There is such a thing as constructive criticism.
Like calling a feature in development stupid and gamey?
Naturally.
When something is flawed you call attention to it, instead of pretending that everything is perfect and fawning over everything Toady does. Toady will never correct the mistake unless he knows its there.
Then you should wait the new version being released and report the bridge bug there, instead of writing a book about it in the FoTF thread.
If it is there when the version comes out, I will. As it stands, this conversation goes in a circle.
Once again, let me repeat this -
...
when I noticed that bridge, what I did pretty much was to just point it out in a couple of sentences.
It's only when people argued that there was nothing at all wrong with bridges that go nowhere that I had to step up the argument to explain why it was wrong.
The argument was not "this may be something that should be held off," but "there is nothing wrong with this at all," and that is an entirely different argument.
If you go into talking about how something like how this is something that can take just a quick nod in the direction that this is something that needs to be dealt with somewhere down the road, and that other things require more attention, I'll agree with you.
However, I will not agree that it is simply not a problem if a single farmer constructs a 162-foot-long, 15-foot-wide bridge just because the game doesn't recognize the costs involved.
Even before you finished it?
Of course, before you finish is the best time to notice a problem, since nothing is set in stone yet.
The closer you are to the time you commit an error, the easier it is to go back and make the correction, because the less you have done that is based upon the assumptions in that error.
In fact, he's still working with a mockup map, and not actually putting it into the game yet, which means the whole system is isolated, which is the best time to stress test the system, since it is a closed system, and you have greater control over the variables than when it's going through the crazy amount of data being thrown through worldgen.
You weren't the only one complaining this time, though you were the most aggressive and your remark about it being stupid and gamey stood out. I just wasn't in the mood to enter the discussion in the FoTF thread.
My tone became aggressive because it had to be to make my point - as I had said, there were people comparing a bridge that is larger than some of those houses just to the north of it on the map to "just putting a log across a stream".
Especially when one of those houses could just be deconstructed to let the urban road through, and rebuilt for far less material and cost than having the bridge there.
Further, there is a massive difference between saying that an easily correctable mistake I notice in an early mockup,
where one expects to be able to find silly mistakes that are easily correctable, has a "stupid and gamey" look and saying that I think Toady is stupid or that I am somehow insulting Toady in any way.
Believe you me, people will point out stupid mistakes I have made in my own work and call them stupid mistakes. It's entirely common and routine in any situation where someone isn't being treated as if they were the pope and they were infallible.
Suggestions, bug reports, and frank questions
are not the insults to Toady One you seem to think they are. He is just as human as you or I, and occasionally people really
do have ideas that he hasn't thought of yet, or can find mistakes that he has made. It's OK to treat him as a human being.