Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Fedor]

The new version kicks nine kinds of ass.  Here are some feedback ideas and suggestions:

* The biggest request is simply for a less laggy game.  Only greater efficiency will let many of us players fully participate in the fun.   With 7 dwarves, a 3x3 size map, no non-visible or sky tiles shown, temperature, sound, and weather off, and a 10 FPS graphical refresh rate, the game still lags.  Framerate varies intermittantly between 40 and max at the same (fully visible) location and I don't know why.

* Announcements of discovered materials (such as mica or magnetite) repeat themselves, sometimes even for the same material on the same level (but probably different seams).  If the stuff is precious that's one thing, but more than one announcement of colored rocks I can do without.

* I had hoped for more ores and gems (and danger) in the deeper map levels.  Ore and gem abundance (aside from magnetite) seems lower than it was.  Valueable ores are found too near the surface:  I had a fortress with scads of platinum actually exposed to the open air and silver and copper found only deep underground.  It may not be perfectly true to life to have the valuable stuff take longer to get to, but making the player work harder to get it makes perfect sense from a gameplay perspective.  The previous version's escalating rewards and danger setup worked very well.

* Variety of raw materials is also lower than players are used to at many locations.  At one site, the list of near-surface and deep materials ran as follows:  Near the surface, I saw the colored rock alumite; the metals aluminum and native copper; and no gemstones (their place being taken by the aluminum).  In the interior, I saw the colored rocks mica, orthoclase, and microcline; the metals silver, bismuthinite, and cassertite; and no gemstones (the bismuthinite taking their place).  Seeing nothing apart from the surface aluminum that was worth more than 10x base or had many of the colors I like to see in my fortress was disheartening...

* Should magnetite be found in veins rather than clusters? - it's incredibly valuable as is.  Decorative gemstones (actually anything found in small pockets), IMHO, should be worth at least 3-4x base.

* There may be too many metals.  One type of pewter seems enough.  Same with gemstones.  We probably don't need faint, light, /and/ regular yellow diamonds, and I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that scrolling through a list including more than two dozen different opals might be taking more of my time than the distinction between a Claro and a Levin opal is worth.  And I'm speaking as a certified gem-fiend here.  

* I love the more varied colors for rocks, but many of the cheaper materials use colors and tiles once reserved for rare things, which makes the special stuff less visually distinctive.  Also, the variety of colors for ores that are useful for exactly the same thing (hematite, limonite, magnetite) makes it harder for players to remember what does what (is that yellow stuff gold or iron or just a rock?).  Additional colors to allow for more subtle shades and hues might be just what we need.  Failing this, the colored rocks should at least be worth a little more.

* Big thumbs up for how object selection now works when building and making things; custom-designed architectural projects have never been so practicable.  However, the object chosen should not be the closest in absolute distance; absolute distance caused troubles when we had two dimensions - with three it's much worse.  Ideally, path length should be considered instead.  If that's not practicable, just adding distance to the nearest stairwell would help.  May the player control which rock type (or even just which color of rock, as in the previous version) a mason's shop accepts as inputs?

* "Make coke from lignite" on a non-magma smelter never builds up more than one bar of coke.  Once it is made, additional jobs chew up lignite with no (visible) output.  Another confusing bit is that "Make Steel Bars" still takes 2 metal bars as inputs, but now outputs only 1.  Same problem with Fine Pewter; process uses 4 bars, outputs 1.  Also, available jobs are more confusing:  I didn't realize you would make pewter straight from ore until I read the raws.

* I love how my miners don't smash up so much ore and gems now, but they have also gotten better at preserving ordinary rock.  This makes it fairly tedious to clear out the inside.  I really like the new ability to mark an object for dumping and am now hoping for a way to dump non-economic rock from an entire area.

* Consider removing the cap on number of starting skills and making them 3 or 4 times as expensive.  Consider making the starting anvil cost fewer points (quick fix - by making it damaged?) and reducing the total number of points available.  I also recommend supplying only iron picks at start - those copper picks are just too good a value, allowing more metal choice for weapons, and requiring that every barrel obtained be paid for.

Trade ideas:

I'm loving the new trading setup.  Loving it, loving it, loving it! *skips for joy*  But I'm a natural wheeler-dealer and perhaps some tweaks might make it make more sense for most players.

* Let the asking price for what the traders offer be available regardless of appraisal skill.  Even if you don't know what it's "worth", you'll certainly be able to negotiate a price from the guy selling it.

* Let that asking price always be higher than base.  Traders are going to make a profit regardless.  The profit margin should depend on the ratio of weight/bulk to base value, with heavy low-cost objects requiring a much higher markup.  It should also depend on what the traders especially want, your trader's skills, and the difficulty of getting to your fortress.  Some often-traded material types such as cloth may deserve special handling.  The asking price for something like wood logs could easily be 10x base; for an aluminum goblet, required margin could be as little as 25%.

* Any offer of goods with a modified value equal to or above the total asking price gets accepted.  Anything less gets rejected.  Any player bargaining should adjust the asking price rather than consist of guessing it.

* Coins should always be in high demand and be among the most valuable uses of metal.  Cut gemstones should also be highly worthwhile trade items - more so than at present.  Traders love small, light, easily negotiateable wealth.

