Welcome, Deus! You will find our Bay12 to be a very hospitable in most circumstances, however, your chosen subject of introduction leaves much to be wanted. It is a point that has been made MANY, MANY times, and a quick forum search can realize this.
As a result, many regulars have seen this argument proceed uncontrollably for many pages of repetitive idea-rephrasing and "Well, I think THIS!" and all that nonsense. You're welcome to your ideas, and the free expression of them, but don't be surprised that the blowback is a borderline hostile.
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To commit hipocrisy and comment on your point, DF was not started as a commercial product, instead a passion project. For many years it was clear that Toady was merely
sharing his game, not selling it, and so as a community there was never an expectation of player consideration in development focus. Why fix bugs if it isn't intended to be played?
Over time this idea was contradicted by the fact that many people were still playing and enjoying the game, despite it's unintuitive UI, many bugs and generally incomplete nature. Toady acknowledged this by creating a bugtracker and working to fix the game-breaking bugs like crashes or broken pathfinding.
Marriages, friends and grudges are broken, and you need ant-sized meeting rooms for anyone to know anyone
- Military training & equipment are still bugged
- Raiding\outside missions are broken and can ruin the entire fortress due to bugs
and many many more
You are obviously an experienced player, so you must remember that these bugs you refer to are rather small and definitely not game-breaking. While, yes the raids cause crashes, as others have said that will likely get fixed in the steam release / bugfix update that is planned. The other issues do not get in the way of running a fortress, though they do prevent a detail-oriented overseer from pursuing certain strategies.
As DF is now actually becoming a commercial product(though I imagine it is being created without the usual intention of making lots of money), there may be a shift in development priority, and as PatrickLundell points out, a shift in bug-fixing philosophy. We'll have to wait and see, but it's safe to say this steam release is the most exciting thing to happen to DF in many years, IMO the most exciting thing since the 3-d update ALL THE WAY BACK IN 2008.
oh my god what happened to all those years
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Simply put,
your concerns have already been noted. Please take a number and proceed through the featherwood door to your left. There you will join the hundreds that came before you. . .