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[pisskop]

What would it take to make a brief video tutorial?  A youtube series or one actually in the program?

"alright, marine.  You've been sent here to this POS to survey the land for future colonization... First up you need..."  And then comes mining, cutting, farming, fighting, etc, etc...

[XXSockXX]

Actually I can see some of the new developments helping with that. If forts have some sort of founding mission (that seems to be something Toady thinks about for the future), new players could start with a small mining outpost and learn the basics before moving on to more difficult stuff with a military colony in enemy territory.

[Revanchist]

I wouldn't mind a use for useless nobles, maybe ones that operate within a certain user-defined zone, geared (or given) to a specific noble.
However this ins't the purpose of the thread.

I personally found that the mods helped me get assimilated with the game. On an unrelated note, I actually find the ability to play exactly as you want to be a primary selling feature. As well as the equally selling consequence for doing something wrong, at the wrong spot. Unfortunately, most people aren't quite that persistant...

I'm also aware that The (Great) One doesn't care for the mods we make. I just think they help.

[Kumis]

As for learning curve, etc. the game could be such that it's easily playable (farms, work designation, basic trading, basic defense) up until a point, and difficulty rises in steps thereafter.

A bit like now with militaries and sieges. It's not really a clear mile-post (you've unlocked this stage of the game!) but rather a, 'If you can't go any higher then the game ends here... the wiki's over there, by the way.'

I also like the idea of more micro-management underlings, so you can set specifications 'Keep 20-30 pairs of socks in stock; 10-20 units of thread in the hospital, all other thread to be woven; etc.' and any problems in the supply chain still have to be sorted by you, just like now.
So the infrastructure is still just the same, but the actual command is simplified.

[cats]

What would it take to make a brief video tutorial?  A youtube series or one actually in the program?

"alright, marine.  You've been sent here to this POS to survey the land for future colonization... First up you need..."  And then comes mining, cutting, farming, fighting, etc, etc...

Excellent. I just went to youtube and posted a bunch of df tutorials under different usernames, backdating and adding comments to make it look like they were there the whole time.

[Veylon]

Start to implode? If you ask me, the game is well into the later stages of implosion.

Probably the worst offender is the sheer numbers of different items/materials without much ability to sort or categorize. Say I want to use up my cheap leather to make some waterskins. Or encrust a bunch of beds with 10* gems. Either of these is a micromanaging mess to actually do, even though it's easy to say what I want to do. The lists explode when there's a bunch of stuff that differs by material, item type, and quality, as is seen after a goblin invasion. Or try buying all the sand off merchants. Then there's the sheer number of keybindings that need to be memorized in Adventurer mode, with little way to find out which key it is you need to press.

I'm not saying that it's bad to have lots of options or unique items, but that the sheer richness has become a chore to deal with. The game could really do with a lot of the interfaces being cleaned up and rethought so that the alleged overseer can actually oversee. Oftentimes you just want to buy one kind of thing from the merchants, but you can't without scrolling through dozens of things you don't want.

[Rallan]

I think increased complexity won't slow down the rate of new fans by too much, because Dwarf Fortress has already become much more complicated and hard to learn than any commercial game could get away with. DF fans are already the sort of players who are willing to tackle an insanely steep learning curve, and gradually making it a little steeper probably won't scare that sort of gamer away.

Plus there's always the chance that Toady will end up making things a bit simpler. User-friendliness isn't exactly a big priority of his, but his love of simulation means there's a chance that he might decide to tweak dwarven AI at some point so they're better at self management.

[Azure]

Start to implode? If you ask me, the game is well into the later stages of implosion.

Probably the worst offender is the sheer numbers of different items/materials without much ability to sort or categorize. Say I want to use up my cheap leather to make some waterskins. Or encrust a bunch of beds with 10* gems. Either of these is a micromanaging mess to actually do, even though it's easy to say what I want to do. The lists explode when there's a bunch of stuff that differs by material, item type, and quality, as is seen after a goblin invasion. Or try buying all the sand off merchants. Then there's the sheer number of keybindings that need to be memorized in Adventurer mode, with little way to find out which key it is you need to press.

I'm not saying that it's bad to have lots of options or unique items, but that the sheer richness has become a chore to deal with. The game could really do with a lot of the interfaces being cleaned up and rethought so that the alleged overseer can actually oversee. Oftentimes you just want to buy one kind of thing from the merchants, but you can't without scrolling through dozens of things you don't want.

