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[Shonai_Dweller]

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.

Not if that's all they do. Obviously you'd make sure they can carry more than one tooth at a time when implementing this.
One herbalist can clear an entire map of fruit in one sweep. Undertakers (with body carts, say) could clean up in no time.

[therahedwig]

• 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.)

Like Patrick pointed out, dwarves do commit suicide already, but I think the main problem with tantrums is that apparantly their fistfight's escalation level are no-quarter/lethal instead of brawl(probably, the tantrums haven't been updated to the escalation system). Like, I can understand someone stressed out starting a fistfight, but then to go around killing people should not be as common as it is right now.

[PatrikLundell]

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.

Not if that's all they do. Obviously you'd make sure they can carry more than one tooth at a time when implementing this.
One herbalist can clear an entire map of fruit in one sweep. Undertakers (with body carts, say) could clean up in no time.

If you changed the game to allow for dedicated cleanup squads to perform the cleanup within a reasonable time, that would obviously change the assessment (and I would certainly like that), but with the current logic of one trip for every half tooth they'll probably not finish before the next siege hits more often than not for a fortress that defeats their enemies on the battle field.

As an aside, the herbalist case is an odd one, as while a herbalist can PICK a lot from the ground in one trip, they deposit what they pick from ladders on the ground for food haulers to haul one pile at a time (and based on getting unwanted shrubs, those piles probably automatically pick and include what the fruit was lying on top, although that may apply only to fallen fruit).

[Gigaz]

Mentioned here a lot of times I guess but I'd still like to share my view on it.

Killing a huge goblin or undead siege with ballistas, crossbows and melee is probably the coolest thing you can do in dwarf mode. And right now, it is simply not a sustainable strategy. Dwarves get strongly stressed out from combat, from seeing the corpses and from hauling it away. The more gore on the ground, the worse it becomes.

I have seen a few dwarves recover from depression, but it's a minority. In most cases, the dwarf is effectively lost. The potential danger from tantrums and fist fights is just too big. A dwarf that is depressed will probably kill another dwarf sooner or later. It is best to remove the depressed dwarf in one way or another.
I have not found a reliable and effective way to send a depressed dwarf to therapy.
Right now there are two reasonable ways to defend in Dwarf Fortress. Cage traps, which are kind of lame. And magma, but that is really only something for experienced players.

[DG]

@feelotraveller:
A day isn't enough for many dorfs to travel to an activity site, let alone achieve something.

I wonder if it's time to rehash one of those "make the days/years longer/slower" suggestion threads, if not the day-night cycle ones. They never seemed popular enough to gain much traction, but as more and more activities are squeezed in you never know.

[PatrikLundell]

@feelotraveller:
A day isn't enough for many dorfs to travel to an activity site, let alone achieve something.

I wonder if it's time to rehash one of those "make the days/years longer/slower" suggestion threads, if not the day-night cycle ones. They never seemed popular enough to gain much traction, but as more and more activities are squeezed in you never know.

This is probably not the right thread or time for that kind of suggestions, as the implications are very substantial. At a guess, the agriculture overhaul is the first reasonable stop, and even then, I'd expect further substantial changes to have to be in place apart from that. Also, such an overhaul would probably mean fortress building/mining... etc. progress to slow to about 1.5 effective current FPS (1/72:nd of the current rate, assuming the new fortress FPS isn't hampered), as the current production/digging rate is somewhat tied to real world progress rates, with dorf movements/activities being abstracted.
Thus, digging yourself down to the magma sea would still take about two years in the DF world, but the when "100 FPS" progresses time 1/72 as fast as currently, it takes the player forever, and generational fortresses would turn into endurance contests (or major sessions just running unsupervised, e.g. overnight while sleeping).
A better option (but still a future one, and not relevant to the current stress issues) would probably be to expand "adventure" mode to allow for fortress building/management at the adventure time progression rate, while leaving the fortress mode to handle mega projects/"proper" fortress building/generational fortresses.

[Stuebi]

My biggest issue with the system is how lazy the Dorfs are about actually fulfilling their needs and, you know, trying to enjoy themselves. It's not fun having to literally micromanage every step of their day to shove stress relievers into their faces. Having to consider recreation and fulfilment when designing your fort is fine and even fun. But if you do your utmost do get everything up and then the fort still fails because your population refuses to actually use / get to what you provide, it becomes tedious. It's a little too optimistic to assume that players will care enough about individual dwarves to still be spending most of their time babysitting a population bigger than 20.

Apart from that, some negative modifiers are simply to strong. It generally feels like the system likes negative reinforcement a bit too much. Rain was mentioned already (And it really, really is completely overtuned) but I also think the reaction to seeing hostile corpses is overblown. I'm sorry, but seeing a dead invader or monster should probably lean on the positive side of mood, since he was actually trying to kill you not too long ago. I think there should be a balanced reaction somewhere along the lines of "I don't like seeing corpses, but that guy being dead means we get to live, so that makes it okay."

