Your fixes are interesting but only make sense in the very limited scenario of building an outpost similar to the current version of the game. Most of them wouldn't make any sense for a prison colony for example.
Not right now, no. But that's where the game is heading, and that's when immigrants are due to be overhauled.Your fixes are interesting but only make sense in the very limited scenario of building an outpost similar to the current version of the game. Most of them wouldn't make any sense for a prison colony for example.
Sure, but nothing in the game makes any sense for a prison colony simulator.
Not right now, no. But that's where the game is heading, and that's when immigrants are due to be overhauled.Your fixes are interesting but only make sense in the very limited scenario of building an outpost similar to the current version of the game. Most of them wouldn't make any sense for a prison colony for example.
Sure, but nothing in the game makes any sense for a prison colony simulator.
Yes, sure it's possible that Toady will take time out of development to introduce a temporary new 'more realistic' system despite knowing it'll be replaced with a completely new 'even more realistic' system as part of the "short-term" plans.
It's more likely though that he'll fix some bugs and continue working on implementing artifacts and magic.
Weirdest thing about the immigrant system for me is that they're all dwarves. What's up with that?!
Dwarf-only immigration will probably go away when multi-race civs are a thing.Multi-race civs have been a thing for years. That's why it's weird. Your non-dwarf citizens turn up as visitors (or monarchs on occasion), but not immigrants right now.
c) Lack of Government/Security/Fame: Dwarves associate security with the presence of nobles of Baronial rank. Dwarves are social creatures with a strong sense of loyalty to their civilization and their heritage. The more Barons, Counts, Dukes, and Monarchs in your fortress, the more security the fortress is perceived to have. Without sufficient nobles in your fortress, few dwarves are going to want to risk it. Right now in terms of game play, nobles only serve to artificially increase the difficulty of the game in minor ways. Why do you want nobles in your fortress? Because nobles are what attracts migrants. Indeed, nobles are one of the things that attracts desirable migrants, since important and skillful dwarves are only going to want to serve other important, wealthy, famous dwarves. More on this later.How do you conclude that dwarves would conclude that a whole bunch of individuals that inherently have no military skills whatsoever would be irrationally perceived by dwarves as a sign of security rather than say the presence of a large number of highly trained soldiers? Additionally why would important and skillful dwarves want to go where other such dwarves are given that the more of these they are the more competition there is lowering their value to the site government and hence their influence over it.
3) The more economic migrants you get at a time, the less desirable that they should be.
Early on, when one dwarf shows up in your hole in the ground in the wild wilderness, he or she is probably the same sort of pioneer dwarf that your original 7 were. They should on average have 1 or 2 useful skills, and a small amount of equipment suitable to a traveler. They probably have a weapon, because otherwise they wouldn't have survived getting here. They are probably only slightly stressed. They might even show up with a donkey or wardog other handy pet. However, the more wealth and fame your fortress has, the more likely it is to attract the tired huddled dwarf masses who see your fortress as a land of opportunity. These tend to on average be peasants with nothing more than the clothes on their back, and they tend to be rather stressed from their journey.
7) Refugees should be a separate thing from migrants: I think something like this is planned, but ideally the arrival of refugees should be semi-random events that can occur at any time. Refugee arrival should be triggered by the Refugees are created event in the world engine, and scheduled for some future season in whatever numbers based on distance from the event. Far away events might send no refugees your way, while being the closest outpost to the event would be very likely to send refugees your way. Unlike economic migrants, refugees should be extremely varied in nature. Some might arrive with nothing, not even clothing. Most will have worn clothing. Some might arrive with heavy weaponry, as veterans of battle and have extra military skill. Some might even arrive as families with wagons and a load of basic quality goods, or even with artifacts rescued from other fortresses. However, they should all arrive as high stress, unhappy, and potentially volatile dwarves. Some might be only slightly stressed, and some might be PTS basket cases, but the arrival of refugees should be a mixed blessing. How many arrive should be calculated similarly to economic migrants with the addition of adding the calculation of whether they are from your civilization (relatively small numbers of refugees might arrive from other dwarf civilizations or even allied human civilizations. I'm not sure about elves, but perhaps if you're maintaining a no wood cutting policy?), but the caps should be based on the size of the fortress they are arriving from. So under the best (worst?) conditions you might find a comparative horde has arrived. I think it's reasonable that you could turn away refugees, with a few caveats. If you do, all high empathy dwarves in your fortress get unhappy thoughts, and/or may suddenly get grudges with the mayor. Hospitality is presumably a prized virtue among dwarfs. Secondly, the refugees get unhappy thoughts, may start brawls, and the whole group may occasionally turn hostile especially in the rare case they outnumber the residents, but also in any case when the group isn't from the same civilization. Thirdly, whatever source civilization the refugees hail from get the equivalent of an unhappy thought, similar to robbing one of their caravans, treble so if the refugees end up dead (even if they started it). Refugees you lock out of the fortress without an audience probably should just go insane, poor thingsThere are no specific mechanisms for refugees in the game at the moment. There is also no particular reason why refugees would all end up going to your fortress in mass rather than scattering about the place.
