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[Mantonio]

Activision.

Even worse, Team ninja.

Slaves to Armok: God of blood; Chapter II: Dwarf fortress; Historys of X and Y; Extreme beach vollyball.

 I...wuh..wha...what!?

Fortress mode involves rapidly building floors to bounce the ball back, adventure mode is basically the same as before, but with less mapwalking and more stuffwhacking.

And everyone has large breasts. Even the men.

But especially the women. Even the other races.

[NW_Kohaku]

Ah, I knew this thread wasn't going anywhere good as soon as I saw a "please gripe about something" title.

I somehow sense an undercurrent of rejection of some of the things I have proposed specifically...

I should point out that I have spent an inordinate amount of time and thought specifically dealing with mitigating micromanagement so as not to make any "fake difficulty", and have invited everyone in the forums to share their concerns in that thread.  Automating as much of the micromanagement as possible is one of the major goals I have been pursuing.


More seriously, one thing I don't want is even more focus upon the military aspects of the game.  It seems like there are so many fantastic possibilities for what this game can be, and it always gets squandered to make more room for focus upon the same tired military aspects that 99% of all games in existence already follow, except with an obssessive attention to detail that is wasted by an inability to control or even read everything that happens. 

I can get combat in a million different flavors from a million different games.  I can only get the complexity of engineering and simulation that DF has from DF.

[G-Flex]

Military still has a long way to go, though. Right now we don't have meaningful military except for site defense, and obviously that needs to (and will) change.

Also keep in mind that the simulation you apparently want includes political simulation that necessitates war and other military action.

[NW_Kohaku]

It needs war, yes, but it doesn't need obsessively detailed combat.  Just open up any Legends Mode, and see the cases where battles are fought, and they tell you every ear that was smashed, finger lost, nose cut, and hamstring pulled.  Oh, right, and then they tell you that after that, the guy also died, rendering all those injury reports (which are printed with the same importance as the death message) completely moot.

Maybe you could run some more abstracted combat simulation, then have survivors who took some damage get war scars and battle wounds, but only after the battle?  Players wouldn't really be able to tell the difference as long as they still can't interact with those battles in any way. 

Plus, is it really a major historical event worthy of engraving in my fortress's walls that some random goblin I never heard of stubbed his left foot, fourth toe, philanges, lower toe pad fat, fifteenth capillary while fighting some random elf I never heard of?

Even fights that players do have some nominal control over in Fortress Mode largely consist of a report consisting of twenty pages of bruising some body part's fat, which is why I generally don't even read them.  All that matters is what I control - I train them, throw them at the enemy, and then see who lived, and maybe treat some injured.  You could do that with hit points, honestly.  Since dwarves die of infected toes, just make an abstracted system where dwarves have hit points, and lose them constantly due to bleeding or infection once injured.  Same ultimate effect to the player.

Even then, the combat is so complex now as to be completely unbalanced and unrealistic, thanks to a whole slew of factors like not properly counting the weight of the whole creature, or dummying out important differences in creature physiologies like dogs being supposed to have a stronger bite than a human toddler's.  You, G-Flex should be aware of that more than anyone, since I've seen more from you on that subject than anyone else.

Oh, right, and remember the .31.01 wrestling interface?  Use seventeenth left elbow hair to grapple enemy belly button lent?  From a list of eight thousand meaningless options?

All this is not to say that I am opposed to complexity, (obviously, I am very much for complexity in some cases,) but that complexity needs to be handled well to be meaningful and not micromanagement.  There is a massive difference between simply tacking on pointless complexity the player either has to micromanage or which the player has no control over at all, and devising a deep and meaningful system. 

Personally, I sort of resent the notion that complexity in any subject other than military is just pointless micromanagement, while military micromanagement is just fine and dandy to shove on all the players who want to play something else.

