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[Skelodwarf]

The thing that turns me off about the game right now is this:

So you get to the point where the game picks up: 80 Dwarves. Hell Yes.

Blood pumping, siege imminent, here we go!

And then once it DOES get here, the FPS is lowered to the point where it doesn't even get to my door step.

Also, I think it should be impossible to NOT have goblin accesibility.

This happened once, it pissed me off once I found out what happened.

[Dasqoot]

One of the things that slowed me down in the beginning was being confused by [v] and [k], and I think the fact that they're so easily confused yet are both very necessary is one of the biggest interface problems.

I agree with this a lot.

A lot of stuff just needs to be merged. It's all muscle memory now, but when I think about doing something, or trying to explain it, even I don't know what the buttons do. Categorizing the build menu would be amazing as well. Workshops, Construction, Machinery, that's it, lump everything in one of those. If I were new and thinking about building pillars, I'd go look under constructions, since building a pillar is like building a wall right? Why does Hatch Cover get as much prime real-estate as ALL workshops? The main build menu has almost every letter taken up too, so you have to memorize strange combos of buttons, but using broad subcategories, you could get everything down to the first or most significant letter.

Err, so interface turn offs and quick fixes for me, from since I was a beginner, up until now. These 4 changes all seem reasonable and wouldn't take much time to do:

1) Build Menu, completely reworked, option to self-sort would be almost as good.

2) V and K, much like T and Q, should be merged. Even better would be a left mouse click doing the job of both. (Example, I'm not in a menu and I left click on a ground tile with an anthill. It should bring up what is now the "k" screen for that tile. I click on a cat, standing on a dwarf, it should bring up the cat's V screen, I click again, same spot, bring up the dwarf's V screen. I click on a workshop and it brings up the relevant bits of T and Q.) I don't think I used the T button for months after I started playing, and while it's not essential to play, it's a very handy thing. I think it would be great to have it work at-a-glance, and just show job queue and the items in the workshop on the same screen.

3) D, I and P, these should be merged and some other stuff might be better as a submenu. "c" is rarely if ever used and only takes up space ATM. Let's make the main menu bar extremely concise. If you are thinking of doing something, there should be no doubt in your mind that 'X' button will let you do it.

4) I still don't know exactly how to install a tileset. I tried once and got totally lost while following the directions. If DF came with a very simple one, no bells and whistles, and just required one .png swap to switch to a shinier one that all the other kids liked, that would be fantastic. The grid size also goes along with this. I get lost trying to figure out the gridsize in the init.txt. There should be a couple options in game to switch the gridsize to something that works. Default, how it is now, double-height, so it's the same width as default, but double the height, and a couple more of whatever people think works with the different monitors and aspect-ratios out now. For example this is what I settled on after messing around with the grid for an hour or so:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Code: [Select]

[GRAPHICS:YES]
[GRAPHICS_WINDOWEDX:1600]
[GRAPHICS_WINDOWEDY:1024]
[GRAPHICS_FONT:GuybrushSemiGraphic_curses_square_16x16.bmp]
[GRAPHICS_FULLSCREENX:1280]
[GRAPHICS_FULLSCREENY:800]
[GRAPHICS_FULLFONT:GuybrushSemiGraphic_curses_square_16x16.bmp]
[GRAPHICS_BLACK_SPACE:YES]
[GRID:125:75]
[FULLGRID:80:25]

It was just trial and error over and over because I didn't really understand what I was doing and would have no advice for someone I was trying to help set it up. Most new players are going to want a much larger gridsize than the default, so a couple built in options would completely smooth out that bump.

(err by merging, I don't mean just dumping all the current options into one submenu, I mean categorizing and reworking what doesn't mesh that well right now. Like, changing all resizing in the game to to be done with mouse and arrows, instead of "some arrows, some UKMH" I still don't know off the top of my head which things use UKMH. For simplicity's sake, I think everything resizable should be made to be like designating dig squares.)

Umm, thanks for humoring me, I have no idea why it took me that long to explain myself.

[The Mad Engineer]

When I first started to play, the thing that annoyed me the most was the difficulty of discovering the backstory.

