Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  
Pages: 1 2 3 [4] 5

Author Topic: Why is Dwarf Fortress fun?  (Read 28369 times)

zehive

  • Bay Watcher
  • [DRAGONFIREBREATH]
    • View Profile
Re: Why is Dwarf Fortress fun?
« Reply #45 on: March 20, 2012, 05:19:45 am »

It's like opening a pocketwatch and seeing dozens of gears. Learning what each one does is, for some people, a joy.
Its more than just that though, its learning to make your own pocketwatch, make it different, make it do different and cool things. Make it trap sea serpents, make it kill mermaids, make it destroy goblins, make it run the lives of potentially hundreds of manic depressive alcoholics, make it do an infinite amount of ridiculous things without restriction, and it ASCII characters leaves it all up to your mind to fantasize all the magnificent, but more usually utterly horrifying, terrible, unspeakable things that are happening.

And then make that pocket watch run off of dying puppies. Thats what makes DF so awesome.

kaijyuu

  • Bay Watcher
  • Hrm...
    • View Profile
Re: Why is Dwarf Fortress fun?
« Reply #46 on: March 20, 2012, 05:25:52 am »

Pushes the reward buttons in my brain for building things. It's like Lego with little AI guys running around putting blocks together.
Logged
Quote from: Chesterton
For, in order that men should resist injustice, something more is necessary than that they should think injustice unpleasant. They must think injustice absurd; above all, they must think it startling. They must retain the violence of a virgin astonishment. When the pessimist looks at any infamy, it is to him, after all, only a repetition of the infamy of existence. But the optimist sees injustice as something discordant and unexpected, and it stings him into action.

Sus

  • Bay Watcher
  • For ‼SCIENCE‼!
    • View Profile
Re: Why is Dwarf Fortress fun?
« Reply #47 on: March 20, 2012, 06:02:42 am »

Quote from: bombzero

so why IS Dwarf Fortress fun?

"...and the severed part flies off in an arc!"

"... menaces with spikes of..."

The fact that Cacame Awemedinade exists.

The massive collection of goblin/troll body parts your dwarves end up with after a siege walks into a trap corridor.

Reading the combat log immediately after the general of the goblin civilization is killed by one of the weapon traps in your trap corridor.
This. It's the mind-boggling amount of detail in every aspect of the game plus all of the idiomatic (menacing spikes, I'm looking at you!) and totally random ("The sergeant shakes the Stray Giant Emu around by the tongue and the severed part sails off in an arc!") craziness. The combat, for example, is quite like real-life medieval warfare: chaotic, random, brutal and, more often than not, fatal for all involved, from wound infections if not a lucky crossbow bolt through the eye or a slight case of decapitation. There's also oodles of schadenfreude to be had when some hapless invader is torn to shreds by a weapon trap, falls 7z onto a bunch of spikes and explodes in gore or gets its limbs cloven off by your military. All this in what is essentially a wide open sandbox with its own stunningly complex history. A sandbox where you can aspire to do anything from conquering
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
, building a cat soap tower to the heavens, creating the perfect dwarven utopia, or torturing children and small fluffy animals for ‼SCIENCE‼... and that's just off the top of my head.

Besides, Losing is Fun. Dwarf Fortress is lots and lots of ‼Fun‼. :P
Logged
Certainly you could argue that DF is a lot like The Sims, only... you know... with more vomit and decapitation.
If you launch a wooden mine cart towards the ocean at a sufficient speed, you can have your entire dwarf sail away in an ark.

Drago55577

  • Bay Watcher
  • Я красивая девушка
    • View Profile
Re: Why is Dwarf Fortress fun?
« Reply #48 on: March 21, 2012, 06:05:25 am »

Someone needs to mod in an M1 Abrams Battletank creature :/ with a natural ability that shoots a modded material (same properties as steel) that explodes... And another one that shoots sharp rocks everywhere (MG)

Than we would be slaughtering everything.

That's also why DF is fun, modability
Logged

Rip goat, more loli
I think I've been sigged more times as a result of my comments in this thread than I have in most of my other activity on these forums. 

alexandertnt

  • Bay Watcher
  • (map 'list (lambda (post) (+ post awesome)) posts)
    • View Profile
Re: Why is Dwarf Fortress fun?
« Reply #49 on: March 21, 2012, 06:25:25 am »

Anywhere else, people would keep an awkward distance from you for getting a sense of reward for building skyscrapers out of kitten soap with puppy-fueled furnaces. Those people have never played Dwarf Fortress.
Logged
This is when I imagine the hilarity which may happen if certain things are glichy. Such as targeting your own body parts to eat.

You eat your own head
YOU HAVE BEEN STRUCK DOWN!