[G-Flex]

It needs war, yes, but it doesn't need obsessively detailed combat.  Just open up any Legends Mode, and see the cases where battles are fought, and they tell you every ear that was smashed, finger lost, nose cut, and hamstring pulled.  Oh, right, and then they tell you that after that, the guy also died, rendering all those injury reports (which are printed with the same importance as the death message) completely moot.

Then cull the less-important information or display it differently; that isn't very hard.

Plus, is it really a major historical event worthy of engraving in my fortress's walls that some random goblin I never heard of stubbed his left foot, fourth toe, philanges, lower toe pad fat, fifteenth capillary while fighting some random elf I never heard of?

Probably not, but it's important to that goblin, that elf, their civilizations, and so on. DF isn't designed to be very player-centric; it's a fantasy world simulator. This is doubly important when you remember that adventurers can also interact with those entities.

Even fights that players do have some nominal control over in Fortress Mode largely consist of a report consisting of twenty pages of bruising some body part's fat, which is why I generally don't even read them.  All that matters is what I control - I train them, throw them at the enemy, and then see who lived, and maybe treat some injured.  You could do that with hit points, honestly.  Since dwarves die of infected toes, just make an abstracted system where dwarves have hit points, and lose them constantly due to bleeding or infection once injured.  Same ultimate effect to the player.

Ergh. Please don't throw the baby out with the bathwater here. Your complaints can be adequately addressed by displaying information differently to the player. DF does a poor job at layering information well, and that's a major cause for concern here that doesn't require actually changing combat internals.

Ideally, players should have access to information that is as abstract or as detailed as necessary. You can have pared-down combat reports without getting rid of body fat and toe infections. Basically, from my perspective, you aren't complaining about DF having complex systems, you're complaining about having to interact with them even when they don't matter to you.

Even then, the combat is so complex now as to be completely unbalanced and unrealistic, thanks to a whole slew of factors like not properly counting the weight of the whole creature, or dummying out important differences in creature physiologies like dogs being supposed to have a stronger bite than a human toddler's.  You, G-Flex should be aware of that more than anyone, since I've seen more from you on that subject than anyone else.

Damn straight, but I think that these problems are very, very solvable. Hell, one reason they annoy me so much is that I like the simulationism behind it, think it has a lot of value and potential, and that some of the more important fixes wouldn't even necessarily be that difficult.

Oh, right, and remember the .31.01 wrestling interface?  Use seventeenth left elbow hair to grapple enemy belly button lent?  From a list of eight thousand meaningless options?

I don't think you'll find any arguments that the interfaces could use improvement. I'm pretty sure Toady knows that wrestling in particular is rather painful and always has been.

All this is not to say that I am opposed to complexity, (obviously, I am very much for complexity in some cases,) but that complexity needs to be handled well to be meaningful and not micromanagement.  There is a massive difference between simply tacking on pointless complexity the player either has to micromanage or which the player has no control over at all, and devising a deep and meaningful system.

I hate to do this, but I have to bite the bullet on this one and bring up that DF is very unfinished. Systems get implemented before they realize their potential consequences to gameplay. That's a fact we have to accept. I don't think that creatures actually having complex anatomy is "pointless"; it just isn't as relevant or realistic as it could be.

Again, I think you're mostly annoyed because the way DF presents this information to the player is suboptimal. Combat reports are a little annoying to read right now, but combat reports can be changed without changing how combat itself occurs, for instance.

Personally, I sort of resent the notion that complexity in any subject other than military is just pointless micromanagement, while military micromanagement is just fine and dandy to shove on all the players who want to play something else.

No disagreement here, except I don't think that complexity necessitates micromanagement.

Also, keep in mind that the body/wound systems are important for more than military matters. Yes, it's true that dwarves don't really get hurt or suffer health problems that aren't related to getting beaten up by another creature (or inhaling its toxic snot), but that presumably will not always be the case. Health and injury are incredibly important aspects to any sort of simulated gameworld with a focus on both individuals and more macroscopic (environmental, social, etc.) forces.


