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[Immortal-D]

I've tried to make the new version work, I really have, but it's just so very slow by comparison.  The loss of macros has also been hard for me.  Used to be I could order digging of 28 bedrooms in just a few seconds.  Now designing a large bedroom floor (and really all other digging) is a cumbersome chore.  I recently had the urge to Dwarf again and stopped after half a year.  I'd spent as much real time playing a few months as I would have playing 2 years in the old version.

Any input is appreciated, though I don't think there's any help for my situation at present.  Keyboard cursor might never come back, or will be a very long time if it does.  I can get used to the new menus and make sufficient hotkeys, but anything that requires painting (dig, zone) is impossibly slow, not to mention the strain on my wrist from using the mouse in that fashion for a prolonged time.

[Goldbeard]

I tried it only very briefly and rolled back to 47.05. Too much muscle memory invested in the old controls, even if they're not objectively the best for new players.

[Immortal-D]

I tried it only very briefly and rolled back to 47.05. Too much muscle memory invested in the old controls, even if they're not objectively the best for new players.

If there was a way to get the new content in the old version, I would also do so.  The improvements to WorldGen are amazing, plus the new !FUN! in the underworld.  That said, it's not necessarily about muscle memory for me.  That's a bit of a pain to relearn, but it can be done.  What kills it for me is simply the mouse cursor being so very slow.

[Salmeuk]

install DFhack... the addition of auto material selection is worth it alone. also, keyboard cursor has made a return in a slightly hampered form, try it out in the settings menu.

beyond that? I've gotten back to perhaps %80 of my previous speed in terms of designating and fortress management. There are many unintuitive tricks to the interface, so as much as premium claims to have improved things, it has merely created a new game of 'memorize the various caveats of a finicky interface in order to become adept and efficient'.

is that game worth playing? read on to see my findings.

here is the new meta, and if you want some gameplay footage check out my vods from Reigngate since I do a fair amount of designation there.

1. the single biggest waste of time is the scrollbar to the right side of menu lists. this is due to the precision of clicking and dragging, the fact that the scrolling takes place on the right side of the screen when most of the buttons you intend to click are on the left, leading to a constant left-to-right-to-left-to-right hand motion, and the fact these lists DO NOT SAVE YOUR PREVIOUS POSITION IN THE LIST WHEN YOU RETURN. thus, every new reference to a menu list requires a re-application of your mouse to the scrollbar... gahhhh

avoid using this part of the interface at all costs!

 a. in this sense, it means that all lists of items, units, buildings should be referenced much less than in previous versions. if you can keep outside lists of these things it will save you a lot of pain.
 b. just give up on micromanaging your dwarven labor, or pre-plan your dwarven bureaucracy to the extent you only need to reference your labor lists maybe once a season. this one hurts, I know, but the game really does not want you to interact with specific dwarves in specific ways. creating a new labor category for each dwarf you want to play a specific role, is simply too ridiculous a workaround to be feasible

2. using the search function is absolutely required. in every instance it appears. this may take some getting used to but it will save a loootttt of time overall.

3. clicking on the header portion of any list category will collapse that category, allowing you to quickly un-expand lists. no I do not know why the lists default to expanded.

4. when designating large places, do not click-drag the mouse. click the mouse, then use WASD to move the view around, thus moving the cursor. you could also turn on the old style cursor in settings.  this will save you mouse labor overall.

5. some of the biggest timesinks are fixed thanks to DFhack's suspendmanager. I fear for the sanity of vanilla players who have to manually un-suspend hundreds of designated constructions.

6. one significant timesave exclusive to premium is that you can mass-delete unbuilt constructions with the new "remove stairs / constructions" tool. this is not mentioned in the tooltip. so if you suddenly change your mind about that giant tower to the gods, it wont take long minutes of q-x spamming like in 47.05

7. instead of deleting stockpiles with the interface, abuse the fact that newly designated stockpiles will overwrite old ones - so designate a new stockpile, but avoid picking an item to store, and instead cancel with rightclick.. this will act as a stockpile eraser tool and is much, much faster than the intended U.I.

