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[That Wolf]

The UI.
We all know about it, some fear it even more so in adventure mode.
It needs to be pulled apart melted down and reforged.
Its bad enough getting carpal tunnel from coding. A game shouldnt do that.
I know its being brought up many times and it is a suggestion that will make the game noticeably better straight away.

The menu, it needs sorting features it needs to be easy to navigate and maybe even a little humanoid body that shows what armour you are wearing or what bodyparts are missing.
The ability to manualy layer armour and manualy select what weapon is in what hand.

Having to hold 2 buttons just to change the page is simply madness and terrible foresight.
I know it can be done.
A game should be fun and the more time your not in a menu means more game time = losing = fun.

Yes im passionate

[Bumber]

BEFORE POSTING A SUGGESTION
Search for an existing thread. If you find a thread similar to your idea, you can bump it to expand on the suggestion, even if the thread is old.  However, please do not bump threads just to show support.

Abstracted Interface: Redux
Total Interface Overhaul

[Dirst]

BEFORE POSTING A SUGGESTION
Search for an existing thread. If you find a thread similar to your idea, you can bump it to expand on the suggestion, even if the thread is old.  However, please do not bump threads just to show support.

Abstracted Interface: Redux
Total Interface Overhaul

There are 13,367 threads in the Suggestions forum and only two are about the interface?  I call bullshit 

[That Wolf]

I think everybody that dislikes the UI should post their own UI suggestion to get the point across.
Yay we finaly painted the road markers now people can drive safely... oh but lets not fix that massive hole in the road because its fun fucking your suspension.

Edit:
Dont get me wrong, I love this game, been playing it for a while, It just doesnt cut it anymore and using 3rd party isnt going to either.
Now I aint no fancy city folk and I sure dont need a fancy worded long winded speech to make my point.

I know its being brought up many times

One of my most hated is the inconsistent controls for menu scrolling, sometimes its D-pad others its shift+??
Just that alone is quite frustrating. Adding the ability to use the mouse to select would help too
I understand why its like it is, however I dont know why it hasnt been streamlined.

[Bumber]

There are 13,367 threads in the Suggestions forum and only two are about the interface?  I call bullshit 

No, those are only the biggest. I simply don't have time to click on each of the 176 results (more if we omit 'user',) see if it's relevant, copy the thread URL, paste that into the post, copy the title, paste that between the URL tags, and then try any related search terms. Maybe Footkerchief does, IDK.

I think you'll agree it's much more economical that people just do their own bloody Armok searches.

[Zammer990]

My UI suggestion:
Git gud.

But seriously, the only gripes I have with the UI are the discontinuity between hotkeys in dwarf mode, and the literal data dump that is adventure modes ^q (Q) menu.
It definitely needs some kind of ravamp, but with a game as complicated as dwarf fortress, we're always going to be stuck with either hotkey-a-plenty, or menus after menus after menus.

[That Wolf]

This isnt about my skill level, I tear this game up. 
Its about making it a good game, and good games consist of gameplay, intuitive fun and less importantly story (thats what books R 4)
DF has oodles of gameplay, more than enough to give the major arcs a rest and start fixing the menus perhaps even to a lesser degree the NPC interactions but thats a different tale for another time
Yeah the 'Q'uest menu is the worst of the bad, even its filter isnt enough.
Maybe I ask for too much, I duno Im getting all excited, Im going to hang up now.

[Zammer990]

intuitive fun

I'm not sure I understand...

you mean like this?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Dirst]

People who are really worried about repeated keystrokes can map everything to their $450 HOTAS flight stick.

The first, and probably the easiest step is to make sure that when similar functions have the same keys in different places.  Such as 'f' and 'F' to follow.  Most of this can probably be done through a keymapping file, which would be reflected in the in-game help, but then it would break compatibility with vanilla mappings in the wiki.

Not as easy, but already DFHacked, would be to keep the map cursor stable while hopping in and out of menus.

Complete information in the Legends mode exports, and let the third-party tools figure out the best way to present everything.

Keeping with the low-hanging fruit, I think the top-level menus (and maybe a handful of others) should be hot-keyed and keep the current selection.  Have someone selected in loo(k) and jump to the squads menu where that guy is still selected the to thoughts-and-preferences then back to squads to take him out of the squad with four of his grudges.

At a higher level, I haven't read the abstracted interface thread, but in general that sounds like a good idea.  De-coupling code usually makes sense (at least until you've come to a late round of optimization, if even then).  Personally I'd like the option to keep the map and the menus in separate windows, but that's probably fairly specific to people who have dual-monitor setups.  A distinct interface level would make that relatively straightforward in DFHack, even if it never made it into a init option for vanilla.

As for the map itself, TWBT and Armok Vision and so on would benefit greatly from an abstract interface, in that they could even become the primary interface (and I expect the authors would love to see Toady incorporate their work or ideas into the game itself).

The idea of little mannequins to show equipment or wounds won't work with a LOT of work to represent the arbitrarily complicated body plans in DF.  May be work work doing for common body types, but I'd rather Toady spend his energy elsewhere.  Again, the kind of thing that'd be easier with an abstracted interface layer.