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[Ethicalfive]

I liked how the comments about the last talk were taken to heart when making this one. I really think they did do a great job on making a much more enjoyable talk this time around. So i'm greatful they took the time to put it together. Good work!

[NW_Kohaku]

I'm not the only one with this oppinion of you, so maybe you should re-evaluate your attitude. I do not try to bully people of the Fotf thread, regardless of what you think. I just fear that one day Toady may get fed up with answering valid questions because people are trying to push their agenda there.

Ah, so then I guess you said this:

I'm with Capntastic on this. Suggestions forum only exist everywhere on game fora because regardless if the developers will read and use them or not, people will feel entitled to make them anyway. The "suggestions forum" is there so they don''t clutter the rest of the fora with their self-entitled right to make suggestions.

and claimed that people make suggestions to be "thread tyrants" because you wanted to preserve the Suggestions Forum for all those people you didn't want using it, then?

Everyone who asks a question has an "Agenda" for something they hope to see in the game or are curious about how Toady wants the game to go - the only difference is that you agree with some of them, and villify others.  Someone who asks about if and when Toady wants to change the interface is just as much part of their "agenda" whether I am the one asking it or someone else is.  Somehow, it's just sinister when it's the person you personally don't like, though, isn't it?

Apparently, it is a sign of having a greater ego to you to simply talk back to you when you try to intimidate away other people.  If that's the definition, then I don't see it as an insult.  Someone needs to stand up to the bully.

NW_Kohaku: To be honest, I don't know how you even expect Toady to read your suggestions. Judging by the length of your threads and posts, it would probably take almost as much time as reading and responding to the rest of the suggestions forum as a whole.

I take it that means you gave up on reading Improved Farming? 

I try to be organized at the same time as I try to be thorough - I put up tl;dr versions, and quick guides for the people who want a swift look at it, although that wouldn't help Toady.

The "Front Page" of the thread contains links to all the major points, so there's something if you don't want to read the whole thread, and I keep it updated so that you don't have to track the entire thread's progress to see how the idea evolves.

That's the best I can do, however... Sometimes, topics just need discussion and extrapolation - I do think that trying to puzzle something out in a suggestion forum is much easier than trying to implement something in code, then finding out you want to go further than you previously had planned and throwing out your old code.  Especially since only Toady is coding, but all of us can debate.  It's practically the only thing we CAN do to contribute.

The DF Talk system would IMO work way better if people wouldn't write questions to Toady in the emails. Instead they should tell him, what topic they would like to know more about (maybe through a poll?). You know, like "hm, I've a very specific question about egg laying [like this one] but I want to hear more about the general future of Taverns, so I vote taverns as the next DF Talk topic and write my question in the FotF thread".

Also, not native english speaker here, so sorry if the phrasing is a bit weird.

Don't tell people you aren't a native speaker, and they probably wouldn't know.  If you just keep chatting in English-speaking forums, you'll probably get rid of what little verbal ticks I only notice now that I'm specifically looking for them, and be completley fluent.

Anyway, maybe that would help.  I do know there were some votes a while ago, but that they haven't really taken place in a while.  Of course, not being a particular fan of DF Talk, I didn't follow them too closely when they were there, anyway.

[monk12]

I'm slightly amused that the very DF Talk that sparked this whole derail contains Word of Toad answers to some of the debated points. To quote,

"We were originally thinking about doing just adventure mode taverns and inns, and then we remembered ... there was this suggestion around 2008 or something on the forum for dwarf mode inns. I don't remember if we had talked about it at all before then, or if that was just a random suggestion that popped up back then ... So we saw taverns and inns on the dev page and we were like 'Okay, let's do dwarf mode inns too'"

Couldn't find the thread itself, but then again my search fu is weak. I don't think the fact that Toady welcomes and acts upon suggestions is really up for debate. And NW_Kohaku is right, some points do need to to be debated, discussed, and elaborated on to be meaningful. We know that Toady and Zach spend significant time hashing out the new features. In fact,

"We don't want to get too far off topic, I guess, not that we ever had a problem with that before, but it's just I don't want to talk about something I haven't completely ... well, that never stopped me either, but let me just say that Zach and I have not one hundred percent worked this out..."

