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[sockless]

This is more food for thought than a suggestion, but it's still a suggestion.

One of the main problems with a lot of the suggestions that are suggested here is that they add complexity to the game. Now to some people, especially newbs, the game is complex enough as it is without adding more stuff into the game. But on the other hand there are a lot of people, like me, who want that extra depth.

I think that I'd better define what sort of complexity mean. A lot of new features don't really add depth to play, like the beekeeping industry. These add complexity, but they are optional, what I mean is that you don't need bees in your fortress, because there's something else far easier that you can do instead. The complexity that we need, and that this thread is dedicated to, is the sort that adds layers onto game play, the Improved Farming is one such idea.

The Improved Farming would be quite daunting for a noob, especially with all the other stuff going on at the very start of a fort.

My idea is that all these layers of depth are can be toggled as difficulty options, so when you gen a new world, you can select your difficulty options, not just number of animals, but game play features as well. You would be able to set it in the init file or something as well.

This would mean that noobs can master one game concept at a time, while advanced players can get their depth that they want.

I use the word depth as complexity implies that it isn't a good thing and that there needs to be an easier way to do it.

This suggestion doesn't really apply to DF as it is currently, since there's nothing that amazingly deep, maybe it could be applied to the military. This is more geared towards the future when more in depth things get added.

[Gloster]

A lot of the learning curve problems could be solved by simply turning the individual aspects off. You start with a very simplified version to get a grasp of the fundamentals and then gradually turn aquifers, invasions, cave-ins, advanced farming, religion, clans, nobility and class warfare on. (And we already have many of these options.)
Which would have the added advantage of allowing players to emphasize the play styles they like to concentrate on.

[Dutchling]

There is no difficulty curve if you play with a tutorial.
I learned to play with the utter newbie tutorial or something like that and I never had any problems that could not be ficed be doing a sreach on the wiki and a quick question at the forums. And as long as toady is developing the game it has no use for him to create a tutorial so you can just search 'Dwarf Fortress tutorial' and you will have a good one.

[NW_Kohaku]

You should take the time to put more thought exploring the ramifications of suggestions than simply declaring "food for thought", and letting other people do the thinking for you.

What we need is a tutorial mode which is similar to the regular game, but, as Gloster said, simply has all but the elements that relate to the subject matter of that specific tutorial turned off, so the player can be introduced to the elements that are relevant, and experiment in peace.

Further, if you read the Improved Farming thread, you'll notice that I went to great lengths to detail in a TL;DR version, a hotlink in bright colors and large font to the "quick explanation", and then explained in detail all throughout the entire thread how this would actually not force a player to learn every aspect of the Improved Farming system all at once, but would allow the player to learn only the aspects they actually want to care about, while leaving the other aspects a more subtle detail that they can ignore if they are simply willing to forgo maximum efficiency.

This is exactly the sort of gameplay method we should be encouraging, not simply leaving every feature of the game so obtuse that only a few people would want to play with it, and then leaving an on/off knob so people only play half the game.

The latter of which is considered a failure of planning and programming in the gaming industry, because it means you wasted time producing a system people didn't want and just ignored.

Hence, you only want two "difficulty levels" - Dwarf Fortress, and Tutorial Mode.  One to learn how to play Dwarf Fortress, and one where you're actually playing it.

[sockless]

I read the entire IF thread and I understand how you tried to make it easy for a newb to use, but even then, it's more complex than the current farming system. I did skim read some of it though, but it did sort of seem to imply that you can't survive on plump helmets forever. But that is more attacking the examples than attacking the idea. This thread isn't about how IF would be so hard for a newbie.

If people want to play with only half the features turned on, I don't see why they shouldn't, since it doesn't effect anyone else. I think that there would be a lot of player that would play with them all on, but I do imagine that some players would play with half the features turned off and never move up, since they are comfortable with what they have, so only the elite few would play with all features turned on.

I imagine that a tutorial mode could be done, but it would be rather hard implement properly. How would it work, would it be like all other tutorials? Where you play with super limited features, then you get annoying messages popping up?

