Hey there. I played the 2D version, which was an approachable easy-to-play game. Then I spent quite a lot of time in the 40d days, when things were a bit more complex but also more fun, and I grew to love Dwarf Fortress. However, the last time I played DF properly was in 2012. I still follow the game religiously but I find myself unable to play it. After games like Rimworld or Oxygen Not Included, I just can't bring myself to endure Dwarf Fortress. It has become such a hassle to play. I do love the idea of Dwarf Fortress but I'm mostly just waiting for it to become playable.
In general, I think the game needs
automation, streamlining and useful defaults. So much of the development has been adding complexity. Not only adding the
ability to micromanage but also the
need to do so. What it needs now is to reevaluate each feature and automate it so that it
works by default, and micromanagement is just an optional choice for advanced players.
Specific examples of things that are noob unfriendly:
- ALARM! When the fortress is in danger, I want to have a single button I can press and everyone retreats to safety (with no need to set up burrows, alerts or anything). I don't care how exactly it works, there are many options. Imagine, for example, that after clicking ALARM, dwarves would automatically retreat to meeting halls. Even noobs have those, and for them the effect would be that the game just magically
works. Burrows and alerts should be completely optional for those who want more granularity.
- MILITARY. This is such a huge deal. I want to click a dwarf, draft it to military, and be done with it. Anything more is just a hassle. This is how it used to work in the 2D days and it was glorious. Basically, things like uniforms, squad rosters, training schedules etc. should use automation and useful defaults in such a way that I should never have to open the dreadful military UI at all. I draft dwarves to be soldiers and it just
works - everything is automated. The military UI should be completely optional for people who want to micromanage.
- STRESS has been mentioned many times, and is another example of this. The game should just
work by default - stressed dwarves should be able to relieve their stress by themselves with no action on the player's part. This would result in them spending a lot of time off-duty, so the role of the player is to optimize the system (to get more work out of the dwarves), not to make the system work at all.
- JOB ASSIGNMENT, perhaps the worst culprit. It's overcomplicated to the point of being unusable. External tools are considered a must just to be able to play the game. No amount of UI wizardry will fix this - the system is just too complicated. You can't reasonably expect players to manually assign dozens of specific labours (a lot of them obscure and useless) to dozens of dwarves. This needs to be streamlined massively, to the point where players are assigning only the broad categories (All farming, all metalsmithing, all clothes making, all doctoring...), not specific labours. This goes hand in hand with redesigning the categories because right now you
have to go deeper in the menus and use labour-lever granularity because just using the top-level categories isn't useful. Some categories are too broad (farming), other tasks that should logically be together are spread amongst different categories (clothes-related stuff). Better yet: Just let the game automate labour assignment completely (DFhack already does this and it's lovely), with no input on the player's part. And give powerplayers the
optional ability to overwrite automation.
- DIFFERENT MODES OF SELECTING AND BUILDING. There needs to be just one of each, period. The different modes of building cause endless amount of frustration. Just have everything work the same way as hospitals and be done with it.
Etc. etc. The desired state is to have a game where the basics just work so that the player can then focus on improvement and optimization. Right now, the role of the player in DF is to struggle with the game just to make it work at all, which is just too frustrating. There has been a lot of talk about the UI* but talking about UI may obfuscate the fact that the game mechanisms themselves are set up in an overly complex fashion, and can't be saved by an UI designer. They need to be fixed at the programming/design level. For example - no UI designer can fix the different modes of selecting and building stuff.
I think what's most needed now is just take one year off, not adding any new features and just focusing on streamlining the game and doing quality-of-life improvements. Take each feature and think: „Can this be streamlined or automated? Can I set some useful defaults that will just work?“. Rethink and reorganize the menus. The game is more than a decade old now, it deserves a massive polishing pass. Do that every ten years, that sounds about right, no? The news about the Steam version and the associated plans to make it more fun to play made me excited about DF again. I know that for you, Toady and ThreeToe, this is a huge change in the way you approach the game and that you may not feel completely comfortable in your new role of game polishers. But I think that it's a great decision, and thank you for it! This sounds like the start of a new, more exciting era of Dwarf Fortress.
--
* Ages ago I made some
suggestions for interface overhaul. Most of them still seem relevant. There's even a
non-graphics version, and a
revamp of the military UI.
Author
Topic: *We need your help to save the noobs!* (Read 98321 times)