I haven't seen a lot of the negativity you mention, but I haven't been keeping tabs on the page 24/7 either, so maybe I've just missed it.
I tend to keep tabs on things. Amostubal's grievances are basically the same ones I've been having for years. Meph is just incredibly tolerant of these things.
Lol... the one thing I kept thinking is... maybe that's why he disappears for a year at a time... to give the grievances a break... I'm actually a rather positive individual... I try to look at my mods (that've done for other games and DF in the past) as pieces of artwork... I create the thing I want and put it out there, for the world to see. This is the second time I picked up another's work and tried to make repairs that were lacking... and its hard work. This project needs a team of 10 to 15 mod writers to go through and discover the errors and fix them. It needs a couple of (or more) real programmers (I am not, I'm a dabbler) to go and actually work on the launcher to fix the errors it has, along with possibly scrapping it and producing a cross platform launcher. If I had the resources and time, I would have a team of 15 to 20 people to work this project over. Personally I think 40 people + have put into this project in various ways (from the mods that have been added in to actual masterwork content).
This project is no longer a 1 man job, and it hasn't been for years, but that's whats been going on for several years here in DF. We have a handful across the modding and programming community that has done 95% of the work. The few like Putnam here that really has put in not just hours or days into creating content, but literally months of time over the past several years. There is maybe 10 solid programmers and modders with more than 2 years experience still working on DF. I have a lot of respect for them... I didn't even know of Dwarf Fortress 2 years ago...
I learned of it through a youtube video that was discussing the most difficult games ever, an opinionated top 10... I had played 9/10 and had felt rather satisfied with my ability to grasp them, and played till I was tired of them... so when number 3 (behind dark souls 1 and 2 at 1 and 2 go figure) was a game I had never heard of... I went looking for it... was glad it was free... and then began what became this. I died, a lot, I wiped on everything from elephants to demons and hell. And in the end I figured it out... vanilla DF is sooooooo boring now. I can run fortresses for decades... or at least until FPS kills the game play.
What makes Dwarf Fortress so difficult is that there isn't a real game plan, there really isn't any concept that remains from the beginning to the end. To be exact if you take what worked 2 years ago and tried it that way today, it doesn't function. What we do today, is going to be lost 2 years from now. This is the nature of the beast. The mods we write have the same frustration times 100. What works last year wont work this year. What we make today may be broken when the next version is released... who knows? Only Armok knows, and he's deathly quiet. I've decided I want to work on a project that is my own and if it breaks when the next release comes out, well fuck it, lol. MDF was broken when I got, broken for a long time, but people played it and ignored the issues...
So my biggest problem is that the game isn't a commercial work, and this project isn't either. We get it for free, but we treat it like we paid 40 bucks and a monthly subscription to play it. the truth is there is no standard in the community, at least not in the raws. there is no programming language forcing a conformity on the community, so what one writes is illegible to the next person, there is no 1 standard mod loader... everyone plays one of several ways and they don't want to switch.
The fact is that Masterwork is easy mode for mod enjoyment with DF. there is no work. you boot up the launcher and boom, you have access to a whole bunch of cool features. Its the mod version of PyLNP. The other launchers are just that other attempts at having a standard and a bunch of arguments between them about who is the best, If you had a list of how everyone plays DF, it would be 69% PyLNP, 30% MDF, .9% Rubble, and .1% other (PyDwarf, revised, modest, STFU DF, etc, etc, hard core, my personal mod set because I did it myself !!Biotches!!).
Which is why if I mod again its going to be my own little mod pack... It will be my own little artwork, few will be paying attention to it, and the ones who do will most likely be Putnam, Lethosor, or whoever stumbles across it.... I'll come up with a pretty little name... just look for me someday when you get a chance.
To everyone who said their goodbyes, well thanks for the compliments and thanks for being good friends while I was here... I'm keeping my discord open if anyone wants to holler at me.