Looks like someone beat me to it - was gonna make a similar thread compiling feedback from players, veterans in particular, so that there's an organized place that Toady can look at and find a way to have some middle ground so that new players can more easily familiarize themselves and the veterans aren't alienated due to missing functions.
This isn't supposed to be a debate starter, or a whiny "dis game sux now its all ruined" post, merely constructive criticism - as someone who deeply enjoys this game, I want it to keep being successful and not fall into the trap of "alienate your old audience in favor of seeking a new one".
Here's what me and Splint have gotten so far, both from our sessions and from talking to some people in the unofficial DF discord:
-The Tutorial doesn't offer much freedom in how you execute it, and treats the situation - despite being perfectly calm and survivable - as an extreme evil biome situation where you have to get underground immediately or be killed nigh-instantly by the local wildlife/weather.
--The UI is disabled partially until step 6 of 8.
--It also doesn't cover farming or other basic survival skills (such as fishing, or setting up a water zone) which is vital for most fortresses and for newcomers to learn for long-term survival. If you're going to assume they need to be taught the controls, assume they need at least one basic sustenance method explained as a jump off point.
-Placement of stairs has had control removed from the player, as we now lack the ability to place specific stair sections as we see fit, such as to engage in cautious mining operations, without an additional step of removing the top or bottom-most designation. I know of at least one new player who had difficulties because of this.
-Construction placement lacks a proper indicator (this is likely a bug or oversight)
-Keyboard movement between layers while furniture placement or designations are active appear to skip two z levels rather than moving by one (this is likely a bug or oversight) forcing the use of the mouse wheel.
-You are essentially forced to use the stock screen to get rid of corpses after a fight. This list can become insanely long between dead bodies and severed limbs, and there's no actual indicator when moused over a body and its inventory what has been marked for dumping.
--You have no option to mark things individually for dumping from the main screen anymore.
-No ability to set labors on an individual basis anymore (whether via something like Dwarf Therapist or the v-p-l method).
- Hospitals now need to be converted from meeting areas. This is nonsensical, as hospitals aren't social spaces, and basically adds an additional step to setting up a hospital zone. In previous versions, hospitals were designated separately.
-Zones can no longer share functionality (most obviously with fishing/water zones, and pasture/training zones)
-Assigning tombs has become somewhat awkward, an attempt to reduce the amount of steps not really panning out. This is not really much better.
--Lack of a communal tomb option has been felt by several players, some of them new.
- Farm plots are considered workshops now for sorting purposes, as are nest boxes and beehives. A better option would be a Farming infrastructure category instead to separate these non-workshops from the actual workshops (with the farming category in workshops simply renamed to food.)
--The same can be said of furnaces, as there is ample free space for the two sections to be moved. This however is more of a minor nitpick.
-Splitting many things up into much smaller windows sounds good on paper, but I've found it shockingly grating, and several pieces of information were easily overlooked by several players due to being hidden in other tabs, or otherwise not immediately obvious. When a prominent DF streamer who played the new release for 11 hours had to ask on the unofficial Discord if the stone selection menu for furniture was gone (as in, making a piece of furniture out of a specific stone like gypsum), as he couldn't find it, then something is definitely wrong here.
-Combat reports are much better organized to read, however because they're scrunched into such a small window, it necessitates far more scrolling than it might have before at times.
-Work Order menus are obscenely long and lack categories, be it by material or by item type (armor, crafts, etc.) While there is a search bar is helpful, if a player forgets the material, mistypes an existing material, or forgets the item, this can become incredibly aggravating quickly. This is a potentially game-breaking issue as these lists will become UNCONTROLLABLE once people start adding mods to their game!
-Settings menu for changing hotkeys does not show categories, which can potentially be confusing (for example, in the same screen the user can see chairs, doors and weapon racks all have the same hotkey with no indication they're in submenus.)
-Keybinds for the build menu cannot be changed.
-No hotkeys on the trade screen - can cause issues like cancelling a trade by accidentally opening the tasks menu.
-Lack of visible hotkeys on the screen at all times, instead requiring mousing over everything. Say what you will about the old UI, but at the very least all the hotkeys were present on the screen to make doing certain things more immediately obvious.
Prefacing these by saying - while they can be changed in announcements.txt, the fact that these were changed to begin with is baffling, and not a good design choice.
-A strange mood occurring no longer pauses the game by default. This could have potentially disastrous effects if you aren't paying very careful attention (which is likely if the game is tabbed out or you're busy with other things in-game.) While this can be fixed by copying over the previous version's announcement file contents, that this was changed at all is baffling. The lack of the announcement bar at the bottom does not aid with this or the other alerts.
--The arrival of migrants and traders is likewise not conveyed in a meaningful manner, making it easy to lose track of caravans and new arrivals. Several players have had issues of this nature. There *is* a brief audio cue for arriving traders, but it's easy to miss with music and other sound playing.
-There is an audio cue for the birth of a child, but not for the arrival of migrants. The game also does not pause and recenter to inform you of the birth.
-Keybinds for certain menus cannot be remapped (looking at you, workshop tab.) Nevermind, that CAN be changed, but the clutter in the keybinds might make it easy to overlook.
A potential improvement on this suggested by a new player: "Since hotkeys can overlap, it would be nice if keybind options were listed in a tree, with each segment of options starting with the very first menu the player encounters, followed by hotkeys assigned to its children, then hotkeys assigned to those children as well."
-The complete lack of keybinds within workshop tasks makes doing very basic, early tasks very tedious, and gives an impression of trying to force the player to use a manager (which shouldn't be necessary at an early stage of the game, where one's population can be counted on their fingers.)
- Minecart designations appear to be messed up - from one user on the unofficial Discord:
"In previous versions of DF:
Route 1
- stop 1
- stop 2
Route 2
-stop 1
Route 3
-stop 1
....
Steam DF goes
Route 1
Route 2
Route 3
Route 4
Stop 1
Stop 1
Stop 1
Stop 2"
There is also an apparent inability to control how tracks look.
-You now require aristocracy present to get wagons in caravans. This makes the sale of larger and heavier items, such as animal, ore or statues made of certain metals, potentially impossible due to their weight, and they don't actually bring enough supplies for you to feasibly buy to get through the winter.
-Physical descriptions of the starting seven (that is, their appearances - stats and like do seem to
show) don't appear anymore if you check them while preparing carefully.
-There's no longer any indication that a civilian is hauling something - previously their tiles would flip to the tile of the hauled object.
-Many old functions were bafflingly removed, like direct ammo management of a squad, civilian alerts, shift+selecting a single set of materials for constructions, one-step without unpausing, or seeing whether the trade depot is accessible.
-As a consequence of mouse control now being required due to lack of hotkeys instead of simply being an option, many actions, like even just making beds at a carpenter's workshop, are now painfully slow to do, versus the old UI's hotkeys.
-Bug or oversight
1. Set a stockpile area
2. Select repaint
3. Click on a spot to start your repainting
4. Right click to stop it
5. Click out of the stockpile
6. Click on the stockpile again
7. Start repainting again
It should skip the first click to start the repaint, instead remembering where you last attempted to repaint, disregarding if you're actually trying to repaint another stockpile entirely.
I will talk to more people later, get their opinions on things and post them here. I hope this is helpful.
