MusicallyInspired, on 16 June 2022 - 11:01 PM, said:
I know oldschoolers are in love with it, but it's not going to get people to play it. As I understand it though, it only controls differently.
Weapon swinging works quite differently, from my experience the default classes (at least, some of them) are harder to play with this than vanilla DF. I know most regular players don't go for default classes anyway, but I guess new players would pick a default one over making a custom class.
The only kind-of fix is to switch DFU to
Morrowind-esque weapon swinging per mouse click, but to me that is basically a step towards being a different game.
I don't believe that other DFU QoL improvements -- if you don't count high resolution and overall improved visuals -- alter or improve gameplay so much that vanilla would seem less playable to new players in comparison. Don't get me wrong, I'm cool with a lot of things in DFU, and especially how the mods enhance and improve the playing experience. But I'm a purist in the sense that I'd like the unaltered original thing to be available as well, alongside any mods and upgrades that the community might have created. So far, DFU does not offer the unaltered original experience, and it makes one wonder if players who've been introduced to DF via DFU would ever want it. Contrast this with EDuke32 vs. DOS DUKE3D.EXE, they are identical gameplay-wise in all aspects. And as far as I can tell, The Force Engine is also identical to DOS
Dark Forces in a similar way as Eduke32 is to DOS DUKE3D, even though not being based directly on the source code.