8. in order to efficiently browse the new military interface, which calls upon the player to tirelessly and repeatedly scroll through the entire list of fortress units, you need to give your intended squads their own specific titles. This can same time since you look for their title instead of the specific name of the dwarf. In Reigngate, all cultists are members of the military, have the job title 'Cultist' or 'Cult Priest', and so this makes things really really easy..

9. i have finally found a use for work orders in the new version, but I would still suggest taking it easy on them. there is a limit to efficiency, and I found that the time spend managing these work orders definitely takes away from the pleasure of the game. like... the old version sometimes felt like a poorly designed spreadsheet, but that was nothing compared to a spreadsheet where the only acceptable interactions are a few number keys and the mouse.

10. finally, the current most annoying thing about premium, the thing that i dread the most, nightmare level U.I. interaction, is the fact that when you want to re-arrange the furniture in a room you must manually click every item and then move the mouse to the 'remove this building' button, repeat ad nasueum.. for this specific operation I can only recommend that you manually zoom the game in as close as possible, so as to decrease the specific distance between the furniture and the interface button, allowing you to mass-remove furniture without destroying your tendons. the fact I could type the previous sentence with a straight face really speaks to how broken this interaction is.

finally, go ahead and install the "Interface Tweaks" mod from workshop. The addition of labeled hotkeys is brilliant, and kind of shows (again) that the premium update should have been way more considerate to the returning player.

 Secondarily, take the time to re-bind the interface keys to your liking, and take good notes on your setup since future updates may remove these binds. I have re-bound things like the mining key from 'm' to 'e', the zoom function to '1' and '3' allowing for very fast changes in perspective. I also rebound most of the workshops to their 47.05 counterparts.

Thirdly, and this one is a bit weird, just recall how fun the game is. It's still there. all the insanity and epic storytelling, it's still there... imo the pain of the premium update is worth overcoming.

and yet, I can't help but think that if the above problems are ignored for another year or two, I'm not sure I'll be playing still due to literal health issues from force mouse usage. which sounds like a threat but no, it's just a literal acknowledgement that the U.I. has suddenly demanded an entirely different physical interaction from the playerbase, and demanded that interaction be repetitive and counterproductive, for genuinely mysterious reasons.

here is an example of my most recent designation spree, to see how I interact with the game and what can be done quickly in premium vs. 47.05: https://youtu.be/l9s29K95L3Q?t=1642

[Immortal-D]

That is brilliant, and I wish I could pass that on to Toady & Putnam.  Also I'm probably glossing over the keyboard option you mentioned, I do not see it anywhere in settings.  I'll give it another try soon-ish.

[Telgin]

I took a long break from DF so I found that I had very little difficulty adjusting to the new controls and graphics.  I was honestly surprised.

I never made use of macros or any of the extra tools that DFHack added, so maybe that factors into it, but mouse designations for mining and zones feels very natural and I'd never want to go back to doing it with keyboard controls.  I don't remember most of the hotkeys for different bits of furniture and the like, so I mostly just use the graphical menus.  As I've learned the hotkeys again, it feels natural enough.

Some of the UI usability does need work though.  One thing that still gets me is that search boxes don't automatically get focus, so I'll do something like open the work order menu and start typing without clicking in the box and end up closing it or doing something else by mistake.

[Splint]

The main things I'm missing and that I've just... Opted to not play the current version for, are individually very minor things. issues with equipment allocation (looking at you rations and ammo,) stairs, and doing extremely basic early game things feels incredibly tedious. I'd call it a side-grade at best to the previous UI. And I got 60-something hours on the new version so it's not like I didn't give it a fair shake.

It has areas where it's objectively better, I won't deny that. The biggest benefit is in laying stuff out without macros (as someone who never bothered with those.) It is far *far* faster and easier to designate sprawling, potentially complicated single-level layouts with the mouse system than it ever was with the keyboard. The underground attacks are a cool-as-hell addition and make the caverns way more interesting than they used to be.

