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[ReverseWill]

Carp.

If you've been playing DF for over a month and a half, you knew carp. You feared carp. If you weren't incredibly careful, you'd have an aquatic massacre on your hands. Carp could;
-Survive on land for a disproportionately long time.
-Deal three times the damage of an unarmed dwarf.
-Flat-out haul your thirsty dwarves into the depths to drown them.

Carp were the worst kind of vicious animal, because where there was one, there were another twenty. I don't care to count how many fledgling fortresses I had crumble on me due to forgetting to do everything in my power to make my dwarves not go near the water. However, as we all know, Toady scaled back their damage, made them less populous, and most importantly removed that incredible tendency for violent aggression they had. Now, carp are mostly docile creatures who, it seems, only really attack in self-defense, preferring instead to swim away. They're now just another type of wildlife.

Be all this as it may, I sort of miss our old aquatic foe. It's great that what might have been a great bastion of dwarven civilization isn't being undone in its infancy by a school of overgrown tuna, but without carp as a threat, I feel like there's no reason to avoid freshwater rivers and lakes anymore. It removed some of the arbitrary, almost superstitious sense of danger I got when mucking about redirecting rivers and draining lakes to suit my whims needs.

Am I the only one who thinks like this?

[The Architect]

Let's ask Toady to toss in a new fantasy creature or somesuch in their place. It certainly is an improvement that carp aren't broken.

Spoiler: TL;DR: No. Nostalgia is silly, and there is a reason the old versions are available. It is important for DF to move forward, and it would be bad to preserve bugs, errors and imbalances for such a reason. (click to show/hide)

It's bad to become attached to bugs and glitches and then treat them as if they're cannon. The forum community is notorious for that: for instance people might get upset if Toady got around to programming the use of mugs, as some people have written the current system into their stories. They imagine dwarves guzzling beer by the barrel-full, with it spilling over their beards and onto the floor as they sit alone with their keg in orgiastic pleasure. While things like this are fun, they are simply community-forged fantasy. A broken or incomplete game mechanic can be explained, parodied, or even immortalized in stories, but it's important to keep it in perspective and not let nostalgia carry us away. Carp are carp. Elephants aren't terrible aggressive monsters. Balance problems that we've gotten used to playing with don't change such facts.

If you want tusked beasts rampaging the forests in uncontrolled and inexplicable rage, you can mod them in. You can also mod in fantastic fish that aggressively drag your dwarves into the river. In fact, you can even suggest to Toady that he put something in or you can create your own "Nostalgia mod" for like-minded people to play.

For myself: while I enjoy the nostalgic memories of DF bugs and unintended features, I think it is very important to recognize that you should want the game to change, and these problems to be fixed. We should all want a better, improving DF, not one that remains static so that we can indulge in pointless nostalgia.

[Washcloth]

I dont know about every one else, but im quite glad to see the job interuption spams leading to five drowned legendary miners gone.
But yes, it seems the carp has gone much the way of the elephant.  However lets not let the carp's History die!
im designating a engraving of a rendition of a cheese in there honor.

[ReverseWill]

For myself: while I enjoy the nostalgic memories of DF bugs and unintended features, I think it is very important to recognize that you should want the game to change, and these problems to be fixed. We should all want a better, improving DF, not one that remains static so that we can indulge in pointless nostalgia.

I recognize that things must move forward, and that there are enough dangerous things in other areas to keep us occupied [Jabberer, I'm looking at you]. I was intending more to state that the water seems a little too safe. While there are beasts in the oceans, they're few and far between, while there's no real threat lurking in freshwater areas anymore. Yes, carp are definitely not the monsters of legend they turned into due to bugs, but it added a challenge to obtaining/moving water. Or course, now that farms must be irrigated to be viable, it's definitely a good thing that I don't have to worry about killer fish grabbing the dwarf or dwarves carrying out that job.

I guess I just want a little more danger in the non-subterranean waters now that the scaly threat is gone. Maybe Giant Toads and the like could have a small chance to spawn in murky pools aboveground.

However lets not let the carp's History die!

A good solution. Engravings all around. Maybe someone could make a sort of insert like they did with Cacame Awemedinade for old-school carp.

[darkflagrance]

I haven't actually seen a carp in the new version yet (due, perhaps, to a deep-seated reluctance to approach water?) so I don't know if they are actually significantly different.

Is it merely that carp no longer cause as much cancel spam and/or suicide rushing? Or perhaps that teeth are currently bugged to be as tough as skin (until the hopefully eventually material rewrite)?

Because those traits seemed to be the main killers in 40d.

[Grimlocke]

I will commision a mosiac of clear glass and obsidian in the form of our vicious fisher mauler, but im still glad the bug is gone now. While it made some hilarious stories and dwarfy deaths, the cancelation messages and the uninhabitability of rivers got annoying quickly. And what Architect said, the game has to move on.

[tastypaste]

Carp and Elephants made for some hilarious stories but they were a pain in the ass when you were actually trying to build a working fortress. But keep in mind that we now have enemies who are even more deadly than Carp, and they're unkillable at the moment. If you've ever run into a glass beast with poison dust breath you know what I mean. Even at their most deadly Carp and Elephants never spread poison clouds that killed every living creature within 20 tiles and continued to kill via residues even after they were gone. Our new enemies are much more deadly. And as if those weren't enough, there are even more deadly enemies than those down there in the you-know-what.

