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[Buttery_Mess]

DF is the game I always wanted. I don't know what it is that other people want from games, but DF doesn't deliver it, so they can't get into it.

I think it's tought to introduce people to DF because a dorfer-type person is exceedingly rare, and you're just not likely to meet them in meatspace.

[iEpinephrine]

I tried to get two people into it:

The first quit at the site selection screen because he didn't know what he was looking for.

The second quit at the farming system.

[Befenismor]

People are so stupid these days

[hermes]

Honestly, I wasn't irritated with the UI until quite a bit into the game... It was more -after- I got my first few forts up and running with some decent booze production that the UI started to bother me. The 'designate' menu made a lot of sense, stockpiles made sense, the build menu made sense... Then I started getting immigrants.
And everyone I've introduced to the game has quit right about that moment. Where they are like: 'Wait, THIS is how you manage active labor? Holy mother of god.'
It's not the concept, the concept of turn on labor, dwarf does associated task is simple. The actual act of finding out what the appropriate labor skill is, then finding the dwarf, then scrolling through that menu to find the proper labor...
/beginrant
Labor management should be its own full-screen menu. There is an extraordinary amount of information that needs to be assessed when making labor related decisions, and displaying the world around the selected dwarf is showing you literally none of that information.
The military menu is also pretty gnarly, I'll admit, but honestly, that's nothing compared to the ridiculous hassle of actually finding the dwarves you want to conscript in the first place.
/endrant

I'm with you 100% on this.
I've always been a vanilla player, no mods or utils, maybe a graphics pack now and then, but once I took a look at DF Therapist or whatever it is that lets you see skills and assign jobs, I just can't go back to vanilla when the first/second wave arrives.

There needs to be some kind of "New Dorf Wizard", like your Manager makes all migrants line up, then he walks down the line with a clipboard asking names, desired profession in the fort, he checks how many dorfs are already doing that job... just something to make the headache of job management go away!

Back on topic... well, this is the only game I recommend to people, but nobody has even tried it.  Many people have rather specific gaming preferences, which I think would account for a lot of the rejections described here.  You need to find people who love management games who hate DF to find out where the game goes wrong.

[Buttery_Mess]

All the menus are a hodge podge at the moment. I know how to use them, so it's okay, but I'm sure Toady knows that there needs to be a greater feeling of uniformity between the menu and designation systems, and he will get around to it. When you think about it, it makes more sense to keep adding features, so that Toady can refine his menu system methodology over the years, and then once all features are implemented, rejigger the menu systems so that it feels a little more intuitive and easy to manage, absorbing the functions currently performed by certain indispensable third party programs at the moment.

[zilpin]

... and then once all features are implemented, rejigger the menu systems so that it feels a little more intuitive and easy to manage, absorbing the functions currently performed by certain indispensable third party programs at the moment.

"All Features" would be DF implemented as a bubble universe within a quantum singularity, completely simulating every boson within a user specified universe size.
How about an incremental progression on the UI, instead.

[Jelle]

Oh yes I agree with the labor assigning part, and generally every part of the units part of the interface.

There is such a huge amount of improvement possible to cut down on  the time it takes to manage jobs and how practical it is. The first thing that springs to mind is being able to create a few templates with certain labors and assigning a dwarf one or multiple templates so you don't have to look up every single labor on every single dwarf.
You'd assign labors similar to how you assign equipment in the military screen, for specific needs you'd go in the labors list of the dwarf and set up as you want, for the bulk of the dwarves you'd make a template and save yourself a ton of time.

I also never understood why you can't enter the labors and health screens etc by selecting a dwarf with k, rather then only seeing the dwarfs description. Going through the unit list is a huge hassle wich should only be needed for large scale management imo.

I should mention I've never ever used dwarf therapist, and have so far managed all labors per individual dwarf. It's a huge pain and makes getting migrants a negative experience.

Arh I forgot to mention, as in the military screen (as I said I like that part of the interface) when assigning a template you'd be able to see a dwarfs skill relative to the labors you're assigning in the template. It's perfect when dealing with a large workforce and you need to take a quick scroll through to see who's adequately skilled for the job.


That's how I'd go about improving the interface for labors. If only to make a hauler template and remove all useless labors on a dwarf you don't want doing important stuff.

But yeah, there's no point in making a refined UI if you're not even sure of all the features your game will have.

[Kusgnos]

People are so stupid these days

It's easy to dismiss it just by calling it stupidity, but...

Well, people just have different tastes in games. I'm not particularly fond of elitism when it comes to Dwarf Fortress, because the fact remains that some people don't have the time or the interest in figuring out an interface before they get to playing the game.

I tried to introduce Dwarf Fortress to a friend, and she's a very intelligent person--goes to a top university, rigorous major, excelling, internships and what not--but she simply didn't have the desire to explore and manipulate Dwarf Fortress like she did with other games I had shown her (and maybe she didn't have the time, ha-ha). Honestly, DF is more a matter of taste than intelligence. I know it feels good sometimes to have our ego massaged when our friends marvel at how we can play such a complex and unintuitive-interface'd game, but it's silly to call people stupid because they don't want to play.

Anyhow, most of the people I've shown DF to have said something along the lines of "Oh, that's cool," and "It's fun listening to you tell stories from it," but they never get into it themselves.

[Anathema]

As far as friends I've referred:

Most of them: one look at the graphics, and said no thanks.

One: Mastered the basics, got a fort to survive a couple years, then lost interest - just the general hassle of managing 100 dwarves got to him. He's not really a fan of requiring a third-party tool to play a game, I convinced him to use Dwarf Therapist anyway, even then he got tired of 30 dwarf migration waves. He also mentioned some stocks screen/stockpiles frustration, just too many items and difficulty finding out what you actually have and where it is.

Me: Despite climbing the learning cliff, the interface still frustrates me, and is generally the cause of me abandoning a fort and quitting for a week/month/until next patch. Top frustrations:
-Military!! Yeah I've figured out the interface and gotten it to work, mostly, but I still wince and seriously rethink whether I want to continue this fort every time I  need to set up a new squad. The entire squad/military/schedule/orders interface is traumatizing.
-Trying to do lots of above-ground construction on multiple z-levels, i.e. mega or at least semi-mega projects - again I've figured out the interface and it works, it's just physically painfully to use (literally. my poor hands). I've lose interest before completing most such projects, just because of frustration with the interface.

[ffaerie]

Interface is alright, my bf plays this with his meager knowledge of computers alright. The fps problem (combined with No Victory) is what puts my friends off the game. None of guys I introduced to the game ever left because of UI... but many many see no point in playing a -no-win- game or seeing how they forts die to FPS slowdown. And for the record, noone is smart enough probably to tinker with Military. They just lay traps and it usually works. Military is so broken in 31.25 only hardcore fans like me bother with it. And we use danger rooms yes.

[zehive]

its impossible to get into. I still don't understand what I'm looking at, DF needs its own college class to fully understand it seems. But I understand it enough to have plenty of !!FUN!! and see the epicness of what is, or what can be.

[freeformschooler]

its impossible to get into. I still don't understand what I'm looking at, DF needs its own college class to fully understand it seems. But I understand it enough to have plenty of !!FUN!! and see the epicness of what is, or what can be.

If it was impossible you wouldn't have a bunch of teenagers playing it. As always, I recommend reading the quickstart guide fully while playing -- that's all I needed to understand it.