Basically, we have to accept that DF is a very detail-oriented and simulationist game in all respects, and that this is one of its major draws. Obviously, doing that well is difficult, and one of the inherent difficulties with having huge piles of information like that is allowing the user to deal with it in a satisfactory and fun manner. I don't think this is impossible, and I think that cutting down on the detail back to 40d levels would limit what I (and plenty of others) actually get out of the game. Right now, the added detail just isn't handled properly enough, probably because the game has never had to do so before. I think it's not only possible for the game to handle it in an organic enough fashion that it becomes fun and non-frustrating, but it is also necessary, as that sort of detail-based simulation is DF's key design goals and player hooks.

[NW_Kohaku]

Heh, I think you're missing the point of my argument, G-Flex.  I'm not arguing for a return to dumbed-down simulations.  (Although I would really like some sort of organized effort led by Toady where players could do some sort of "Ark Project" where we could implement in real values for materials and animals as a collaborative effort, just so that we could have some realistic creatures that the system is set up to provide, but doesn't because Toady doesn't have the time to actually put real data into the system.)

What I'm arguing against is this:

I don't want any enforced highly complex subsystems, but instead a very modular final-game experience. That is to say, I hope that Toady keeps his game complex enough to have very dynamic fortress logistics, but that none of it is so complicated that you have to choose X fertilizer in order to grow Y plant under Z-squared variables.

In even simpler terms: I don't want new core elements to make me micromanage a lot more stuff as a form of fake difficulty, but I want the option to toggle such things or easily mod them in if I'm really into such-and-such aspect of fortressing.

I don't think there's another way to read this but as a pointed argument against the Improved Farming thread, which is pretty much the only place you see talk about using fertilizers with multiple variables to grow specific plants on this forum.

What Plisskin is heavily implying, here, is that this will force players who want nothing to do with farming to "micromanage a lot more stuff as a form of fake difficulty". 

There's a real undercurrent in these forums that while there are several different playstyles, there is One True Playstyle, and that is using ASCII graphics, to play only for combat and military challenges, and that everything involving engineering or storytelling or graphics or people wanting to enjoy simulated worlds are just a sideshow that take away time from the real game.

I have taken time to specifically tackle the problem of having multiple different types of playstyles.  I have made several arguments as to how you can get around farming if you don't want to do farming... but of course, anyone who says "If you want to farm, just play Harvest Moon" isn't even going to read the thread long enough to get to that argument. 

Which leads to the real frustration of "how do I convince someone who has some preconcieved notion that I am forcing something he doesn't want upon him when he won't even read the arguments I have written against that?"

At a certain point, it feels like people just plug their ears and go "LALALALALALA!"

So, I occasionally try a different approach - bring the arguments they bring against my proposals and my playstyle against what already exists and what that one playstyle favors.  See if maybe that causes them to stop and rethink how they are forcing micromanagement on other players, as well.

Yes, there's turning sieges off, but then, there's also just turning the need to eat food, drink, and alcohol dependency off, too... but they'd never be willing to do that, since that's only "playing half the game" or "cheating" if they're being really harsh about it.  And they're right.  You are only playing half the game to cut off things like eating and drinking, and you're only playing half the game to cut off sieges, too. 

People don't want an init option that forces them to choose between playing the parts of the game they don't like just as much as the parts they do like, and the other choice being a broken half-game.  People want to have the game be dynamic in-game, and allow the player to spend as much time focusing upon the aspects that they like about the game as they want. 

This is, of course, what I have spent a great deal of time talking about, and trying to devise ways to incorporate into the system I have proposed, but, that's not good enough.  It's just assumed I will not or can not do such a thing.  My argument is already wrong simply because I have started with the proposal that farming be made more complex, and farming isn't an interesting subject to them, so therefore, it cannot possibly become fun or interesting, and at best, there should be an init option to cut it completely from the game. 

