I'm not really sure what hinting would do beside obfuscate what the forgotten beast does. Instead of string telling what it does, it'd be nother string, making it fuzzy what it does and that string will just coorlate to the given ability, adding nothing but a layer of obfuscation.
You'd be testing what the forgotten beast does on every encounter, rather then approaching with a prepackaged strategy. The game needs some work in the beast taming/stealth front first to really take advantage of that though.
But if you knew nothing, if all you got was the body plan and name, I guess there would be more sacrificial kittens and adamantine weapons from some militarily-minded overseers - though ultimately, what works on steel FB with deadly dust and webs works on steam FB with poison sting, and you gotta be ready to handle all comers.
Exactly there would be a short time period were the community wouldnt know, then that information would be correlated on the wikia and fully look able. What would it actually add? Annoyance maybe because you'd have to pause and go look up what 'As the forgotten beasts walks forth it brings in its wake covering of dirt and skin debris' or however vauge the hint string would be.
Toady One and ThreeToe could possible hide it, by preventing enough vauge strings to make it hard to correlate, as some of them would be terrible and wouldnt make any sense.
- A game option to omit the effects description, to force the player to try to figure out what it does.
- A game option to make FBs composed of something other than flesh more vague.
Perhaps. But what if is hidden only in game. That's it, if you are the first one to encounter the FB, then you don't know what it does beyond it's looks. The same could go for a FB that already had previous encounters but no survivors where left to tell the tale. Kind of like the rumors and alias are working know.
On the other hand a FB that is widely know could have the full description, but again taking from the rumor mechanics, it could have exaggerated proprieties, like "it shoots lasers from it's eyes" and "it craps pure gold nuggets", and so on, and only once you encounter it and see what it does in battle the description clears out only to discover that it only crap silver nuggets, what a disappointment.
Why would it change? I guess the system would be more or less the same for the most mundane worlds, only that instead of beasts the mightiest lords and races would name eras. The Goblin Era of Bonecraker Lord, supreme rules of the Jubail Mountains.
Ummm on second thoughts perhaps it could change a little based on the fantastic levels of the world, but in any case I think any change for it would be on the back burner for a long long time, unless it's one of those low hanging fruits encountered from time to time, or it's a must once the fantasy settings options come along.
I think it will change, for example if there is a shift in world magic (as presented in Threetoe's story) or a strong world event ("The Second Apocalypse").
Ages should be shorter, and more linked to what actually "happen" in the world, and with more addition to "events" I think new Ages will follow.
As far as I understand, the artifact retrieval is a start in the direction of sending out other kinds of parties as well. Another piece is the ability to enter other planes (which comes after one way portals) that should provide the functionality to have more than one location active in DF at a time.
All those concepts are still on the table. The DF dev cycle tends to involve Toady realizing he bit off more than he could chew, or that some other dev goal ought to be done first, or just getting bored of working on the same thing for a few months, and things get shelved on the backburner. The backburner with all these shelves is built into table, though. Toady's kitchen setup is weird. Anyway, all of this eventually comes back around (lest one end of the table get too hot and catch fire); as Pat said, being able to send out parties to get your stuff back after some jerk takes them is the first step toward influencing the wider world around your fort, which was one of the goals of the Army Arc years ago.
As far as the Age system changing, it's changed in the past and I don't see any reason to assume it'll never change again in the future. The Creation Myth Generator alone will likely shake things up enough to have to rework it a bit.
If you haven't clarified it yet in a devlog post newer than this question, will we be able to have false identities/pseudonyms in adventurer mode?