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[Witty]

As many others have already said, three years is still a young fortress. I think ~7-8 years is roughly when you'll start to see the stacking problems the stress system has, depending on how regularly sieges arrive.

I'll use this thread to hawk an old comment of mine. The comment is about dwarf socialization problems, but I think the problem extends to the happiness issue as well. Dwarves will have strongly unmet needs and have no initiative to fulfill them. Most common example I've found are full-time soldiers who need to pray. Despite being devout worshipers, they'll use their off months to read, sit in meeting halls and whatever else that isn't praying. It's like the recreational activity zones command dwarves to attend them, rather than dwarves looking at their needs and acting on those.

Negative thoughts are regular, easy to acquire and potentially long lasting. Equally powerful happy thoughts require strong micro-management of the individual's needs (made worse by their lack of initiative), and that becomes unmanageable/tedious/boring after >50 dwarves without third party tools.

I understand not wanting to make dwarves war-mongering monsters that most players assume dwarves to be - but I would advocate some system to reward players for overcoming a siege. We have a personality and value system that have dwarves that generally honor martial prowess and don't really care about peace. Why do dwarves have no thought for seeing their enemies stopped unless it's their corpse? I imagine that at least some dwarves would be relieved, if not thrilled to see a siege lifted. Some would be upset regardless, but I personally think a great deal of long term stress comes from siege waves that provide only negative thoughts (corpse hauling) even if your constantly victorious in defending the fortress. That's pretty discouraging for any people to be effectively punished for defending their fort.

[bieux]

Somewhat new player here. I've only been playing since 2018, and I recently started a fort that's about 7 years now. I don't have a firm grasp on all that this game has implemented, but I think I can give the 2 cents on what I've observed so far of stress, without comparing it to past versions:

• Forts and Stress are really fine until something bad first happens (like the first death, first werebeast, etc). After that every dwarf starts manifesting problems related to the incident, and it never really stops, at least before the next traumatic event. My forts were always manageable past this point, but were never something more than manageable: There will always be the eventual horrified dwarves job cancelations, tantrumming fights, sudden deaths, etc.
• I see no counterweight to the "bad memories" dwarves get. There are good thoughts and memories, but they don't seem to counteract bad thoughts very well (I get the feel like even a 50-50 proportion seems to lead them to depression and eventually insanity, rather than making them remain indifferent). I've heard personality changes sometimes help, but so far they feel very swingy and not necessarily beneficial to the problems the dwarf is having. One would expect a dwarf who had been rained on and had a personality change about it to start being indifferent to it, or admiring it in some way. Instead, they still complain about the rain.
• There is hardly anything that can be done for depressed or tantrumming dwarves. Once they're in that state, I prefer to exile them instead of addressing the cause of their stresses. I know they probably won't get better once I start giving them what they want, instead they'll get depressed or throwing fits again and again in the near future, until they get insane.

If I may suggest, I feel like dwarves should have some mental defenses, like: Focus on how some personalities could bring oddly beneficial emotions to a certain stressors, dwarves frustrated by being rained on could get the personality change jackpot of liking rain. Prehaps Implement a stress cap for each stressor, so a dwarf that drank without a goblet too many times would stop getting bad thoughts about it upon reaching the "desensitization cap". Even depression could be reframed as a final protective barrier, that makes depressed or tantruming dwarves drop jobs and break stuff, but only as means to "unwind", get better emotionally, slowly get back to a more stable level of stress. And then, if even their breakdown does not help with their stress, they get insane.

Edit: felt it was unfair not to look at how my later forts had much less problems due to stress than my first fort. I think paying attention at the thoughts and preferences really did make for substantially more stable dwarves, so I think disasters can be prevented with correct and careful gameplay, although the same can't be said from starting off of a disaster and attempting to fix it.

[oldmansutton]

Disclaimer: Been playing for over 10 years now.

The old joke back in the previous almost stress free versions was: "I've been starved, dehydrated, wounded, trapped in miasma for a month, and watched my infant torn apart in front of my eyes, buuuut that's a pretty sexy looking chair, so everything is fine now."

