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[qualiyah]

3 years is way too short. The stress problem takes time to develop, because some of the dwarves who see dead bodies will get permanent negative personality changes months later, and then those permanent personality changes will cause them to gradually get more and more unhappy in response to trivial stressors, but that process can take a few years. Plus, each new siege will doom a bunch more dwarves. Plus, it takes years for unmeetable needs to get into the red, but once a dwarf has a need that's been unmet a really long time, that's a hefty negative thought that recurs over and over and over again.

Suggestions (many of these have already been made, but I'll second them):

1) Comparatively trivial things like getting rained on, going out into the sun after becoming cave-adapted, drinking stagnant or otherwise nasty water, getting caught in miasma, and having one's 257th masterwork sock accidentally dropped down the magma chute, should cause unhappy thoughts, but should not cause permanent personality changes.

Right now, I see trauma from silly things like that vastly more often than I see it from genuine tragedies: I have dwarves whose entire families have died in horrific ways, sometimes right before their eyes, but the traumatic incidents that stick with them are the times when they had to go out into the rain or the sun, and that one time some spoiled food stunk up the dining room. The memory system could be really cool if it was mainly about personality changes as a result of, e.g., the death of a loved one, but right now it mostly just seems silly.

At the very least, the more trivial things should have a miniscule risk of causing permanent personality changes, which then decreases the more times it has happened, as dwarves get used to the experience.

As a side-note, I think major personality changes just happen too often, in *both* directions, in a way that trivializes them and undermines the whole concept of a personality trait. After 10 years in a fortress, there are a bunch of extreme personality traits that were originally quite rare that are now really common, because so many dwarves have had experiences which gave them those traits. And while I used to try to get a sense of what my dwarves were like psychologically, that is undermined by the fact that they invariably end up with completely different personalities 10 years later. I think it would be better to have personality changes happen more rarely, so that you could expect to see it happen only a few times in a full lifetime. Alternately, you could make it so that most personality shifts move a dwarf only slightly--say, 5 points on the personality scale--rather than drastically (but also making it such that these changes could affect the same personality trait multiple times).

2) Make it so dwarves get special happy thoughts from eating their favorite food, but DON'T get unhappy if they haven't had their favorite food in a long time. It's incredibly annoying to have some dwarf whose major source of stress is not getting to eat a food that's literally unobtainable. Bear in mind that they get more and more upset about this with each passing year! Instead, make it so that lavish meals are enough to satisfy their desire for a "decent meal." This seems both less frustrating and more realistic.

3) Currently, dwarves become desensitized to death after seeing lots of sentients die, and once they're desensitized, they no longer get upset when seeing dead bodies. However, currently, seeing dead bodies alone doesn't produce desensitization: a dwarf who hasn't seen anyone actually die will be as upset at seeing their 100th dead body as at seeing their first. That doesn't make sense: dwarves should gradually get desensitized to seeing dead bodies once they've seen enough dead bodies.

4) Soldiers who value martial prowess should get powerful happy thoughts (including the chance of a permanent positive personality change) from participating in a successful siege defense or raid. There really should be some reward for having your soldiers fight the enemy hand-to-hand; right now, all the incentives are on the side of turtling up or using traps instead. This seems more realistic, plus, seeing your soldiers elated by their victory would feel really rewarding as a player.

5) Make it so a dwarf who likes (for example) zinc and chickens gets a stronger happy thought from seeing or owning a zinc statue, or a statue of a chicken, than they would get from any other statue of the same quality and value. Currently, dwarves seem to respond only to the quality of statues and engravings, not to their subject or material. This would be a nice way to reward players who like to pay attention to the individual personalities and preferences of their dwarves.

6) Fix the bug that causes some dwarves to get dozens of simultaneous negative thoughts about "vengeance" every time they join in a fight that's already going on.

7) Dwarves need to be better at seeking out the things that they need: they should prioritize going to the temple of the god they haven't prayed to in ages (rather than praying in the same temple over and over and over again while neglecting the other one), and they should actively seek out their friends and family members to talk to when they're lonely because they haven't talked to a friend or family member in a long time--and if they don't currently have any friends or family members, they should seek out their current favorite acquaintance (to help raise the chance of friendships forming).