So just based on these two quotes, we know that Toady and Zach don't have a master blueprint of every little thing that's going in the game, and they at least use the suggestion forum as a jumping off point for new feature discussion, and it is hardly unreasonable to assume that they read the content and use that to help shape their dialogue and perhaps open up new avenues they hadn't previously considered. The more those avenues are discussed, either by the thread creator or through natural conversation within the thread, the more material the Tarn brothers have to draw on whether or not they use any of it at all.

And as long as I'm enjoying the sound of my own voice, yes, NW_Kohaku, you came off as an arrogant prick to start this thread- I can tell your words were not well considered just from the fact they weren't arranged and organized in a big, thorough argument like they usually are (though perhaps argument is not the right word). I know DF Talk isn't terribly information dense, and as a result isn't a very good tool for expanding on. My advice- don't regard it as a tool, and I think you'll enjoy it more. The information within is amorphous, unformed, extremely preliminary, and not very "hard," but it is comprehensive, it provides valuable insight into the development process and is probably better for discerning the goals of development rather than the methods. And above all, it is entertaining. Sit back and relax a spell, try to set aside your prejudice and persecution complex and enjoy it for what it is.

As long as I'm on the soapbox, yeah, Rainseeker overreacted. I nearly fell out of my chair at that outburst. Kiss and make up, wouldja?

Why can't we be friends?

[thvaz]

I think the biggest sign I'm a bully is the fact I am the one taking flak from everyone on this thread.

[freeformschooler]

I think the biggest sign I'm a bully is the fact I am the one taking flak from everyone on this thread.

Oh yes, you big, mean bully. You should really stop bullying the arrogant dude. Bad, bad boy.



This thread has been fun.

[Zalminen]

I never listen to the DF talks, mostly because I read much faster than people talk and listening to the whole thing would take 3-4 times as long.

I sometimes read the transcripts but since the DF talks are 'fireside chats transcribed', they don't really work that well when read.

But I'm sure others find them more fun.

[Capntastic]

I think the biggest sign I'm a bully is the fact I am the one taking flak from everyone on this thread.

Welcome to my world.

[G-Flex]

I think the biggest sign I'm a bully is the fact I am the one taking flak from everyone on this thread.

Welcome to my world.

I don't really see anybody giving you flak here.

NW_Kohaku: To be honest, I don't know how you even expect Toady to read your suggestions. Judging by the length of your threads and posts, it would probably take almost as much time as reading and responding to the rest of the suggestions forum as a whole.

words

Your response sounds more like you're talking about other forum members reading the thread, whereas I was talking about Toady getting something out of it. Honestly, I tried to make an argument for shorter, more abstract suggestions on that thread, which I admit I probably did not explain very well, and one reason for that is that Toady isn't going to read twelve dozen pages of you going into explicit detail about your particular suggestion for some game system, and that even if he does, he won't get much more out of that than he would out of a more abstract summary one-tenth that size.

[thvaz]

I think the biggest sign I'm a bully is the fact I am the one taking flak from everyone on this thread.

Welcome to my world.

I don't really see anybody giving you flak here.

It was sarcasm. NW_Kohaku instead of defending himself is attacking me, to the point of searching old quotes, and I am the bully here.

[NW_Kohaku]

Your response sounds more like you're talking about other forum members reading the thread, whereas I was talking about Toady getting something out of it. Honestly, I tried to make an argument for shorter, more abstract suggestions on that thread, which I admit I probably did not explain very well, and one reason for that is that Toady isn't going to read twelve dozen pages of you going into explicit detail about your particular suggestion for some game system, and that even if he does, he won't get much more out of that than he would out of a more abstract summary one-tenth that size.

Really, there are two audiences, there - the other forum members, and Toady.  I have to keep both in mind. 

Besides, simply throwing out an abstract summary is not terribly helpful - I spent the first post just outlining the problem I saw and arguing the need for changes.  Simply saying "we could have X" isn't an argument, you have to say why you need X, and what it will do to the game and the player's interaction with the game. 

In fact, not thinking about how the changes will actually have an impact upon play tends to make most suggestions fairly shallow.  If someone wanted, say, a new type of food that was more complicated to make, but offered no additional benefits that any other form of food could provide, then what are you really trying to have added into the game?  If it only tries to fill the function provided by another item, and no mechanics changes are made to accomidate the differentiation, then they don't add much.  (Gems, for example, aren't valuable just because you can't do anything useful with them you couldn't do with some other material.  They have very little impact on any given player's game, aside from random mandates.)

