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[penguinofhonor]

One thing I've noticed with a couple of my friends I've gotten into the game is that they don't know what the init file is or how to edit it, and I think that an in-game options screen would help greatly even if they had to exit the program for any of the changes to take effect.

Another thing is that several similar mechanics need to be grouped together (designations, rooms, stockpiles, and zones are a good example).

Also stairways definitely need to be explained more effectively, or they need to be simplified or something so new people actually know how to work things.

[Neonivek]

Well it isn't so much that people are against the option to micromanage.

It is that people are against micromanaging being required as well as the often "Overload" methods the game goes about it.

For example if you want to send a dwarf you see infront of you into the military you can't just click on him (Though you may go to the Dwarf Selection screen instead)... You have to go to the military Screen and filter out a hundred or so dwarves plus dead dwarves and enemies. Now you don't just make him a soldier... No you have to select him then have the foresight to know you have to click something else. Then you have to place him in a squad, set where he patrols, then set them on break because otherwise they are pointless.
-Hmm I also forgot that you have to select their equipment as well and hope they use it.

There is quite a bit of hoops you have to jump through to even do basic actions where you feel like you would rather have the ability to select a dwarf and have them do it.

In fact a lot of Mass production starts to become that way. You want to make armor for your army? Well you better select their armor individually as well as their weapons. Hmm it lists "Boots" does it make one or two? Better assume they make only one. Not enough room? well I hope you remember exactly how much of this you need?

Hmm you need to get enough Barrels for your fortress or Beds? Well you could set it on infinate production but you could make too much. No you don't get an option to place bets to be placed in a room and expect the dwarves to build it afterwards, you also cannot expect Dwarves to realise how many barrels you need and plan ahead. No you have to select 10 beds at a time to build and hope you remember to check up on it.

I could go on (MELTING!!!)... but I feel the format of my post is more obnoxious then helpful and Id rather be in the second category. I am hoping people will realise I was just kinda on a tangent and not trying to be a snot.

[wigwam]

I guess only three things have bothered me, and they've never been game-breakers for me, just bothersome.

1) I find it frustrating that you have to wait for furniture not only to be constructed, but to be moved to the appropriate stockpile before you can place it in your fortress. I don't know how possible it is (and if it's not, then I'm happy anyway), but maybe the ability to plan out room layouts, and when the furniture is finished they are moved to those locations. Also,

2) The direction dwarves choose to approach a job from. I've read up on the wiki where they prefer to dig/build/deconstruct/etc. from, in what order, which allows for pre-planning, but sometimes I just want to let that dwarf die who decided to wall himself into my channel. Or I scratch my head over the miner who has dug out a winding path into my soon-to-be-huge hall and backtracks half a mile around uncompleted work to dig out that square that was right originially next to him. I understand that he really wants to dig from the left, but it would be easier just to dig from the right, instead of wandering all about. Finally,

3) The complete and utter lack of urgency in my dwarves. Don't get me wrong, it's hilarious and half the fun most of the time, but it does get extremely frustrating when you've assigned a squad to protect your fortress at a strategic point during a siege, and one of your elite macedwarves gets torn to pieces because he was the only one out there, while the rest were wandering down to the farms to pick up a bite to eat. Similarly, instances (like earlier) where some dwarf decides to stand on the wrong side of the floodgate he's building. Because I can't hook up the mechanism to open it until it's built, now I have to scramble to get some mechanic to release him, but the mechanic suddenly decides that he'd rather be on break. That sort of thing.


Heh. Hopefully this wordy response made sense.

And the ASCII has never bothered me. Well, except for the fact that it wasn't square, but I got another set to fix that. Personally, I like the fact that my mind sort of fills in the blanks. Imagination is fun.

