you do know there is a road map for the 1.0 release right? and while not all the features are known or planned the major ideas are all laid out. and yes, this is a public alpha, being developed by one man, so the standard conventions do not apply. Toady goes to great lengths to make sure all of us testes enjoy doing the testing, so it takes him longer to get us the material. this last cycle was one of the longer ones, since so much was being rewritten. there are a crapton of features in 40d that are sorta/kinda there but not really, like the economy, and there are a crapton of features in this release that are also sorta/kinda there but not really.
and you cant really say that "you should finalize one feature at a time" or whatever, because all the feature interact with each other. we cant really fix the economy, for example, because it will rely on the diplomatic and trade stuff to a large extent, and that does not even exist yet. it is the same for almost every other feature. so much for this release is brand spanking new. and all of us are the testers, finding out what is broken and what is not, what works with the other features and what does not, and what is just a place holder for future interactions with stuff that does not exist yet. we relay that info to Toady so he can take a look at it, find out what works and how it should be refined.
we as a community have a massive amount of say in what goes on and how df is developed. but we have to understand that things are going to be broken, things are going to be ugly, and things are not always going to be done that suite playability first. at some point new things will be added that completely screw up the status quo, like this release. this will all be true clean up to the official 1.0 release, and perhaps beyond. we have to be wiling to accept that and work with Toady to fix things up in preparation for the next big addition of content. only as we get closer to 1.0 and as the final feature set is getting closer to being achieved can we expect things to start falling into place and work in a more consistent manner.
we as individuals have to decide where we fit into all this. are we one of the hardcore that pick up the latest release the moment it goes live so that we can be the first to find out it will not even run? its important that someone is, or Toady will never know. are we one of the people who keep playing even though the fort is guaranteed not to survive because of some major bug, just so we can help isolate the problem? some of us need to be, since it is obvious Toady cannot test it all himself. maybe we are the type of person who waits *patiently >_>* for the release to become more stable so we can explore the new features and provide insight and direction to future development? we need those kind of people too.
what we do not need is people who gripe that the game is not finished and therefore not fun and blah blah blah. but that is just my 2 cents.