[therahedwig]

Most of the things have been said, but I wanted to point out I've had the tantrum spiral happen on forts with the invasions turned off. In one of these cases it was caused by having a period when there was nothing drinkable, but once I got drinks going it... didn't stop, and I guess that's the most unintuitive part of it. In another case it was caused by... I think a titan? May have been something else, but it was also a completely peaceful fort, and something comes by, kills some dwarves, and it becomes impossible to recover from it because everyone is constantly in panic.

From my own observations, it seems that there's just plain more stressors than destressors in regular play. And a lot of the reasons for this imbalance seems to be caused by bugs (unmeetable needs, social issues(in the real world, a lot of stress management is done by complaining to others), super minor stressors like rain having such a large impact, bugged tavern keepers), and I am slightly worried, as the next release seems to be intent on adding even more stressors.

[SkaiaMechanic]

Many have covered the issues already, but I wanted to state my emphasis.

Stress is a great mechanic. Seeing the corpse of a loved one should put a dwarf into shock, and generates empathy. Being able to dwell on terrible conditions makes it so you need to take care of your whole fort.

What's incredibly frustrating is when you take active steps to avoid unnecessary stress, yet it accumulates anyways.

For example: Many dwarfs are frustrated by not being able to pray to a certain Deity. So you build a temple, decorate it, problem solved! But...Dwarves are busy, and never take time on their own to pray...so they become more and more frustrated. You addressed the issue, but unless you micromanage each individual dwarf to make sure they take time to pray, it doesn't do much. They should be able to take time on their own by default. They can still complain about the quality of their deity's temple, but not that they can't pray at all. Only way to solve this taking all their jobs off and hoping for the best.

Example 2: Dwarves complain about eating low-quality food. So you cook a thousand lavish dishes! Your dwarves will dine like kings! But then they pick up a raw plump helmet and keep complaining, ignoring all the masterwork meals you've produced. You addressed the issue, but it did nothing. Dwarves should be able to eat food that makes them happy if it's available. Maybe if they can't get their favorite food they won't be ecstatic thoughts, but they shouldn't complain about the lack of quality meals and be satisfied at the selection. Or at least not get negative thoughts.

Example 3: Dwarves like to gain social connections. Great! You build a grand tavern they can relax in to chat with other dwarves. But unless you build your tavern in a broom closet, they'll never converse. It would be fine if some dwarves were extroverted and some introverted, making friends easier for some than others. But there's no clear way to solve the problem without, again, removing all their jobs and hoping for the best. This also applies to meeting up with spouses.

What would be great is if Dwarves could be counted on to take care of their own needs if it's made available by default. Now, sometimes you want something done right away, and NOT take months to build. If you could assign "High Priority" to these tasks, it would be done by any qualified Dwarf, breaking only for food and sleep. Then they truly won't be able to meet their needs and moods will quickly tank unless you have an entire team of dwarves supporting them. (and thus likely getting lower quality items than one or two designated expert dwarves.) That would be an interesting gameplay decision, balancing efficiency with stress.
Obviously, Military Duty would be an exception, which would make the military rotation schedule even more important.

That's my biggest gripe about the current stress system. Dwarves should be able to take care of their needs if available, with the goal to make those needs available at all times. Bad things should still happen which put dwarves in a bad mood or even change their personality. They should be able to complain about how their furniture is shoddy unlike their neighbor's masterwork, or be disgusted at blood and vomit in the hallways. But the day-to-day stressors? Those should be able to be mitigated.

[ozyma]

I can't say how happy that this is being worked on. DF has been my absolute favorite thing in the world and as of right now I simply am unable to play it. The question of the game used to be "what is my fort going to die from" now it is "how long can I last before all of my dwarfs inevitably go insane from not eating pears or getting rained on while trying to get pears." I start every game focusing almost only on stress and do everything to reduce it and I still just collapse from it despite filling literally every square inch of unused space with masterwork golden statues and every other trick in the book.