When I am "going into explicit detail", I am usually citing the real-world equivalents, methods, citing a source for my information, arguing for the complexity change, or talking about how the player's interaction with the game will change because of the specific topic I was talking about.  The reasoning you are using to support your argument isn't just bloat, it's a critical component of the argument.

[NW_Kohaku]

I think the biggest sign I'm a bully is the fact I am the one taking flak from everyone on this thread.

Welcome to my world.

I don't really see anybody giving you flak here.

It was sarcasm. NW_Kohaku instead of defending himself is attacking me, to the point of searching old quotes, and I am the bully here.

He saw the sarcasm. He was talking to Capntastic.

Anyway, defend myself from what?   Here's the last post before that -

I'm not the only one with this oppinion of you, so maybe you should re-evaluate your attitude. I do not try to bully people of the Fotf thread, regardless of what you think. I just fear that one day Toady may get fed up with answering valid questions because people are trying to push their agenda there.

You only talked about me in the first sentence, the rest was you talking about you. I don't have to defend myself from you talking about yourself, and the first sentence's only "attack" on me was that more than one person has a negative opinion of me.   That's hardly something that requires "defending".

The last post about "the biggest sign you're a bully" only amounts to "poor me", anyway...

[G-Flex]

Besides, simply throwing out an abstract summary is not terribly helpful - I spent the first post just outlining the problem I saw and arguing the need for changes.  Simply saying "we could have X" isn't an argument, you have to say why you need X, and what it will do to the game and the player's interaction with the game.

If you can't do this within a single page of a thread, then you probably need to learn how to focus on the big picture and be more concise.

[NW_Kohaku]

Besides, simply throwing out an abstract summary is not terribly helpful - I spent the first post just outlining the problem I saw and arguing the need for changes.  Simply saying "we could have X" isn't an argument, you have to say why you need X, and what it will do to the game and the player's interaction with the game.

If you can't do this within a single page of a thread, then you probably need to learn how to focus on the big picture and be more concise.

That is something I do in most cases - it's just that in the case of the Improved Farming thread (which is the only thread to go over that threshold), the topic simply expanded to be broad enough (and a "big enough picture") to require more time talking about the broad concept before focusing in on the specifics. 

It's simply a broad topic - soil erosion requires its own arguments for it, and examples of how it could be rolled into the game, and the impacts it will have upon how the player plays the game.  So does tracking water inflow and outflow, abstract food web mechanics being rolled in with vermin, invasive species, the use of certain types of flowers as insect repellants, heavy metal pollution, and a host of other topics.  Each needs their supporting reasoning.  Each is broken up, organized, and clearly marked to be easier to read, but each needs their reasoning.

[Dakk]

I find DF talk entertaining and informative, and I don't get why toady's very own spoken words would be in any way inferior to a wall of text written in size 10 font. There's the transcript for people who absolutely needs to read stuff to understand it anyway. I don't think the objective of DF Talk ever was doing an academic lecture on DF's future features.

If DF Talk carefuly listed, described, justfied and made references to every single feature is being discussed, it would become dull very fast. Toady already spends time answering our individual questions, if he had to prepare lessons on dwarf fortress for every DF talk it would end up taking more and more time just to tell the fanbase whats going to happen next.

Big, longwinded and carefuly written arguments are not aways the best.

[thvaz]

You only talked about me in the first sentence, the rest was you talking about you. I don't have to defend myself from you talking about yourself, and the first sentence's only "attack" on me was that more than one person has a negative opinion of me.   That's hardly something that requires "defending".

The last post about "the biggest sign you're a bully" only amounts to "poor me", anyway...

I'm not the only one here who thinks you have an enormous ego, it looks. If I was alone at this I could think I was wrong. And then you accuse me of bullying people out of the FotF thread, as if I had the power to do this. As I said in another thread - if questions-suggestions were valid questions, Toady would answer them. Why Toady didn't answer most of your questions?  Because when they weren't wall-of-text lenght, they were disguised suggestions. Certainly I'm not the most polite of the forumites, but I think never anyone reported me for aggressive behaviour - at least I never was informed of any report. So calling me bully because I disagree with you is pretty harsh.

And then saying you have an enourmous ego is too harsh too?So prove me and others wrong, stop showing your discontent everywhere about Toady policy regarding suggestions and we can let this overblown quarrel finally settle.