[NW_Kohaku]

If people want to play with only half the features turned on, I don't see why they shouldn't, since it doesn't effect anyone else. I think that there would be a lot of player that would play with them all on, but I do imagine that some players would play with half the features turned off and never move up, since they are comfortable with what they have, so only the elite few would play with all features turned on.

The reason why making a game so that only "an elite few" would actually play the game the way that it was designed to be played is a bad idea is that it means that Toady would either have to

A: Stop designing one game of Dwarf Fortress (or rather, the twelve games Dwarf Fortress already tries to be), and start designing modular pieces of games so that there are simpler or dummied-out portions of every single feature in the game.  This would be a tremendous impediment to DF's continued growth, because Toady has to divide up his time on different segments of game that only a fraction of the playerbase wants.

B: Make a game that nobody wants to play, and then just give people the option to rip out giant glaring holes in the game mechanics, like it already does with turning off temperature, and making magma just funny-colored water.  This means that Toady's work in building the game is simply wasted on stuff only a fraction of the playerbase wants.

Neither one of those is a smart game designing move. 

The smart game designing move is to build a system which either the overwhelming majority of your playerbase will enjoy, or whose complexity or difficulty ramps up the more you become involved in that one portion of the game, which you can avoid in game, not through shutting it off in the options.

If you don't like bees right now, that's fine, just never build a beehive, and you never have to worry about it.  If you do like beehives, all you have to do is embark in a place with bees, and start building beehives.  That's how you add something to the game that doesn't detract from anyone else's playstyle.

[sockless]

Hmm, I guess you are right, a lot of the new features and suggestions interlock with each other as well.

Since a lot of suggestions and new features scale up in difficulty, I guess the best way to keep the difficulty at a good level is to have a proper population cap that actually works, maybe it could be modified in game as well.

[Gloster]

Um... so why do we have the adventure mode and the legends mode? I've never tried either one of those and don't intend to. And I am sure many people happily play the game without ever bothering to build a fortress. Yet both groups probably enjoy it a lot more then they would, had they been forced to do everything.

Merely giving the players an option to turn some aspects off does not in any way damage the game or the design work.
If most people decide to keep some aspects permanently out of their game, that means they don't like them, prefer to play without them and those aspects hence probably shouldn't have been put in in the first place - and that is definitely a failure of design. NOT giving the players the option to remove them does not make it any better.
If the new aspect is beneficial to the game play then people will want to use it on their own, without being coerced.

And the opting-out has the added benefit of softening the learning curve.

Plus - the point about adding unnecessary features being a design flaw - relates to traditional commercial business models. From the perspective of a company that has to churn out three games a year to make the money, wasting time on stuff only some of the players will enjoy doesn't make sense. But DF doesn't really work that way, right?

[NW_Kohaku]

Um... so why do we have the adventure mode and the legends mode? I've never tried either one of those and don't intend to. And I am sure many people happily play the game without ever bothering to build a fortress. Yet both groups probably enjoy it a lot more then they would, had they been forced to do everything.

Merely giving the players an option to turn some aspects off does not in any way damage the game or the design work.
If most people decide to keep some aspects permanently out of their game, that means they don't like them, prefer to play without them and those aspects hence probably shouldn't have been put in in the first place - and that is definitely a failure of design. NOT giving the players the option to remove them does not make it any better.
If the new aspect is beneficial to the game play then people will want to use it on their own, without being coerced.

And the opting-out has the added benefit of softening the learning curve.

Plus - the point about adding unnecessary features being a design flaw - relates to traditional commercial business models. From the perspective of a company that has to churn out three games a year to make the money, wasting time on stuff only some of the players will enjoy doesn't make sense. But DF doesn't really work that way, right?

You don't "play" Legends Mode.  Legends Mode is a disorganized collection of the procedurally generated history of the game.

There doesn't need to be a Legends Mode at all, but it exists to let the player actually see the procedurally generated history in a manner other than simply seeing some random, unrelated picture of a goblin killing an elf in some war you've never heard of before.

Adventure Mode IS a different game... and you'll note that it's hardly been deserving of the word "game" for the longest time.  This is because Toady has been working on making Fortress Mode a better game, and left Adventure Mode to rot until very recently.  (And while he does that, Fortress Mode generally rots, itself.)  If anything, that's pretty much proof of what I've been saying that it is a bad idea to divide your attention between two different games, or else one or both of those games will wind up suffering for the lack of attention and focus.