[Phoenix_Kensai]

I know it's a pretty minor thing, but one thing that discouraged me a lot at first was the whole world generation thing... even though it isn't interactive, I was a bit discouraged by the fact that I had no idea what was going on or what any of this was. While I could guess some things, such as what areas of the map were oceans and mountains, I got the impression that there was a lot going on with civilizations and wars and such that I should have understood. Oddly, the game itself didn't discourage me too much, probably because I have a strange liking for complexity in games. I still find the world generation rather confusing, though when I play these days I usually don't pay much attention to it.

As for what could be done about this, if it was even something to worry about, I... don't know. Some kind of interaction and commentary on viewing the history of the world unfold might be interesting; maybe the player could switch between viewing the different civilizations and settlements as time passes, seeing information on their current ruler and population and such, as well as any significant events that occur. It should be completely optional, though, as I can see world generation taking quite a bit longer if you were watching everything that unfolds.

I'm sure there are far larger problems to address, though, and to be honest, I'm still not even sure how much is happening on the screen during the history stage of world generation. I just always felt like there was a lot going on, even if a good portion of it was in the background.

Another problem I had, and still have today, to a lesser extent, is understanding what all the buildings and menu options are for... while this can be solved by looking in the tutorial or on the wiki, it might make the game a lot easier to understand and learn if there was some sort of help text that was displayed as you select commands. A bit like in strategy games such as Age of Empires, where you can hover your mouse over a unit or building in any menu to get a brief description of what it does. Since Dwarf Fortress doesn't use a mouse, it would have to be somewhat different, though a simple line of text on the bottom of the screen that describes the currently selected menu command or building might work well.

...I apologize if I'm not making a whole lot of sense with this. It's... rather late.

[Roundabout Lout]

I started with the Mike Mayday graphical version, so for me it was just the "WTF do I do?" factor. Picking a location was easy enough, and the embark now option is nice to have at first, but nothing prepares you for when you actually make it to the site. I must've watched those dwarves run back and forth for 5 minutes before I gave up and didn't try again for a while.

 Glad I took the time to eventually learn it.

[ThreeToe]

You all have many valid complaints, as should be expected.  It seems like the thing that would keep the most players from giving up is a good tutorial, in addition to other fixes.  I’d be interested in hearing how you think that should look.  For instance, one long tutorial, or several guides aimed at different aspects of the game.  What subjects are the most confusing?  Should the tutorial map fit in the world itself as a mission from the Mountainhomes for example?

[Akroma]

what turns me down is neither the difficulty, nor the grafics, I can manage that

what REALLY pisses me off is the insane amount of CPU this thing hogs

I only have that computer here and I can't afford a better one

and running the game at 7 FPS after the first migrant wave simply is not fun


I can play for 8 hours nonstop and still not make it through an entire season

[MrWiggles]

After reading this thread, and myself only getting DF for a few weeks after having it on my computer after five months, its interesting.

The User Interface, in my opinion needs to be homogenize, streamlined and collapsed. 

There are times with the Letter Associations make sense, and there at times, where it won't click with me. Like the stairs being U J & I. Seems to be obituary. It would be nice if grouped together actions were grouped together on the Keyboard, in rows or collums(sp) instead of being spastic. It also awkward to use the number pad for some selections, and the arrow keys for others.

If the commands could be kept in constance areas of the keyboard, so I can develop some muscle memory for certain actions, that would be very helpful.

The workshops are awesome neat in some very nice ways. However, they are an overload when first getting acclimated to it. It also doesn't sink in very well on how or why things are grouped together. Like for the craft shop, the individual items for wood are stored under wood, but shells and bones the individual items are displayed on the list. A suggestion on how to circumvent it, seems out of place on this thread.

The Ascii Graphics never really bother with me. But I don't judge a game based on how shiny it looks. I'll admire good graphics, but I won't play a bad game because of them. Just how the game restrictions itself seems odd. The game doesn't have to stick with just UNICODE Ascii scripts, it can use different fonts, and bold, italics, and different character sets as well. And the restriction of just 16 colors also seems strangely limiting.

