>>16339682
I'll disagree with you based on a simple premise: the game isn't stricly a colony sim. It's suposed to be much shorter than that.
The original (and still prevalent) vision to the game is rather simple: you crashland. Your aim is to leave. Either make a new spaceship, or locate that friendly AI thing.
The dificult part? It's a race against the clock. Overtime, the game will get progressively harder, and if you do well (amass wealth, don't lose colonists) the dificulty will up even more.
On vannilla Rimworld, you're guaranteed to eventually be overrun by a pack of 200 tribals or 50 well armed raiders after a good long while.
So the basic premise I use for my argument is this: the game was intended to have a start and an ending, with a soft "hidden" timer in between.
This didn't stop people from trying to make it a colony sim however, and getting their shit kicked in when they do. Just look at this three details:
>you gotta manage dwindling stocks of food
>random diseases can appear
>random hostiles will fuck you up
Have you never played a game like this before? Yes you have.
It's Oregon Trail. Rimworld is just Oregon Trail on steroids.
You start. You cling to your resources/gather more as you can and then strive to finish it. If you don't, sooner or later you'll lose.
Now, mind you: the game can be turned into a colony-sim by simply tweaking a few values in the game's files or installing mods if you're lazy and can't be arsed.
But I think Tynan's game-designing skills do hold up quite well.
He did make the game he set out to do (Oregon Trail in Space), and people who wanted that were quite happy (like me).
People who wanted Rimworld Fortress however… are understandably upset.
For the record: I do think Tynan never quite nailed down the response to wealth on the game. You can easily get spikes in wealth without noticing, and suddendly the game does a complete jump in dificulty that fucks with you.
On the other hand, the game fucking with me lead to some very interesting moments. Playing with permadeath, I had a raid kill 12 guys. The remaining 2 had to patch each other. One was an assassin that didn't know anything besides weapons. The other was a cook. And both were standing in the middle of a devastated base. I had a lot more fun rebuilding that base with those two broken bastards than I had building it in the first place, and even got to rescue 2 of my previous crew. The dificulty scaled down quite a lot after that massive disastruous raid, so I enjoyed some years of good luck and happy growth afterwards.
People only remember the times the RNG and dificulty fuck with you, but forget how many times it helps you recover.
The Narrators in this game are like a DM in D&D: they're not there to screw with you, they're there to keep the game challenging.
That means not crushsing you entirely that you get a wipe (unless it's your own fault) but also means not letting you sit by for 5 years where nothing seriously threatens you.