In short: I like the system on principle, but it needs Dorfs to be more proactive about fulfilling their needs, and I do think some of the modifiers need to be tuned down. You should be motivated to accommodate the system because it feels good to do so, and not just because it hangs over the entire fort like a giant anvil. Currently it feels like Dorfs are suicidal whackjobs by nature.

[Iduno]

The stress system drove me to take a break from the game as well, so I'm glad to see you're interested in fixing it.

People have already covered the "dwarves don't actually try to find things they like", the issues with corpses or rain, and the bugs.

The part that got to me was that a modest 50-dwarf fortress requires ~20-30 different types of food, which is much more variety than a fortress can reasonably produce. It would be easier if there was less variance in the types of foods dwarves normally like (with a few dwarves with unusual tastes), and also if we could make fewer food items faster. The same goes for temples, or favorite item, or whatever (but usually to a lesser degree).

It would also be easier to manage stress if fewer dwarves were stressed. Needing to go through the preferences of 2-3 dwarves to see what I need to buy/make is reasonable. 20-30 is stupid.

I would, however, argue against one fix people have suggested. Dwarves who have suffered enough stress to become depressed/PTSD should act like most dwarves do now: not putting in the effort to make friends or find things they like, even though those are what they lack. Once you get that far gone, it's HARD to come back. Expecting them to have the same capabilities as other dwarves, even the capability of taking care of themselves properly, is unrealistic.

It sounds like making a few small changes would slow down the feedback loop enough to make the game more enjoyable. No reason to completely remove any systems.

[ZM5]

I'm fairly sure there were suggestion threads about this - but I think a fix to counteract citizens only getting positive moodlets from very specific food types that may not be obtainable on an embark, even with trading (didn't know their very specific preference was hidden) would be to allow them to develop new likes and possibly dislikes over time.

[Sappho]

Pretty much everything has been covered, so just chiming in with my personal experience as a 12-year player (with some long gaps here and there, but I still play and even stream the game all the time today). These are the top issues that cause me to abandon a fort because the tantrum spirals are becoming untenable:

1. Food. It's basically impossible to satisfy their desire for "decent" meals, since this has nothing to do with the quality and everything to do with whether you get lucky enough that they crave ingredients you can actually obtain/produce (and if they happen to be close enough to such a meal when they get hungry). I'd say either favorite foods need to be restricted on a civ-by-civ basis, or, preferably, high-quality meals satisfy this need and favorite foods just give a boost.
2. Socialization. They don't do it unless you lock them in a room together (and once I did lock them in a room together, two friends, for an in-game month, and designated the room a tavern, and they refused to speak to each other and just stood there and continued to have bad thoughts from not seeing friends). They seem to need socialization but they don't seek it out at all.
3. Lack of autonomy, generally. I remember the days of "Well, the overseer needs this lever pulled immediately or we're all going to die, but I'm going to go take a break / have a party instead." It was frustrating sometimes but also part of the fun and charm of the game - your dwarfs have their own needs and desires and they will always prioritize those over getting work done. Now it's "Well I'm so stressed from not seeing friends or family, not praying, not having a break from work, and not eating my very favorite food in the world that I'm literally moments away from murdering everyone in this room, but the overseer asked me to dump that boulder, so I guess I'll do that OOPS I'M INSANE NOW."

Dwarfs having needs that need fulfilling is FINE by me, absolutely. But if the means to fulfill those needs are available, they need to go do it. Making it necessary for us to micromanage every single dwarf's living quarters and burrow and military schedule and labors in order to keep them from going completely insane is just a nightmare. I prefer the game where you assign a task and hope a dwarf feels like doing it before it's too late, not the game where your dwarfs will work themselves to death rather than see to their own urgent needs.

[vettlingr]

Another thing I think should be mentioned is preferences.
Food:
There are over 100 plants to choose from, and with meat, some have proposed that dwarves have preference for parts of an animal rather than the general animal meat products, such as brains or eyes.
That makes it at least 1000-2500(?) single meat preferences to be satisfied. Yet dwarves choose only 2-4 between these –—1500 different foodstuffs, making it almost impossible to supply even 15% of the peckish dwarves, even when buying up all the foodstuffs brought by caravans.

Instead of (or in addition to) liking a certain foodstuff, they instead like the type, such as sugar, flour, fish, fruit, meat, brain, eyes, liver, fat/tallow. Alternatively they can also get a preference for biscuits, stews or roasts.

Materials and Items: can usually be fulfilled, yet dwarves don't seem to care much about seeing Materials or Items they like. While they do seem to pick up crafts they prefer, the positive thoughts are temporary, and they will get a negative thought again seasons later that they "were unable to aquire something for too long" even if their inventory is stacked with bracelets they have a preference for.