[Qinetix]

Superheroes , enuff said (those kind that shoot lasers from eyes , fly , have extreemly much muscles and powers , diferent colours , etc etc)

[G-Flex]

Yes, there's turning sieges off, but then, there's also just turning the need to eat food, drink, and alcohol dependency off, too... but they'd never be willing to do that, since that's only "playing half the game" or "cheating" if they're being really harsh about it.  And they're right.  You are only playing half the game to cut off things like eating and drinking, and you're only playing half the game to cut off sieges, too.

People don't want an init option that forces them to choose between playing the parts of the game they don't like just as much as the parts they do like, and the other choice being a broken half-game.  People want to have the game be dynamic in-game, and allow the player to spend as much time focusing upon the aspects that they like about the game as they want.

People should never be forced to turn major game features off for reasons of playing style, unless their playstyle is so totally off-kilter from what the game intends that the game simply isn't designed to support it. I really, really think that the "make it optional!" school of game design is ass-backwards.

I think the important thing to note is that making something (say, farming) more complex doesn't mean that it has to be more complex for the player, as long as the game presents the player with reasonable information and the proper tools to deal with it. Besides, even without disabling features entirely, fortresses can still focus more or less on certain things; not every fortress needs to have the same industries, or exist in the same political climate, and so on. In other words, complex farming should be feasible even to people who aren't particularly interested in it, and people who are particularly interested in it should be able to engage in it in a way that suits their preferences, all without having to resort to slapping "[DUMB_COMPLICATED_FARMS:HELL_NO]" in their init file.

So yeah, I don't think we're much in disagreement here. I think the person you're quoting is committing the mistake that I pointed out: Mistaking micromanagement for detail.

[Kogan Loloklam]

I'd actually like a maintenance job, because that means things can fall into disrepair. You could then selectively abandon tunnels without abandoning the fort.

[NW_Kohaku]

Even though I realize I'm not exactly arguing with anyone, here, I just can't leave well enough alone if I feel I haven't fully articulated my point...  (probably the root cause of all my tl;dr)

Let's tell a story...

In the days before World War I, the population of Europe had been exploding ever since the Industrial Revolution.  Imported fertilizers, including sea gull guano (yes, poo) from as far away as Chile were mined and brought back to the European motherlands because they were an absolutely critical resource for two reasons:  1. They were necessary to fertilize the fields for the intensive agriculture of the limited land Europe had for feeding its booming population and 2. those same guano nitrates that made fertilizer were also used in the creation of gunpowder and other explosives, critical for defending the nation from attack. 

During World War I, the war was really decided in the first year or so of fighting when the British simply blockaded the German and Ottoman fleets from being able to get to their sources of nitrates.  Their ability to feed themselves and resupply their ammo denied to them, Germany and its allies could basically just be bottled up while the other bloc of European powers waited for them to be starved into submission.

All the pointless trench warfare that followed was nothing more than a sideshow to appease the superstition that wars are won with soldiers, rather than a nation's ability to absorb losses and birth, feed, arm, and train new soldiers to replace the dead ones. 

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

An arguable degree of oversimplification? Yes. But a necessary shock to the system for some people.

Oh, and the professor who taught pretty much this exact lesson in class to me was a retired US Army Colonel who focused on 20th century military history.  Historians debate, of course, but I'm not just pulling this out of my ass.

There was, however, one hope for the German people, in their scientists, as Germany enjoyed a massive advantage in the sciences at that time, and a scientist named Fritz Haber had invented the Haber Process.  The Haber process is a means of getting nitrates (for generating food and ammunition) out of the inert nitrogen in the air, which is in functionally limitless supply.  All they needed was to build the factories and power plants it would take to perform the industrial manufacture (and supply the power for that industrialization) to produce all the fertilizers and ammunition they needed.

There was a problem, however, in that the Haber Process was discovered too late.  There wasn't enough time to build enough factories to supply enough nitrogen to both feed the starving German people and supply its armies with ammunition. 