Like why in the world do literally hundreds of dwarves want to make their way from their homes in some distant dwarves civilization to make their way to some wild, gods forsaken, place on the border of goblin-lands, where they might at any moment be devoured by a giant grizzly bear, and they won't even have a proper bed when they get there, much less any normal dwarven amenities like hot and cold running water and magma?
In the summer of 1858, the city of London came to a standstill. Government could barely function; people resisted the urge to leave their homes, but demanded action from the government. What had brought London to its knees was the overwhelming stench that radiated from the surface of the River Thames.Also note that the Great Fire of London is argued to be one of the biggest boons to the sanitation of London in history.
For centuries, England’s most famous river played the role of dumping ground for all of London’s various wastes—human, animal, and industrial. As the population of London grew from a tiny Roman fort into a large, metropolitan city, the amount of waste it produced expanded exponentially. By the 1600’s, many people began to recognise that the pollution of the city’s most vital water source was becoming a problem. Yet with no comprehensive idea on how to fix the issue, no action was taken and the people of London continued to use the Thames as both a water source and a rubbish bin. By the arrival of the 19th century, the problem had been left to stew for too long. Enough waste and pollution had accumulated in the Thames to make it the most contaminated and unhygienic river in the world.
How do you conclude that dwarves would conclude that a whole bunch of individuals that inherently have no military skills whatsoever would be irrationally perceived by dwarves as a sign of security rather than say the presence of a large number of highly trained soldiers?
Additionally why would important and skillful dwarves want to go where other such dwarves are given that the more of these they are the more competition there is lowering their value to the site government and hence their influence over it.
Your fortress is evidently already seen as a land of opportunity. Why would the more people who migrate result in a lower quality in migrants, that simply is completely devoid of logic.
There is also no particular reason why refugees would all end up going to your fortress in mass rather than scattering about the place.
I think migrants make perfect sense. The DF world is dangerous and horrible with goblins, undead and monsters running amok. If you could make your fortress safe, dwarves would flock to it.
Ipso facto from the existence of the nobility itself. By extension, from the nature of historical aristocracies in the real world. Nobility being parasites is a perspective of a society that doesn't have an aristocracy. It's generally not how aristocracies are perceived, where a king is normally perceived as the surety of justice, health, wealth, and divine favor. Whether that is rational or not is beside the point, it's how aristocracies persist.
What?? When ever in human history have large numbers of talented individuals ever decided to move out from centers of industry, wealth, and power so that they can be bigger fish in smaller pawns? I mean, yes, I know that it does happen in individual cases, but on the net people seeking careers move to Hollywood or Broadway. They don't move to Hobokan so that the can have more influence over the local arts scene, or go from Yale to teach in a junior college where they'd be more respected. Aggregation into centers of influence is normal.
I'm getting the feeling I'm wasting my time here, but that's just basic demographics. Places with low economic opportunity generally only attract immigrants who have the wherewithal to make a life there. Place with high economic opportunity on the other hand will attract people who lack that wherewithal precisely because it promises an improvement from whatever ghetto life or subsidence farm they are trying to survive in. Or as a simple matter of fact, wealthy people my by homes in the country - or immigrate to the wilderness, bringing their wealth with them as it were, but wealthy urban areas attract the poor looking for a better life. Vanderbilt moves from New York to Asheville, while the citizens of Asheville were moving to New York. Or, if you were, wealthy Americans were going vacationing in Europe in the 1890s, but poor Europeans were moving to America. Or, wealthy persons may by retirement homes in Costa Rica, while Costa Ricans risk everything to sneak in America.