Current stress has kind of gone to the other extreme: "I got married, had a baby, live in the lap of luxury, buuuuut it's raining so everything is terrible and will be forever, kill me now."

We've had super-manic dwarves, and we've had uber-depressive dwarves.  It would be nice for not EVERY dwarf to be inflicted with some sort of mental health problem.

A lot of people have touched on pretty much everything that is wrong with stress as it stands, and stress as it used to stand.  Having dwarves (as a norm) being able to cope with stress long term and let go of relatively unimportant one time stressers is going to be key.  Most negatives and positives people deal with in any given day are fleeting, and are forgotten after a good night's sleep. Here are some ideas I've had while reading through all the responses this morning:

- A lot of people mention corpses as being too severe.  I think it's set ok as it is, and turning off corpse/refuse hauling on almost all dwarves should leave you with a couple more stoic and resilient individuals who act as undertakers. It's a gruesome job, and should take its toll on one's mental health.  Even the corpses of enemies are horrifying.  Yes, there's a little mitigation in knowing you are safe now from said enemy, but that doesn't remove the impact of seeing a gore spattered passageway strewn with blood and entrails.

- I also feel like while the average dwarf should be able to cope with fleeting problems/joys, that there SHOULD still be dwarves who are more prone to depression or manic behaviors.

- I love the idea of priests/psychiatrists helping people tend to their mental health.

- I love the idea of a "stress summary" screen, though probably off the "u"nits menu rather than the "z" status screen

- Dwarven autonomy is the second part to the solution.  If you're pushed too far, you're going to take the day off work and try to rebalance mentally. I liked the ideas of them seeking out some form of escape, or some way to meet their need, without having to micromanage them, rather than them just continuing to work themselves to death.

ETA:  I used to do biohazard cleanup, and it's not something I've ever forgotten.  But the more time that goes by since I had to deal with it, the memories become more hazy and less powerful.  The same with some of the intense joys of my life.  The further something is in the past, the less power it should have to effect the present.  There should be some sort of precedence placed on events closer to the present, as being more influential to the current mental health of a dwarf.  The past events shape who they are now, but the present events shape how they will react and who they will be down the road.  Hope this makes sense.

[Gnoll Fortress]

My dwarfs are constantly complaining
 the penalty for seeing an enemies corpse is way too high the same when a random troglodyte dies it can nearly end a fort
 I have over 1000 prepared roasts and they constantly complain about the lack of decent meals
 they complain that they haven't seen their family but they do not ever seek them out
 the military get so stressed I'm losing more to suicide then I ever have to attackers
 also they never seem to get over seeing one goblin die

[Witty]

- A lot of people mention corpses as being too severe.  I think it's set ok as it is, and turning off corpse/refuse hauling on almost all dwarves should leave you with a couple more stoic and resilient individuals who act as undertakers. It's a gruesome job, and should take its toll on one's mental health.  Even the corpses of enemies are horrifying.  Yes, there's a little mitigation in knowing you are safe now from said enemy, but that doesn't remove the impact of seeing a gore spattered passageway strewn with blood and entrails.

I disagree on this point. First off, corpse hauling is very low priority. Even if you have a group of dedicated haulers, they're going to take their sweet time to move the bodies. Plenty of time for others dwarves to see the corpse and get the negative thought. Mind as well make everyone a hauler, the end result is going to be the same.

And while it's undeniably gruesome and harrowing to see, it will become less so with each encounter for your average dwarf. Seeing your first dead sapient would be a lasting experience. Seeing your 154th isn't. But the game currently treats that one with the same severity as the first. Some dwarves will never grow to cope with it obviously, but I imagine most would.

[oldmansutton]

First off, corpse hauling is very low priority. Even if you have a group of dedicated haulers, they're going to take their sweet time to move the bodies.

I'm thinking here, of having a couple individuals who ONLY have corpse hauling turned on.  Dedicated undertakers.