All you're saying is that you want the ui rewite that's going to come before v1.0 now while he doesn't have everything that the ui rewrite would affect implemented. If multiple gem/wood/leather etc. types REALLY bother you then spend a couple days fiddling with the raws and you can have all the animals tan into just "leather" and all the gems are "Gem common" "Gem semi-rare" gem" rare etc. If you write  a script it'll probably only take a few hours tops.

As to the keybinding issue, Thanks, you've described every game ever. Would streamlining help? yes. would a tutorial help? yes. are we likely to get an official one before v1.0? No. That's what youtube's for. And quite frankly, I find it insulting that you have a problem with the amount of keybindings. A game with as many features as DF is going to need all of them and it's the price you pay for the depth of the game. Many of the other roguelikes: Nethack, DCSS, ADOM, Cataclysm, etc. have a large amount of keybindings. It's the genre! So until DF hits beta/release you and anyone getting into it is just going to have to approach it like they would approach ANY other complex game, job etc. By printing out and studying the relevant reference material, trying things out, asking questions, and repeating forever.

[Rallan]

Veylon's raising valid concerns about very real problems with the game (and specifically, problems that help make the game offputtingly complicated for potential new players). And he's doing it in a thread that's all about whether DF is getting too complicated to keep attracting new players. If you think that reasonable criticism is a sign of laziness or disloyalty, or that it's "insulting", or that players who don't like it should man up and learn to mod the raws or quit whining because they're not hardcore enough fans to have opinions, then you might be taking things just a little too personally.

The game has serious problems with needless complexity and a user interface that wasn't designed so much as made up on the fly and then ignored while other aspects of the game are being developed. This is totally excusable since the game's still in the early stages of development and Toady's got every right to develop it however he damn well pleases at whatever pace he damn well pleases. But pretending that those problems don't exist is kinda dumb. And fostering an atmosphere where people who mention those problem are called out for not being big enough fans will just create a toxic fan base that serves as yet another turnoff for new players.

[Rvlion]

It took me ages not only to get used to the ASCII, but also to get used to all the options that were available for me in 40d.

Since a few months I started the game again with 34.11...
So far I never had a succesfull military, never a succesfully build hospital zone. I have been overrun on several occasios by multiple mountain and forest titans, once I defeated a visiting titan only to be attacked my a goblin ambush before I could close my front door.

I am not saying this is a bad thing, while sometimes it annoyes the hell out of me I keep coming back and start a new fortress. I love the pain... The pain of constant defeat... the !FUN!...

This game is good only for people simular to me, many people I know go pure for graphics and everything looking old is discarded as junk no matter how fun it is.

However at the same time if this game has the graphics like the dungeon keeper games, but preferably better then the fan base would still be like it is today due to the learning curve... It is steep, very steep. Once you know the basics it becomes easier, but before you know the basics it takes hours...

I know many of you are true ASCII players for whatever masochistical reasons, please also understand and accept that most new players cannot understand what the hell is going on in ASCII. I read multiple posts on DF question forum part were a player got sneared because the answering player supposedly didnt understand the picture made while using a the graphic pack. With 40d it took me months before I started playing in regular ASCII and actually understand what I was looking at.

When the game goes beta or beyond a graphic pack is requires or only a few players are going to be playing it.

To answer the OP question...
Adding many features without streamlining the overal game is ok for the already active players, however the furthur the project is along the learning curve gets so high that many won't even bother to spent time on it anymore... That is my 2c.

[pisskop]

Why hasn't a mod changed the interface?  Is it hardwired in the closed source?  What about item reorganization?

[Kipi]

Why hasn't a mod changed the interface?  Is it hardwired in the closed source?  What about item reorganization?

Interface is completely hardcoded. We can make external utilities (like Therapist) with memory hacking to ease up things. But we can't touch the actual interface of the game.

Item reorganization is possible to some extend. We can remove and combine item types (like make all different creature leathers just one type of generic "leather"), all of those are defined inside the raw files. We can't create new item categories (like new type of furniture) certain item types are still hardcoded. Furniture is a good example of that.

[rcmgames]

Like most of you have been saying, I just think that if a player who has a decent amount of experience (like me) still has to take their time getting used to the new things being put in the game, after they've already spent so much time figuring out how to play in the first place, a newcomer is going to have one hell of a time. We all see the massiveness of tutorials now-a-days (multi-video playlists). Whenever I tell a friend he/she should play, I almost have to stop myself from saying it, because then I would have to spend an entire day teaching someone what to do, sit with them to answer questions, etc. Does anyone even think there is a possibility of having in-game tutorials? I assume you could break them down into sections, but still. That would be a ton of stuff. Plus, it's not like it would be an optional thing, there would be tutorials you HAD to complete in order to even understand how to play.