Of course, as should have been clear, "Quality" in this case represents bring your own wealth and having had extensive education. It in no way guarantees that the attributes and aptitude of a skilled wealthy dwarf are greater than that peasant that has showed up.
As Shonai_Dweller has said, this suggestion might make sense for the current state of the game but it would soon become irrelevant as context-based immigration is introduced.
I'm a little mystified to keep seeing this sort of thing as a response, because much of my suggestion is intended to make immigration seem more realistic to the context. If context based immigration is implemented, it would have work much like this.
There are of course other contexts that are possible than economic migrants and migrants that are refugees from disasters. Yes, presumably a Duke could order you to house a dozen dangerous prisoners, and some sort of 'prisoner transfer' immigration could occur. However, while that's possible it doesn't do anything obvious to enhance gameplay, and to make it enhance gameplay would require massive overhaul of far more subsystems than merely immigration - cages would have to be less absolute, the loyalty system would need revamping, NPCs would have to be able to engage in their own goal directed sapping/tunneling behavior, the behavior of stone when tunneled therefore might need to change, you'd need much better fog of war so that things could take place outside your omnipresent observation and so forth. And many of those changes would have major impact on gameplay elsewhere which wouldn't necessarily be positive, so you'd have to be asking, "Why am I making any effort at all implementing penal colonies when not only do lots of things not work already, but if I implemented them fewer things would work."
So when someone answers, "These changes you suggest aren't needed [because magic is going to happen and then somehow immigration is going to work].", I frankly don't think they've ever designed a game in their life. Moreover, I don't think even they know what they mean by 'contextual immigration'. I did actually take the time to read through the development notes before posting suggestions, and they certainly aren't clear about what immigration is intended to be like.
There are no ways to get the whole system to be simulated from first principles. You aren't going to be able to check each of the 100,000 entities in the game world to see if they want to immigrate, and if you tried to do those sort of first principles, you'd almost certainly screw it up - like trying to simulate an economy from first principles you'd never have enough realism to make it work. Any attempt at fixing immigration is going to have to rely on some sort of abstraction informed by desired gameplay.
Your suggestion is based on what you perceive to be realistic society, law and economics for the world the game presents you with.
However, when implemented, just like the creation of the universe, laws and societies and (possibly) economic systems will be unique for each world (and each society in each world). They'll also be customizable.
Which is why your suggestion is kind of limited right now since nobody really knows how any of that will work.
Migrants will act (hopefully vaguely realistically) according to the social, legal and economic pressures placed on them and will turn up at your site depending on what your site's role in your civilization is supposed/perceived to be.
Lots of people suggest without taking into account the bigger picture, which is fine I guess, all ideas are useful, but people probably wouldn't be jumping on this thread if it weren't so "the simulation is broken!!"
Laws likewise are based on basic biologyNot really. There have been thousands of different societies, law systems and economic systems throughout history. We don't really know how it will turn out in the end or how much we'll be able to mess with it but the current economic and social system in DF isn't unrealistic.
Look, I hate to break this to you but economic systems tend to be grounded in the physics of a universe, and if you changed the physics of the universe radically it would no longer have anything recognizable in it. Laws likewise are based on basic biology, which in turn is grounded in the same sort of hard realities as economic systems are because they are both based on scarcity. So while I can easily imagine creating an engine that diversifies minor points of ethics and traits and tendencies of a race, creating diverse gameplay and religion, when it comes to something as basic as immigration, the fundamentals here are going to be fairly similar - whether or not my race does slave trading or kidnaps the children of other races or is matriarchal or whatever because my civilizations god said, "Thou Shalt" or "Thou Shalt Not". Things like that might create additional subsystems that you could turn on or off to create different scenarios, but they will fundamentally just be subsystems - whether or not caravans show up with sentient races in cages to be enslaved, for example. Whether they do or not has nothing to do with economic migration.
