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[Leperous]

Actually, some of those suggestions for Fortress mode are quite good - away with the "third finger, right hand is broken" bloat and puny goblins I say!

[Deon]

I read this article on Kotaku wherein Super Mario screens are altered to reflect trends in modern gaming, and I thought - photoshops or text - that a similar approach could be taken to Dwarf Fortress.

So I ask Bay12, if DF was being published by one of the big software companies...
-what corners would be cut?
-what "features" would be added?

My contributions:
- One variety of stone.
- Undo key.
- Worldgen seeds available as DLC.
- Initial Xbox/PS3 exclusivity with buggy, DLC-free PC port released a year later - no Mac, Linux support... ever.

No, no, no, no, and no.
Also, noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo, no.

This.
No company would code a game for 8 years and consider it an alpha.

Release time limitation kills a lot of good games.

[Aklyon]

Release time limitation kills a lot of good games.

Well if thats the problem...

The release time is struck by the angry gamer's plastic imitation sword!
The release time's heart has been pierced!
The release time has been struck down.

[Corona688]

and labors might be lumped together (a furnace operator might operate the kiln, wood furnace, and smelter, which might in turn be combined) and a farmer might sow, thresh, and mill plants.

Combining skills isn't a completely terrible idea, if done carefully.  Combining those into furnace operating might be a very good idea -- I always have to skrimp through the skill lists the one time in a million I ever need to worry about them, and what the heck kind of occupation is "wood burning" anyhow?  Even with the nice new sorting system for skills, there's still an awful lot of them, some oddly specific(strand extractor, pump operator), some overlapping(metalsmith, blacksmith).

[Urist Imiknorris]

(metalsmith, blacksmith).

Metalsmith is the skill, blacksmith is the profession.

[Nikov]

The game would use atrocious amounts of HDR bloom, even if the graphics are still ASCII.

All fortresses would be on the same worldgen and you would send your armies abroad to capture other player's fortresses. In spite of a robust trade system, you will only import terror and export vengeance.

[Rutilant]

A lot of this cynicism is to be expected and I think most new games are as crappy as the rest of you, but my GOD do some of you guys sound like pathetic technophobes.  Yes, while a lot of new things can be crappy, that doesn't mean 'technology = bad'.

Of course, this kind of ridiculous exaggeration and frothing bias is something I've come to expect from these forums so I'm not sure why I'm surprised.  I can't really have expected some of you to become, gasp, reasonable people just because we're talking about this rather than tilesets versus ascii or whatever. 

It's a wonder to me that with these attitudes some of you are even able bring yourselves to use a computer in the first place.  So traditional you play dwarf fortress in the backyard with a pickaxe perhaps?

Amish fortress!

[Karnewarrior]

For the record, I was serious.

[Mfbrew]

Few or no people would complain if Toady released a fully 3d DF tomorrow with bump mapping and ragdoll physics and mouse support and Dolby surround sound, as long as the game still had a clean, consistent and charming style like the cool old school ASCII one that predominates now.  Frankly, that would be awesome.

Most of the technophobia comes from the dumbing-down of games we've seen in our lifetimes.  In an attempt to appeal to wider audience and make bigger profits, games seem to appeal increasingly to the lowest common denominator.  Many DF fans grew up on games that threw you right into the deep end, and we like the challenge.  To that kind of player, complexity is good and a learning cliff is an exciting challenge to overcome.

DF's outdated presentation and interface make it easier to be bold and add new features.  As someone mentioned before, Toady didn't have to model and animate all of the forgotten beasts- he just had to type words like "it's a giant skinless lizard" into notepad.  DF players who seem resistant to change and anti-technology merely consider prettiness a small price to pay for richer gameplay. 

 

[riznar]

Most of the technophobia comes from the dumbing-down of games we've seen in our lifetimes.  In an attempt to appeal to wider audience and make bigger profits, games seem to appeal increasingly to the lowest common denominator.  Many DF fans grew up on games that threw you right into the deep end, and we like the challenge.  To that kind of player, complexity is good and a learning cliff is an exciting challenge to overcome.

While games have gone to larger demographics, most of the perception of this comes from nostalgia and forgetting all the bad games. There have always been shitty games, but most of us aren't 12 anymore and only the memorable ones stick. Also most of the games in the past were hard because they were poorly designed or your character piloted like a truck.

[Aklyon]

Most of the technophobia comes from the dumbing-down of games we've seen in our lifetimes.  In an attempt to appeal to wider audience and make bigger profits, games seem to appeal increasingly to the lowest common denominator.  Many DF fans grew up on games that threw you right into the deep end, and we like the challenge.  To that kind of player, complexity is good and a learning cliff is an exciting challenge to overcome.

While games have gone to larger demographics, most of the perception of this comes from nostalgia and forgetting all the bad games. There have always been shitty games, but most of us aren't 12 anymore and only the memorable ones stick. Also most of the games in the past were hard because they were poorly designed or your character piloted like a truck.

There were actually hard games that weren't hard because of controls or design, you know.

[riznar]

Just like there are today? Also I never said there weren't. But a majority of the games back in the day were badly done because the industry was new.

[Sabin Stargem]

A vast majority of the games I like are commercial.  As such, I often feel a bit cross when the Dwarf Fortress community puts them down as a whole.  Granted, most of those are not very good - but I can say the same for freeware.  As such, all that matters is whether or not the games are actually good, and if you enjoy a genre.  I think that most Dwarf Fortress fans don't care much about games, just Dwarf Fortress, so they are ill-suited to judge.  Not unlike Roger Ebert who only watches videos and refuses to play the games that he dismisses as never capable of being art.

[Deon]

I've never said anything bad about commercial games in general, it's like a racism, but I doubt any company would ever embarked on a mission to make anything at least SIMILAR to DF by the level of details AND the lack of a true goal .

[Hyperturtle]

I want beautifully rendered cutscenes of Dwarfen Whoopee.  right now, they seem to make more dwarfs via spores.