I don't think it is fair to look at it that way. The first month or two after an update release is always when the majority of bugs get found and corrected. Even Skyrim, a multi-million dollar undertaking, has had 3 patches since its release a month ago. People will find problems, most of the things that aren't placeholders will get fixed up enough to be playable, and we'll have another stable release for a while. I am not really certain what else could be expected.
Well, it's easy, isn't it? The game should be complete! After all, murlocdummy made a game in Flash, and that didn't take a year to do.
Did I ever hint at the idea of going back and fixing bugs was easy? Of course not, nor did I ever try and make the case that the game should be totally complete. I'm just saying that the game should be functional and entertaining, at least to a minimum degree. The easy part is half-baking something, letting people have it, then forgetting about it and moving on. The hard part is half-baking something, then going back over and baking it completely.
I'm not asking even that much out of Toady. I just want him to put some cinnamon on that half-baked idea that he's giving us so it stops tasting like raw egg slime and dried batter clumps. I'd like to see vampires, mummies, and war with other civilizations, but I don't want to get vampires that come out of specifically mummy-defined sarcophaguses, mummies sucking blood, or civilization wars that involve you having to micromanage your entire army just so that they don't starve to death in the middle of battle, dropping 45 food items all over their dead bodies, and causing the enemy to stop attacking you so that they can pick up the loot.
Is it so much to ask that Toady make it look like he's giving a minimal level of care for his work in his work? I like how he's taken it upon himself to make DF his life's work and wants the donation rewards to make it seem like he's giving a personal gift to his contributors, but the real thank you gift that he can make is to make the game properly palatable to its users.
His continued steady stream of donations, suggest that the game is palatable to its users. Its ongoing progress, steady userbase, and exposure also suggest, that for an game, thats you say, is in an unplayable state, is played a quite a fair bit.
Part of the reason why this release took longer, was for the so called, cinnamon, is being added to the release. The expansion of the night creatures, sewers, crypts, mummies ect, is to make the new towns/cities, actually be worth something. From the Dev Log, it appears that the towns, without such side tracking, would have been pretty empty and boring, and probably would have undermined the release entirely.
ToadyOne does do bug fixes. About half the releases so far for DF, are just bug fixes, and all the release, minus the first one, contain bug fixes.
With as much activity as the forum has, with its steady stream of new users coming on here, with community forts games still happening, ect, that the game is fun and entertaining.
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Topic: Future of the Fortress (Read 1163193 times)