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[mSterian]

Hello people.

I'd like to get into the game, due to it's complexity. I've seen quite a few videos demonstrating and learning people how to star playing and such.
But I am the kind of gamer that needs an objective to be able to enjoy a game.
So... does DF have any objectives? Any goals to strive for or any such thing?

Or is it like a "life simmulator", like.. SIMS for example.. where you just play out your life and go through random events?

I didn't notice it having any score, milestones, or anything to keep track of how well you're doing. I need at least that... a scoring system that tells me I'm doing better than 30 minutes ago or worse. A rating, a grade, achievements, challenges... SOMETHING.

If it's just a Sandbox game where the only purpose is Creativity... I think I might have to pass
Creativity Is not my strong point. Or, I might have creativity, but creating something just for myself is unsatisfactory to me.

I could just choose the objective of keeping my dwarfs happy, but it seems that's not quite a big challenge. I've seen all they need is sleep, food, boose and warmth. Is there more to it than that.

I haven't seen people play it until they reached conflicts/war. Maybe that gets more interesting.

What do you say guys? What makes you play this game over and over? Maybe I can adopt it.

[AfellowDwarf]

I think the only milestone the game aknowledges at the moment is the arrival of the king etc. So at the moment it's mostly self-imposed challenges, large projects and stories that keep people busy. Maybe theres be something that makes the game a little more to your liking in the next update or the mods, though.

[itg]

At first, survival will be enough of a challenge to keep you going. When you're pretty much guaranteed to lose your fortress, you can keep score in terms of how many years you last.

If you stick with the game, though, you'll reach the point where you can survive indefinitely on normal embarks. Everyone handles the game a little differently at this point, which is one of the things that makes this game so interesting, in my opinion. To name a few possibilities:

• Explore any industries you haven't messed with yet. Try to attract the Monarch and become the Mountainhome, if you haven't done it by this point.
• Try out progressively harder embark sites, such as sites with aquifers, evil biomes, glaciers, or all three of those combined.
• Give yourself artificial limitations, like requiring yourself to have an unobstructed entrance to the fortress at all times, or embarking with just a pick.
• Create a challenge fortress, such as an above-ground fort or a straight-to-cavern embark.
• Search for the HFS (hidden fun stuff). It's kept a secret for a reason (i.e. don't look it up or you'll miss out on a classic DF experience), but once you find it the first time, a new objective will make itself clear.
• Build a megaproject. It doesn't necessarily have to be a creative project if that sort of thing doesn't interest you. I spent some weeks draining the magma sea, for instance. Superweapons and doomsday devices are always a good choice.
• SCIENCE! That is, do experiments to learn about game mechanics.
• Focus on the story aspect of your fortress. It sounds like that's not what you're interested in, but who knows, you may surprise yourself.
• I suppose you could keep score in terms of fortress wealth or goblin death toll.
• Use more magma.

In short, beyond basic survival, you have to be able to set your own goals to a certain extent, since there's no real victory condition. There are plenty of standard challenges and projects, though, if it's important to you to have that external yardstick. Just check the wiki and forums.

[Garath]

I usually have as an objective to create a military that can handle sieges without the help of too many traps and without just shooting bolts from the walls. Keeping the buggers happy gets harder too at that point. Nothing like the death of a buddy/husband/brother/son to upset the smooth running of your well-oiled machine "that had no challenges left"

[WanderingKid]

Personal opinions inbound:

I'd like to get into the game, due to it's complexity. I've seen quite a few videos demonstrating and learning people how to star playing and such.

The game itself isn't that complex yet.  Most industries aren't very deep.  The majority of the complexity revolves around two items:
1) The user interface isn't.  It's more of a power-user interface in layout.  Similar to needing to know all the keyboard shortcuts in a windows program without having a menu bar.  You can get things done incredibly quickly once you know what you wanted in the first place.  It's also missing things. DFHack helps with that.
2) You have absolutely no bloody clue what the hell you're supposed to be doing.  Cue tutorials to teach you what basics need to be arrived at to keep yourself alive.

But I am the kind of gamer that needs an objective to be able to enjoy a game.
So... does DF have any objectives? Any goals to strive for or any such thing?

No.  If you need the 1000 gamer points achievement list, this game isn't really for you.  Bragging rights and/or completions are things that you decide to do that are cool enough to share with the community.  Bring photos.  We love photos.  We especially love to copy, mimic, and then make your idea our own, too. 

Or is it like a "life simmulator", like.. SIMS for example.. where you just play out your life and go through random events?

I've been trying to figure out the best way to describe Dwarf Fortress, and here's the best I've got: High Fantasy Survival Simulator.  Like life, if you're still alive, you win.

I didn't notice it having any score, milestones, or anything to keep track of how well you're doing. I need at least that... a scoring system that tells me I'm doing better than 30 minutes ago or worse. A rating, a grade, achievements, challenges... SOMETHING.

Nothing.  Nada.  Zip.  It's all in your head.

If it's just a Sandbox game where the only purpose is Creativity... I think I might have to pass
Creativity Is not my strong point. Or, I might have creativity, but creating something just for myself is unsatisfactory to me.

Then you REALLY don't want to spend the umpteen hours it takes just to learn how to use the interface, or you need to get really good with screenshots and the like for sharing your creations.

I could just choose the objective of keeping my dwarfs happy, but it seems that's not quite a big challenge. I've seen all they need is sleep, food, boose and warmth. Is there more to it than that.