* Material usage and object value should be more closely related, especially for metal and gemstone objects, especially if the material is valuable.  A gold table has much more gold than a gold goblet and should be worth correspondingly more.  One way to re-think this matter is to stop multiplying base object value by material value and, instead, make it so either that object value equals either "material value + (object value * quality)" or "(material value + object value) * quality".  Material value equals "weight * material multiplier".  Adjustments will likely be be needed to various multipliers (quality multipliers of 1x, 1.5x, 3x, 5x, 9x, 25x perhaps?).

* More valuable rare colored rocks and special woods would be neat (and help to liven up the mountain too).  At present, it's pretty much metal or bust.

[Dwarmin]

WIth the new version, no more lag for me! Im playing in a reasonable large mountainous area, ands its going TOO FAST!

[Talith]

As far as colors go, i kinda agree that the "nice" colors should correspond with rarer and harder to get stones and metals.  Although changing the colors is something that could be done through editing the raw files.

[Sowelu]

Agreed on mineral distribution balance issues:  It's very bad at the moment.  Pre-Z axis version was very well balanced, this version just plain -isn't- balanced.

Slight agree on too many gem/mineral types, though they are kinda neat.  I wouldn't mind seeing mining get harder based on depth below the surface.  I also wouldn't mind if the time spent digging was based on depth below the surface, but that's pretty hacky--at least it would make deeper areas hard to reach like they -aren't- now.

But, hey.  More Chasm-like things would be fun.  Digging just doesn't feel dangerous to expand any more, nor very epic to go deep like it used to.  Maybe that's because you're always just a few Z-axis moves away from the surface.

I agree that traders should try and rip you off way more than they do.  They should especially rip you off more for cheaper goods, like wood.  Traders should aim for a certain profit margin per cart...and so if you ask for cheap goods, they'll bring them but you'll pay a LOT.

[AlStar]

quote: * "Make coke from lignite" on a non-magma smelter never builds up more than one bar of coke. Once it is made, additional jobs chew up lignite with no (visible) output. Another confusing bit is that "Make Steel Bars" still takes 2 metal bars as inputs, but now outputs only 1. Same problem with Fine Pewter; process uses 4 bars, outputs 1. Also, available jobs are more confusing: I didn't realize you would make pewter straight from ore until I read the raws.

This (and, most likely, your complaint about the game being slow) got fixed in the most recent release - have you downloaded it yet?

[Solara]

quote:Originally posted by Sowelu:
<STRONG>Agreed on mineral distribution balance issues:  It's very bad at the moment.  Pre-Z axis version was very well balanced, this version just plain -isn't- balanced.</STRONG>

I have to disagree with this - the old version with such similar distribution, the good stuff always being deeper, was just too formulaic and game-like and meant that every fortressed progressed pretty much the exact same way. You might as well complain about the loss of the sheer cliff face and the old river-chasm-magma setup.

With the way things are now everything is about location, which frankly is more realistic and IMO more appropriate for a sandbox type of game such as this. It's a great feeling never quite knowing exactly what you're going to get when you hit the embark key, and I've had just as much fun building an aboveground village and adjusting to life on a map with nothing but trees and dirt and no stone or metals to speak of as I have lucking out on an absolutely perfect dwarven paradise made of limestone and magnetite.

[Sowelu]

The current mineral distribution is an excellent sandbox, but the formulaic 'game-like' thing is exactly what I miss.  In the old version, "deeper" meant more danger and more reward.  In this version, it doesn't mean much of anything.

Of course, I'm still adjusting.  It's a different style, is all.

[Mechanoid]

Please realise that the game has actual geology now. Iron isn't found 100% of the time, and neither is copper, or silver, or any of the other ores. However, if you look for areas that have specific rock types, you're likely to find their associated minerals somewhere in the map. Of course, once trading is improved (requesting more minerals, etc) you'll be able to fully compensate for your fortress' geological failures.

Also note that many ores are no longer worth as much as they once were, and because of the new geology, the only place you're likely to find massive amounts of gemstones are in the mineral veins. I struck a native gold vien and nearby were gemstones, while in a gold ore vien there were none. As always, it could also be possible that the map was merely generated that way, and could have very few gemstones simply by bad luck.

[RPB]

quote:Originally posted by Sowelu:
<STRONG>The current mineral distribution is an excellent sandbox, but the formulaic 'game-like' thing is exactly what I miss.  In the old version, "deeper" meant more danger and more reward.</STRONG>

Personally I always found the cave river to be much more dangerous than the chasm or magma (of course, all three could be dealt with once you knew how).

I like the variety of materials between sites now, but a few things do seem to be a bit off. I'm finding clumps of native aluminum all over the place, but over the course of all my testing forts and a couple of serious attempts I have found a grand total of two, count 'em, two gems. And I say "gems" but really I mean "semiprecious stones". I thought naturally occuring aluminum was supposed to be insanely rare. It does occur in pretty small pockets instead of full-sized veins, but those pockets appear to be among the most commonly occuring metals in my experience.

[Talith]

i find microcline in huge quantities, and it seems to be quite common.  Although the color suggests otherwise.