Bay 12 Games Forum

So for context, I'm a fairly new player to DF, I've known about it a long time but bounced of it many times before finally getting into it. It was something that I always thought I'd love but UI is a nightmare. Learning to use keyboard and not mouse for 90% of controls was a major learning curve, and that's as someone who has been playing PC games for what I would consider a long time. When I finally broke through it was by watching youtube videos of other people playing, and not from reading the wiki. Indeed I've only ever used the wiki a handful of times and think that trying to direct new players toward it is gonna be a huge turn off for a lot of players, it was for me for literally YEARS. I would consider the fact that a large portion of the audience on steam are used to more modern methods of tutorials in games, and its more likely particularly amongst younger players, that they're going to gravitate to resources either in the game or on youtube, anything else that requires more work to learn how to play is where you're going to lose a vast majority of new players.

I gather a lot of longtime Dwarf Fortress fans might feel like putting the effort into the learning the game yourself is part of the game experience, and I would argue it's not a necessary one although it does define a large majority of long time players early experiences of the game. To some people, learning to play a game like this is probably part of the fun, but it also narrows the appeal to the subset of players that are okay with putting the work in. Some form of in-game tutorialisation should be present so long as the game is an abstract system of menus navigated by keyboard, with a mouse as standard almost all of the UI could do with a complete overhaul, but if it comes to sticking with keyboard there HAS to be something in game to get players digging, and figuring out how to set up supplies of food and water while learning how to designate rooms. I feel like that is the bare minimum a player needs to know before even feeling like outside resources are even going to be all that helpful to actually learning how to play at all, before learning how to play better.

Obviously this is a consideration made for new players so I suppose any guides or in game tutorials would obviously have to function in an optional capacity so as not to interfere with the game experience as it is for people already playing.

Thanks for this opportunity to offer some feedback on a game I finally learned to love after a decade of frustrating half attempts previously.