I have been playing games (starting with peek-a-boo, perhaps?) for around 40 years, and so have definite opinions on what kind of gaming experience I want.
For any computer game that I really liked, which created save files, I wrote scripts to make backup/restore of those saves easy. Sometimes, I used them to restore, but most often, not. Why would I restore in certain cases? Unwillingness to reinvest the RL time to regain the status? Science? !SCIENCE!? Curiosity for the alternate universe? Safety net against bugs? Safety net against accidental key press? Unwillingness to give up certain cool (i.e., fun) item? Share current world state with friends? We could create a list of reasons to utilize saves, and a list of reasons not to. In the end, it will ALWAYS boil down to personal play style preferences (for a single-player mode game).
Now, once you set up some sort of competition between players, then you will likely set up some rules to keep an even playing field; but then, you are not strictly playing the same game, any more, are you? You are now playing something else, something multiplayer, which has its own rules to follow. Now, you get unquestionable reasons to enforce certain play styles. Behold, the meta-game.
If you want to join in on the rules of a particular group's version of a meta-game, then GREAT! Have fun! If you don't want to play that particular meta-game, then don't; go find another meta-game, or just play your own single-player game as ... well, as a single-player game. If you are playing by yourself, and for yourself, and not to compare your results in any sort of competitive way, then only you can decide for yourself whether your actions are cheating.
Established ConsensusThere is already an established consensus that !SCIENCE! is a legitimate use case for restoring saves. No other rational is necessary. No meta-gaming group on these forums can reasonably argue against the pursuit of !SCIENCE!, or its usefulness in the fostering of a vibrant DF community. From this alone, there is sufficient and compelling reason to seriously consider adding a save/restore functionality to the UI.
PureThere is no need for one group of meta-gamers to denigrate another. If any one meta-gamer group has a "pure" foundation from which to preach, it might be the group which makes ZERO changes to the game, playing as-is, without modifying raws (including for any init options), and eschewing any use of dfhack, Dwarf Therapist, tilesets, and any other unofficial add-ons. Any other meta-game group is just claiming that their particular slippery-slope position choice is more solid than the next (with regards to arguments of "purity").
HistoryMany examples exist from the forums of the many succession games, many bug reports, and many research projects which benefit richly from the existence of save files, and which would therefore CLEARLY benefit from an official save/restore UI. Really, if the person reading these words wishes to argue against all of that evidence, then that person is a truly unreasonable person with whom time will not be wasted.
ConclusionTo save/restore or not to save/restore, is a perfectly valid question, which can only be usefully answered by an individual player, or by a group of individual players with an internal consensus. If, perhaps, you were a player who tried to force your personal save/restore preferences upon everyone else, then you were part of the problem, causing unnecessary conflicts. But, now, maybe you can begin to realize that choice is really the only long-term solution. With the existing OFFICIAL option for save/restore, anyone can play either way, and still be playing the "pure" game, as intended, and as provided for in the vanilla game.
p.s.
The only part of this post which I will direct towards an individual:
I find nothing conclusive in the fact that out of the handful of people that posted in this thread (out of thousands of players/forum dwellers), the majority appear to advocate a permadeath style that should never be abolished. One could even argue that the insignificant number of replies this thread got so far, is an indication that the majority of DF players 'couldn't care less' about this, which is not quite the same as considering permadeath as "essential for the pure dwarf fortress experience."
I hate (in a non-mean-spirited, playful kind of way) that you have compelled me to spend the time to write this post; I really wanted to do other things with that time.
But, some of the DF players do care a great deal about this topic, and have decided not to spend the time to write a post. I do not read silence necessarily as an indication that the person "couldn't care less" (although I must admit to the general rule of, "silence is assent"); sometimes silence is more from apathy, rather than agreement.
Also, I will readily agree that I believe most players probably don't care much either way.