[Kazang]

It's funny the first few times your fort gets murdered by fish but really it gets old fast.  It just makes the early game irritating and tedious, instead there are far more dangerous things around for you find in the later/late game instead of having a budding fort sank by overgrown guppies over and over again.

My experience with carp is minimal so I may be biased, but I'm glad I don't have to constantly babysit dwarves around a river in the new version.

[Urist Imiknorris]

Let's ask Toady to toss in a new fantasy creature or somesuch in their place. It certainly is an improvement that carp aren't broken.

Spoiler: TL;DR: No. Nostalgia is silly, and there is a reason the old versions are available. It is important for DF to move forward, and it would be bad to preserve bugs, errors and imbalances for such a reason. (click to show/hide)

It's bad to become attached to bugs and glitches and then treat them as if they're cannon. The forum community is notorious for that: for instance people might get upset if Toady got around to programming the use of mugs, as some people have written the current system into their stories. They imagine dwarves guzzling beer by the barrel-full, with it spilling over their beards and onto the floor as they sit alone with their keg in orgiastic pleasure. While things like this are fun, they are simply community-forged fantasy. A broken or incomplete game mechanic can be explained, parodied, or even immortalized in stories, but it's important to keep it in perspective and not let nostalgia carry us away. Carp are carp. Elephants aren't terrible aggressive monsters. Balance problems that we've gotten used to playing with don't change such facts.

If you want tusked beasts rampaging the forests in uncontrolled and inexplicable rage, you can mod them in. You can also mod in fantastic fish that aggressively drag your dwarves into the river. In fact, you can even suggest to Toady that he put something in or you can create your own "Nostalgia mod" for like-minded people to play.

For myself: while I enjoy the nostalgic memories of DF bugs and unintended features, I think it is very important to recognize that you should want the game to change, and these problems to be fixed. We should all want a better, improving DF, not one that remains static so that we can indulge in pointless nostalgia.

http://www.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThrowItIn

[Djohaal]

Let's ask Toady to toss in a new fantasy creature or somesuch in their place. It certainly is an improvement that carp aren't broken.

Spoiler: TL;DR: No. Nostalgia is silly, and there is a reason the old versions are available. It is important for DF to move forward, and it would be bad to preserve bugs, errors and imbalances for such a reason. (click to show/hide)

It's bad to become attached to bugs and glitches and then treat them as if they're cannon. The forum community is notorious for that: for instance people might get upset if Toady got around to programming the use of mugs, as some people have written the current system into their stories. They imagine dwarves guzzling beer by the barrel-full, with it spilling over their beards and onto the floor as they sit alone with their keg in orgiastic pleasure. While things like this are fun, they are simply community-forged fantasy. A broken or incomplete game mechanic can be explained, parodied, or even immortalized in stories, but it's important to keep it in perspective and not let nostalgia carry us away. Carp are carp. Elephants aren't terrible aggressive monsters. Balance problems that we've gotten used to playing with don't change such facts.

If you want tusked beasts rampaging the forests in uncontrolled and inexplicable rage, you can mod them in. You can also mod in fantastic fish that aggressively drag your dwarves into the river. In fact, you can even suggest to Toady that he put something in or you can create your own "Nostalgia mod" for like-minded people to play.

For myself: while I enjoy the nostalgic memories of DF bugs and unintended features, I think it is very important to recognize that you should want the game to change, and these problems to be fixed. We should all want a better, improving DF, not one that remains static so that we can indulge in pointless nostalgia.

Not to mention turbo water pressure and such. But elephants were tamed and became a recurrent, but dead, meme. Carp might face the same fate, and currently we have the bronze colossus immortality meme showing up. I think DF should move foward indeed.

[daoist]

The final 40d fort I did had a carp problem. And I mean in the past tense. I built a system of floodgates and pumps so I could drain the entire river whenever I wanted. So I'd let it refill, wait for carp to spawn, then murder them all over and over again. BWAHAHAHAHAHA

[Zebra2]

My first "notable" carp experience was on that map with the 30+ level waterfall into a big river infested with carp and hippos. I embarked with my dwarves at the top of the cliff, by the stream that drops all the way down to the major river below. My starting seven got to work as I sent miners up along the stream towards the cliff to dig out some stairs. A miner strays a bit too close to the stream...
Then suddenly, BAM, a carp flies out and drags him back into the stream in the blink of an eye before me. The river suddenly turns red as I'm still figuring out what's going on. There's blood everywhere in the turbulent waters and the massive waterfall is red.

[Tastysaurus Rex]

Isn't it possible to....mod it? I mean, I don't know a thing about modding, but compared to some of the crazy shit I read about I don't think making fish strong and homicidal is really too big a stretch.

[DarthCloakedDwarf]

Piranhas? They can be the new carp.

[tastypaste]

Piranhas? They can be the new carp.

I'd make a James Bond execution chamber with piranhas and sharks with frickin' laser beams on their heads.