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[mirrizin]

So, I've recently come back to DF after a hiatus, and so I've come back to the forum, and I find this thread by someone who seems frustrated with the ease of "winning" in DF. To quote him:
 
Stragus:
---"But the documentation seriously needs to reflect this. The myth of an extremely hard game and this "losing is fun" slogan have to go. Currently, this is a very easy game: you can't lose unless you want to lose. That being clearly established, now let's hope future updates can provide a challenge for those who seek one. The players who only want to build peacefully already have what they seek."---

And he has a point. I remember back in v.34 when I figured out that I had established (in a very easy biome) a fort that, with some care and a lack of unlikely catastrophe,* could stand indefinitely. And I thought that I'd won.

I then built what was, on reflection, a rather creative megaproject, and then quit the game, because I didn't have the heart to abandon a fort that was doing perfectly fine and would continue to do so.**

And it gets boring. And, if you are the sort of person (no insult intended) who depends on external discipline to be challenged, it's actually rather boring. You can choose a relatively winnable embark, and win with relative ease. You can pick a more challenging embark, and win with some effort. You can choose a nearly impossible embark, and win by spending eternity in a hole in the ground with an endless supply of plump helmets and beautiful furniture. That is always an option.

Now, I think that this is a very shallow, limited, and limiting understanding of Dwarf Fortress. But taken at face value in certain ways, it's what "losing is fun" implies. "This game will kick your ass, man***! It'll beat you!" But really, if you're reasonably intelligent and spoiler-informed, it's not that hard, and seems to be getting easier. Survival, if that is your game, is easy. In fact, it is downright boring.

So, with some false humility, I suggest the title of this thread as an alternate, or at the very least corollary slogan.

* Say, a flying humanoid titan made of adamantium.
**Retirement wasn't an option yet, and now more experienced players know about when I started playing.
***Some feminists may read this and smirk. I know I am.

[mirrizin]

This may be relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_Test

[Somebodyelse]

There are no win conditions in this game.

It's like simcity, you set your own conditions for "winning." It sounds like you and the guy in that quote both set the bar too low and are now disappointed in your own standards.

[mirrizin]

There are no win conditions in this game.

It's like simcity, you set your own conditions for "winning." It sounds like you and the guy in that quote both set the bar too low and are now disappointed in your own standards.

For the record, I'm speaking for a past self as identifying with the guy in the quote.

And yeah, it is a lot like a more complex version of SimCity. I used to play that one, and then you get to the point where you start throwing disasters at yourself because everything else is boring. Then you start over again.

Another thought: Maybe we should make boredom more dangerous? I was wondering if that's a sneaky side effect of the taverns...

Dwarves who are idle too long spend all their time getting drunk, then die of alcohol poisoning. And then you get tantrum spirals and gallows humor about alcoholism destroying families. There's a thought.

[BesorgterZwerg]

There is no "winning", as there a no goals given by the game.
Dwarf Fortress is not a survival game. It does exactly what it says on page:

Dwarf Fortress is a single-player fantasy game. You can control a dwarven outpost or an adventurer in a randomly generated, persistent world.

Therefore I never understood the expectation that DF should be difficult to play. Some updates ago it was harder to play, yes, but mostly because it's an unfinished game, so some behaviour can be interpreted as quite unintentional because features like a proper emotion system were missing.
DF is an authentic simulation of a fantasy world with its own regularities. But things like tantruming dwarves in an absurdly high amount and a high difficulty only for the purpose of legitimating a slogan like "losing is fun" doesnt really fit in such a game.

This is of course only my opinion.

[Salkryn]

There are no win conditions in this game.

It's like simcity, you set your own conditions for "winning." It sounds like you and the guy in that quote both set the bar too low and are now disappointed in your own standards.

To be fair, I like to have my fortress tested by external forces (sieges, megabeasts) regularly, and I find it hard to strike a balance between a fortress that gets crushed almost instantly and one that eventually settles into a very long period of stability with no major threats without poking a hole in the blue stuff. It's true that there's no set "endgame" to DF, no "win" condition programmed in, but it's still quite common to end up in a situation where it's nearly impossible to "lose". After losing a few forts to madness and tantrum spirals, megabeast incursions, and sieges, I read up on basic fortress design, military training, and defensive/trap design; after which I rarely have a fortress fall unless I am particularly unlucky. On the other hand, I will freely admit I haven't yet moved on to the more challenging embarks, I'm still mostly embarking in high savagery biomes but avoiding evil ones and towers for the time being. Then again, the reason I avoid those embarks is because my forts tend to end very suddenly and very painfully. What I'm trying to say is, and I think what the OP is talking about is that it's hard to find a good balance between "fort gets curbstomped in the first year" and "fort settles into long period of stability with no challenges".