Plenty of time for others dwarves to see the corpse and get the negative thought. Mind as well make everyone a hauler, the end result is going to be the same.

True.  Maybe make it less impactful to SEE a corpse as it is to HANDLE a corpse.  Or maybe a susceptible dwarf could be like, "There is a corpse here, this makes me uncomfortable, I shall refuse to look as I pass by".  Being able to turn our heads away from something we don't necessarily want to see if a defense we use to cope in situations such as these.

And while it's undeniably gruesome and harrowing to see, it will become less so with each encounter for your average dwarf. Seeing your first dead sapient would be a lasting experience. Seeing your 154th isn't. But the game currently treats that one with the same severity as the first. Some dwarves will never grow to cope with it obviously, but I imagine most would.

Very true.  I mean, hopefully your 154th effects you still, but you WILL be more desensitized to it the more exposure you have to it.  My first bio-hazard clean up job was brutal, mentally.  My 5th, not so much.  I do remember them all though with a distinct lack of fondness, but they don't HAUNT me.

[waldo]

I can't really help with the stress aspect of the game, the last time I really say down and played was years ago. I don't really have the time commitment to sit down and effectively manage a bunch of moody dwarves and now I'm finding out that I wouldn't have been able to anyways.

If I were to be polled directly as to the effects of stress I would say it's not just stress which is the issue, obviously it's the brightest issue and has the highest payoff, but it underlines a bigger core issue: complexity has been added, which is good, and the difficulty has increased exponentially, which is bad. I'm not saying the game shouldn't be hard, it has a reputation to uphold, but with every new complex system that has been added it's increased the difficulty of implementing and understanding the new mechanic.

I remember when y'all updated from .40d to .23 and the hardest thing to wrap my head around was the military screen. I had gotten so used to doing it the .40d way which ultimately consisted of manually placing each dwarf's position along the parapets. Once I figured out how to work the squads and the burrows and the emergency systems the difficulty dropped off a little again but picked back up when the regular cave monsters started.

I guess my point is I dropped off because the pace at which there were new aspects to learn about the game in order to have a functioning fort increased quicker than I could learn how to handle said aspects. Maybe I just never got out of noobdom but that's the biggest issue I've had. Well that and having a potato for a computer for most of my life.

[Nameless Archon]

ETA:  I used to do biohazard cleanup, and it's not something I've ever forgotten.

You also weren't doing this job in a world where regular and routine raids and military sieges were a common, expected event - often more than once a year!

There's a big difference between spending your entire life in an environment that is relatively safe and sanitary, and then discovering something like you have, and living in a world where people are routinely killed and buried in war events. The pressure to adapt and "get over it" would be much stronger in this fictional world we describe than in the real world, because exposure to death is a routine and relatively common event, compared to the "modern world" where we segregate such things and only have dedicated people (EMT/fire/police, coroners, undertakers, clean-up) dealing with this.

[brolol.404]

I think there are a lot of good replies, so I will just list the ones that matter to me. I don't think the system is broken, but it could definitely be improved a lot:

> Rain should not cause permanent bad thoughts. Rain can be annoying, but the annoyance of it should fade. This should true of all non life altering events. Dwarves should be annoyed, and then get over it. A few examples are: eating without a table, sleeping on the floor, drinking without a goblet and drinking without a well. Most of us have done all of those things multiple times in real life and some may have been annoyed, but never thought about it again the next day. None of these should stack.
> There are then more serious events that can cause longer periods of unhappiness, but once again they should fade over time. These include: exposed to miasma, getting hurt, experiencing fear and being without clothing. These shouldn't stack unless they are from different sources.
> Only the most serious events should cause potential long term issues like seeing a corpse, being haunted by a ghost or getting extremely wounded. Once again though these should not stack from the same event and should still slowly fade over long periods of time. If they do cause personality changes, they should be less severe and possibly even positive at times (Urist became humble after experiencing immense trauma).
> All of the non-obtainable requirements for stress should be removed. If there is no way for the player to do it (or it would be extremely difficult) it should not cause stress. It would be better to motivate the player with positive thoughts for these instances.
> Dwarves should do what they need to in order to be happy. They should stop all labor and go pick up an item, pray, take time off, talk with friends or talk with family like they do when they are tired, hungry and thirsty.
> If a dwarf has a choice of wearing their preferred item or eating their preferred food, they should choose that even if it is further away.
> Stress should be something that can not only be mitigated, but also recovered from. It should be an obstacle in the story, not the ending to every story. If dwarves are stressed/unhappy about non life altering events, the player should be able to change their environment and shortly thereafter, dwarves should be ok again.
> Tantrums should be temporary for the most part. Most dwarves should come back from a complete snap relatively quickly. Currently, once a dwarf has snapped, they are a lost cause. They may come out of their tantrum at some point, but they quickly go back into it. A tantrum is already punishing enough, there is no need to make that dwarf permanently useless.