I think a lot of people have pointed out the problems with the system but I think a lot of the proposed solutions will just lead back to the old system. Way back when I first started playing I had a tantrum spiral after my queen got ganked. I went to the wiki and found out that you can't just make plump helmet wine and you need a nice dining hall. I created those things and I never had to think about it after that.

After you did the basic things it stopped providing any sort of interesting stories or gameplay. The stress system ideally combats this by making trauma something that you actually have to deal with. I think Toady's description of his venerable 3 year old fort is a great description of what I'd love to see in this game. it's a great story and makes the events in your fort feel like they meaningfully impact your dwarfs. If someone's child dies or they're a new recruit and see the horrors of battle they should be terrified (maybe  even to the point that they can't continue fighting), depressed, and inconsolable so that no legendary dinning hall will just make them instantly happy again. But if you care for them they will recover and even grow from the experience. That's a good story. As of right now it just seems like if you are in any fortress for long enough most of your dwarfs will just get more and more stressed.

A lot of people suggest automatic stress reduction to fix this and to a degree I think that would be good. Being able to set a workshop or training space for free use and having dwarfs that have a need to craft or fight to go and fulfill that. But having stress reduction be itself an automatic action that depressed dwarfs do until they fell happy again would just lead us right back to the same old system of not having to care until I realize my legendary weaponsmith is off reducing stress instead of forging. That's an annoyance and not a challenge. What I really wish I was able to do would be something like seeing that my militia commander has been fighting off goblin raids for so long and losing so many of his comrades (though dwarfs no longer casually socialize on the job anymore so he probably wouldn't even care lol) that he's getting really depressed and being able to send him off to something like a golden mist filled pleasure dome with exotic elven women who serve him wine until he feels like he can get himself back in the game.

People have also mentioned people becoming inured to stressors which is in principle a good idea but could easily lead back to just not having to worry about massive amounts of stress causing things. Like not even caring about a miasma filled corpse pile in the middle of the fortress because they've already maxed out their miasma bad though penalty for the day. I think ideally the end result needs to be that say hunters who are constantly going out into the rain should start appreciating nature and not really care about getting rained on but will still be horrified at combat and visa versa for a military dwarf. Similarly a mortician dwarf should not care about handing corpses but still retch at miasma and be afraid of combat. Though dwarfs should be limited to only ever being able to not care about a few stressors

I also really like the idea that personality traits should play a bigger role in the amount and cause of stress. Dwarfs that love war and conquest should get happy thoughts from corpses while peaceful and skittish dwarfs should be reduced to a brief and recoverable catatonia from simply seeing a few dead bodies. Same with rain and nature, and I'm sure there's a lot of other examples of things that would make most people happy make people with certain traits uncaring or sad and visa versa.

I have some thoughts on corpse hauling. I have to say that I'm an average person who has worked in a funeral home and been around many dead bodies. It is frightening and unnerving to see a corpse for the first time. But just a corpse isn't really anything that you think about after the next day. Seeing a horrifically dismembered and rotting corpse is absolutely horrific and can scar a person for a while, particularly if it's a loved one. But even that you get used to fairly quickly.

TL;DR I think the stress system needs to have the average dwarf in a reasonably well kept fortress be generally happy even after a long period of time. Meanwhile, dwarfs that are subjected to a particularly specific and easily recognizable horrific event should be ripped from their happiness into depression. This means increasing the initial values of particularly horrific things like seeing combat or having a loved one die to be much, much higher while increase the stress decay rate and giving players specific tools to reasonably focus in and unstress those specific dwarfs with a reasonable amount of time and resources.

[green_meklar]

I posted a response to this on Reddit that some people said was good and that I should post here, so here's a copy+paste of it:

[start copy+paste]

I would agree that dwarven stress is too serious of a problem right now, in a way that feels like it constrains gameplay. Some points that come to mind are the following:

