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[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

Hmm, you're right, it's not so much "random hell" as "incredibly complex and detailed..."

that's not hell! That's heaven!

[PTTG??]

I think the only flaw with Dwarf Fortress' detail level is that it tries to put it all immediately accessible. I imagine that at some unknown future point of DF's development, you might see a "sword" on the ground. If you pick it up and look at it, you'll see it's a fine iron sword with engravings and a leather grip. Examine it closely, and you'll see it's actually a fairly sharp and well-made sword made from poor-quality iron. You'll get a detailed description of the engraving, and the leather will be tanned cowhide. You'll see that there is a bloodstain in the leather, but you won't know who's without magic.

The big difference is that in combat, it's easier to read "The tall man swings his sword at your neck." than "The tall, slightly fat man with detached earlobes, straw-colored hair, and a slightly upturned nose swings his sharpened well-crafted poor-quality-iron sword with an engraving of five rings, the symbol of a political group of dwarven settlers in 1051, with a cow-leather handle stained with Bombreck Bigarm's Dwarf Blood, at your neck."

[Robsoie]

The problem is not with the details, but how they're presented, the "don't feel anything when seeing a goblin die" repeated hundred of time in a dwarf information panel when there had been a gob siege exterminated is plain bad presentation, it should be similar to some of the announcements that are stacked, by example "don't feel anything when seeing a goblin die x42" .

A bit like in the adventure mode when you want to report something, if you adventured long enough you have thousands and thousands of useless gameplay-wise events you can report (any random and even completely harmless animal that had seen you during your travels is reported as having fought with you, even if you didn't even saw them)

Maybe there should be some kind of filter options in the init to allow/disallow the display of the useful stuff and the less or (much less) useful ones, so people that want the useful-only information wouldn't have it drowned under the giant (if you played long enough) pile and people that want to know every seconds of their dwarves life could still have the whole pile displayed if they like that.

[Shonai_Dweller]

I imagine a lot of the 'info on-screen all at once' right now is to help with testing.

The player doesn't need a long list of every single rotting body-part when looking at a Forgotten Beast victim, but for a playtester, having to check if each body-part is correctly rotting one at a time in a series of hidden away 'tidy' menus would be kind of frustrating.

Eventually all the surplus info needs to be hidden away (hopefully still accessible to the curious), but only when serious work starts on what the final interface should and shouldn't be (which will probably be quite a while yet).

On the other hand, there's an emotional reaction upon being confronted with an endless list of rotting body parts, or checking out a dwarf's mind to have it scream Horrifed! Horrified! Horrified! Horrified! Horrified! ... at you which you might not get from neat and tidy menus. Balance is key.

[Atomisk]

Try a hermit challenge, too. Choose your fav from the starting seven and murder the rest, then open a hole-in-the-wall tavern in the middle of the desert. DO IT NOW

aaaaand i'll be picking up fort mode again... gonna play stardwarf valley with a fuckin peahen and dwarf who can probably do anything if he puts his mind to it.

[GoblinCookie]

Play with hidden history, it tidies away the details quite nicely.

[Xazo-Tak]

The problem is that all the information given to the player cannot be utilized or viewed efficiently.
I'd love it if I could say "Okay, all the dwarves that want to craft a masterwork someday go into crafting or engraving jobs, and all the dwarves that are strong go into mining, and all the dwarves that are good fighters join the military...".
But instead I have to peer into each dwarf's details, compare it with a chart that shows which traits affect which skills, then start manually turning job allocations on and off.
I don't do that of course, it'd drive one insane, but I hate how unless you do that the job allocations of your dwarves make no sense and are not based on demand or desire.
If this game wasn't going out of its way to have a nostalgic Roguelike graphical style, it'd be possible to show so much more of the in-world detail: Chat bubbles from talking dwarves would be a big benefit, especially if restricted to communication of information or anything tied to something happening in game. Seeing a dwarf running from an enemy just isn't the same without the exclamations of panic.

[Shonai_Dweller]

I don't think speech bubbles 'limited to things tied to the game' would be a good idea. Everything is tied to stuff happening in the game, isn't it?

"A goblin, how horrifying!" is just as important as "Plump helmets for dinner again?!", "I do so love mining", "Where is my brother? How lonesome I feel". Speech bubbles would be massive information overload.

Oh and don't forget to keep an eye on the arguments going on at the tavern, wouldn't want the visiting goblins to be convincing your dwarves of the worthlessness of hard work.

Wander round your fortress in adventurer and you'll see exactly what eveyone's talking about. Sure, some of isn't necessary (who cares about the local titans if you can't yet send out squads to handle them, right?). But since you don't have to worry about most of it unless you want to, isn't it better off screen (where it is right now)?