Um. A lot of it is just overload. I had a game compile when I first got it, and I forced quit out of it, as I thought it frozed. Then I let it compile as I went grocery shopping where my first world  I didn't know what to expect. I had no idea on how to seek help, until Sorid from SGU Forum pointed me out to the Wiki, and from there I found the IRC chat room, which really helped me out. BUt for a good long while, I was just plain lost.

I didnt know what I could do. There was a lack of direction.

Lack of direction I suppose is the main issue. I didn't know the parameters of what I could do, and should do. I didn't know what I need to keep my dwarfs alive. Would I need to have space in the levels for sewage pipes? COuld I build a tank and kill everything?

My two cents.

[Aqizzar]

The interface itself should be the first tutorial, including button by button commands, and implore the player to look carefully at every menu.  Beyond that though, I don't have any idea how to write a tutorial for DF - I tried to talk a skeptical friend through starting a fortress by phone, and it took nearly an hour before he was even designating rooms.


Since I came a little late to the party, I'll just list off some of my starting problems.  I haven't read many other posts, and God help us if this isn't already a universal suggestion thread.

I don't understand why there's three or four different sets of menu navigation buttons.  Even after more than a year of playing, it still trips me up going between trading, placing furniture, and the unit list.

As some people have said, just giving the dwarves a sense of priority and urgency would make especially very small and very large forts a lot less frustrating.  Part of why my giving my friend a walk-through took so long was that his dwarves just didn't feel like doing anything at random (or at least it sounded that way on my end).  Things like stockpiling vs workshopping just slows everything down, not to mention the classic problem of traders/mayors doing absolutely anything except trading/meeting when they need to.

Likewise, the way dwarves who're trying to haul something and meet an interrupting creature, run away, then twig to the same task and meet the creature again, etc ad nauseum.  This has got to slow down a lot of first time players, when rhesus macaques raid the wagon after embark.

And as much as everyone hates to hear it, yes, CPU optimization is sorely needed.  Not everyone can afford a beefy, single-core processor and 4Gb of RAM.  DF being free, I'm sure it attracts a lot of budget gamers.  I already have of both of those, and I get about 30FPS with 40 dwarves and a river.  As DF gets more complicated, especially with the giant underground flows coming up, it's rapidly approaching the point where a normal person's computer just won't be able to run an entertaining fortress at a playable speed.

[MrWiggles]

You all have many valid complaints, as should be expected.  It seems like the thing that would keep the most players from giving up is a good tutorial, in addition to other fixes.  I’d be interested in hearing how you think that should look.  For instance, one long tutorial, or several guides aimed at different aspects of the game.  What subjects are the most confusing?  Should the tutorial map fit in the world itself as a mission from the Mountainhomes for example?

For myself, it should have some basic stuff, like navigation and embarkment screen, and preparation screen at first, so I know how to get about the menus. The tutorial should offer suggestion on how to proceed, (Now since you looked around, how about pressing D for the [D]esignation Screen to start digging into the very earth! )

After the basic are done, a meeting room/dining room, barracks, farm, craft dwarf, trade depot offered as suggestions it should only prompt itself when selecting a new item within the menus.

If I press U, to see my unit list it should ask me if I want an explanation of what this screen is used for, so forth for each new screen.

Each explanation should be written absent of using any other screen. As in, it shouldn't assume that just because your on the Building Cue list, that you understood what the Unit list was.

[codezero]

It took me a while to figure out how to mine into the side of the mountain(2d), but after that it was fun figuring out what everything did. Especially with the in-game help which is exciting to read, as it sparks the imagination (oh I can do that!). So my two cents is just to update/expand the in game help. And also link in "?" to the game help, so when you (b)uild,(w)orkshop,(l)still, there's a "?" down there somewhere, and a ? on pretty much every unique TAB side-section. Because it's easy to get lost/forget where things are in that game help.