But it has areas I'd consider it objectively worse, like with gear management for the militia (I never understood the complaints about the militia interface from 31.25 to 47.05, apart from setting patrol routes,) and being someone who tends to make heavy use of above ground constructions, the new stair controls are a baffling gameplay choice especially when there was already a kind of submenu that could have been used to maintain old, useful functionality - advanced designations.

The biggest problem I've had though is in doing incredibly basic item orders and labor assignments. The work detail thing to me is something that sounds like a good idea on paper, but I'd rather have the finer control over who does what without being forced to rely on workshop profiles and the manager for simple crap. I shouldn't need a manager for such basic tasks, and the fact enough people made enough noise for them to work on restoring old functions means it can't have just been the old hands complaining.

I know I'm going to have to suck it up eventually, but shit man, I spent my money so it doesn't mean I have to just lie down and take it. Got at least a tiny right to bitch.

[vjek]

...
and yet, I can't help but think that if the above problems are ignored for another year or two, I'm not sure I'll be playing still due to literal health issues from force mouse usage. which sounds like a threat but no, it's just a literal acknowledgement that the U.I. has suddenly demanded an entirely different physical interaction from the playerbase, and demanded that interaction be repetitive and counterproductive, for genuinely mysterious reasons.
...

This is a fair summary for me.  I acknowledge I am no longer the target demographic for the game, as a consequence.
If the lava-over-pathing bug was fixed in 47.05, I'd stick with 47.05.  But, given the rather long list of bugs that remain unfixed for years, I've just moved on to other games, for now.
It was a good 10+ years, though. 

[Justiceface]

I have adjusted to using the mouse though I still hate it on a deep, DF-instinctive level. DF is a keyboard game goshbloodydarnitall. #getoffmylawn

Ahem. I'm okay with mouse use for the moment... I'm given to understand keyboard support IS coming back so I'll sit and wait for that, Linux native support, on-screen announcements, and probably a dozen other things I would like to see. And adventure mode. I have such an adventure mode jones sometimes it's painful.

I find the mouse is slower generally, and the need to switch from mouse to typing (when queuing up orders or putting trade items on the depot, for example) is a nasty workflow break. I worked data entry for some time so workflow is A Thing with me. Flopping back and forth between keyboard and mouse is irritating at best. I also miss the easy access to measuring with the keyboard. I have the keyboard cursor turned on and I can do the shift-cursor = 11 squares thing I'm used to but when it feels clunky to build/dig with the keyboard (especially as there's no indicator on screen of where you're drawing your wall/floor in the graphical side) I do the actual build/digging with the mouse and... well, that's not awesome as far as measuring since I lose track of where I was at.

I have thought of going back to 47.05 at times. Sometimes I really feel a draw for the old look/feel, with my square ASCII graphics set and letters instead of sprites running about (hey a cluster of red lowercase t's... the turkeys must have hatched!), but going back to the old way of controlling the game feels jarring. I'd have to stick with it for a while and some of the changes that've been made to the .50 version are improvements I've gotten used to so that makes it hard.

[adseaghtrnjty]

I've had a similar experience. I found it hard to make rooms because a few taps on the arrow keys (or a macro) was way more precise when making rooms. It's gotten easier, but I still make a lot of mistakes. I rarely made mistakes when making rooms with the arrow keys. It's the same thing with farms, but worse, since you don't see the dimensions of the farms before confirming. I need 3x3 farms. It's easier and more precise with the arrow keys than the mouse. Also, with the old keyboard shortcuts, I could make workshops and constructions super fast. Cage? b-g (vs b-?-?). Door? b-d (vs b-f-r), etc. I was so fast. I'll become fast again, and you will, too. On the positive side for me, I don't have any wrist pain from this game any more.

[Libash_Thunderhead]

-removed-