Bay 12 Games Forum

Chiming in after years of lurking because I saw a comment pointing out that feedback is probably skewed to people who've been tolerating the system well enough to troop through it somewhat, or just really dedicated fans. As I've not been trooping it and have essentially been driven away but took a peek at the website to see what's up, I'll leave a message now to share the perspective of someone who's been playing for a long time but can't handle it in the current state. Then I'll probably just disappear again for a few years at least. (I'm just not a social person)

I'll try not to go into much detail (try...) since so many others seem to have highlighted the points I found difficult and other points I myself wasn't perceptive enough to see.

I've played the game on and off since before Z levels and I've enjoyed the complexity, the difficulty, the psychological management, all up until the stress system came around. The idea of the system sounded really awesome, and I'm glad a legendary dining room isn't enough to have your dwarves run around with a mindless drooling grin everywhere they go, but...

They've become waaaaaaaaaaaay too sensitive. I feel like they don't de-stress, don't adapt, don't become students of the school of hard knocks. This is a medieval world. There should be some amount of "deal with it" mentality, along with some amount of alleviating factors from good fortress management.

I feel that favourite foods should be a bonus, not a necessity. Well prepared not-favourite food should still be enjoyable. If my favourite food is tacos but I have the opportunity to eat a damn good stir fry, I feel quite satisfied. If a dwarf likes cheetah spleen but has the opportunity to eat a damn good cat roast, he or she should at least feel marginally satisfied, if not ecstatic.

If the good outweighs the bad, they should think back on stressful events in times passed as having built character. I used to live in the same house as a guy who ended up killing two people and getting into a shootout with the cops, but I don't look back in horror at the time I lived with the guy. (It wasn't fun.) On the contrary it gives me a story to tell people, and almost a sense of pride to have encountered difficulty and gotten through it (alive). And people like to share screwed up stories... (or maybe I'm just special...)

And maybe some people in real life have PTSD but they don't generally all go on a mindless rampage and kill 2 or 3 coworkers at McDonald's leading 10 of the surviving coworkers to develop PTSD and go on to kill the rest. Maybe once in a while... Who knows... But the level of lethality of psychological torment in this game has gone from a possibility to what seems to me to be inevitability.

Think back on the medieval times in the real world. Did every single village, town and city on earth end in a tantrum spiral? No. Did the surviving cities, towns and villages in the world today have a super experienced OCD overseer or benevolent dictator watching over them, tweaking everything to perfection to ensure survival? No. Did a rainy day lead to mayhem, destruction, and PTSD?...

I love this game and have been looking forward to the new features for a long time, but I can't take it...

Some point by point thoughts/ideas:

-Make dwarves less sensitive. PLEASE. Make them hardy but not invincible.
-Make nice things all around the board work a little better, without drooling ecstasy as a result (with the exception of some kind of godlike super-managed utopic fort design, which thus-far results in some super-genius players having a fort actually survive).
-Allow dwarves to put up with missing a need or two or three, as long as most aspects of their life are decent.
-Cut down on the building up of a psychological doomsday counter, and maybe focus more on shifting through levels of moodiness depending on a combination of whether it's been a crappy day and the general thickness of skin / positive or negative attitude an individual has.
-Don't have dwarves experience permanent unending trauma from things that happened in the past, with the exception of a few dwarves who just couldn't take some VERY screwed up thing happening (like having all their family murdered infront of them), and allow even them to be able to live on with help from friends, family, etc, with the occasional case of someone who snaps and takes some final way out (and depending on temperment, brings others with them).
-Give tormented dwarves a way to seek spiritual healing, comfort... Give them therapists, give them concerned family members, give them figures they can look up to for words of encouragement in troubled times.
-Let them actively seek the things they like (as has been mentioned).
-Maybe even have sort of a slider for each dwarf for how hard they should work on a daily basis, a work day length/free time per day timer. Give them assignable weekends. Apply the same mechanic to active and inactive military dwarves.
-Maybe even let them coordinate outings like ordinary real world people, let them agree to go for a beer after work so that they'll actually be guaranteed to socialize AND drink a beer.
-Give tavern keepers some amount of responsible alcohol dosing judgement ability (in real life we have certification for that). Only allow truly disturbed or problematic alcohol-addicted dwarves to poison themselves, with the occasional stupid teenager passing out and throwing up from inexperience. Have them learn from their mistakes with alcohol.
-Maybe give them an analogue to the labour menu in the form of a leisure menu where you can pick what leisure activities to spend the most time on so they spend more time praying, socializing etc.