None of those objections about me not actually seeing the big picture here are actually pertinent. The fact that economic migration might be turned off by a flag in event of a strict prison scenario isn't actually an objection to a discussion of the basics of economic migration or refugees (which are more like 'emergency economic migrants'). In fact, what they strike me as is objections by people who themselves couldn't and can't explain the big picture, but who are bristling at perceived criticism.
Well, at least you are honest there. And while we are at it, lets add Toady to that list of people that doesn't really know how any of that will work. How do we know? Because this game has as more subsystems that are broken now than work. This is a game defined by its bugs, where the bugs are an integral part of what has created the gameplay in the past. And I'm not just talking about the abandoned ill-thought out economic system, but core pillars of the game play like the Happiness/Stress system are broken in the 2014 release I'm playing. Right now, it's so easy to make dwarves happy that the pillar of the gameplay might as well not exist. And even a cursory examination of the mechanics indicates that in their basic structure they could never been tweaked to work, and it will always produce absurd results. The whole system will need to be ripped out. And that's not because the replacement system is fundamentally more complex, but simply because the current system is wrong. That's because Toady is clearly learning as he goes like well... just about anyone would be. No doubt if I was doing it, I'd go down even more dead ends and wrong paths.
But yes, at least you are honest in admitting that sense you have no idea how any of this other stuff will work, you have no basis for claiming whether or not my suggestions would work with that stuff that doesn't exist yet. It's fundamentally absurd to claim my stuff is invalidated by stuff whose content you don't even know, and whose specifications are still being worked out by the designer. In the mean time...
Yes. And presumably that role that could morph depending on your relationship to the civilization. You might start out as a fort tasked to defend a trade route against goblin incursions, and such with certain constraints about that role - civilians aren't going to show up to be long term residents of a military installation, and replacements are going to depend on your relationship to the local military governor. Fine, I get all that, but whatever your current role, once your site becomes perceived as a colony or settlement, it will begin to be subject to economic migration and be more attractive to refugees - and both those subsystems will have to work. I suppose thinking about it we could add more factors (like a colony reputation system based on my colonies relationship to civilization ethics, am I known as a 'den of inquity' or a 'wretched hive of scum and villainy' or as a great place to raise a family), but they would be additional factors to that basic description I just made, with fairly small and obvious modifications of the default behavior.
Well the simulation is broken. I imagine no one is more painfully aware of that than Toady. Why is it some sort of taboo to notice how broken the game is in a suggestion forum?
I think Celebrim42 puts his or her finger on a real flaw in DFs current gameplay and has some interesting ideas on how to fix it. That the starting scenarios update is going to change how immigration works makes this sort of analysis more useful -not less. I sort of wish discussion centered around how to solve the problems OP points out, rather than which models of immigration are the most realistic.Some of his ideas don't make sense, others were discussed. Why not discuss them yourself instead of pointing out that others should?
I think Celebrim42 puts his or her finger on a real flaw in DFs current gameplay and has some interesting ideas on how to fix it. That the starting scenarios update is going to change how immigration works makes this sort of analysis more useful -not less. I sort of wish discussion centered around how to solve the problems OP points out, rather than which models of immigration are the most realistic.
I think Celebrim42 puts his or her finger on a real flaw in DFs current gameplay and has some interesting ideas on how to fix it. That the starting scenarios update is going to change how immigration works makes this sort of analysis more useful -not less. I sort of wish discussion centered around how to solve the problems OP points out, rather than which models of immigration are the most realistic.
Most of the OPs problems are not problems at all.
Handwaving away problems is not going to make them disappear. I agree that putting constraints on immigrations will help make gaming more goal-oriented.I don't think people did that. The OP started a discussion about the current system of immigration specifically, not a suggestion about an ideal system. Should the game remain essentially as it is, some of his suggestions, however gamey, might make sense. But as was said, it's pointless to address it in that way right now because we know significant changes are coming which would make OP's suggestions useless and ultimately a waste of time.
It is meant to discuss regarding the direction new development can take.
Handwaving away problems is not going to make them disappear. I agree that putting constraints on immigrations will help make gaming more goal-oriented.
In general, a lot of systems in this game have been implemented in a broken fashion. For example, as a player, it is much more meaningful to have three different kinds of wood (light, medium, heavy) and a meaningful role for each, compared to having hundreds of different kinds of wood trees.
