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Yes, religiously!

39 (17.3%)

I used to, but haven't in a while.

172 (76.1%)

Tried it once or twice, but didn't care for it.

6 (2.7%)

Never!

2 (0.9%)

What's "Dwarf Fortress"? Is that like a mod for TF2?

7 (3.1%)

Total Members Voted: 222

[Gervassen]

Depending on your definition of "circlejerk", every thread is a circlejerk

And for that matter, what's wrong with circle-jerking, anyway? Don't tell me y'alls haven't got together with your best mates and done a little grabarsery. I mean, we've all done it, right?

UI is horrendous. Squad menu broke the game for me after 2010.

However, the forum still has useful information on other games that tend toward complex simulation systems rather than cheap arcade thrills--and yet still have a sane UI that makes playing fun. The more complex a game is, the more that good presentation of data becomes important.

[WealthyRadish]

I think a convoluted UI is acceptable, so long as it doesn't create tedium. If a game's fun enough to motivate learning a bad UI, then the only thing that'll detract from the game after it's learned is stuff that's needlessly repetitive. DF seems pretty good about this in most areas, except for stuff like labor assignment, but fortunately Dwarf Therapist exists. I think the current supported branch of Dwarf Therapist also allows you to assign squads from it, but I may be mistaken.

[Frumple]

Did the last time I used it, anyway. And yeah, dwarf therapist is a kinda' massive aid to relieving some of the UI issues. DFHack helps a lot too, for stuff like vein designation and a few other things.

[Mesa]

I do wonder how many of the "What's DF?" votes are genuine or just "lolwut why not".

[Mephisto]

UI is horrendous. Squad menu broke the game for me after 2010.

I wouldn't go quite that far. I do play off and on - I'll usually start up a new fort once a year or so and then play religiously for a week or three, then I'll stop. It's not that I can't understand military scheduling, burrows, etc, it's just that I've never read up on them so I usually die to the first invasion.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

UI is horrendous. Squad menu broke the game for me after 2010.

I have severe doubts you'd even played DF pre-3d. The military was not working as intended and needed a complete overhaul. See: Eternally equipping non-existant socks, dying in hospitals that would not work.

What we got was a proper separation of active/non-active military roles, civilian/non civilian equipping with custom outfits for handiness, a powerful [if complex] scheduling system, a proper hospital system that works.. Not to mention the tie in to the burrows system which made the entire universe come into alignment and has severely increased DF's enjoyability.

I do miss the old patrol setup. Otherwise the old system was arguably a placeholder.

[loose nut]

Well, .40d's military is certainly simpler to figure out, though you had no doctors whatsoever and your military tended to all become full-time legendaries and best friends and they kept a very, very messy barracks.

[Robsoie]

Did the last time I used it, anyway. And yeah, dwarf therapist is a kinda' massive aid to relieving some of the UI issues. DFHack helps a lot too, for stuff like vein designation and a few other things.

yes, the continously developped Dwarf Therapist coupled with several DFHack plugins (some that bugfixes longstanding unresolved issues in the game, and some that adds some interface helper) are really making the game much more playable by lowering the tedious of the default interface a lot.
Assigning dwarves from inside DT into a squad is as easy as right click -> assign to squad, it's so usefull that i simply can't imagine playing DF without DT when you start to get migrations coming, it makes management of your hundred of dwarves really fast and easy

Be sure to give a try to the mousequery plugin for dfhack (does not work for the r4 test floating around so keep usind dfhack r3) , it is really great.

And if you're still completely clueless, you have the DF Starter pack that replace the now outdated and abandonned LazyNew pack to provide a DF build with most of the 3rd party tools (it includes the mentionned Dwarf Therapist, DF hacks and tons of plugins) and tilesets already added

[Singularity125]

I usually play once a new version is released. Then I think of how much better the game will be once the next update is released and stop.

>_<

Story of my life.

Hear, hear. I have exactly the same problem. And since major releases tend to be over a year apart, that means there isn't a lot of playtime on DF.
But, this is one of the friendliest forum-based communities I know, so I stay.

[Leyic]

Once the game went 3D, I found myself compelled to build forts that looked like things, i.e. anvils, daggers, kegs, etc. But the dwarves were too stupid to not build their fellows into the walls, remove scaffolding someone was standing on, and so forth. Hence I wound up micromanaging these constructions and the game was no longer fun. Once Toady does something about this, I'll try to find time for the game again, assuming Gnomoria doesn't beat him to it. I could go back to playing 2D, but then I remember the lack of rewall and all the things that'd crawl out of the wells and chasm.

[Darkmere]

Pretty much the above. If there were any kind of sanity in the construction and pathfinding I'd still be playing it. As it is, doing ANYthing except another underground tower fortress is too tedious to designate constructions and hand-hold each individual mason to make sure they don't kill each other, seal each other behind walls, or get stuck on towers that I can't be bothered to bCw anymore. Same thing goes with channeling out multi-Z rooms as well. If you don't sit there and watch every single tile, you'll lose all your miners to a cave-in. Every. Single. Time.

[Elephant Parade]

Pretty much the above. If there were any kind of sanity in the construction and pathfinding I'd still be playing it. As it is, doing ANYthing except another underground tower fortress is too tedious to designate constructions and hand-hold each individual mason to make sure they don't kill each other, seal each other behind walls, or get stuck on towers that I can't be bothered to bCw anymore. Same thing goes with channeling out multi-Z rooms as well. If you don't sit there and watch every single tile, you'll lose all your miners to a cave-in. Every. Single. Time.

You can turn off cave-ins, but pathfinding is still bad.

[Owlga]

I've never actually even touched DF, and I think it could be interesting but I've kind of come to the realization that it's never really gonna be playable. Or even have something resembling a UI.

Ill just wait for rimworld and prison architect to be done.

[Elephant Parade]

I've never actually even touched DF, and I think it could be interesting but I've kind of come to the realization that it's never really gonna be playable. Or even have something resembling a UI.

Ill just wait for rimworld and prison architect to be done.

It's pretty playable. You need the wiki, and there will be a few forts lost to weird mistakes, but you can learn it without too much trouble as long as you use the Lazy Newb Pack. Seriously, tilesets are your friend.
Turning off invaders and cave-ins helps immensely, as well.

[Owlga]

It's not that I can't understand the game. I never played it but I had it shown to me and adapted to what I was seeing pretty quickly. I just don't think it's ever going to be worth the time to bother with at the rate it's going and I'm not one exactly to subscribe to pipe dreams as a game design principle.

In short I'd rather play a df that does the fortress part well and has had that focused on entirely rather than trying to make it into something as huge and massive as toady wants. It's an interesting goal but it's not gonna happen I think. Not that I have a lack of respect for the drive toady has or anything, I'd just rather play something more focused and polished.