Drago55577

  • Bay Watcher
  • Я красивая девушка
    • View Profile
Re: Why is Dwarf Fortress fun?
« Reply #50 on: March 21, 2012, 06:40:56 am »

People keep a massive distance from you when you dumP Babies and kittens off a cliff into a looped waterfall to make a temple to armok

By loop I mean he water circulates back round,
« Last Edit: March 21, 2012, 08:23:28 am by drago55577 »
Logged

Rip goat, more loli
I think I've been sigged more times as a result of my comments in this thread than I have in most of my other activity on these forums. 

Fairin

  • Bay Watcher
  • Furry!
    • View Profile
Re: Why is Dwarf Fortress fun?
« Reply #51 on: March 21, 2012, 07:02:51 am »

Freedom
Logged

SquatchHammer

  • Bay Watcher
  • A bit drafty
    • View Profile
Logged
That's technically an action, not a speech... Well it was only a matter of time before I had to write another scene of utter and horrifying perversion.

King of Candy Island.

Toffle

  • Escaped Lunatic
    • View Profile
Re: Why is Dwarf Fortress fun?
« Reply #53 on: March 24, 2012, 10:16:48 am »

I believe we are naturally creative beings.  DF allows our creativity some room to play.  This is fun.
Logged

Deathworks

  • Bay Watcher
  • There be no fortress without its feline rulers!
    • View Profile
Re: Why is Dwarf Fortress fun?
« Reply #54 on: March 24, 2012, 01:21:13 pm »

Hello!

While I also enjoy the creativity part in designing the fortress layouts and adapting to the available terrain and items, another major aspect for me is the surprise factor. You can order your dwarves to create statues, crafts or decorations, but you never know what they will create (currently, I am frustrated in my efforts to make a comfy dining room, because the dwarf who spends most time on statues seems to be an ardent worshipper of a deity who is depicted as a rotting female dwarf (T_T) ). If you don't check the history in legends, checking the various decorations can be quite exciting as you explore the past of the world.

Likewise, the relationships between the dwarves and their emotional states create a new history in your fortress - with surprising developments whenever you turn your back to somebody for a second.

So, while you interact with the game, it also tells you millions of new and exciting stories - some influenced by you, but others absolutely beyond your control. It is uniting creativity with joyous consumption.

Yours,
Deathworks

P.S.: Or if you want the short answer: DF is fun because it is the best game ever created. :) :) :)
Logged

Naryar

  • Bay Watcher
  • [SPHERE:VERMIN][LIKES_FIGHTING]
    • View Profile
Re: Why is Dwarf Fortress fun?
« Reply #55 on: March 28, 2012, 10:04:27 am »

Because it has a level of gameplay other games can only DREAM of achieving.

Even other roguelikes.

bombzero

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Why is Dwarf Fortress fun?
« Reply #56 on: March 28, 2012, 04:21:03 pm »

Because it has a level of gameplay other games can only DREAM of achieving.

Even other roguelikes.

i dont know bout that last part, theres some pretty fucking in depth rogulikes out there that are in version .01 and stuff, i imagine rouguelikes will remain the 'amazing' games that nobody knows about for the time being.
Logged

Naryar

  • Bay Watcher
  • [SPHERE:VERMIN][LIKES_FIGHTING]
    • View Profile
Re: Why is Dwarf Fortress fun?
« Reply #57 on: March 29, 2012, 03:37:06 am »

Because it has a level of gameplay other games can only DREAM of achieving.

Even other roguelikes.

i dont know bout that last part, theres some pretty fucking in depth roguelikes out there that are in version .01 and stuff

Yes, I have played amazing other roguelikes, but none is developed like DF. Mostly because DF is a RTS/RPG and most other roguelikes are RPG's.

rex mortis

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Why is Dwarf Fortress fun?
« Reply #58 on: March 29, 2012, 04:16:27 pm »

Because I can make my own moral decisions. When I can horribly mutilate little children who cross my path, the decision not to do so is immensely satisfying. Of course, if I choose to slowly torture said children till they die, it was still my decision and immensely satisfying.

Many games force somebody else's morals on the player. I deal with that every day in my real life out of necessity. I do not need it in my games.
Logged
Because death is peaceful and magma is lovely.

Stoup

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: Why is Dwarf Fortress fun?
« Reply #59 on: April 16, 2012, 08:45:45 pm »

It's the emergent stories and the allowance for one to use their imagination to create fascinating epics that really drew me to Dwarf Fortress. If the only experience I had with DF before I played it was scenes of gameplay, there would be absolutely no appeal to me whatsoever. But when I read the Hamlet of Tyranny I was absolutely stunned that such an epic tale could come about as a product of a completely randomly generated world, and thus was hooked to DF. Or rather, I tried to get into DF, but the learning curve put me off for a few months before I finally got the hang of it
Logged
Pages: 1 2 3 [4] 5