Haber tried getting the army to use gas and chemical attacks instead of regular explosive ammo for the artillary barrages, which got him and Germany in general the condemnation of the world for War Crimes, but it still wasn't enough, Germany was still shooting all the nitrogen it could produce with the Haber Process instead of using it to farm.

Germany's fields by this time were desolate and overtaxed.  All the food that was produced was sent to the soldiers, along with the ammunition from all the nitrogen that was produced.  Everything was given to the military, nothing was given to the citizenry, in the hopes of holding out just long enough to strike a better peace treaty.

Then the German people snapped - they had been literally raiding garbage dumps for potato peels that had been discarded years ago because that was the only thing remotely like food left before they just flat-out resorted to cannibalism.  They demanded peace on any terms, just to end the starvation.  So Germany accepted peace on positively humiliating terms. 

The utter devastation caused to the German nation, plus the fact that many of the soldiers never realized how bad it was getting, and thought that the humiliating peace treaty had been forced upon them by traitors from within, plus the lack of any economic recovery thanks to the unrelated Great Depression were what set the stage for the radicalism of the 1930s.  We all know how that one turned out.

That was the consequence of the German leadership's choice to throw everything they had to the military, and nothing to their domestic production.  The war may well have been unwinnable either way, but they wouldn't have gone down nearly so hard had they made other decisions.


Someone who looks at military history only through the lens of troop movements is only reading half that history... in fact, they're looking at far less than half.  There's a gestalt effect to these systems - the decisions about whether to focus upon military or domestic production were not made in complete vacuum, the decision only had meaning because they had to choose one over the other, and chose poorly.

These are complex, real decisions with massive consequences, even if you're only focused upon military matters.  To completely cut out the mention of industrial capacity from a conversation about the military power of nations is to completely cut out some of its most meaningful context and its most far-ranging decisions and their impacts.  That's a far cry from "micromanagement as a means of fake difficulty".

If you're playing a wargame without industrial capacity or a nation's ability to sustain casualties modeled, you're not playing a simulation of war, you're playing Risk.

[G-Flex]

I agree. In general, if you're going to simulate societies, you cannot adequately simulate one aspect without adequately simulating the others (within reason). Obviously, if the game were solely about war, you could make the other parts more abstract and still have a successful simulation, but that isn't the case here. Simulated cultures need to be viewed on a sort of holistic level, with each aspect influencing the others and the whole, and that's where DF could feasibly shine.

To be honest, this ties into why I'm so afraid that fantasy races in DF will just wind up as copies of each other with different flavor. I don't know that there's a serious risk of this, but think about it: Even dwarves have their own flavors of large-scale agriculture and woodworking even when entirely below-ground. I'd rather that dwarves, say, suck at farming altogether, and have limited access to relatively poor underground "wood", and have to consider what implications that has for their species and the questions it raises... rather than them having "forestry, but underground" and "agriculture, but underground".

[Max White]

G-Flex, NW_Kohaku, I hate to do this, especialy from me, because it makes me some what of a hypocrit, but can we not do this today on this thread? I mean chances are the thread owner was going for a fun 'Let's point of things that we can all agree would be realy bad' sort of angle, rather then debate thread. I mean I could be wrong, and I apoligise if I am, but the origenal post seems to direct away from this.

We have the suggestions forum for you guys to have fun brawling in. I might come join you.

[G-Flex]

I admit this has gotten a little off-track, but I think that's kind of inevitable for a thread like this, and I'm not sure any of this deserves a thread of its own, particularly since NW_Kohaku, at least, is responding to other people's opinions on what DF shouldn't have (i.e. the thread topic).

[grel]

Any kind of online logging in. I like that I can download the executable and go hide in a hole and play the game.

[Dutchling]

hit points and/or easier combat. I understand that people don't want to see reports of groundhogs bruising your dwarves' fat and I think it would be great for combat reports to be a bit better organised but don;t make the combat less detailed (like random generated wounds or outcome of battles)