If any of you actually give a damn about the game and Toady, you need to see past your own insanity and start living in reality.
The UI is not a problem?
Acting like the UI is the only problem?
DFHack and the numerous amounts of bugs it cures is an indication that the player base is well aware of the bugs that inhabit DF. The UI is a detriment to the game, agreed. It's a working model that only supports power-users as a debug menu more than as a UI.
Other than the old NetHack gamers, I don't think anyone will argue you on that particular point.
I made small, legitimate criticism about the best unplayable game ever made and proposed a solution, therefore I must just be a noob, or a scammer, or whatever?
I propose that a 20 to 30 year project should be delayed for 6 months to a year to make it a better experience for everyone playing for the next 10 to 20 years and I'm the one who's crazy?
No, ignorant, and I don't mean that the cruel way. You are amongst the intelligent, and newer, playerbase who all get frustrated at some point and detail an intelligent method to attempt to assist Toady with what you see to be a problem. The ignorance comes in for three parts.
1) Toady has explicitly stated that everyone can damned well keep his hands out of his toybox.
2) He'll work on the parts that are actually interesting to him at any particular time, and only occassionally does he want to do bug corrections. This makes point 1 particularly frustrating in some ways.
3) He's explicitly stated he intends to fix up the UI last, because it's a wrapper for the code and he doesn't want the code to have to conform to a wrapper.
Wake the hell up, there's a ton of people who start playing this game and really like it but stop after a few months because of the endless problems and pointless tedium. Not everyone wants to spend an hour picking up 200 pieces of clothing strewn about the floor (which dfhack's solution doesn't really solve). Or the endless mozaic of forbidden bolts. Or the sisyphean task of dealing with the military. Or micromanaging basic construction of roofs/floors to prevent cave-ins.
Then these are people who have heard about the cool stories that can occur in DF, but don't want to play a simulator. DF is not a high speed game, and is not meant to keep you permanently engaged. I've actually had forts run in the background for hours while I'm at work and I just keep an eye on the occassional announcements for highly successful forts running at low FPS.
Most people have only a few hours a day to enjoy themselves, and they don't want to spend 2 hours of it banging their head against a wall trying to get a dwarf to pick up a dumped item, and then have to resort to cheating at the end. Not everyone is obsessive compulsive, masochistic, or unemployed.
While I might be the first of that list, I am neither of the other two. Out of curiousity, did you ever play any of the OLDER Sim Cities?
You're all the kind of people who not only have the time to play such a game, but talk about it on the internet too. You could at least give a damn about the multitude of other dwarf fortress players who don't. The ones who want to enjoy this work of art, but are essentially forced out of playing.
Why, because they paid so much money to play it? DF is a hobby as much as it is a game. I've spent hours painting models for Warhammer 40k, endless cycles of shooting my friends in the head on CoD, and many, many hours waiting for planes to reach 13,000 feet so I can jump out of them.
I don't disagree that DF couldn't be more engaging, but it's a mirror. It gives back as much as you'll put into it. That is too high for some people, and that's okay. Not every game should appeal to everyone.
And beyond that, you should care about Toady. [snip]
You misunderstand. We filter this so he doesn't have to answer this question over... and over... and over... and over... and over... so he can spend time coding.
And other players than the ones on this forum are human beings too, they deserve to enjoy the game without contemplating ritual suicide after another dwarf gets punched in the brain because he failed a production mandate.
Wow, so serious. C'mon, ritual suicide?
No, you'd rather get your extra 6 month or year worth of features. That's what you really care about? Did ruling over dwarves destroy your humanity?
I give a damn, and I proposed a solution, that the community give Toady a bonus for a hard 6 month to years work of making this game play better for 10 to 20 years.
That's not fucking wrong.
No, as I said, just ignorant. Search the forums for 'kickstarter' or 'open source' or any other number of methods that the masses could assist Toady with his code base and load. You'll find many different topics, all with the same premise.
And at the top of that hierarchy is Toady, with a single statement (paraphrased):
"I'll let you know when I want help. This is my baby, and I don't want your hands in it and I don't want your financial pressure to do a particular item."