• The effect of rain on dwarven mental health is blown way out of proportion. Dwarves should not be going insane after spending years haunted by the recurring memory of getting rained on that one time when they went out to collect a log and put it in a stockpile. It's not realistic and it's not fun. I get it that dwarves are supposed to prefer living underground, but this is a bad way to incorporate that into the game.
• The psychological effect of seeing corpses is probably also blown out of proportion (especially when each tooth and bone counts as an entire corpse). I get it that in real life people do get pretty disturbed by seeing corpses, particularly those of people they know, and in that sense this is somewhat realistic. However, we have to remember that this is a high fantasy game and combat is a big part of it. There are a lot more opportunities for dwarves to see corpses in the game than there are for people to see corpses in real life. Trying to give dwarves realistic reactions to this completely unrealistic level of violence is just not good balance for a game. (Additionally, dwarves lack any tools for extracting items from underwater. If a dwarf falls into water and drowns right next to a busy area, their corpse lies there just under the surface causing traumatic thoughts to every other dwarf who walks by, and the process of trying to pump out the water just to retrieve that one corpse is much slower and more complicated than is either realistic or good for gameplay.)
• Dwarves respond very negatively to the corpse of any sapient creature, even an enemy or something that doesn't resemble dwarves at all. This isn't very realistic. Dwarves should not be that upset from seeing the corpse of a goblin, troll or plump helmet man. Or at least, seeing dead enemies should give them happy thoughts about victory and security to counter their feelings of disgust.
• A lot of dwarves just have too many needs to take care of. Some dwarves might get unhappy because they didn't socialize enough, or because they didn't get enough intellectual stimulation, or because they didn't get to pray to their favorite deity enough, or because they haven't been able to let off steam in a fight, or because they haven't done anything creative, etc. Again, that may be quite realistic, but the problem here is that players don't want to micromanage every dwarf's work/life balance. Either the seriousness of this mechanic should be turned down, or some sort of additional automation should be implemented to allow dwarves schedules for doing all the various things they need to do in order to have fulfilling lives (the way they already take time off for sleeping, eating, drinking, breaks, and strange moods).
• The amount of damage dwarves cause during tantrums is pretty ridiculous, and bad for gameplay. Rebuilding random structures that get knocked down by tantruming dwarves is annoying at best, and dangerous at worst (when they decide to knock down the one drawbridge protecting you from the goblin hordes outside). In general, it's way too easy for dwarves to kill other dwarves or knock down buildings when they get upset. (When's the last time you saw somebody in real life dismantle a stone drawbridge in a fit of rage?) The escalation of tantrums should be more gradual, with more, and more effective, methods of intervention available along that route.
• There aren't really any ways for dwarves to alleviate their stress, other than complaining to somebody in charge, and that doesn't seem to be very effective. Dwarves should be able to get similar positive effects by talking over their troubles with family members, priests, philosophers, etc. There could even be dedicated dwarven psychiatrists the way there are already dedicated surgeons, that is, unless we're just assuming that priests fill that role in the medieval sort of world the dwarves live in.
• Another way of balancing mental illness is to replace most of the tantrums with suicides or suicide attempts. In real life, there are more suicides than murders; the average person is more likely to be killed by themselves than by someone else (at least in a direct sense). Giving dwarves a tendency to commit suicide rather than punching everything around them would help the mental illness component of the game feel more manageable; the loss of one unhappy dwarf, while unfortunate and sobering for the player, does not interfere much with the proper functioning of a fort the way wanton violence and demolition do. Moreover, if dwarves can fail their suicide attempts (again, highly realistic), logging these attempts in the announcements screen would help the player to identify unhappy dwarves and get them help.
• Cave adaptation, while perhaps not a major contributor to stress the way rain and corpses are, is honestly just not a fun component of the game. I'm not sure why it's there. Nobody gets any enjoyment out of dealing with it, least of all new players who don't know as much about how to arrange fort layouts. The game would probably just be straight better without it. (And with the myth/magic release coming up, there'll be a lot more opportunity for new ailments that are actually interesting to play around.)

To answer ThreeToe's specific question:

I want to know what kind of play style is causing people to quit in frustration.

My conjecture here is: Basically, treating the dwarves as workers rather than people, and not bothering to micromanage them.

