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This episode both Blind and Tekkud join us to discuss adjustments that long-time players may need to make with the new version.
Ep. 80: Veteran Players and Version 50 – With Tekkud and Blind
BlindIRL and Tekkud join us this episode to talk about long-time players and the new version.
Listening to Tekkud’s comments on Dwarf Therapist and DFHack really resonated with me. I have played DF off-and-on since around sometime in 2013. Something that really annoyed me was that many content creators seemed to insist that Dwarf Therapist and DFhack were necessary to play and sometimes they seemed to ignore the fact that some of the problems they “solve” were addressed in updates. Auto-mining designations were added in late 2014, but I kept seeing creators years later saying things like “I really wish vanilla DF had something like the digv command.” Same thing with the re-hauled work order system added in 2016. I jumped in early on that update and its functionality was pretty much as robust as it is now(the more useful suggested conditions was a nice addition in the premium release). People seemed to act like it didn’t exist for months or even years. Therapist wasn’t working on that version for a while, and I realized that I didn’t really need it to keep a fort running. When my fort was small, I checked migrants as they arrived and gave them labors that I thought were needed, but when my population increased, all the jobs were covered. If I wanted to ensure quality of a product, I would set the work order to a workshop restricted to only the high skill dwarves(the workshop profiles used to let you restrict to a range of skill rather than assign a single master).
Dwarf Therapist and DFhack are tools that have useful functions, but looking back at my history with the game, I don’t think they were necessary to play and I think the tutorials insisting that they were necessary provided a disservice to new players. I wouldn’t tell a player starting Rimworld to get all the expansions and download 20 mods before starting. For DF, I would tell a new player to learn the game as is first(probably with a square tileset), then delve into the other stuff.
Good points all. I do think that both DT and DFHack were spoken of that way is that the documentation was pretty good – at least compared to vanilla df. And they had some fun convenience tools. But at the end of the day, whatever floats one’s boat. But yeah, neither were necessary to run the game or do many of the thngs that they “addressed” with their commands and interfaces.
Lads loving the podcast, started listening last year when Steam release fever gripped me.
I have a question that you may or may not like to take as a talking point in a future episode –
What’s your thoughts on the “cheese/broken” elements of the DF gameplay cycle? I’m talking about the fact the game is such an in depth “simulation” with so many options yet at the end of the day some of the most essential and useful things you can do in game are essentially exploits. Bridges as magical atom/enemy smashers, wooden cages that can magically contain all but the most gargantuan of beasts and are the best defence for most things, barred wooden doors that simply stop a rampaging etin in their tracks. These elements of the game always strike me as taking away from the immersion (and challenge?) of the game world when they’re so vital to almost any game session.
If The Lads knuckled down on some of these things and changed or removed them (creatures able to escape or smash cages depending on material, more creatures being door destroyers etc) would it improve the game or simply make it more difficult without any changes to offset their removal?
That’s a good question – I guess it is in Tarn and Zach’s hands on whether an exploit becomes “canon” or not, but some things like dwarven atom smashers minecart power generators have dipped themselves in DF lore so much that taking them out would cause a bit of a backlash though :).