61–70 of 84 posts
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It's also hilariously outdated, to the point that the game had a whole dimension less than it does now. Still a great read though
I loved reading Boatmurdered many months ago; is there anything of similar quality that reflects the current state of affairs in DF?
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You are, of course, totally right. But do you know much about dwarf fortress? The brothers have responded to questions about this a number of times (regarding UI) but more importantly than that, it appears that they don't particuarly care about making the big bucks. They are totally happy just pottering along with a loyal hardcore following, earning a very middle class salary, doing something they are massively passi…
Is this not a short-sighted view? A middle class salary they can survive on for how long? When that source of income dries up they'll be unable to continue working on their passion without spending time and effort finding an additional source of income. Alternatively, if they open themselves up to a strategy enabling a greater income they could potentially retire in a very short time with indefinite financial securit…
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I don't disagree with you. I think I'm just bitter because I hate bad UIs and it stops me from properly exploring the game. I don't understand why they don't care about the fact that so many people will never experience their creation because of the unnecessary barrier they've created.
> I don't understand why they don't care about the fact that so many people will never experience their creation because of the unnecessary barrier they've created. Would people care to experience it if they could? I've always assumed with this (and a number of other things in life) that being a bit of a niche interest (or in this case a lot of a niche interest) in part creates the niche interest. There have been man…
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Is this not a short-sighted view? A middle class salary they can survive on for how long? When that source of income dries up they'll be unable to continue working on their passion without spending time and effort finding an additional source of income. Alternatively, if they open themselves up to a strategy enabling a greater income they could potentially retire in a very short time with indefinite financial securit…
> A middle class salary they can survive on for how long? Most middle class people aren't really financially independant either. 76% of people don't have any means to support themselves 6+ months out if they lose employment. Why should they? http://money.cnn.com/2013/06/24/pf/emergency-savings/index.h...
Those people aren't really middle class. They just think they are.
"Middle class" has political and functional meanings beyond just "having near-average income". Nobody living paycheck-to-paycheck, no matter how big those paychecks are, can really function within the middle class.
The difference between lower class and middle class isn't income, it's assets. Because only assets beget independent economic and political power.
As recently as mid-20th century, an American talking about being "middle class" would have been referring to ownership of assets. Originally, of course, middle class was anyone who was neither a serf or a noble.
If you can't afford to tell your employer "fuck you" today, then you're a serf, and you have very little leverage.
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Right, except it wasn't done well in this case. The game is great, the UI not so much. Some menus require the arrow keys to navigate, some +-, others hjkl. It's been a while since I last played, but there is a "Designation" menu which orders your dwarves to perform specific tasks. You want them to build a staircase where there was some rock before? Awesome, they'll do it. You want them to build a staircase after you…
> Right, except it wasn't done well in this case. According to you. Is it so hard to imagine others may disagree? Must you downvote?
This is like making the point that the sky isn't really blue it just looks blue - technically correct, but unless you are answering the question of why it is blue, correcting somebody on this is boorish, not interesting.
In this case we are talking about Dwarf Fortress, near universally reviled for its interface, so yes, arguing that some people may theoretically prefer it is both hard to believe and makes it seem like you are just being contrarian.
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> but haven't had the guts to invest the time into it given its steep learning curve And by steep, you mean vertical.
Actually, flat. A learning curve usually is time on x-axis and knowledge-percentage on y-axis. If knowledge-percentage only slowly increases the curve is flat. A nearly vertical curve means you learn fast. This is a little bit like educating people about kerning [0]. For another example, a "quantum leap" is basically the smallest possible leap you can do. [0] http://xkcd.com/1015/
In that case, a learning curve is a sort of visual hill with a steepness indicating difficulty of progression.
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> A middle class salary they can survive on for how long? Most middle class people aren't really financially independant either. 76% of people don't have any means to support themselves 6+ months out if they lose employment. Why should they? http://money.cnn.com/2013/06/24/pf/emergency-savings/index.h...
> Most middle class people aren't really financially independant either.... Why should they? Those people aren't really middle class. They just think they are. "Middle class" has political and functional meanings beyond just "having near-average income". Nobody living paycheck-to-paycheck, no matter how big those paychecks are, can really function within the middle class. The difference between lower class and middle…
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> I don't understand why they don't care about the fact that so many people will never experience their creation because of the unnecessary barrier they've created. Would people care to experience it if they could? I've always assumed with this (and a number of other things in life) that being a bit of a niche interest (or in this case a lot of a niche interest) in part creates the niche interest. There have been man…
You falsely attribute a niche's draw to the fact that it's niche. I find it unlikely that people would base their interest in a game on its popularity, or lack thereof. If the game is fun, people will play it. If it's not, they won't.
Maybe DF being a niche helps in some way. I don't know. But I do know that the UI is, almost objectively, not good. I know it's why I stopped playing. Once you get more than 20 dwarfs or so, managing who does what is ridiculous. (at least without external tools. I think the popularity and almost necessity of some external tools really does show that the UI can be atrocious at some points. (also note this is not a comment on the ASCII nature of the game, that's fine))
"It's not like people see our $50,000 a year and think 'Hey, I want a piece of that pie.' They'd much rather look towards things like Minecraft, where there are hundreds of millions of dollars." The brothers have this massive, massive blindspot regarding the importance of the UI. That $50,000 cap they perceive is barely scratching the surface of what would be possible for them if they made the damn thing a bit more a…
No they don't. They keep saying over and over again that they know the UI is bad, and they know it drives away potential players. They said it right in this very article even. I am always amazed at how many people are so desperate to tell others how to run their affairs that they invent false ignorance in others so they can step in and tell them how to do things.