With 15 factions, over 1000 years of history, and a bajillion historic figures (Without the culling -at first I didn't know that you could do that), it was very hard to "access" the world.

[sweitx]

It seems to me that most of these complaints are about personal annoyances (learning curve, difficulty in doing things, etc.), but the things that bug me more than that are things that I see as more game-breaking than that.

For instance, long-term fortress viability is severely screwed over by the extremely fast rate at which dwarves gain skill, children becoming legendary socialites right away, lack of viable long-term goals, wilderness depopulation, etc.

I agree, the dwarf's skill progression should be much slower.  Soemthing like,
(Skill level) - (Years since dwarf first start working during the profession)
Competent - 1 year
Expert - 4 years
Grand Master - 12 years
Legendary - Only mood (or a chance after a certain amount of years to create a legendary artifact item to reach legendary).

Of course, better (in-game?) documentation and stuff would also help. Being on IRC and the forums and having the wiki burnt into my brain helped me enough where I could get by just fine, and I guess some of the industrial practices are helped by having a decent knowledge of things like chemistry beforehand, although I've actually learned a lot about a lot of those real-world processes since I've started playing DF. Ideally, though, I shouldn't have needed access to any online resources in order to learn how to play, although the lack of documentation is probably par for the course for a game that's still under development... it would suck for Toady to have to update a ton of help files with every new version.

Well, how well does wiki converts to a window's style help file?  If it can be done quickly, the Dwarf Fortress wiki can be made into a downloadable help file.  Since having in-game help you need to access anyway can be done just as well with a separate file (wondering what does fishery do?  search "fishery" in help file).

[Lemnx]

Biggest turn off, eh?

"WTF buttons commands WORKSHOPS? STONES? How do I build workshops!??!!? somebody puked random shit all over my screen... ASCII ARRRGGHHHHH!!?!?!?!"

The only reason I learned the ropes of DF was because I took it as a personal challenge and wouldn't stop until I felt as though I succeeded.

[Volfram]

Having not read anything but the first post


Z-levels and changing the view therof was never aptly explained except in a single tutorial which was not found in the help files or the wiki, but took, as I recall, a link from another forum which was found via Google search to find.  They're hardly even mentioned in the newbie materials.  It's one of the things I always make sure to explain very carefully whenever I introduce someone else to the game.

Other than that, I don't play right now because it's a bigger time sink than I can afford currently.

The ASCII never really put me off much, but I'm a bit of an oldschool gamer.(Adventure 660 and The Caves of ZZT oldschool)

[Kishmond]

My first thought was: "Okay, how do I start? I guess I need to dig into that wall there, how do I do that?" I know there was a list of things to the right, but none of them said 'Dig'. A slow introduction to the necessary command sequences would be nice.

Another thing that confused me for a while was exactly how stairs worked. I didn't know I had to build two!

[Jack_Bread]

I'd say the graphics, first off. Toady should use Dystopian Rhetoric's graphic set as the average until he has the time to make a average graphics set or something. Also, he should have a "Graphic: [On/Off]" in the beginning window.

Next is the learning you need to do to play it. Maybe Toady can get someone(or ThreeToe) to help write the Help section, which I could barely understand. 

[Jakkarra]

ive taken it upon myself to create a VERY in-depth tutorial, similarly done to Capn'duck's.

I am starting it today (sunday in england) but i would like to address a few issues.

1. can anyone reccomend a good, high quality video recording program for use with the XP operating system.

2. i have a fairly average quality mike, good enough for my purposes, can the said video recording software take sound from this and automatically have it in the video.

3. could someone please give me a list of things that NEED to be covered, i know basically everything ill need to cover, but im wanting to be sure, go into minute detail please.

4. all for now.

Love, jakkarra

[Idiom]

1) Initial "WTF" ACSII? (Lots of discussion by fans already on isometric and other such solutions).

2) Inconsistent and clunky controls (Lots of fan suggestions already on how to streamline them).

3) Micromanagement and having to rely in 3rd Party programs to overcome that (IE Dwarf Manager/Foreman and Atuo-hot key scripts).

