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[Boltgun]

This, so much. The world needs more titles & distinctions, so we can identify which things are important at a glance, rather than painstakingly searching.

Naming things is fairly precise and can be easily modded, I wonder why default civs do not make a good use of that.

Also, if you keep playing, you'll notice one dwarf that stand out from the others (usually your general if you fight sieges) and then you'll pay attention to their story. Your random farmers do not need attention and can be treated as background characters.

[Urlance Woolsbane]

I don't mean to act as if real-life names are supremely purposeful, but most real-life names signify something, even if it's simply "well, this sounds like it's Native American..."

The only reason behind "The Buff Skunk" is that it's an animal, and elves like animals. Now, if this were the name of a Dwarven group trying to sound elven, that would be one thing. But for an elf civ, it's the equivalent of randomly calling an Italian town "the Mustachioed Pizza."

Now, if an elven civ were called "Skunkland," that would be odd, but at least comprehendable. Even if it was a completely random choice, at least the player should think "I bet that country had a lot of skunks."

So yeah, the line between word soup and pseudo-meaningful names is thin, but it exists.

I am genuinely concerned this game is going to become incomprehensible with enough randomizing.

Handily it's a concern Toady has mentioned himself regarding procedural generation. It's part of the reason a semi-typical fantasy base has been stuck to instead of having completely generated species.

I believe that the eventual plan is to allow the player to determine the degree of randomancy, with the game generating guides to the things it creates. 

[Salmeuk]

So yeah, the line between word soup and pseudo-meaningful names is thin, but it exists.

It's also subjective where that line stands, oddly enough.

[exdeath]

I am genuinely concerned this game is going to become incomprehensible with enough randomizing.

Handily it's a concern Toady has mentioned himself regarding procedural generation. It's part of the reason a semi-typical fantasy base has been stuck to instead of having completely generated species.

So the game will never have abiogenesis, and you will always have people suddently appearing at the map?

[Vattic]

So the game will never have abiogenesis, and you will always have people suddently appearing at the map?

Well there is a myth generator in the works which should eventually explain where things came from; Of abiogenesis specifically I haven't heard mention. There is already simple genetics, but no speciation (can't image this would be an easy task). I know at one point Toady thought of having people migrate in from off the edges of the map, but have no idea if this is planned.

I believe that the eventual plan is to allow the player to determine the degree of randomancy, with the game generating guides to the things it creates.

Indeed and we already can to some extent in advanced worldgen.

[imperator]

This is true, but there is a reason that fantasy novels don't usually have 50+ main characters, it's just too much.

I think if each dwarf was treated as a side character it would be more effective. Say if Bomrek Eribbasan from above, instead having the personality of a wall of text, the same as any dwarf, was put off by merrymaking is pleased by her own appearance and talents, likes lions, and prefers to consume hake and demon rat. This personality is a lot more distinct than before when she was kind of nice, kind of egotistical, kind of determined, kind of cowardly, etc.

We have too many games where there is "too little".  So for once I don't mind having a game where there is too much.

As far as the personality screen, the human psyche is very complex.

[Shazbot]

The problem with too much is it will be disregarded by the player, and end up no better than too little. The interface already pains us to keep track of which dwarf is which. Their names are word soup, their graphical representation is a handful of colors, and fortresses of any meaningful number of dwarves become a Brownian motion of colored smiley faces.

[imperator]

The problem with too much is it will be disregarded by the player, and end up no better than too little. The interface already pains us to keep track of which dwarf is which. Their names are word soup, their graphical representation is a handful of colors, and fortresses of any meaningful number of dwarves become a Brownian motion of colored smiley faces.

I'd rather have too much and be able to disregard the things I don't find important at that time, than too little and end up with a game that quickly loses my interest.  Simply because the game simulates something doesn't mean we have to be constantly paying attention to it.  Part of the challenge of the game is to strategically determine when/when not to focus on something.

[Oort]

I feel like a big part of the atmosphere of dwarf fortress is being able to "zoom in." Maybe you don't care what every dwarf in your fortress looks like, but if someone does something badass you can take a closer look and get a very specific description. The same idea applies to so many elements of the game.

As a GM in a variety of fantasy tabletop RPGs, I've found that one of the most important parts of creating a convincing world is giving it as much detail as a player is willing to look for. Dwarf fortress is the only video game in existence that actually stands in for a human being BSing in order to create a world with enough detail to fill the imagination. Yeah, it's even harder to get into than rolling dice and eating bad pizza and arguing about rules, but once you learn how to connect with it you'll be glad all the detail is there.

(Although, impassioned defense of dwarf fortress aside, there's always places where the information could be made more accessible or easier to filter.)

[Shazbot]

That isn't a challenge. That's false difficulty through complexity, a problem Dwarf Fortress suffers.