You're just not going deep enough if this is where you get bored.  Currently it is possible to seal yourself into the first few levels, create a turtle of traps and walls where nothing can get near you, and keep your fort alive until it dies from FPS loss.  Or you can dig.  Open caverns.  Open the circus.  Mine everything.  Use everything.

But no, if you're stopping as soon as survival is satisfied you're not going to find much challenge in the easy biomes.  That's why they're the easy biomes.

I haven't seen people play it until they reached conflicts/war. Maybe that gets more interesting.

Sieges happen at 80 dwarves if you're at war with the goblins, but even this is simple enough to deal with using a few common designs.  Toady is working on making that more interesting eventually, but right now I have more problems cleaning up after a siege is done than with the sieges themselves... and even that I've got down to a pretty good science outside of reanimating biomes.

What do you say guys? What makes you play this game over and over? Maybe I can adopt it.

Everything I said above about it being easy goes out the window.  There's challenge here, but it's not the kind of challenge that you can brag about easily to a few thousand other friends.  There's no "I beat megaboss 4 in 38 seconds!"  Maybe, if you're lucky, 2 friends will even know what the hell you're talking about. 

The challenges I enjoy are the ones I can share that I think are really cool.  For example, check out the sig link below me here for the ore to magma sea minecart routes.  Designing that and using it were a lot of fun to me.  Right now I'm doing a series on the single pick challenge in one of the most gruesome biome/environments I've ever seen.  I've got a web spewing titan all over my surface embark killing off every immigrant showing up, and I need to figure out how to deal with him because I've only got 2 layers of stone to work with above the aquifer to try to trap/kill him in... in a reanimating biome.  If you think a Titan is bad, imagine an undead Titan that will never die.

A single mistake in defenses can let a fire breathing Forgotten Beast wander up into the fort through the caverns and tear the heart and mind out the majority of your fortress.  Killing them can be just as interesting, even if they never get in.

In the end, though, I've seen only two types of people hang around a long time here in the forums.  I can't have an opinion about the non-forum goers for obvious reasons.  The first kind of person is very interested in the simulation mechanics.  They get into minecart speed physics and impact densities for materials.  The second type, and the larger majority (or at least, the more vocal) is what I'd say I fall into most of the time.  I play Dwarf Fortress because I love the stories it eventually tells, and it's partially a choose your own adventure.  There's enough complexity to keep me engaged still when I start taking on larger, unnecessary projects, but really it's a question of am I amused while I did it?  The answer is yes.  Sometimes it's amusing enough that I get to share it... and then it's about 100x as much fun.

[WhimsyWink]

This reminds me a little of the frustrating conversations with people who just didn't 'get' Dungeons & Dragons:
If it is a game, how do you win?

Sometimes a game gives you 'tools' to build things and if the tools are structured well, the only real limit is you.  I am a builder/storyteller/protector by nature.  So this is a good match for me.

When I run out of challenges from invaders, I'll just build more. 

[Garath]

as I think was mentioned, there are by now also a lot of mods, including (I think) tunneling invaders, more magical effects, different types of invaders, cavern invaders and a bunch more. The challenge of actually building a fort that survives all that, which is reasonably happy and prosperous and in general a place where you can watch your kids grow up (a whole challenge in itself: have a fortress born dwarf die of old age) isn't as easy as it sometimes seems, at least not when you start to take away some of the more overpowered stuff like lots and lots of weapon or cage traps, danger rooms, quantum stockpiles, stuff like that.

[weenog]

You want points?  Go heavy military.  Every time a soldier earns a name (or an extension to an existing earned name) by killing notable opponents, that's 1 point.  Aim for a million points.

You'll need to dig deep and eschew mechanics if you want the high score.

[Blue_Dwarf]

The main "objective" is to dig deeper and deeper until you awaken the horrors that lie beneath the caverns. But that is spoiler land.

[blazing glory]

the goal? losing is FUN!

but more specific try self imposed challenges like have 6 of you 7 starting dwarfs have only social skills
and they never do ANYTHING that means doing work beneath them (carpentry mining hauling that stuff)
so your 1 dwarf has to do all the work i havint tryed it for myself but i hear it's challenging

make a contraption that floods the outside of the entrance of your fortress
(or better yet floods IN you fortress )

try to make some disaster by monster or something and have the remaining dwarfs try to
survive from a apocalypse (or at least thats what it will look like once disaster has come)

and there is a lot more you can do! 

[ShadowHammer]

Battle goblins, zombies, elves, humans, and monsters. Forge armor. Create unparalleled Legendary weapons. Raise an army of supersoldiers capable of taking on the same odds as the three hundred, and winning. Cover the countryside in magma. Mine out massive halls, filled with the wealth of a thousand kings. Fill a hidden chamber with the weapons of every goblin to ever meet its doom at your walls. Make your fortress so powerful that enemy armies break upon it like water, and elves in the farthest corners
of the world cower in fear at its name.

The true goal? Live long enough to discover the enemy that can destroy it all.

[xoseph]

Your score is roughly equal to the number of barrels of blood your fortress possesses.

[Garath]

make that how many tiles are covered in blood, since you can't collect blood on your own currently and buying it from caravans isn't an achievement

[blazing glory]

write it down because it rains

[Blue_Dwarf]

make that how many tiles are covered in blood, since you can't collect blood on your own currently and buying it from caravans isn't an achievement

Who said anything about buying