Also the graphics didn't turn me off, but I'm sure it would for some, so I like the idea of shipping it with one of your favourites, and having some option to use it. Ala nethack (which I can't play in ASCII).

After I'd pretty much figured everything out, my biggest bugbear was every time you had to micromanage something, the fortress would come to a halt for you to do so, so it to this day I do things sparingly or I just can't progress. Toady has said that this is a hard thing to change now but I'd like you to bear it in mind with the presentation arc coming up, there must be some workarounds at least in some screens.

Now that I'm a veteran my biggest complaint is the framerate. The last time I got the king was years ago, and all my latest fortresses are efforts to that effect, trying to beat the pathfinding bottleneck with burrows, small rooms etc. I'd really like to see a release soon dedicated to optimisation.

Really I think you need to concentrate on the players already playing it, word of mouth will get new players over anything that might daunt them. I think the attrition rate may be overhyped.

[Jiri Petru]

You all have many valid complaints, as should be expected.  It seems like the thing that would keep the most players from giving up is a good tutorial, in addition to other fixes.  I’d be interested in hearing how you think that should look.  For instance, one long tutorial, or several guides aimed at different aspects of the game.  What subjects are the most confusing?  Should the tutorial map fit in the world itself as a mission from the Mountainhomes for example?

I like the idea of having a pregenerated world and save file with a prepared fortress, so you don't have to go through the world generating and embarking when you learn the basics. The fortress would be placed in a location ideal for a beginner - a brook (no deadly fish), nonhostile environment, plenty of wood, no aquifer probably a rock cliff to dig into. Hidden from the player would be valuable minerals and also interesting underground locations... if he decides to continue with the fortress after the tutorial.

Unfortunatelly, pregenerated worlds and savegames would make the download size much bigger and I understand you have to care about your bandwith. So how about:
(a) the tutorial would take place a tiny world, not a standard one
(b) releasing two game versions: DF core (small download) and DF with tutorials (large download). Most players would probably download the first one, as they already know the game. Also, it takes only a few minutes to create the version with tutorials - you only have to copy some files, no separate compilation or other stuff needed.

[Footkerchief]

Should the tutorial map fit in the world itself as a mission from the Mountainhomes for example?

Having written orders from the Mountainhomes would be cool, even if it wasn't for a tutorial per se.  It could help give new players a sense of direction by giving them specific information about the local biomes (what lives here, what can be farmed, what's the weather like, does the river freeze over in winter), geology (what's all this limestone good for), civilizations (are kobolds known to stalk the area), etc., as well a general overview of how to get a fortress up and running (dig out shelters, stockpile your goods, produce food and crafts).

It would be cheesy to actually have a true tutorial (press d for designations, etc.) in these "orders," though.

[tomato]

You all have many valid complaints, as should be expected.  It seems like the thing that would keep the most players from giving up is a good tutorial, in addition to other fixes.  I’d be interested in hearing how you think that should look.  For instance, one long tutorial, or several guides aimed at different aspects of the game.  What subjects are the most confusing?  Should the tutorial map fit in the world itself as a mission from the Mountainhomes for example?

Tutorial mode (another option the start menu) with preselected world that learns player how to dig, make stairs, farm land (both under and above ground), make workshops, designate locations, make rooms, etc. in a step by step manner

all in a safe, predictable location (so there wouldn't be any disturbances from kobolds, wildlife, carp or sieges before player is prepered for this)

A letter from mountainhomes in a regular world would be nice too (eg. explaining that giant skeleton eagles are not so friendly and that "you won't be able to farm on glacier so you'd better make farmable land underground, fast")

[SenorOcho]

For me, its hard to say since I was so excited by the prospect of such a game I immediately consumed the entire wiki, read the story of boatmurdered, and watched all of captnduck's video tutorials before ever starting my own fortress.
Yeah... all from a passing mention of the game on Boardgamegeek. Crazy.