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[Eschar]

I have, sadly, never met anyone who has heard of DF. I usually start by telling them about the necromancer-bacon scheme, the cats getting alcohol poisoning from cleaning themselves, and various other stories to illustrate how detailed it is.

[nenjin]

I've gotten tiers of responses.

(Average casual gamer) Oh woah, I've heard of that. I've heard it's super complicated.

(Hobbyist who plays games) I tried it once but I just couldn't figure out how to make stuff work.

(Dedicated gamer who delves in to games) It sounds awesome I just don't have time to learn it.

(Programmer / Dedicated gamer friend of mine) It's cool, the ridiculousness of the simulation, but the input methods, the UI...sheesh....ain't nobody got time for that.

I've never found DF "hard" in the way it's always described. I find programming in C++ hard. DF was reading a wiki and failing a few times until I figured out how to make a running fort. After that it was just exploration of systems I hadn't tried and gratuitous faffery. *shrug* It's just a time investment in learning because each system is it's own "thing" and has to be studied and understood how it fits into the bigger gameplay loop. And I'm a reader by nature, always have been. So spending a weekend referencing wiki articles while I played a game was like....normal.

So when people say "oh wow, so complicated", I think they're actually saying what players who are capable of playing DF but don't will just tell you straight out. "I could learn to play this awesome game but I don't want to spend my time reading 12 to 15 wiki articles to understand how to do it. It's more fun to hear about than it is to play." The fact that learning and playing DF has a kind of obsessive quality to it and "the base" has carried that out to the rest of the world hasn't exactly helped that perception.

TLDR: Strange Moods.

[Inarius]

I've never met anyone IRL who knew Dwarf Fortress before me. So...most of the reactions were "WOAWWWWW, that seems awesome". Part of them continued to ask me stories about it, or funny anecdotes. Especially younger people (and especially children). But nothing more. Some people have actually gone to the bay12 site but were stopped by either ASCII and language (I'm French).

On top of that :

Really our best method is to create more Boatmurdered-tier stories and the like. Posting these stories and hosting these let's plays on more visible communities such as reddit and somethingaweful or other let's play forums could accomplish this. Try to get as many new eyes on the produce as possible.

+1

What DF community lacks is writers who could translate what makes the game great to "the world".
And, probably, too,a good tutorial.

[pisskop]

at its core, a fortress needs

- nothing

 because some fortress stories are about throwing mobs of mildly trained dwarves at the undead or hostile occupation until they are dead or flee.

the game has a lot of excess data that needs to be filtered to make a tutorial for people not hell-bent on learning on their own by doing.

something like:

- here is my fortress in its nth year.  pretty right?  i am under siege from the xyz brigade.  how did we get here?

- skip to embark.  dont do pre-embark yet.  cover basic crap like digging a hole.  and stockpile.  and the basic 'workshop pull from stockpile, hauler push to new stockpile'.

- cover skills and then do pre-embark.

- cover the rest of the skills and industries.


this way we get the gameplay out before we do the logistical grind.  df is scurry because of the information overload a newbie gets shoved into their faces.  they have an interface that needs remodeling, a graphics pack that was theoretically possible when Atari was popular, and a game about having no control directly over your subjects

[Inarius]

and a game about having no control directly over your subjects

I don't see the point playing DF if this was the case...

[pisskop]

You cannot directly control any of your little dwarflings.  You tell them to do things that they do.

Take the military.  Or the 'sock' meme.

[Shonai_Dweller]

You cannot directly control any of your little dwarflings.  You tell them to do things that they do.

Take the military.  Or the 'sock' meme.

What management games have ever featured direct control of your subjects? That's kind of the point of these games, you manage people, as opposed to playing as them (although in Dwarf Fortress you can actually do both). That's been the case since Sim City and Populous and probably earlier.

[Ziusudra]

The Dungeon Keeper games had the possession spell, but that's the only exception I can think of.

[pisskop]

dungeon keeper was a good example of why god games dont do direct control.

the idea is nice; the realities of programming two game modes you can swap to o  the fly less so

[TheFlame52]

I told my friends that in DF, sufficiently traumatized females can miscarry. They thought it was hilarious and horrifying.

[WillowLuman]

I'm the only one I know who found out about this game on my own.

[Civillain]

Dwarf Fortress has had some unexpected benefits for me due to the way it's perceived. I'm a woman and I hang in a lot of gaming circles, and I occasionally get those men that  start knocking my game choices as not "hardcore" enough to call myself a gamer, or trying to get me to prove I am worthy of identifying myself as a gamer.

When I mention Dwarf Fortress, they shut right up. It's only happened a few times, but it's thanks to the fearsome reputation of Dwarf Fortress that I got that satisfaction! Honestly I wish it happened more because it makes me way too smug. Alas, as I get older, the people around me get more mature and I haven't needed to "prove" myself in over a year.

[WillowLuman]

Still though, that's pretty awesome/funny

[pisskop]

df has plenty of 'casual' players.

our largest forum is called 'casual games and roleplaying' 

df's difficulty is renowned from its earlier releases.  2d stuff.  i hoped in at 34.01 abouts, and it was a matter of bring willing to fail my way to success

[Eschar]

I found out about DF (and NetHack) from an article by Eric S. Raymond called "An Apologia for Terminal Games."