Toady and ThreeToe presumably approach the game from a sort of D&D perspective because their background is in that sort of stuff. The D&D paradigm teaches you to care about every party member, to think of them as individuals and treat them accordingly. Also, Toady and ThreeToe have the time to devote to doing this ingame because the game is literally their job. The average newcomer to the game, and the average person in the Steam audience pool they want to appeal to, is not coming at it from this perspective at all. They're coming at it from a standard gaming perspective where individuality and characterization are not emphasized, so they see the dwarves first and foremost as a workforce to carry out their commands. The villagers in Age of Empires don't get PTSD from walking past the corpse of a slain scout cavalry; the SCVs in StarCraft don't get bored because they're always mining minerals instead of vespene gas; and so on. Most players see their dwarves as having the same basic role as an Age of Empires villager or a StarCraft SCV. When you tell them how the dwarves all have personalities and react to seeing things around them, they go 'Oh, cool!', but they don't internalize this as meaning that they should treat the dwarves in a fundamentally different way. Besides which, they simply don't have the time for all that micromanagement. If you have 150 dwarves in your fort, and you spend just two minutes on each dwarf to assign him the jobs most suitable to his personality and fill his bedroom with furniture made of materials he likes, you've just spent five whole hours focusing on nothing but your dwarves' psychological needs. Most people just don't have the patience for that. They want to achieve something more in the span of five hours of gameplay than merely keeping their dwarves from going berzerk out of sheer depression.

(Also, it doesn't help that every new player wants to start their first embark where wood is plentiful, which is to say, where rain is also plentiful.)

[end copy+paste]

I also want to say that I've skimmed through this thread and seen a number of really great replies here already. I hope the devs are reading this stuff carefully. The general sentiment about stress being way too persistent and about the creativity being sapped out of the game by the need to orient everything around keeping dwarves from becoming miserable is very on-point.

Moreover, I would recommend that the devs find someone who hasn't played the game before and watch them play it. Only paying attention to gameplay and testimony from experts often gives a skewed idea of what's going wrong. Carefully watching a newcomer playing a game can be extremely informative. It lets developers cut through their built-up subconscious assumptions about what playing the game looks like. This is known to be a highly effective practice in software development generally.

To sum up concisely the fixes I would be inclined to implement right now, roughly in descending order of priority:

• Have negative thoughts, particularly minor ones, fade much more quickly over time. Getting rained on once for five minutes shouldn't be a source of stress a year later.
• Automate more of dwarves' psychological self-maintenance. The player shouldn't be toggling them between idleness and karoshi every time they turn a job on or off.
• Make tantrums less common and/or less destructive. (Possibly introduce suicide attempts as a less destructive alternative to tantrums, unless of course suicide is considered too touchy a topic even for this game.)
• Implement a better UI for detecting and managing dwarven stress. (The DFHack advanced labors screen is good, but something that shows specific sources of stress would be even better.)
• Ditch the entire cave adaptation mechanic.
• Make corpse disposal a higher-priority job.
• Give dwarves more outlets for their frustration: Talking over their troubles with parents, siblings, friends, priests, philosophers, drinking buddies, or even dedicated psychiatrists, rather than having to cry on the mayor (who may not be available) every time.
• Reduce the effects of seeing dead enemies or dead creatures of other races, and/or give dwarves positive thoughts of victory and security to offset the negative effects of seeing corpses after sieges.
• Give dwarves ways of praying that aren't just in temples (much less deity-specific temples). For instance, let them carry around a figurine of a deity for some religious comfort, or have a personal shrine in their bedroom.
• Give dwarves ways of getting intellectual stimulation that aren't just from books. Having an intellectual conversation with a friend, scholar, visitor, or master of a shared craft should have a similar effect as reading a good book.
• Give dwarves positive thoughts just for eating high-quality food, rather than requiring (often very rare) ingredients in their food. (A list of 'food dislikes' would probably be more realistic than 'food preferences', and easier to balance.)
• Let dwarves who miss their family members outside the fort alleviate their stress by sending/receiving messages with caravans, diplomats, or even trained messenger birds.

[PatrikLundell]

It can be noted that militia schedules don't really work with needs, as dorfs above some fairly low skill level spend most of their off duty time on individual training, at the expense of civilian jobs as well the as meeting their needs. Deassigning the training facilities from the squad allows them to act as if they were actually off duty. It can be done manually (which I did when playing), but that defeats the purpose of having a schedule in the first place.