Further, opting out as softening the learning curve only works as far as setting up a tutorial is concerned.  I already talked about how to create a tutorial. 

If you play the game always avoiding an aquifer or turning aquifers off, however, you aren't scaling the learning curve at all.  You're just refusing to ever learn how to deal with an aquifer.

[Gloster]

If you play the game always avoiding an aquifer or turning aquifers off, however, you aren't scaling the learning curve at all.  You're just refusing to ever learn how to deal with an aquifer.

So what? I thought the idea was for people to enjoy the game. If they find aquifers bothersome why should they be forced to endure them?

I personally prefer to play without invasions because I a) enjoy sim city style and b) invasions can be essentially nullified anyway, with extra unnecessary effort.
But I wouldn't say invasions are bad or useless or that it had been an error to implement them. At the same time, I probably wouldn't enjoy the game as much, was I forced to build 1000 traps at the beginning of each settlement.

[NW_Kohaku]

If you play the game always avoiding an aquifer or turning aquifers off, however, you aren't scaling the learning curve at all.  You're just refusing to ever learn how to deal with an aquifer.

So what? I thought the idea was for people to enjoy the game. If they find aquifers bothersome why should they be forced to endure them?

I personally prefer to play without invasions because I a) enjoy sim city style and b) invasions can be essentially nullified anyway, with extra unnecessary effort.
But I wouldn't say invasions are bad or useless or that it had been an error to implement them. At the same time, I probably wouldn't enjoy the game as much, was I forced to build 1000 traps at the beginning of each settlement.

You can do this now, because the game sort of peaks at the point of having invasions and megabeast attacks, however, the more the game builds off of the things we have now, the more aspects of the game you will be missing if you simply cleave off all combat from the game.

When the game moves into the territory of being able to let you engage in warfare on a global scale, rather than simply securing your own fortress, you'll be missing more of the game. 

If you seal yourself off from the rest of the world, when the game's taverns and trade routes become more evolved, you will be missing more of the game.

Right now, you can shut off the temperature system... but then you're missing a part of the game.  Maybe it's not a very well-developed part of the game, and you can get by without it for now, but as the game becomes more developed, you'll be tearing a larger and larger hole in the game where things just don't make sense if you don't have everything on.

Playing the game with only military-related skills and labors on, so that all you can do is train troops, then send them at the enemy is not "an easier game", it's just tutorial mode for combat.  It's not a whole game at all.  It's just a tutorial to how to play that one piece of a game.

[Sfon]

The ideal solution is, as I've seen some say, to make the game less "front loaded". That is, do a better job of balancing early vs late fort complexity. Right now the challenges are early, and once overcome become almost a non-issue.

Ideally the game would be better designed to start out easy, but became more complex the further you go. One idea I've seen for this is dwarf demands scaling up as their fort gets bigger/wealthier. That and similar ideas could fix the problem. There are already a few minor things like this, such as plant gathering often being good enough at first.

If what is needed to get by starts out small enough and scales up fast enough, then it'll be better for both newbies and vets. If the game works like this then a fort with 30 dwarves would be a lot simpler than with 100, and a tutorial could be good enough by only going over the few activities and workshops important in the first couple of years. It would work like many games, needing more knowledge/skill the farther you go. Difficulty could be adjusted significantly by simply altering values like population cap. That would also allow a player to practice using many workshops/methods/activities needed for more complex forts with a 30 pop max fort, if they need to. A big, wealthy, 30 year old fort would actually demonstrate player skill. Newbies would have trouble dealing with the average 5 year fort, but currently many players get bored by then anyway and surviving that long is as good as beating the game.

The difficulty needs to curve better. Once the game's core difficulty functions properly, then maybe we can think about more than basic (siege on/off, etc) difficulty options. Until the core system is fixed anything derived from it will also be broken. Unless it is something that fixes the brokenness, in which case it might as well be part of the core system.

[Jeoshua]

30-pop forts can still grow.  I use them exclusively in Fortress mode, since I rather like the idea of having to wait until year 12 to have 60 or more able bodied dwarves.  After that point is reached, you're up to 120 in no time.