Currently, a dwarf becoming utterly harrowed by the tragic nightmare that is his life over some trivial events over the course of a few years seems silly. Especially since they are 100 years old and seem to have never experienced any stress related issues in their life.

[PatrikLundell]

I'm disagreeing with waldo about the difficulty (never played those old versions mentioned, though). As far as I can see, DF isn't brutally difficult, and the rumor about that is misdirected and exaggerated. What it is, however, is massively filled with system of varying complexity, and learning them all in detail would be a massive task (I've ignored a number of them completely, and learned only what I believe I need to know about others).
However, you don't need to learn everything to run a successful fortress, as much of it is optional and other mechanics can be replaced with alternatives. For the fortress to survive, you need to get the basics to have a sustainable fortress, and unless you'll turn off sieges you'll also have to know how to keep the majority of the dorfs safe from enemies. After that, it's a matter of what you want to do with your fortresses: explore new (to you) mechanics, megaprojects, eternal bloodshed through sieges and raids (made difficult currently due to stress/work load induced by the former and fortress ending bugs with the latter).

@oldmansutton: No, with only half a dozen corpse cleaners you're likely to only rarely be able to let the civilians out onto the surface as new sieges tend to arrive before the cleanup from the previous one(s) is done, and when that "rarely" happens the whole hauler population will spend the time into the next siege hauling clothes and equipment. This assumes you're beating the enemy in the field or kill them with weapon traps (which I don't). Cage traps relieves some of it, and depending of captive disposal method, you can get rid of a fair bit of the hauling of their equipment.

Edit (hard to post and cover everything when other posts appear while you write yours):@brolol.404
- I think the current distinction betweem normal and "!" need activities is fine as a principle. If the overseer doesn't provide time off there should be consequences, but of there is time off dorfs should take care of things on their own (claim trinket when it becomes available, like clothes, and then pick it up in their free time, for instance). A fortress where dorfs are treated reasonably well should work better than one where they're worked to the bone (introducing Meet Friends! and actually do that would be great if Meet Friends wasn't available, rather than the current blanket Socialize(!) activity).
- I've seen dorfs go longer for preferred drinks and food than they'd have to. The problem here is probably not pathing but availability, with most dorfs just having a choice of "don't care" meals. The demotion of lavish meals doesn't help players used to the previous system when they were useful (they now have no mood effect at all in themselves, but can serve as "rare ingredient extenders" by mixing rare stuff with common ingredients. Of course, actually getting lavish meals prepared in an intelligent fashion at a fortress wide scale is currently close to impossible with vanilla DF). I think the reason for masterwork clothing the floor of dorf rooms is due to claiming a corresponding item of a desired material, but haven't investigated.
- Dorfs that have had a strange mood are immune to insanity. I had one that was tantruming and had maximum stress, but once I managed to get the finicky bugger to pick up a trinket of a desired material (wouldn't take anything else hauled), a slow trek towards recovery started. Unfortunately, the fortress was cut short by raid corruption when the stress level had improved from -100000 to -70000 (which is still extremely bad). I believe I also did other things apart from the crucial trinket acquisition to improve the condition of this starting 7 dorf, though.

