I don't recall having seen "the quest for validation".
If you can't see that
this, for example, is essentially an echo chamber as far as discussion goes, nothing I say will convince you otherwise. Your mod, your community, your rules. But this pretty much kills any desire of mine to become a part of any of it.
What I see here is objections after we agreed how we would want this to work and after the feature has been coded.
If you want a build a house, you don't tell somebody to build a house for you and then it's done, you will tell if you want it or not.
I wasn't here during the agreement/brainstorming (which of course means nothing from your POV), but that kills your house analogy stone dead. All I asked for was a challenge option that's only loosely tied to the whole concept. Heck, I'd have wanted it even without the settler profession itself. I objected to none of what's already present.
Bugs and balancing are major issues.
Sure. I just spent a few hours fixing mine. But a blanket statement 'There might be bugs and balance issues, therefore discussion is closed' is in extremely poor taste. You can argue
anything that way. Flying pigs, no flying pigs, a Donald Trump cameo, DT as a FF, the string "donald" banned from the codebase, etc etc etc.
Effort is also a major issue...
Yes, and I would have taken that as an answer in itself. And I'd have appreciated an additional technical elaboration like 'pioneer code is operating on incompatible assumptions like [this] and [that]'. From a brief code-dive, it really doesn't look like this is the case, but I could be very wrong here. Or a game designer answer like 'animals will kill your first colony before it's built, then'.
Something. None of that happened.
don't confuse "interesting" with "fun".
Unlike many people, 'interesting' and 'fun' are very closely related for me.
I didn't ask this to be enabled by default, either.
Moreover, difficulty levels/options etc are by nature more in the "fun
because it's interesting" camp rather than "fun because it's engaging". MTG is also a
social and
commercial game, which WTP isn't, so the analogies don't carry over fully.
And are pioneers "fun" or are they not? I didn't just propose a wild idea, like Andrefab.
That I can agree was excessive complexity for complexity's sake, with little precedent in the game.
You argue that this is how it should be mainly because it's more historically accurate.
Where do you get that? If I've given any reason for wanting this, it's this:
I want more obstacles to my imaginary imperialism.
Historical accuracy is just a bonus.
Maybe, but where is the fun gameplay? I don't like this for the gameplay value.
Waiting for the good stuff. Anticipation. Do you open all your presents three days before Christmas?
It's much more immediate than for pioneers, too, since you only build a limited number of cities and each of them noticeably changes your progress in the game.
What are your reasons for disliking it?
Also I don't like the coding part of making this optional.
For a practical reason, or for code unification/aesthetics?
We are trying to get rid of human only features...
I didn't ask for a feature, I basically asked for a game option/difficulty setting.
...and we already removed the one-city challenge.
It looks like you want the game played in a less freeform manner, then. Goes against the modding ethos of 'making impossible things possible' IMHO, but it's your mod.
TLDR, your reply is brings nothing new to the table, since it's basically a rephrasing of Ray's position of "We do stuff we find interesting, when we like it, and we won't discuss anything in detail, either". Sure, I do the same thing, but I at least explain my
designer thoughts behind including or excluding something, and I occasionally change my mind because players show me I was
wrong.
And I didn't ask for this feature to be turned on by default.