This is not meant as criticism, which like the OP's post, people seem to have taken offense to. It is meant to discuss regarding the direction new development can take.
In this context, scenarios development seems like a good place to make immigration more meaningful to the player.
Handwaving away problems is not going to make them disappear. I agree that putting constraints on immigrations will help make gaming more goal-oriented.
In general, a lot of systems in this game have been implemented in a broken fashion. For example, as a player, it is much more meaningful to have three different kinds of wood (light, medium, heavy) and a meaningful role for each, compared to having hundreds of different kinds of wood trees.
This is not meant as criticism, which like the OP's post, people seem to have taken offense to. It is meant to discuss regarding the direction new development can take.
In this context, scenarios development seems like a good place to make immigration more meaningful to the player.
There are very few serious problems with the present system under present game-world conditions.
except it, um, doesn't crash every three hours or so
happiness isn't abandoned, it's actually a new subsystem? from 2014?
Also, you're not the final arbiter on what the "pillars of its gameplay" are.
Why in the world do you think that any thought went into the UI?
Why in the world do you think that any thought went into the UI?
Oh good grief, now you are making my point for me.
But, back on topic, gameplay is defined by what the game allows you to do. The pillars of your gameplay are the systems that the player is expected to spend the most time engaged in. A pillar of gameplay in Minecraft might be for example collection of resources. Another pillar might be exploration. In a first person shooter, the pillar of gameplay might be tactical reflex based squad combat. So, for example, if you implement a bunch of different skills for the dwarves and then have a system where dwarves gain XP and then become more proficient in these skills, then training up your dwarves becomes a pillar of the gameplay by definition. I'm not defining that as a pillar of gameplay. It just bloody well is.
Are you playing vanilla? A large majority of the crashes I've heard about are from people using TWBT (a DFHack plug-in.) Some crashes also happening on the Linux version.except it, um, doesn't crash every three hours or soYes. It. Does. (Why would I lie about that?)
So, you smelt metal and form bars, which are then used to form objects, which can in turn be melted back into bars. Fine. But, you smelt sand into raw glass.... and it can only be used as a gem. You can't melt it back down. You can only melt sand into objects directly. Why?It might need to be a powder to heat properly. It's generally made directly from sand IRL.
]It might need to be a powder to heat properly. It's generally made directly from sand IRL.
Maybe wild animals and migrants can act similar?
Glass is the consummate recyclable material. Glass makers recycle their broken pieces all the time. Although you may not be old enough to remember when most containers in real life were glass, glass is pretty much the material that started the recycling movement.Wikipedia says it gets crushed into cullet first (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_recycling), which sounds like a labor-intensive task. Probably needs an intermediate step at a millstone/quern.
Moreover, from a realism perspective bars of glass were one of the original commodities that drove long distance trade. People didn't trade sand. Areas with sand that was good for glass production (that is, it made particularly beautiful, unusual or attractive glass - often with vivid colors) produced standardized glass 'bars' (actually more like thick disks) and traded them to other region for 'hides' of copper, jars of olive oil, and other standard commodities.So it would seem. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_glass_trade)
So no, it really doesn't make much sense from a game play perspective that glass industry doesn't or can't produce bars, or that sand but not bars are available for trade. My guess is that its a technical artifact of the implementation of glass that has kind of hung around without a lot of examination.Could just be an oversight due to time constraints. We can't burn clothes or wood items into ash. Ore furniture and blocks can't be melted. Furniture from glass blocks would probably add a bunch of reactions, since it's not desirable to replace the direct sand reactions. (Hopefully the reactions system will be overhauled at some point, now that we have job details.)
Wikipedia says it gets crushed into cullet first[/url], which sounds like a labor-intensive task. Probably needs an intermediate step at a millstone/quern.
This is because talented individuals are drawn by the general advantages of living in a more desirable site equally with everyone else as they automatically enjoy those advantages even if additional privileges/influence are in question. A talented individual will migrate along the lines of everybody else even if due to the size of the site he is moving too he has no prospects of improving his actual social standing by doing so.Well, human population and dwarven/elven/kobold/whatever might differ in why they do migrate to smaller sites.
