why does it seem like the game is going away from the direction it ought to be?

[woolfoma]

I thought this was a game about building western (with a sci-fi touch) colonies and towns, like with buildings and built out in a field(ish) maybe a couple walls and stuff. but now (especially in A9) it seems like the game has backpedaled from its original destination, hordes or pirates come to try and attack your colony, ignoring the fact that you've already killed like 500+ people with your 10-15 colonists, and temperature issues in the recent update(s) and mortars etc. really push you towards underground mountain bases with killboxes at the entrance. sure if you make the game attack you less some people will be able to build massive colonies by using killboxes but so what, let them ruin the fun for themselves instead of making the game lean more and more towards defeating those people. the game should limit the amount of people your colony can have to like 9 or 10, and limit raids to 20 people a month, then we could have the fun gameplay that this game should have had, instead of just a mad dash to a spaceship.

[Goo Poni]

Direction is subjective and as Tynan is the one making it, he can take Rimworld in whatever direction he feels is right. You can still play an outside colony, there is nothing stopping you except yourself. Personally, I have always played a mountain base for the utility of mortar immunity alone. I have never seen the spaceship ending. I have never built it. I don't want to. It feels like it invalidates the past several hours I just put into making a small functional haven. For me, the game has not backpedaled at all because I've always been slaying raiders in their hundreds and just barely keeping on top of the mountain of flesh that needs to be disposed of. The game does limit the people you can have. Play Phoebe or Cassandra (y'know, the default?) and you can only really break past about 12 colonists if you get lucky with a raid and have multiple incapacitated raiders to convert when you're already near the limit. Only Randy allows you to have more than that limit. I don't think Rimworld has ever been about wiping out the indigenous peoples.