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[JoeyLemur]

Funny enough, I play DF while mining in EVE...

[Ayeohx]

Funny enough, I play DF while mining in EVE...

Joey, that seems terribly depressing for some reason.

[Trigonous]

Funny enough, I play DF while mining in EVE...

Joey, that seems terribly depressing for some reason.

EVE is the only game I know of that rewards you for not playing.  And the only game I know of where you can spend years infiltrating a "guild", only to steal all the money, kill the leader, and generally piss everyone off.


And back on topic, I did find Dwarf Fortress to have a cliff-like learning curve.  I made around 12 fortresses before I even built a forge.  But that was the fun for me.  Everyone died of starvation?  Next fort will focus on learning food.  Everyone died of goblins?  Time I learned how to make a military.  Tantrum spiral?  Maybe I should make some bedrooms and some coffins next time.  And it was all fun.  I didn't even read the "Losing is fun!" line from the manual (didn't even know there was a manual) until pretty far into my run, but I still laughed when I forgot to leave that one tile space when I carve out my magma fortifications.  Each successive fortress was spent learning a different part of the game, until it was inevitably destroyed.  I then took what I learned and made one that lasted that much longer.  I've made three fortresses that can survive a siege, and then fell to megabeasts.  The last one I successfully trapped and trained a dragon, before dying to the inevitable tantrum spiral.  I think I've finally learned pretty much all I need to know.

But the game does have some unnecessary difficulties, i.e. equipping a bone crossbow when a masterwork adamantium one is available, or having to lock a dwarf in a room to get him to make (or not make) things out of obsidian or bauxite.  But many of these things seem to be fixed in DF2010, so I really can't complain.

[calrogman]

EVE is the only game I know of where you can spend years infiltrating a "guild", only to steal all the money, kill the leader, and generally piss everyone off.[/quote]

Best example of this would be the Guiding Hand Social Club/Ubiqua Seraph heist of 2004/5.

http://eve.klaki.net/heist/

[KFK]

I don't want to discount people's personal claims that they figured the game out quickly.  I trust you when you say that this has been your experience.

But clearly this isn't everyone's experience.  The game is hard for many people to pick up.  Should these people be excluded from the "appropriate" audience for DF?  Even if they would absolutely love the depth of the game, if only the ease of use (from their point of view) were improved?

Or do some here claim that there are very few people who fall into this category?  If so, that might be my biggest disagreement relevant to this thread, that a strong desire for ease of use does not strongly correlate with a lack of appreciation for deep gameplay.  I fall squarely into that category myself, and I suspect that many other gamers do too.  I love deep gameplay, but usability issues drive me crazy.

Even though I've more or less mastered the DF interface, I have to completely agree here. There are risks of snobbery ("Badge of Honor" mentality), as well as plain old familiarity/complacency that come with such a heavy handed UI. It's important not to let these factors keep us from examining how best to issue commands to the game.

I pretty much ignored all the tutorials out there when I started, I couldn't tell what I was seeing so they were useless. It's been pretty much me running to and from the wiki every time I had the 'I wonder how I...' thought. I'd be lost without it.

This sums up how I best learn things. I'm going to retain something familiar a lot easier than something unfamiliar. Therefore a tutorial won't help me until AFTER I've been playing the game for a bit. The best a tutorial can hope for is to make me go, "Oh! THAT's what that thing does..." . I was the same way learning 3D Studio Max. I moused over every icon to see what it was called (picking up valuable commands like Move and Rotate in the process), and clicked every tab long before cracking open the manual. By the time I got around to the tutorials, the hierarchy panel was familiar to me, even if I didn't understand it.

Now try it in reverse. Tell me everything about the hierarchy panel before I've poked at it for myself. There's going to be zero retention. I'm going to go into that panel and be all, "Hey! I've seen this before"...and that's it. I'm not going to remember how anything works because it was completely meaningless in the first place.

How does this relate to DF? Well, my first game of Dwarf Fortress went something like:
Generate world
Dead? Jesus! That's a lot of dead people

Start Game
Uhh, yeah, Dwarf Fortress (The fuck?)
Arrow keys do...what?
Oh, umkh...
Find desired location...if I was better at this game, I'd know what this stuff means.
Moving on.

What the fuck's a Biome?
F1
F2

I think I want to Embark. That sounds like fun.

Now, I've SKIPPED more than half of the Your First Fortress tutorial by this point.

[JoeyLemur]

Funny enough, I play DF while mining in EVE...

Joey, that seems terribly depressing for some reason.

It is, which I've finally switched to doing combat missions.  Actually seems to be a better money-maker.

[Name Lips]

Funny enough, I play DF while mining in EVE...

Joey, that seems terribly depressing for some reason.

It is, which I've finally switched to doing combat missions.  Actually seems to be a better money-maker.

They're a better money maker...

...until you realize you can increase mining profits by saving up all the minerals, manufacturing equipment and ships, and selling them.

Or if you have a real life friend who won't backstab you, you can have one of you focus on mining skills and the other on manufacturing skills, work together, and split the proceeds.