There are more things that are broken to the point of being fatally flawed than there are things that actually work. The gameplay as it exists is more defined by the emergent properties of its bugs, broken systems, and inattention to detail than it is by its design. Like for example, its the only game I know of where experienced players have to steer their gameplay away from activities that would break the game engine, and yet whose design is built around those very activities. It's the only game I know where there are more abandoned subsystems - happiness, economy, contaminants, etc. - than there are working subsystems. It's the only game I know that lavishes more attention on things that have no functional impact on the game than it does on the actual pillars of its gameplay. It's kind of interesting in the same way that a messenger RNA mutates until it reaches the limits of where it can still fulfill its function as a molecule, but never any further, and thus is defined by its accumulated baggage. But as a game system, right now things are a brilliant train wreck.
Brilliant enough I sent him money to continue his dream, but a train wreck nonetheless.
Maybe he'll be able to use that money to produce a game that doesn't crash every three hours or so.
Seriously, I enjoyed playing this game but how is it possible that anyone could actually have played this game and came away with the idea that it works, that it has ever worked, or that it ever will 'work' - least of all if they have an actual degree in Computer Science and game design credentials. This in the industry is called a 'Fantasy Heartbreaker', and like all fantasy heartbreakers it is a thing of aching stunning beauty and a source of inspiration, and a terrible tragedy at the same time. This did not start as any attempt to put down DF but as a heartfelt and honest suggestion to improve one area, but since you have insisted on throwing your chips down on the idea that this game is without flaw and criticism is inappropriate - I call.
Well, human population and dwarven/elven/kobold/whatever might differ in why they do migrate to smaller sites.
Come to think of it:
- elves would come to help grow the trees and protect the site. Think of druid migrating with a bag of seeds
- kobolds simply move from overcrowded areas to increase in numbers and conquer the world
- orcs for the same reasons
- as for dwarves, when I think about it, if you are a legendary mason in 200 y old fortress that has been build and "set in stone" (both literally and figuratively speaking) you have to do but fix the walls occasionally. Same with the miners. So moving to a new construction site makes a lot of sense - builder are needed there for the glory of dawrfkind, I am a builder bored to HFS at capitol, so why not go to help and for some extra thrill?
For the humans historical reason would apply. I long to see when the new system will be finally implemented. By that time quantum processors might be already on the market, so no worrying about FPS hit.
I agree that dwarves are too easy to get your hands on and that can create balance issues. "Ruins the game" is a bit strong, but hyperbole is to be expected on the internet. Posting to watch.
Actually as an ex gamedev professional I kinda know what he means.Seriously, I enjoyed playing this game but how is it possible that anyone could actually have played this game and came away with the idea that it works, that it has ever worked, or that it ever will 'work' - least of all if they have an actual degree in Computer Science and game design credentials. This in the industry is called a 'Fantasy Heartbreaker', and like all fantasy heartbreakers it is a thing of aching stunning beauty and a source of inspiration, and a terrible tragedy at the same time.I think that you have a skewed idea of what you mean by 'pillars of gameplay'. This thread mystifies me since for an incomplete game immigration is basically a fully functional system that works very well, even down to getting to the 'right' dwarves for your present economic circumstances. All that is really missing is some consideration of how dangerous your fortress is as well as how rich it is and the ability of unhappy dwarves to leave your fortress (emigrate).
Why not? :DWell, human population and dwarven/elven/kobold/whatever might differ in why they do migrate to smaller sites.
Come to think of it:
- elves would come to help grow the trees and protect the site. Think of druid migrating with a bag of seeds
- kobolds simply move from overcrowded areas to increase in numbers and conquer the world
- orcs for the same reasons
- as for dwarves, when I think about it, if you are a legendary mason in 200 y old fortress that has been build and "set in stone" (both literally and figuratively speaking) you have to do but fix the walls occasionally. Same with the miners. So moving to a new construction site makes a lot of sense - builder are needed there for the glory of dawrfkind, I am a builder bored to HFS at capitol, so why not go to help and for some extra thrill?
I do not see why it has to be done directly by race, can it not be done directly by personality/values/profession on an individual basis?
Still, I wouldn't call it tragedy.