It would be useful if there was a way to provide facilities and material for work related needs (such as crafting and martial arts training) dedicated to needs fulfillment so off job duty dorfs could satisfy their needs without overseer micro management. Example for martial arts: weapon racks with training weapons and shields allocated to the training facilities where dorfs could pick up an optional weapon and an optional shield for individual training (or sparring, if a spontaneous partner happens to be present), returning the equipment when called for other duties. If the dorfs are already carrying equipment (because they're essentially armed civilians who perform civilian jobs and don't get much training time), they obviously wouldn't need to borrow equipment.

- It can be noted that dorfs DO commit suicide, both indirectly by stumbling obliviously to their deaths (such as into my well cistern, which has also received visitor babies, as those aren't taken care of by their mothers), and more directly through starvation/dehydration. Tantruming is one of several insanity precursors, but the one that causes the most immediate damage.
- Corpse stress was differentiated a few releases back to make a difference between races/civs as well as body parts. I've seen caravans pass quite a few half goblin teeth and even occasional invader bodies without wagon deconstruction/flights (although bodies can still cause these effect). However, siege litter cleanup is still rather dangerous to a fortress' mental health. It may well be that there's a need for a reduction in the accumulation due to volume.

[bieux]

I think people here are pinpointing preciselly a lot of what's wrong about the stress system, but I fear that the suggestions to deal with the problems by erasing their sources are a bit hasty. I believe most of the hate comming from the big stressors (Rain, Socialization, Adaptation) are how helpless the player is to make the dwarves not get affected by it. Provided everything else works as intended, I'm positive that these sources could still be as stressful as they are, and the players would have a much better time had they had better tools to deal with them.

[Narrrz]

In my experience the impact of Miasma on dwarven mental health is too great (as are minor nuisances like drinking without a goblet, sleeping without a proper room, etc) and dwarves get excessively traumatized by seeing the same old dead bodies time and again. With care these issues can be avoided, but sooner or later you will likely start feeling the accumulated effects of just occasional exposure.

If miasma is so awful to dwarves, perhaps they should react to it like other trauma, except instead of freezing in fear or horror, they get overwhelmed by disgust and are compelled to run away from the source, thus limiting their exposure and therefore stress?

If a dwarf is somehow unable to avoid miasma and gets stuck in that nauseated state, that's when the major stress should set in.

Also, unease from dead people should dial down with repeated exposure, something like cave adaptation. Every time a dwarf sees a dead body it should temporarily reduce their propensity for negative thoughts about death. Also, it would be nice if dwarves felt righteous or vindicated seeing dead/dying enemies, presumably tied to their particular personalities.

It might be overkill, but it would be nice if stress propensity decreased with exposure, too.

[DG]

Something not covered in-depth is how the stress system highlights the incongruity of player forts in comparison to the rest of the game world. How do stress-vulnerable dwarves comfortably reach adult/old age in other dwarf sites only to quickly succumb to horror in a player fort?

Other sites suffer sieges, too. If "perfect play" must always result in unavoidable stress deaths over time (I don't agree) then I should be reading about them elsewhere in legends mode. If it's because player forts suffer more sieges, then there has to be good reasons for that, and dwarves need to know about it when deciding to emigrate. Of course, there should be unwise individuals who either don't do their research, ignore advice, overestimate themselves or a combination of all three and turn up anyway. It can be a good plot hook for these types to cause trouble or generally be a nuisance. But if vulnerable people are exposed to horror to the point of nudging madness they should have the option and agency to leave of their own accord. At the moment they can die of insanity or be exiled if the player intervenes. Patrik observed how exiled dwarves poison the population pool of future forts in the world. It's important if a core aim of DF is continuous play to build up layers of player-influenced history rather than constant new world generation.

Leaving hellholes of their own volition is an old game-changing suggestion that isn't limited to affecting stress mechanics but needs to be incorporated into long-term changes to stress mechanics.

=====

I think Toady's description of his venerable 3 year old fort is a great description of what I'd love to see in this game.

That's Threetoe/Zach in the op.

