully-featured playable mods, along with mods that flush out more of the game's content in rather creative ways.
Mainstream:
Bugs are a problem and must be squashed ASAP.
[Dwarf Fortress:
Bugs are better regarded as "Unintended Features".
Mainstream:
Having (or modding) kids able to be harmed or killed will get you lynched by the moral guardians.
Dwarf Fortress:
Dwarven Child Care and Child-B-Q. And it's actually pretty funny.
Mainstream:
"Mermaids are a fey and fair folk of beauty that adventurers respect the presence of, and lore has been written to revere them as blessed sirens of the seas."
Dwarf Fortress:
"Mermaids are (*cough*were*cough*) a bountiful and profitable folk of valuable beauty that one can farm for them pretty, pearly bones."

(Sorry for being such a monster, but I'm still laughing over that whole thread.)

[Iceblaster]

Mainstream:
Improper modding corrupts game data, and renders game unplayable.
Dwarf Fortress:
Improper modding corrupts game data, and renders the game more interesting than usual. Like Ice that sets you on fire, and gems made of eyeballs, and a race of cattle that eat flesh wearing slade leather. Unplayability depends on how long you can tolerate the nonsense.

Lulz
Mainstream:

Remaking it as an FPS

Dwarf Fortress:

Remaking it? We haven't even made it.

Mainstream:

We are appealing to an adult age group

Dwarf Fortress:

You mean making bunnies that eat your soul while wielding adamantine swords right? Or is it something boring like having a child die onscreen?

[itisnotlogical]

Mainstream:
Gritty means everybody says the F-word alot, right?

DF:
If you're lucky, you'll be stabbed in the throat by a kobold and live your last few seconds attempting in vain to stop your blood from flowing on the ground. It only gets worse from there.

Mainstream:
Dragon bones you get from killing evil dragons

DF:
Mermaid bones you get from a breeding program

[sweitx]

On hell...
Mainstream:
Go to hell and kill that one big-bad. Plus a few minions. Game Over.
Dwarf Fortress:
Go to hell and kill many, many big-bads. Plus a few not-so-big and/or not-so-bad big-bads. Colonize it. Live in it. Dine in it. Build carnival booth to shoot at passing demons. Game's not over yet.

On Terrain Destruction
Mainstream:
Claims to have fully destructible terrain.
Dwarf Fortress:
Have fully destructible terrain.

[Starver]

Mainstream: Find levers. Pull levers. Now you can reach the next lever on. (Watch out for monsters that have just been released from a small side-tunnel.  Surely their last feeding was on Aztecs, hundreds and hundreds of years ago!)

Dwarf Fortress: Build levers. Connect levers. Now you can open and close sections at will.  (Trap your own monsters in small side-tunnels.  Let them feed on play with anyone you don't like enough to keep alive.)