[mirrizin]

There is no "winning", as there a no goals given by the game.
Dwarf Fortress is not a survival game. It does exactly what it says on page:

Dwarf Fortress is a single-player fantasy game. You can control a dwarven outpost or an adventurer in a randomly generated, persistent world.

Therefore I never understood the expectation that DF should be difficult to play. Some updates ago it was harder to play, yes, but mostly because it's an unfinished game, so some behaviour can be interpreted as quite unintentional because features like a proper emotion system were missing.
DF is an authentic simulation of a fantasy world with its own regularities. But things like tantruming dwarves in an absurdly high amount and a high difficulty only for the purpose of legitimating a slogan like "losing is fun" doesnt really fit in such a game.

This is of course only my opinion.

Yeah, and that's why the slogan isn't legitimate, I think, or at least dangerously easy to misinterpret, considering how often it's associated with the game.

[Robsoie]

A way to challenge yourself if the default game does not do that is modding on how to increase the odd of losing by making the game harder in opposition of increasing the odd of losing by giving your fort self-handicaps (make no wall, no trap, don't train military too much, embark near those overpowered undead tower,  evil terrifying surrounding embark etc..)

Code wise, i think the "losing is fun" will really happen once Toady will get to his military dev plan
www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html
( scroll down to Improved Sieges )
And as invaders can be turned off, everyone still win, the guys that want martial challenge and the guys that want to oversee their fortress without the war side being a threat or denaturing their map with digging.

Anyways, some modding ideas you can easily implement

- make every animals and every non-dwarves creatures willing and wanting to murder your dwarves in a "Boatmurdered" atmosphere .
This can be done by adding
[CRAZED]
[NOFEAR]
to every creature definitions in the raws , just don't add [CRAZED] to your dwarves or you'll not be able to play a fortress (game would end immediately after embark), take time, but when you're going to see a bunch of previously harmless and pacifist groundhogs suddenly rushing toward your fortress with murder intent, it's hilariously worth it.
You're not going to look at those things moving around your map with the same eyes.

- Add many variants/clones of the goblin entity from the entity_default.txt , this would help to make more enemies to your civilisation, making your fortress being sieged much more, in order to not give you much room to breath and put then some pressure on you.

- Give your enemies the ability to siege you (much) earlier by editing the entity_default.txt for the dwarven entry, change
So according to this, to increase the challenge against gob siege, you may want to change
       [PROGRESS_TRIGGER_POP_SIEGE:3]
       [PROGRESS_TRIGGER_PROD_SIEGE:0]
       [PROGRESS_TRIGGER_TRADE_SIEGE:0]
into
       [PROGRESS_TRIGGER_POP_SIEGE:1]
       [PROGRESS_TRIGGER_PROD_SIEGE:1]
       [PROGRESS_TRIGGER_TRADE_SIEGE:1]

So gobs may be willing to siege when
- you reach 20 pop
- or you reach 5000¤ of created wealth
- or you reach 500¤ of exported wealth

instead of being willing to siege only when you reach 80pop (+/- somewhere near year 3 of your fortress)

There are certainly much more modding possibility to improve the difficulty for your own fortress fun.
That or go look for mods like the fortress defense one.

Now there's the problem of walls, despite climbing is a feature, siegers will not climb the majority of time, so turtling in will still defeat every siege attempt, nothing much can be done there without handicaping yourself with holes in wall and etc ...

[Eagleon]

I think the game is plenty hard enough for players new to the game. Players old to the game should probably know that there are mods available to make it harder if that's what they're into, or more involved in terms of exploration, or that there's adventure mode waiting to make scenarios for your retired forts, or just dick around with raising insurrections etc. Basically going everywhere on the bartle scale, but you have to go out of your way to sculpt it a bit to your purpose. It's not perfect, but neither does it have to be.

And I'm not sure I agree that, without going munchkin, the game is that easy - necromancer hordes still blow through my dwarves with regularity if I embark too close to a tower. The key word is munchkin - some people actively look for exploits to break the difficulty, some people are so irritated by them that they go out of their way to make sure they aren't even usable. Some people are just bad at the game, haha.

I have noticed that dwarves really don't tantrum as much as they could anymore. I've never once seen anyone anything but "fine" in Therapist, even while people are getting slaughtered left and right by stupid mistakes, on their part and mine. They could stand to be made much more volatile like before, especially if the ways that they can be volatile are expanded.

[Iamblichos]

What I'm trying to say is, and I think what the OP is talking about is that it's hard to find a good balance between "fort gets curbstomped in the first year" and "fort settles into long period of stability with no challenges".