For a proceduraly generated game it beats otherslike No Man's Buyon the market and it costs nothing.
An example might be Megabeast behavior in legends, while in fort mode they are nothing but berserk bullets coming your way.
Or how the game gives you few dozen types of trees but no way of actually *planting one*.
Eh. I'm thinking more about things like it spends all this time generating a civilization, but the last names of the dwarfs are completely random so that none of these connections between dwarfs are really evident or apparent. I would think that having some sort of naming scheme would be priority #1 in a game like this. And because the immigration is random, none of those connections ever really impact your gameplay. Dwarfs don't immigrate in families. Family reunions don't take place. There is this stuff in the legendarium, but it is not only mere repetition but has no meaningful impact on play.I know - like I said, I understand what you mean, I just didn't elaborated on it too much.
Some dwarf in your fortress apparently cares that some human was struck down by a sasquatch in 156 because he carved it on your walls, but why should you?
But, back on topic, gameplay is defined by what the game allows you to do. The pillars of your gameplay are the systems that the player is expected to spend the most time engaged in. A pillar of gameplay in Minecraft might be for example collection of resources. Another pillar might be exploration. In a first person shooter, the pillar of gameplay might be tactical reflex based squad combat. So, for example, if you implement a bunch of different skills for the dwarves and then have a system where dwarves gain XP and then become more proficient in these skills, then training up your dwarves becomes a pillar of the gameplay by definition. I'm not defining that as a pillar of gameplay. It just bloody well is.
Still, I wouldn't call it tragedy.
It wasn't my intention when I wrote this thread to start bashing DF. I've been driven to that by a combination of watching the game I was enjoying and excited about dwindle into pointlessness, and people in this thread acting like DF is above criticism even in a suggestions forum.
Your attempt to categorize game systems via this strange "pillar" terminology is a bit odd since such categories are absolutely subjective. Going by your logic, I could define yet another pillar of minecraft as being something like "practicing basic math in order to build symmetrical bases" or "learning to cope with the hopeless A.I." or "overcoming the immediate frustration experienced when you discover that trees won't collapse on their own and you have to spend an aggravating amount of time cutting through the floating trunk." These things might not have been by design, but any player who has spent enough time playing Minecraft will have to interact in those fashions in order to get on with the game. And yes, you could just build awful looking houses or never try to herd your pigs, but I refuse to believe anyone has picked up Minecraft and not become immediately frustrated with the way trees work.No.
Back on topic. I could describe infinite pillars, each of which would describe yet another category of system interaction, each of which is perfectly valid as long as the player spends time interacting with it, at least by your logic. Perhaps the most interesting thing is that the more pillars I describe, the less meaningful each one becomes, and as meaning approaches the asymptote we're left to wonder what the point of all of this was in the first place.*sigh*
Basically, you aren't proving anything to anyone by claiming such-and-such is inherent proof that this-or-that should be removed/added/modified, when such-and-such is a highly arbitrary and unproven categorization. I could easily describe one of the pillars of DF's gameplay as "Interacting with the U.I." or "Visiting the Wiki," and that's kind of awesome, but it is still a matter of opinion as to whether Toady should emphasize (or de-emphasize) either of these pillars.*sigh* x2
I was going to write more about your perspective, but this thread has become your personal soapbox and I'd rather not encourage that. Stick to constructive criticism and avoid writing things like "XXX ruins the game" and "Why you are all wrong about liking this game, the poorly constructed essay" and "Please come argue with me!". Like moths to a flame, or perhaps cheese makers to a pair of !!xXxcave spider silk trousersxXx!!, argumentative types are drawn towards these threads. There are better ways to phrase your thoughts, though people will still poke and prod despite your diplomatic efforts. Sometimes the best response is to give no response at all.[/i]Ah, now. Gamedev is special for having people who tend to say things in such a manner that might appear rude to an outsider.
No, disagreeing with your specific view of how the game should be is not "acting like DF is above criticism".
The fact that masterwork granite statue of my current fort leader will depict him as raising masterwork dog bone bin created 2 years ago is bothering me as well.
So much in fact that I considered adding a suggestion(or necroing a thread with it, if it's there) that masterwork events should be removed from legends altogether.