I picked up MiG-21 for DCS and flew around a lot in a 1959 Soviet jet fighter. It has a cockpit like the control panel of a steam locomotive. Dials buttons and switches, labels in Russian and a radar that has to warm up for five minutes while sipping 180-proof vodka as coolant. But all information I need as a pilot is there, the information I need most is prominent, and the information I need least is tucked away. Most information is clustered by relevant information; radar switches are this panel by the radar, compass switches are this panel over here, and engine start up is basically flipping all the switches from the back right to the back left, approximately in order. And while the game constantly simulates the battery's voltage, I only have to pay attention to it when the warning light comes on. It isn't a "challenge" to avoid staring at the voltmeter, because its tucked away behind the flight stick down by my feet instead of cluttering the radar.

This isn't complex. Its deep. Some Soviet designer burned through his quota of graph paper and pencils to make the most user-friendly interface he could out of dials and colored lights. Information I need is where I need it, and information I don't need is still logically sorted and cued to my attention by a light or a buzzer. The only complexity is local; the labels are in Russian, which is a somewhat more orderly Moonspeak than dwarven. Even so, I can see patterns in the letters that match sounds from English and figure out which radio channel Krymnsk ground control is by logical guesswork.

Dwarven is not only Moonspeak, it is randomly generated Moonspeak matched to randomly generated words which themselves have only an occasional similarity to their concept. For example, The Hatchets of Blazing. Is it a civilization, a site group, a refugee band, a performance troop? After all these years, I've only learned "Urist" is "Dagger". This makes a lot of complexity. On top of this, dwarf mode alternates between giving me English and Dwarven last names depending on which menu I'm in. This is complexity. Then there's just the UI as a whole. Conquering the keystroke combinations to do a task isn't a challenge. Once again, its difficulty through complexity.

[hagr]

My biggest issue is that every single book is counted as an artifact now. They are just books like every other item. When I go to legends mode, I don't want to sift through every pamphlet scribbled down to find a slab or book of secrets.

[Chevaleresse]

The problem with the aircraft analogy is that DF simply isn't designed to be user friendly, at least not in the same way. UI improvement comes after gameplay adjustments which come after changes to the simulation. The fighter is ultimately meant to do one thing and everything else it does and shows you is aiming toward that set goal. DF is not. It's meant to spit out a living, breathing world, not to perform at maximum efficiency at all times. Could the UI be better? Of course, the UI is terrible. But "too much detail" doesn't exist beyond FPS concerns.

That said, there are a lot of ways the detail could be parsed in a somewhat more user-friendly way:
1. Consistency between Dwarven/English menus. I'm of the opinion that every menu should have the English last names, at least for your native civ. (A goblin might show up as Gob Goblinspeak, but it should be Urist Englishwords - unless you're playing as goblins.)
2. Some sort of way to move smoothly between related menus - perhaps clicking/scrolling to and selecting the need for abstract thought brings up a list of libraries the dwarf could be assigned to, for example.
3. As mentioned earlier, a parsing of personalities, where the full personality detail could be toggled on, but the default would only show the "notable" traits.

[Salmeuk]

I, for one, am thankful Toady doesn't exhibit the design mentality of a Soviet aerospace engineer, though that was a great post to read. I think you've tripped up a bit though with your argument about false difficulty through complexity. While it's a valid design consideration that difficulty should be found in the game and not the interface(which is how I'm interpreting your argument in that complexity = meta-confusion over the process of play rather than play itself), DF isn't trying to be difficult. The argument doesn't apply because everyone already knows the df ui is meh, and that it isn't a deliberate decision to have names of things be so damn confusing. It's a result of his dev process, which is why you need to have some patience with the state of the interface.

 I still don't really have trouble understanding the category of titles, but I think I've just been playing long enough that context is enough.

Just imagine that playing DF is like sitting in the cockpit of a plane designed not for ease of use but ease of production. Absolutely no concessions (note how this isn't true for DF) have been made for the pilot's task of flying the plane, and instead switches and dials are located in absurd, tough to reach places simply because it was cheaper to build it that way. However, due to this design philosophy the plane is better to fly, once you invest in the controls.

No, I'm not defending the u.i., just helping you to understand why it's as lackluster as it is.

[Sprin]

Well you don't HAVE to read all that and know dwarves are precious snow flakes
You can just set them on fire

[Sutremaine]

I think if each dwarf was treated as a side character it would be more effective. Say if Bomrek Eribbasan from above, instead having the personality of a wall of text, the same as any dwarf, was put off by merrymaking is pleased by her own appearance and talents, likes lions, and prefers to consume hake and demon rat. This personality is a lot more distinct than before when she was kind of nice, kind of egotistical, kind of determined, kind of cowardly, etc.

Every dwarf is the main character of their own life.

That said, the last part gives me an interesting idea. Perhaps there could be a filter for displaying traits. You could set it to display everything, as it does currently, or show only the strongest deviations from the norm. You know the sliding scales in adventurer mode character gen? Kind of like that. 'Filter ---' to 'Filter < --- >' to 'Filter << --- >>' and maybe to 'Filter <<< --- >>>' if you didn't want it on screen at all.