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[Psieye]

I know I've had that completionist mindset wrung out of me but it wasn't by DF (it arrived late in my life). Probably some combination of a roguelike and Mahjong got me to appreciate that Losing is Fun before I got into DF.

[Deon]

It definitely changed my life. I played around with DF modding more than with any games ever. And I started it long time ago.

Hell, my wife is constantly angry at me because of my DF modding addiction, so it defiintely influences my life .

[finite.]

Can I have a little of what you had?

I find I have trouble actually finishing games. Also I sometimes think about going for 100% completion in games I have beaten, or think about going for it on the way, and never do get around to doing so ever again.

Notorious examples: Never finished Oblivion, never finished HL2, never finished Homeworld (all three of them), quite a few others.

Though they're rarely abandoned for the same reasons.

I never finished Oblivion because of the glaring game design flaws. The levelling system is completely shot. As a game programmer myself, that just rubbed me the wrong way.

I never finished Homeworld because it got too damn hard. Loved it though

Dwarf Fortress keeps getting me to come back for more. It's awesome.

I managed to beat Oblivion but I couldn't go back a second time. BronzeElemental was right about the design flaws, utterly terrible. I have no idea what I was smoking when I played Oblivion the first time to make me able to play through it (possibly hype?). My first run was on Xbox 360 also and that makes it worse in my opinion, first-person view controls just don't sit right for me on analog stick controllers. The second time I played it (since my Xbox ate dust) was on the PC in which case I realized how horrible it was to me. I think I might of been able to play it with mods alas trying to get all the mods to work together was tiresome and in the end, there were numerous problems like textures missing and just straight up incompatibility issues. I am looking forward to Skyrim but as it is going to be free-roaming like Oblivion and Fallout 3, I expect problems will no doubt happen.

On topic: Dwarf Fortress is definitely a great game and I'm glad it's influenced people in a good way also! 

[BronzeElemental]

I managed to complete it and Fallout 3 but only with HEAVY modding.

[Teneb]

I have this game-finishing problem also, and oblivion was especially bad for me since I had played morrowind before it. I don't think I ever did a 100% completion

Anyway, on topic, I usually raged whenever I lost in a game, especially in when it was an "epic fail", and only played in the easiest difficulties. After DF I only play games on whatever may be the hardest difficulty (most of the time) and tend to laugh when I lose have fun. Nice to see DF is helping more people.

[KurzedMetal]

You should try playing roguelikes too (google if you don't know what this genre is), i specially recommend you Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, it's like a hardcore tactical RPG, pretty unforgiving with mistakes (but fun at the same time (just like DF, it's focused on replayability)), it has randomly generated loots, maps, tons of classes, races, strategies, and ways of dying. And what i like about it is that the devs did a really good job removing easy/boring/cheese tactics from the game (which are pretty common in many roguelikes despite their initial difficulty).

[Larry421]

I only found Oblivion fun when I was able to (literally) mod the sh*t out of it. So many design flaws, but you can pick and choose your gameplay elements to get something worthwhile.
Then you install a new mod, it breaks your savegames and you can't be bothered restarting

Dwarf Fortress scratches a particular itch I never knew I had. I get far too much enjoyment out of finding exploit-y workarounds to silly bugs. The only other game that does that for me is (heavily modded) STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl. I once spent a week trying to find a workaround to an escort mission that my overhaul mod (AMK) had rendered almost impossible to beat. It's a bit immersion-breaking, but is strangely enjoyable.

[finite.]

You should try playing roguelikes too (google if you don't know what this genre is), i specially recommend you Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, it's like a hardcore tactical RPG, pretty unforgiving with mistakes (but fun at the same time (just like DF, it's focused on replayability)), it has randomly generated loots, maps, tons of classes, races, strategies, and ways of dying. And what i like about it is that the devs did a really good job removing easy/boring/cheese tactics from the game (which are pretty common in many roguelikes despite their initial difficulty).

I did play NetHack at one point in my life which I enjoyed a lot. The sound of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup really has really peaked my curiosity and I look it up after this post. I never got far with NetHack, a few times I got to the first underground towns but mostly I got killed because I was idiot enough to take on those things that petrify you in melee combat. So one move you go to attack: Petrify, about a million turns later you're dead from starvation. NetHack was one of the few games I didn't research on though and just went with it which is probably why I ended up kicking the bucket so easily(or just temptation to try and take on those petrifying mobs).

