Tilesets are all good and dandy. I don't think that Bohandas was smashing those. Instead I believe he was targeting the group of people who think that DF should have graphics rivaling Oblivion.
BOOM! Suddenly the graphics problem is pretty much solved >> or at least patched up until such a time that we're no longer in FUCKING ALPHA WHERE GAMEPLAY DESIGN TRUMPS GRAPHICS
This is a very very poor ideology. You want to tell me that a game had great story, character, plot, atmosphere, and development of said character. Would still be inferior to a game with the cliche characters and a plot that makes "The Room" look like Shakespeare?
Just because it had better graphics?
The problem with the OP argument is this: There is no quantitative difference between a smiley face representing a maimed dwarf and a small dwarf icon representing a maimed dwarf. Both are representations. How does this affect what should or should not be the default graphics?
A maimed dwarf flashes a red plus with a white background when it is maimed significantly. Very hard to miss.
But improving the graphics beyond simple tiles would be beneficial. e.g. there could be indicators on the dwarf sprite to show the current state, like thirsty, hungry, bad mood etc. This would be better than the alternating tiles right now.
Make a graphics tileset. Or make a few dozen. Then please come back and tell us your opinion
If I had to make a graphic, for each graphic to show if they were hungry/sad/depressed whatever I would've gone stark raving mad. That's at least a dozen different graphics, for the fifty or so graphics I have. And I'm not even done making them! I haven't even touched animals! Flashing keys are not only easier on graphics designers, but also easier to notice, a flashing tile catches your attention more then a dwarf covering his stomach when he's hungry. We're working with <20 pixels here.
Toady designed this game to be in ASCII format (or whatever else Mugros would call it), Toady would need to preform a hostile takeover on every graphics company in the world to have it portray some of the stuff DF currently uses without making it seem black-nightish. And still not even Santa could portray all those high-rez people slashing and hacking in 100 FPS.
Heck, I enjoy ASCII graphics warts and all. Am I the only one that enjoys biting someone in the nose from behind without them seeing me?