[alexsa2015sa]

On personality changes in particular:

A major problem that, there actually isn't nowhere enough diversity in personality changes. They very often seem flat and one-dimensional for most of events. This contributes to "only negative" and "only positive" trends both. Pretty much all negative spectrum of emotional events is divorced from positive ones, which isn't realistic. As disheartening it is, people feeling good from hating someone is a thing, at minimum (currently it's purely negative stress, which I guess rules out certain real-world beliefs from existing so there's that). Ascetics wouldn't mind starving if it helps their enlightenment, too. And so on. Lots of things don't seem to get parsed with enough granularity.

With the way current personality changes work, cultural values are less than a polite suggestion given long enough time for one-dimensional events to hammer. It's understandable with Law arc away, but doesn't change another fact, that being stubborn in face of troubles is pretty much impossible for fragile... dwarves. The only thing they can resist is corpse seeing, which has its own mechanics. All else, they don't seem to be able to endure stoically at all. Rain? pah, that's small problem.

For an example of unstoppable positive trend (which I haven't seen mentioned): I usually run multi-generational forts. Irregardless of starting psyche pretty much every big enough family (4-5 kids) in 44.12 accumulates an assortment of +50 family, peace, harmony, merrymaking, tranqulity, and (I think) leisure time (and maybe martial prowess too) by year 4-5ish. Also love propensity and friendliness and lower hate propensity, I think, but I'm more iffy on that as I don't track personality traits as much.

(A contributing factor might be the fact I keep the families more permanently stationed in the fort while others raid stuff and do work outside of central areas, but even so they are called upon during sieges, everyone's hardened individuals, sometimes even babies who got carried along, so...)

For family personalities, the result is identical between starting dwarves, elves, humans, goblins and anything else else I tried. Even from goblins and humans, even worse -50 monsters. If that's not broken I don't know what is; and half these values make for strong needs. Sample size is ~100 total between eldest children and parents of all races; this suggests culture should noticeably affect personality drift too. This dwarfication of all probably is not the intent of the DF despite its name, as it's a fantasy simulator, so there's work to be done here. If Myth and Magic adds cultures of procgen creatures we can play, this problem will rear its ugly head especially starkly.

[wooks]

Hi ThreeToe and/or Toady,

If you've read this far I just wanted to say, you're doing a good job, and while there is a lot or criticism here, we all love and adore the game you've built.

While getting this ironed out seems daunting, you've got this! -- and were looking forward to testing your fixes whenever they may come.

[catoblepas]

To speak on a very specific item that could use some development: Prefstrings

Your dwarf might have a preference for copper or bronze or pine or flash opals or white-handed gibbons, and they tend not to be very impactful on dwarves moods. I rarely see dwarves acquire objects, and the impact seems to be minimal, if noticeable at all. I'm honestly not sure if putting zinc cabinets in the room of a dwarf who likes zinc is something they actually would even notice. What I do see, and see frequently, is dwarves complaining about not getting their favorite food or drink, which is extremely bizarre. The positive effects of prefstrings should be more noticeable at least, and I'd like to see some more robust associations between materials. If a Dwarf has black-handed gibbon available but not white, they should at least get a small boost from being able to get ahold of gibbon While metals can be relatively easy to acquire, meeting a dwarf's specific dietary preferences is tiresome and frequently unreasonable. Some sort of system for putting materials under different umbrellas could alleviate this. I think it would be neat to see a dwarf's bio say something like "Urist prefers to consume gibbon, particularly white-handed gibbon" or something like that. Other materials could also use a similar system, like wood being divided into hardwood and softwood. Bronze and Brass being copper alloys etc.

In short, I think it should be easier for dwarves to benefit from their prefstrings, and that their prefstrings should not be quite as laser-focused. Most of the time when I notice them in game is when they build an artifact or they complain about their food.