[Untrustedlife]

I think the general consensus from both reddit and this thread is that dwarves should be more autonomous when it comes to their mental needs. Dwarves building a little shrine in their room , or even in the middle of the dining hall if they can’t pray. Popping down to the barracks to spar if they need to practice a martial art. They craft up a bone figurine or some drive if they have a need for that. These sorts of things (along with stress balancing) would serve to not only fix this stress issue but to also improve dwarves in general and make fort mode more interesting. I know toady lamented in the past about how “annoying” it could be for a dwarf to drop a shrine in the middle of the dining hall but it wouldn’t be annoying at all, nor would this extra automation it would simply be cool and more balanced in general.

[NordicNooob]

I'm normally a bit more wordy, but seeing as there have been several dozen college length essays written already, I'll try to keep it short. I'll list things from the worst problems to the least bad.

1. Personality change. That's what kills your dwarves. Rare cases of extreme change are fine, just add some weighted ranges to it please. It's broken both ways, long term forts can exploit childbirth to make everybody stress immune. Long term forts just aren't as common though, so the benefits aren't very reapable.
2. Powerful bad thoughts. Sealing off the world is the only viable way to not have stress problems except maybe in the case where you're running an aboveground desert fort. Bodies must be automatically disposed or just ignored in a place where your dorfs won't wander(since they in themselves don't contribute to mental hardness much of any, unlike witnessing death).
3. Almost everything about socializing. From taverns to honeymoon suites to the 20% no marry chance, there's so much that needs fixing. Villains has clearly made some of this null, but I especially hope that marriage becomes more common and that socializing isn't in its current state for too long. Also of note, it can be overpowered to have rapid socializing going on, with a properly sized tavern other forms of recreation aren't needed for happiness.
4. Needs are sort of broken. Meals and family need to be actually possible to achieve through means other than forcing marriage or forcing a dwarf to have only one option for food. A lot of others could be easier as well, like being extravagant (maybe automatic accessory pickup for certain stockpiles?) and excitement (is throwing a tavern party not exciting?).
5. Military training is a bit OP. Not a huge problem, but with the exception of soldiers right after the first siege where they aren't battle-hardened the rapid skill gain thoughts combined with mental toughness mean all of my soldiers become -100k stress. At the least it shouldn't make good therapy.
Those are the main problems I have with the current system. It's easy to game once you know how to make a siege-cleanup machine and utilize taverns and military training for stress reduction, but it's awful for new players and could truthfully be better executed.

[ZM5]

I'm probably echoing what others say, but I figure this gives a bit more credence:

1. Rain - going by observations I've heard from people like Splint, the rain moodlets seem to get reapplied every time they leave cover. The fact that they reminisce on getting rained on and get personality changes from it also seems a bit excessive (perhaps as a general change the personality changing and reminscing could be weighed on the severity of the moodlet - more likely to have a personality change and reminisce on highly positive/negative moodlets, vs. that one time you were slightly annoyed). I personally also think that the reaction should be a bit more varied based on an individuals personality and their values. I can see some civilians getting annoyed by it, but I'd imagine you'd also have people who just don't care or nature-loving people who would actually get positive moodlets from being rained on.
2. Vengeful thoughts from combat - mid-severity negative thought but it also seems to get applied for every squadmate thats already fighting which when combined together would have a fairly severe negative effect.
3. Corpses. The psychology in this regard seems to take from first-world people unused to death being common, rather than, well, a medieval fantasy people that live in a fairly grim world and would be atleast used to regular death (if not even from combat but things like disease and the like - I know they're not simulated yet but it'd still play into it). I'm completely fine with deaths of family, friends, acquaintances eliciting highly severe-to-medium severe negative thoughts, but from goblins, trolls and ogres that only a few moments ago were trying to kill you and your friends and pillage your home? If anything that should be a positive moodlet like relief that the threat is over or a sense of triumph, or atleast a neutral one that isn't a positive or negative like grim satisfaction. Cause of death should also be taken into account - seeing someone who died in their sleep from old age probably shouldn't elicit the same reaction as seeing the remains of a family member who got butchered by the goblins.
4. Socializing - I know its getting fixed next update, but I figured I'd bring it up - an issue I have with the "socialization" action the civilians seem to do is that its a tad fake for lack of a better term. On one occasion I've seen a dwarf stand behind a wall in one of my inn's rooms and "socialize" with noone in sight or even earshot (adjacent tavern was completely empty). Having it actually contribute to forming relationships and actually take into account if anyone else is there would be a welcome change.
5. Needs - very micromanagey and if unfulfilled make citizens distracted and give them negative thoughts. There's a few that cannot even be fulfilled by some dwarves i.e "being with family" should they have no family in the fort at all. Some others are also a tad annoying like "practice a craft" for military dwarves (I'd rather they be training more instead of making low-value crafts) or "practice martial arts" for civvie dwarves (especially if they're the sort that I would never put into the military, i.e prone to stress and/or with horrible physical attributes). Some automation in this regard would be highly welcome, i.e them going on their own and practising a martial art privately or just grabbing a rock and making crafts out of it at a workshop.
6. Prepared meals don't seem to really give positive moodlets from what I've noticed - even if they contain an ingredient the dwarf likes or even if they're a masterpiece. That definitely shouldn't be the case.