I only found Oblivion fun when I was able to (literally) mod the sh*t out of it. So many design flaws, but you can pick and choose your gameplay elements to get something worthwhile.
Then you install a new mod, it breaks your savegames and you can't be bothered restarting

Dwarf Fortress scratches a particular itch I never knew I had. I get far too much enjoyment out of finding exploit-y workarounds to silly bugs. The only other game that does that for me is (heavily modded) STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl. I once spent a week trying to find a workaround to an escort mission that my overhaul mod (AMK) had rendered almost impossible to beat. It's a bit immersion-breaking, but is strangely enjoyable.

STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl was in theory a game I could really enjoy but when it came down to playing, I could not do it. I didn't realize there were mods for it though so I might pick it up again if that is the case.

[KurzedMetal]

You should try playing roguelikes too (google if you don't know what this genre is), i specially recommend you Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, it's like a hardcore tactical RPG, pretty unforgiving with mistakes (but fun at the same time (just like DF, it's focused on replayability)), it has randomly generated loots, maps, tons of classes, races, strategies, and ways of dying. And what i like about it is that the devs did a really good job removing easy/boring/cheese tactics from the game (which are pretty common in many roguelikes despite their initial difficulty).

I did play NetHack at one point in my life which I enjoyed a lot. The sound of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup really has really peaked my curiosity and I look it up after this post. I never got far with NetHack, a few times I got to the first underground towns but mostly I got killed because I was idiot enough to take on those things that petrify you in melee combat. So one move you go to attack: Petrify, about a million turns later you're dead from starvation. NetHack was one of the few games I didn't research on though and just went with it which is probably why I ended up kicking the bucket so easily(or just temptation to try and take on those petrifying mobs).

NetHack was my first roguelike too, it's awesome but it has little ingame information, and it's pretty hard to advance without spoilers (which i hate to use), and once you are spoiled it's easy, specially if you use cheese and boring tactics like pudding farming or nurse dancing.
OTOH, Dungeon Crawl have extensive ingame information and documentation and you are ready to "have fun" after playing the tutorial (you can learn from playing, when you die, most of the time you know you made a mistake last turn, 10 turns or 15mins before). It has almost no cheese tactic, and the UI, despite being ASCII is superb (It has a superb tiles version too, which i recommend, no need to be masochist).
IMO, DC have the best basic features to introduce gamers to the roguelike genre, and NetHack, to scare them away from them (and DC is actually harder since there's no "panic button" AKA 1 turn life savers like insta-teleport to safety or (scroll of) genociding enemies).

[Larry421]

STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl was in theory a game I could really enjoy but when it came down to playing, I could not do it. I didn't realize there were mods for it though so I might pick it up again if that is the case.

Stalker is definitely an acquired taste. It takes a while to suck you in. Be sure to play on Hard, with the crosshair off. For a first playthrough I recommend vanilla or Complete 2009. Complete pretties it up, adds a lot of polish and leaves the gameplay mostly intact. Mostly. It ups the carry limit and makes weapons much more accurate. Firefights are over faster and ammo conservation is not an issue. So its quite a bit easier.

If you're up for more challenge, check out AMK mod. Heaps of gameplay changes, extra mutants, extra double-plus challenge and a more living, vibrant Zone. Harder, much harder.

There's also Narodnaya Soljanka[/], if you like it even harder, with a huge map and 5-minute load times. 4.3GB download. I'm a bit intimidated to try it

[Nether]

I feel you there, Dwarf Fortress for the first time is wicked
I started playing before boatmurdered began, back when you could still just 'dig too deep'. I lost a lot of dwarves xD

About the soap and engraving; I do both every time, but it always goes wrong the moment I let my military get lazy. Invasions are following the laws of murphy all the way, and always appear when you are making an external construction with a little entrance into your base. Chop chop, engravings only help for so many death friends, tauntrums will ensue.

I loved this game from start, and only started loving it more as it became more complex. It is a brilliant simulator of dwarf life.

[NobodyPro]

I didn't finish Oblivion but I'm pretty sure I did every sidequest that didn't involve going into a cave (that same cave, again) or a ruin (oh look, holes on the ground, I guess it's a spike trap again). After playing dwarf fortress I went back and tried to kill a deer with a dagger. It was on the Xbox so I couldn't mod in deadly throwing sand .