I think this sums up the conundrum nicely.

[greycat]

The slogan "Losing is fun!" does not mean "Losing is probable!"  Losing is more fun than winning, because it creates a better and more compelling story.  (Arguably.)  But this doesn't mean that any given fortress is likely to go down in flames.  You have to set up the world, and the embark, and the fortress, the way that you want in order for your story (or a surprising new story) to play out.

[Stragus]

"Winning is boring!", I think that slogan reflects the mindset of current DF players quite well.

I don't think the comparison with Sim City is fair. In that game, one can strive to reach the highest possible balance of the various indicators: health, education, traffic, pollution... and it's a difficult problem. In Dwarf Fortress, what do we get for designing the most efficient fortress? Well, we get more idle dwarves. That could mean a bigger military (maybe 80% of the population), and that does sound like a pretty good motivation to build an efficient fortress... except that a bigger military isn't really required anyway.

Others have mentioned the problem of finding a balance between "being wiped out instantly" and "the fort settles in stability with ease".

I think the solution is simple: a challenge/survival mode for those who like such a challenge. In such a mode, the ferocity of the attacks would then increase proportionally to both the wealth of your fortress and time. If it appears your fortress has settled comfortably and nothing can touch it, you should keep playing and building, because you'll discover how that mighty fortress is finally going to fall. The challenge now becomes: how far can you go? How long can you last?

The story behind such a mode could simply be that the world is falling into darkness, and your fortress eventually ends up being the only one still standing.

Now, that's a real challenge. I would love it.

[mirrizin]

"Winning is boring!", I think that slogan reflects the mindset of current DF players quite well.

I don't think the comparison with Sim City is fair. In that game, one can strive to reach the highest possible balance of the various indicators: health, education, traffic, pollution... and it's a difficult problem. In Dwarf Fortress, what do we get for designing the most efficient fortress? Well, we get more idle dwarves. That could mean a bigger military (maybe 80% of the population), and that does sound like a pretty good motivation to build an efficient fortress...

Actually, I find it to be a powerful disincentive toward efficiency. Efficiency is easy and boring, to me.

For instance, in my current fort, I could simply dig out a five by five square room and stick the trade depot in it. I dig a tunnel from the outside, clear, for traders. I dig a tunnel from the inside, entrapped, for the dorfs. Build enough traps and goblins won't be a problem anymore.

Or, dig out a huge circular room, about 30 urists across, with a raised dais in the middle for the depot. Channel down the remainder of the room, with drawbridges inside and outside that can be raised at need. Channel the entire room down several urists deep, dig intake and outtake tunnels, install floodgates and levers, and flood the room several urists deep. It's far less efficient, but visually pleasing and kind of neat to imagine. It's also, I think, on the fairly simple side of things far as engineering projects go.

And if you really want some fun later on, drain it out, then replace the pillar bases with supports. Hook them up to a lever. Drown some elves.

This is not an efficient or cost-effective way to design a trade depot, but I rather enjoy the process.

PS: I'm discussing this with my wife, and she points out that in other games, like NetHack, efficiency can be a great challenge. In DF, at least in my experience, it's only fun until you achieve it. And it makes DF a very different kind of game. Or maybe you have to work out what your goal is, and pursue that efficiently. Maybe building a 100 dorf army could be a goal, though...yeah, the game doesn't really have a use for that kind of behavior. You have to use your imagination or mod it somehow. Maybe sometime in the future Toady will make it possible for us to take the fight to the goblins. That would be a new kind of fun. Dwarf Fortress: Invasion Mode!

[Salkryn]

As I recall, sending out armies is a planned update. Also, this update had the thing with vampires, that were preventing sites from growing above minimum size, so hopefully larger populations will mean more activity of all sorts, including visitors and invaders.

[Stragus]

Or, dig out a huge circular room, about 30 urists across, with a raised dais in the middle for the depot. Channel down the remainder of the room, with drawbridges inside and outside that can be raised at need. Channel the entire room down several urists deep, dig intake and outtake tunnels, install floodgates and levers, and flood the room several urists deep. It's far less efficient, but visually pleasing and kind of neat to imagine.

Sounds nice. Now, instead of building this "just for fun", as visually pleasing as it can be... Imagine if such an impressive structure would actively help you defend against the forces threatening your fortress. It does sound pretty hard to attack if you ask me!

Imagine if people would build these ambitious projects because it would help ensure the long-term survival of their fortress. Imagine if a large and wealthy fortress would need dozens of such mega projects to even survive.

I don't know about you, but that would sound amazing to me! That would be a fantastic game.