[feelotraveller]

Since there are already quite a number of apt replies with regard to the problem(s) let me take the liberty of straying into suggestion territory - viz, overseer controlled stress reduction.


Dwarfen Holydays

Once a season* allow the player to call a Holyday for the next day.  On a holyday dwarfs with needs regarded as critical^ attempt to deal with the most dire, perhaps selecting another if the worst is satisfied quickly.  Extra depth pathing/selection may be called for and dwarfs should be able to generate their own workshop jobs, find appropriate weapons, etc.  No regular work takes place for the day and the overseer is locked out from most actions - exclusions may apply with regard to the arrival of unwanted guests.  Dwarfs without critical needs gather in the meeting area(s) and party - drinking, dancing, socializing.  A holyday applies a large but quickly fading buff to all dwarfen moods.  Certain special circumstances may allow for the calling of extra holydays, for example winning a siege.

(*Once a month being too frequent and once a year being not enough.)
(^ Need check to rule out currently unsatisfiable ones.)


Presuming this suggestion doesn't make the grade I believe that the notion of (limited) player initiated stress reduction should be given serious consideration.

[PatrikLundell]

@ZM5:
6. According to the research made, meal quality is currently completely irrelevant when it comes to satisfaction (unlike the previous system, where meal quality and variation seemed to be the only factors, neither of which seems to have any relevance currently). Favored ingredients seem to work regardless of where in the recipe they reside. HOWEVER DF currently lies a fair bit about favored ingredients by just stating the animal the ingredient has to come form, while hiding the specific piece (heart, eye, etc.) required, and also presents giant animal (parts) as the normal size animal. These lies have led to conclusions (including by myself) that favored ingredients didn't work, when the issue was that the ingredient only matched the description of the favored ingredient, not the hidden details. The bugs are reported on the bug tracker, and the research was presented in the big stress discussion thread.

@feelotraveller:
A day isn't enough for many dorfs to travel to an activity site, let alone achieve something. In fact, I've had dorfs set to martial training for a month, and the buggers spent all but a handful of days on eating/sleeping/equipment replacement. I've set aside the winter season for R&R (which included a month of martial training), which seems to work reasonably well (but requires enabling/disabling jobs, etc. at the beginning and the end of the season). This, however, often has to be cancelled because of sieges or siege cleanup activities...
A problem with martial arts needs is that it seems satisfaction comes only from increasing a skill, and even a month (of actual training, rather than equipment gathering) isn't enough to guarantee everyone improves something. Also, eventually the dorfs will get to levels where it's really hard to improve.

While R&R management support by the game would be useful, I would expect some overseers would prefer to have a rotating R&R schedule rather than a "stop everything except life support" one. Harvesting and animal retraining are examples of life support activities that can't be delayed without consequences, and hauling of food/fresh carcasses to stockpiles/butchery are similarly time critical tasks (badly balanced currently, with refuse seeming to take precedence over [still] fresh goods on haulers with both categories enabled). It's not easy to come up with an R&R support that works well for most players.

[Sorgklaan]

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.

That would be so incredibly slow and tedious. You'd be cleaning up a siege for literally years afterwards.