I wish I could test more of the bugs and report, but unfortunately one of the bugs is preventing me from playing.
After hitting year 2 I get constant crashes that render the game unplayable. It must just be me because everyone else seems to be able to have a successful fort (up to the point it gets killed by some uber mega beast), but mine just crash themselves to death after the second year.
I've bug reported it, but the savegame I posted hasn't even been downloaded.
So obviously it's not being looked at, and I can't play the game even to test out features and report because I can't get to the point the game even introduces the features.
So yea, I'm pissed right now, and I think it's perfectly legitimate to post about such issues, alpha or not.
Without people pointing out the flaws they will never get fixed. And this guys post (and mine) are not that inflammatory. And frankly, I'm sick and tired of people hopping to the defense of the game whenever someone posts a somewhat negative comment. Without negative feedback things do not improve, they just grow stale, so STFU unless someone is actually being a complete jerk and not just venting their concerns about the game and the issues it has.
We have the bugtracker for reporting bugs. Submit a ticket, and you will be processed. Toady is just (heh) One person. He can only do so much, so fast.
Nothing the OP describes is to me, a problem. Only those that are bugs. The new military screen is a bit complex, but it's not that difficult. It's fully mouse-enabled, so navigating it isn't the issue. I can work with it just fine, the only probelms are some bugs where things don't do as i say. These are BUGS. Which we all knew would be there.
When he says "improvements to the world generator don't make this game better." I personally don't know what the hell he's talking about. The underground? The wonkiness with Temperatures?
If it's the new underground, I couldn't be more suprised. The underground is nothing short of Epic, in my opinion.
The Wonkiness with the temperatures is, A bug, and fixable. (I belive it's already fixed, for the next release.)
Nothing the OP, or anyone else for that matter has said about the new features, strikes me as a design problem.
To me, they are all just Buggy features. AWESOME feature's at that, just a bit funky, wth all the bugs.
Bugs that will be fixed.
To visualize it. 40d was a Caterpillar that went into a cocoon for 1.5 or so years. Now it's burst open. There's a beautiful butterfly(New version) comin' out. But it's having a bit of trouble against parts of of the cocoon, which are getting in the way of the true beauty of it. (The Bugs).