4) Complete lack of a challenge militarily (Legendaries trained in only a couple seasons. Simple invasions and sieges. Stupid invaders. Super-Traps. No digger enemies or siege towers or catapults or ballistas or wall destroyers.)

5) Complete lack of a challenge economically. (Legendary craftsman in half a year, non-dynamic economy, skip coins entirely and poor coin management and use. Abundant resources.)

6) Complete lack of a challenge socially. (Imbalanced emotions.)

7) Complete lack of a challenge engineering. (No waste, and though it's not planned to be implemented, sewers and waste management is HALF of civilization. No natural cave-ins. No more rivers of fire. No advantages to super projects. etc)

NO MAP EDITOR or IN GAME DEV TOOLS! THIS IS AN ALPHA!

I've actually stopped playing. I've hit the top of the learning curve and got bored because all there is right now is a really steep learning curve and horrible game balance. Need at least these and I'll play again:
-Less micromanagement
-Better and more seiges and seige related things
-Balanced economy
-Balanced psychologies/emotions
-Balanced farming

[Jakkarra]

i dont know why people dont like the micromanagement, would you rather have a regular rts style game?

for example, C&C;

how to win:
 build money factory (basically) build death factory, make unlikeable tosser, kill enemy, win.

id much rather have the system we do now, or even, a more elaborate system.

love, jakkarra

[sonerohi]

Also, is it just me, or were non-workshop buildings a pain to learn at first? I figured out to make a workshop, you just supply a building material. So I tried to build a table figuring 'my mason will bring a chunk of stone here and make a table on that spot' but it instead required a table (item) and not the table (building) which is what seemed to be inferred by the screen notifying me of the failure to do my task.

[G-Flex]

i dont know why people dont like the micromanagement, would you rather have a regular rts style game?

Well, I think the issue is the lack of automation. You should certainly be making the same kinds of decisions, but there should be better ways to make them.

For instance, the military schedules that are going to be included in the next release. Doesn't really let you do anything new, it just lets you make the same decisions easier and have to click fewer buttons.

[Kishmond]

By the way, I doubt the ASCII is ever going to change.

[Fetus4188]

I got into the game after the Z-axis was added and after having read some AAR's from a friend from the earlier 2D versions, so I was hardly totally new to it when I started.

Even after seeing the ASCII for a while, I wasn't comfortable with it.  I could see what was going on but it was just not.. pleasing to my eyes.  I use a custom tileset not so much because it's obvious what each icon is (which they often aren't) but because everything tends to mesh together better and it's easier on the eyes.

I think the biggest issue for me getting into the game was understanding the chain of resources for doing something like making bread, or a steel hammer.  Even now, after having made probably 50+ 5-year fortresses (I always start with an ambitious idea then get bored and go to some new site, solving this issue is maybe just a question of my patience, or of a world gen with yet more options to get I site I'm really happy committing to), I don't really know what all the food relationships are, though I do know about the ores.  So, I just end up making plump helmets and sweet pods because the only time I committed to doing wheat or rock nuts I found to be a drag and unrewarding.

Now that I've rambled about that, what I think would improve it would be more workplace automation.  Things that need to be milled should be milled automatically, and the alcohols should be made from those products (particularly in the case with syrup, IMO), to streamline how food production works.  Also, maybe introduce an optional noble/quartermaster type who handles foods and you could just tell him "stock 100 units of dwarven rum" and he'll automatically task some brew drink for that when necessary (additionally you'd be wanting to tell him to stockpile sugar pods as well).  I don't go into DF looking to manage my food supplies, I'd like that when I get to the point where my fortress is stable and self-sustaining I could instead have the option of floating some do-nothing to tell others dwarves what to do instead of me having to do what I view at that point as a chore.

What makes me stop playing now is how easy the game is unless you specifically set out trying to do some ludicrous task.  It's not a tall order to build a thriving fortress in any old mountain based only on the orthoclase mugs you pump out from it.  Hopefully the improved sieges will change this.  Though I'd actually look forward more to engineering challenges, earthquakes, caveins, floods, other disasters.

Oh, how could I forget.  Fell moods and such, those are a total pain when you're starting out and you don't have the right materials.