[vettlingr]

"Whenever a dwarf is born, Armok tosses a coin, if it turns up heads, the dwarf will be sane, woe to the unlucky misery stricken dwarf that got the tails."

I've done a lot of testing in a fort over 60 years. Using different Dfhack commands to reset stress occasionally over 20 years, while playing some 20 years more without intervention.

Resetting the stress, had the effecft that most dwarves were kept happy, though some things I noticed time and time again:
- Group A: Dwarves with high stress vulnerability, end up stressed after a few seasons anyway after a stress reset. no matter how blissful they were the moment after the reset.
- Group B: Some dwarves got time to "rethink values and personalities" due to trauma/stressful situations and by extension were less vulnerable to stress in the future. These developed into C and D
- Group C: Dwarves with low stress vulnerability, that get stressed due to seeing corpses, trauma or wretching on miasma that suddenly developed more stress vulnerability. These developed into A over time
- Group D: Dwarves with low stress vulnerability that never seem to get bothered by anything.

In a fortress without occasional stress resets, the groups are the same, but there is next to no movement between groups except downwards, since stressed dwarves are too depressed/catatonic/angry to get any free time or do anything they like.

Prisoners seem to act in three different ways over all:
- Group Z: Angry at being in prison, don't let them out! Low respect for law?
- Group Y: Shameful, sad or something else, there may be hope for him?
- Group W: Repentant, keeping them in prison for long will essentially reset their stress. High respect for Law?

Main stressful moments according to dwarves:
- Rain - Dwarves have disdain for Nature, which essentially is either "Hate it" or in the best case "Feel nothing", there is no good thought among dwarves (or Elves) for being outside
- Miasma - Understandable, though they will mull about it for 8+ years.
- Trauma - Bad on all accounts, understandable.
- Corpses! - Initially dwarves will be either horrified or uneasy when viewing corpses, but doing so for a prolonged time will harden them. Though most dwarves will go mad before that happens. there seems to be no limit to how many bad thoughts multiple corpses can give either.
- Conflicts - Vengeful dwarves get multiple thoughts from entering the same conflict, essentially making them mad after one engagement.
- Arguments - Probably essential, but I feel dwarves should have to develop grudges before getting negative thoughts from arguments.

Main Stress Relief according to dwarves:
- Performances - They seems to be working, especially if there are masterwork instruments present, though they never seem to find the right instruments when performing
- Socializing - This seems to not work unless they speak to a friend, since they never seem to develop friendships, this activity seems to be restricted to inns as well.
- Befriending - It seems that Passing acquaintances decay to quickly in a busy fortress, and they will not develop friendships unless in an inn.
- Prayer - Temple activity seems to be working fine.
- Filling needs - This one is very convoluted and requires micromanagement such as changing jobs and alike frequently. The problem here is that the needs seem to tick up simultaneously, hence as soon as they satisfy one (if even possible) another or five others have already triggered a negative thought. I don't know how impactful it is, but my stress vulnerable dwarves with little to no action/trauma seem to get immensely stress only due to this.

[TrevorBOB9]

TL;DR of what I’ve read in other comments (on Reddit) and my personal opinions.

• Nerf rain.
• Balance corpses v.s. corpse parts and corpses/parts of different races (own species, friendly species, hostile species, large animal, animal, vermin).
  
• Give mood boosts for victories over sieges/werebeasts/forgotten beasts/etc.
• Allow dwarves to relieve stress by talking to more than just authorities (priests [do those actually exist?], friends, family, tavern keepers, entertainers).
• Balance need fulfillment. I’m not well versed in how strong things are now, but some needs (alcohol, socialization) should be stronger and have more serious consequences if unfulfilled, however, I shouldn’t have every single non-military dwarf unfocused because they haven’t been able to practice a martial art. Also, again idk how balanced it is now, but a dwarf who likes granite should have BIG mood boost from seeing granite, and not that much disappointment from not seeing it. To counter unstoppable happiness from living underground in a granite area, the boost could significantly reduce for each new hit in a certain time period (does that make sense?)