[Revanchist]

The wiki is typically used as the guide it should be, and Toady said openly that he and Threetoe use the wiki. If the creators of the game need a guide its either time to simplify (which I don't expect/want/whathaveyou) or refer people to said guide.
I personally used it almost as much as the game itself in my first month, and still use it occasionally, but I don't see a problem with it.
After all, it says right on the mandatory opening screen "as of 2011 the user made DFWiki can be found here". Is it shameful to use the wiki, or just to annoying for newcomers?

[Azure]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Like most of you have been saying, I just think that if a player who has a decent amount of experience (like me) still has to take their time getting used to the new things being put in the game, after they've already spent so much time figuring out how to play in the first place, a newcomer is going to have one hell of a time. We all see the massiveness of tutorials now-a-days (multi-video playlists). Whenever I tell a friend he/she should play, I almost have to stop myself from saying it, because then I would have to spend an entire day teaching someone what to do, sit with them to answer questions, etc. Does anyone even think there is a possibility of having in-game tutorials? I assume you could break them down into sections, but still. That would be a ton of stuff. Plus, it's not like it would be an optional thing, there would be tutorials you HAD to complete in order to even understand how to play.

Presumably Toady will cobble some together or have the community make some once the game is nearing beta. Hopefully the tutorial will be a plug-in/save so it doesn't bloat the filesize of the game. They'll probably be broken down into basic how to dig/stairs/ramps stockpiles etc. then each industry, military setup, etc. I can't speak for everyone but when I started playing I spent a couple surface forts designating cut tree/gather plant, stockpile, and farm plot designations. From then on i'd tackle a new industry or feature until the fort crumbled and i'd have to move on. Unfortunately, like any game or job, DF is going to take time to learn and a significant amount of time to be good. Tips like dig a perimeter ditch & wall, remove ramps, build raising bridges and mass cage traps will get them fairly far into the mid-game where they can begin to learn the advanced features. Think of it like building a castle. You start with a throne room, and then you add a granary, a stable, and so on. It's the same with DF. Learn to survive then learn to thrive.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Veylon's raising valid concerns about very real problems with the game (and specifically, problems that help make the game offputtingly complicated for potential new players). And he's doing it in a thread that's all about whether DF is getting too complicated to keep attracting new players. If you think that reasonable criticism is a sign of laziness or disloyalty, or that it's "insulting", or that players who don't like it should man up and learn to mod the raws or quit whining because they're not hardcore enough fans to have opinions, then you might be taking things just a little too personally.

The game has serious problems with needless complexity and a user interface that wasn't designed so much as made up on the fly and then ignored while other aspects of the game are being developed. This is totally excusable since the game's still in the early stages of development and Toady's got every right to develop it however he damn well pleases at whatever pace he damn well pleases. But pretending that those problems don't exist is kinda dumb. And fostering an atmosphere where people who mention those problem are called out for not being big enough fans will just create a toxic fan base that serves as yet another turnoff for new players.

Rallan, nobody is pretending the problem doesn't exist. It's going to get much... much... worse before it gets better because any significant ui rewrite/tutorial mode/material consolidation worldgen toggle at this point is going to take days/weeks to implement and will need to be redone further down the line as it becomes obsolete anyway. I'm not saying that a new player needs to learn to mod the raws just to play the game. Veylon's clutter concern is a later-game problem. One that masterwork df addresses iirc in simplifying leather types among other things.. He's certainly entitled to his opinion that the game is bloated and I agree with that. Hell, everyone can have their own opinion. But if someone says that naked wrestling dwarves are the best defense it's going to get commented on. Do YOU have a problem with someone's criticism being criticized? And yes, I do take it personally that someone has a problem with the amount of keybindings you need to learn. Complex roguelikes have a lot of keybindings because they need them for all the actions you need to do. It's like he's getting mad at a cardboard box for not holding rainwater. Of course it's not going to! It's not designed to! At no point did I bring up "being a big enough fan". Dwarf fortress is a complex and deep game and has the requisite learning curve. You will have to study the keybinding list and likely print it out. You will have to reference the wiki. You will have to ask questions on the forum. You will have to try things out and fail many... many... times. This will likely never change and is the price of the depth of Dwarf Fortress. If you want a plug n play with only a handful of keybindings then you can grab a Halo and shoot your way to victory.

Could DF benefit from a DCSS style tutorial to give you the basics to survive? Yes, and until an official one is done new players will have to use youtube and/or reference materials on the wiki. Can DF benefit from a search function on all the stock/caravan/etc menus? Yes. Can DF benefit from a toggle to have a caravan only bring what you request? Yes. But until Toady gets around to it you have to suck it up or mod to fix what you can.