I have no idea how difficult any suggestions I make would be to implement and am by no means making demands or ultimatums. Just sharing thoughts.

Well, that's my 2 cents, for whatever it's worth. Love this game, will continue donating regularly to feed the beast and watch it grow. Take care of yourselves. Bye for now. *poof*

Posting on a thread just to state your disinterest in the topic.

"Why is space dark if the Sun's up there?"

Haha that almost has a kind of dumb logic to it. It's tempting to think of an answer. Sounds like something a philosophy class might discuss (in my stereotypical imagination).

Monday. *sigh*

Quote from: MagmaMcFry on July 19, 2012, 09:42:10 pm

Manual lawnmowers have a huge advantage in non-horizontal gardens.

Round here they use a remote-control lawnmower. It's the coolest thing ever!

Duuuuude. That makes me think of a GTA 2 mission... Except you weren't mowing a lawn.

Quote from: Tabbyman on July 22, 2012, 02:52:52 am

I've got an idea, and I don't care if someone rips it off and this actually happens, because I'd laugh my ass off. Let's go one step further than sitting on a lawnmower. Imagine someone invented a lawnmower that moves like a segway. It would be more effective on smaller lawns, but only snobby people with big lawns could afford one.

\\Cough\\

GODDAMN!!! I was NOT expecting that so soon.

Edit: Is it just me or does that look photoshopped?

I agree that astral projection is pretty shaky stuff. I originally gave it a chance to impress a girl.

In the end, I lean heavily toward WILD.

Testing astral projection has lead to a lot of inconsistent information if I remember what I read correctly, back when I was looking into it. For instance, in my WILD, which I'll assume it was, there was an object on my desk that didn't exist in reality. How can I say I'm gathering information about reality when I see unreal objects? (edit: typo)

Quote from: Tabbyman on July 22, 2012, 08:28:25 pm

Upon taking a few breaths, I'm just gonna say, I've posed my view, I've done a wee bit of arguing, but really I don't want to spend my weekend feeling like I'm at war with an opposing view. Conflict makes it hard for me to relax and enjoy the final hours of freedom before the next 8 hours of paid slavery commences.

Being at war with an opposing view would mean that you think it necessary to defend your view, which is entirely the wrong approach. You may defend your view as much as you can, but participating in an argument means that the aspects of your side of the conflicting viewpoint are wrong about 50% of the time, unless your argument is about belief in different logically sound and undisprovable concepts, in which case there isn't an argument. The point of an argument is to share as much knowledge as necessary for both participants to align their views, because given the same knowledge, two intelligent people will make the same conclusions. You can't go into an argument expecting both parties to agree on your viewpoint, because either the other person is stupid (in which case he will ignore your arguments just like he ignored the same arguments from other people already), or he has as good reasons to have a different viewpoint as you have reasons to have yours.

That's why I like to avoid arguements. It's easy to get into them yet they go nowhere, no matter how right either side is on what points and counterpoints they make. And it feels like war. Call me a hippy but I like peace. Peaceful disagreement is a complicated subject I haven't mastered by any means.

Edit: I mean, this is an atheism v. religion thread... It's expected to be full of conflict. Might as well be glad I manage to get on with my day without a flamewar of some kind. If I were looking for that, though, I'd go to 4chan.