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[Dadamh]

No no, not the game in general.  It's still fun.

But the dwarves themselves have gotten dull.  They used to be kind of unpredictable and crazy, weird art/industry-obsessed crazy people who lived in holes and flipped out over the smallest issues.

Now they can watch their entire families get killed and eaten, but then just shrug and keep on making stone crafts.

What happened?  Is it the new emotion system?  Most of my dwarves have miles of "didn't feel anything seeing so-and-so die" and they just seem to be boring robots.

I don't need beds, different booze, a dining room, tables, chairs, anything.  They're perfectly fine being robots who collapse whenever they need a recharge and then go right back to doing emotionless work.

I miss tantrums and tantrum spirals and actual problems.  I rarely even get goblin sieges anymore.

Has the game gotten less fun as it has progressed, for other people?

[Fleeting Frames]

If you want more tantrums, edit entity_default.txt (I think?) to give dwarves high stress propensity.

[gchristopher]

I don't think that's really a fix.

It seems like stress prone dwarves always eventually go crazy, and non-prone dwarves almost never do, with very little happy medium. I agree, the new psychology does not work as well as a game mechanic. It could probably be fixed with some judicious tuning, though.

And yes, goblin ambushers are gone, and sieges range from adequate to nonexistent. (With the post-40.X pathing fixes making sieges at least happen sometimes now.)

Those two key gameplay experiences are not currently at their best, so hopefully Toady is aware and willing to address that in future versions.

[steel jackal]

run a fort where you only get booze from caravans.
without locally brewed booze your supply will run out before the next caravan arrives, and your dwarves will be forced to drink water, making them more susceptible to getting cranky.
getting drunk gives them a massive happiness boost, so as long as theres booze, only the mentally feeble will go mad, remove booze, remove their sanity.

of course booze is a dwarves primary source of energy, so without it they will be sluggish, hence why you import some, that way you can get some work done when the caravans arrive

[Dadamh]

I guess it's a known issue, looking at the wiki and bug reports.

But basically I've run forts that are effectively living hells, lost half the fort to weremonsters, blood and death everywhere, and everyone's just fine.

Not distracted by needs, or horror, or anything.

Just beep boop, keep working.

Also yeah, one siege once, and then goblins (at war, mind, not just ----- status) ignore me forever.

Here's hoping some of this is addressed in the next release, and that the next release isn't another year away.

[PatrikLundell]

It's quite unlikely any of these complaints are going to be addressed in the next few years/releases. The next release is to deal with artifacts. If the one after that will be artifacts still, or move to the next topic of myth and magic remains to be seen, but regardless, armies are probably away in the mist beyond, and Toady seems to have decided the zone/needs stuff work sufficiently well for the time being, so they might get some adjustments when embark scenarios are touched (or economy, if that happens earlier).

Thus, you're either better off doing something else for the next few years, or learn to live with the current state (but you can still complain about it, of course. It might have some effect on Toady; who knows).

No booze, as suggested by steel jackal, or lots of free time with lots of booze serving ought to up the death rate (although some players fail to get much of a death rate from tavern alcohol poisoning and lethal non lethal fights despite trying).
When it comes to goblin sieges, you have to ensure you embark rather close to a major goblin settlement (nothing attack worthy closer to it, and no other goblin settlements nearby), as well as check after embark that the two week settlement/war/general messiness frenzy hasn't plunked down a puny site in between you and the main goblin one.

[Werdna]

Fortress Defense mod for the extra invader civs is an easy way to get your siege fix.  I play without traps, and always one path open into the fortress (no turtling).

However, in .03 the sieges frequently bug out with the 'endless siege' that take seasons to clear up.  Like 1/3 of all sieges.  Since people are regularly reporting this in vanilla I don't think it's a Fort Defense issue.  Plan for a self-sufficient, many missed caravans embark (which is a fair challenge of its own).  Elves don't often survive a FD world gen, so don't count on that caravan either.

[Dunamisdeos]

Just mod all your dwarves blood to be molten metal.

The heat in their blood will make them angrier, and the horrifically melting fat will simulate the instant death on embark from versions past.

[Libash_Thunderhead]

 
I see df players are all psychopaths that want their play things dead.

[Dunamisdeos]

Gonna be honest: I didn't read the question, if there was one.

[Immortal-D]

I see df players are all psychopaths that want their play things dead.

It's not so much that we want our Dwarves dead (although there are exceptions; nobles demanding a platinum toilet or whatever).  It's just that killing them is often the simplest solution and/or hilariously unintentional.

[Melting Sky]

It's a bit of a mixed bag. We have far more complex dwarves that do all sorts of neat things now. They have their own little goals and personalities. They get into drunken bar fights, write books, philosophize with each other etc. On the other hand I think the stress system has gone from one extreme to other. In the past you could get a fortress ending tantrum spiral for some pretty silly reasons in pretty solidly put together forts. I mean losing your fort over some Kea stealing a masterwork arrow is a bit silly, but on the other hand we have the current version where literally everyone can be eating vermin, sleeping on the floor and worse yet, sober and there aren't any real repercussions which is equally silly and worse yet boring. I imagine this is a complex system that is an absolute nightmare to balance so it will probably take Toady a lot of work and thought to get it dialed in. I really like the complexity of the new system, but it needs to be tweaked a bit to where there are consequences for failure. If your dwarves are eating dirt, on fire and sloshing through ankle deep vomit they really should be rioting.

[Ironbreaker]

Well, My fort is far from boring, its like a game of thrones. You must be just unlucky, or lucky, depending on how you look at it. I can't leave my fort alone for 5 seconds or something goes wrong.

Just opened up a tavern, with in 1 min my cook got murdered while serving food. After checking the death log, as I like to call it, one of my well trained wrestlers in the military, got enraged and punched the poor cook in the head, opening up an artery and the cook bled out and was dead. Sprayed blood over 3 tiles including the wall. On another occasion another miltiary wrestler, not sure if it was the same dwarf, will be keeping an eye on this one, also got enraged and punched one of my herbalists in the head and also bled out due to an opened artery.

Also not to mention the numerous werebeast attacks, kidnappings and missing children, animals, dwarves and the like. Catsplosion, dogsplosion's, you name it, I got it. Atleast my dwarves don't need to worry about meat anymore. "Looks like meat's back on the menu boys".

[oldmansutton]

I've found werebeast infections on different members of different squads to be amusing... when Squad A takes out werebeast from Squad B, or vice-versa, and the squads start fighting between themselves.  At least I'm going to assume that's what happened.  While watching the death of the werebeast neé dwarf, there was SOME sort of murder-tantrum going on in my main entrance involving a different squad of wrestlers that I didn't notice until I started getting "So and so has been found dead having too much fun"

[taptap]

A few versions back dwarves stressed out a lot from (sentient) remains and it took them long to recover once stressed, I guess the current storage of corpses in plain sight and no one is bothered is the result from the many complaints received back then. As is I can run an unroofed surface fort in cold or freezing weather without much amenities at all and still happiness holds up quite fine or have a fresh small-fort king happy enough while everyone ignores his commands. Maybe it plays different in large forts. Sieges do not contribute to fun for me. (I played a lot with sieges, but after a few thousand goblins dispatched in open battle, I came to see the hauling jobs generated as a major annoyance.)

Biggest fun lost for me were the pathing changes (creature climbing) that disabled creature logic. (Supposedly they made sieges more fun, but did they?)