Clothes: Clothes deteriorate linearly, but it should probably exponential, i.e the first tattered modifier (x troll fur sock x), takes the longest, while the later modifiers deteriorate with shorter intervals. as it is now, clothes are worn until they get the first x - x, where they are discarded if there are new available. making the cloth mill very busy. Alternatively dwarves should get a need to aquire new clothing when at X - X and not x -x and get negative thoughts accordingly from wearing old clothing.
Also perhaps add a [RAINPROOF], [WEATHERPROOF] or [SUNSHADE] tag to cloaks and hoods or something like that, to make them negate negative tags from being outside in bad weather. Wool could have a [COLDPROOF] tag on its own to make it negate bad thoughts from being out in a snowstorm. It has probably been proposed before, and I think as long as there is no dynamic in handling weather controlled by the player, the game shouldn't punish you for it.

Also, increasing the utility of cloaks and robes makes for an interesting Military uniform dynamic.
Little offtopic, but civilian uniforms for Wood Cutters, Miners and Hunters would be cool. I want to give my Miners helmets.

A fix I often go with right now, that works initially is adding the following line to the dwarf raws:
   [PERSONALITY:STRESS_VULNERABILITY:0:25:100]

[Splint]

I feel like I should also point out that some biomes "double dip" on weather stress. Cool biomes, but not cold ones, will sometimes have snow and rain come together, and both trigger separate thoughts.

Also in regards to religion, Objects of Worship prayer never fulfills the need. I emphasize it because I seldom have significant numbers of such people, but in one fort I had seven so this was super noticable. In a surface fort of some 10-15 years, and they are consistently the least happy because they can't fill the prayer need, which I presume is because the hydra they worship isn't an actual god or goddess. This feels like it's probably an oversight, and a serious one at that.

Odd as this sounds speaking of that, it's consistently one of the happier forts I've run, that aside.

This seems to be because of a few things.
- The residents don't suffer cave adaptation. A huge source of stress seems to be just how strong this one is.
- The tavern is always well populated, so there's always people to talk to, perform with, or perform for (even without a tavernkeep, as the stuff stored in it is easiest to get and so constantly depleted by people going about their day normally.)
- The undifferentiated temple has proven sufficient. Not perfect, but good enough. Some of the hydra worshipers even preferred it to the gold and ceramic temple I built for them (the baroness worships the hydra so I thought it'd be fitting, don't judge me.)
- There's a well-stocked and traveled library.
- Everyone has personal homes of value comparable to nobles in most cases. Those who don't were born in the fortress and needed homes build quickly.
- Skilled leatherworkers, weavers, dyers, and clothiers are constantly outputting high quality clothing for people, allowing them to trade out even slightly-worn clothing quickly and providing one or more boosts to happiness.
- The militia is damned good at what they do, making fights generally very short affairs and with a... A minimum, of mangled bits. They are also consistently the happiest people because I got lucky with personality changes. Speaking of that, personality changes seem to skew heavily towards negative, making such a thing a highly luck-based thing that almost always decides the player can go screw, their favorite or important dwarves are going to be more depressed and more stress prone now more often than not.
- Many people arrived married, and as such there's a high population of youngsters running around. Regular births mean that all other stressors leave the parents at a happy medium.
- Corpses of invaders are thrown in a ditch outside where they can't generate miasma, and far enough away that they're generally out of sight 95% of the time.
- I try to maintain open imports, so trap reliance was a no-no. While what I get is entirely random, I seem to get enough stuff that about a third of the population is generally happy with their meal and drink options.
- Citizens and pets that die are interred quickly, to prevent the loved one stressor from tripping from them going unburied.
- Pets are encouraged, but difficult to manage with many residents who like the same animals, leading to one ass who is hogging all the goats, cavies, or whatever else. Pets can make a huge difference early on especially for your starters and early migrants.
- Embarking with goblets. Dumb as it sounds, it genuinely made a difference early on since the woodcrafter had to do and make other stuff.

In effect barring some dwarves who I literally have to use DFhack to fill a specific need on (hydra worship,) so they can do other things, everybody may not be happy, but they're mostly content, with minor dips here and there from werebeast attacks and the like spooking folks and sometimes killing a kid who decided to play outside the walls by themselves. But this took a very specific style of play - extravagant surface living with an active militia and determined pursuit of trade, and that's not a playstyle everyone is going to want to do because it's basically the opposite extreme of the "button up and hide" method of avoiding stress.

I will confirm what ZM said about vengeful thoughts - Way too powerful, and trigger much too often. I had a large number of dwarves go from happy to miserable because of a buzzard attack that involved a child standing on a roof killing the things, just ebcause they "joined" a conflict, even if they ignored it or ran away. One per citizen. There were 20-odd people involved. That's 20+ high strength bad thoughts hammering everybody at once, even though nothing really happened - hell the kid was happy as a clam cause he got to do something exciting, fight, and learn when during the mess and killling two birds, he leveled his wrestler and striker to novice.

On to martial arts practice: I propose using something akin to how champions work, but with civilians, and as a general thing. Practicing a martial art seems to require they actually level up the skill. I'd say adjust it so that completing a solo drill will fill the need for reservists/off-duty dorfs, and the need can also be filled by civilians in their down time opting to go and watch the militia train and learn from their demonstrations and sparring matches, similar to how active soldiers can watch a champion's sparring matches to learn from that; the latter in particular would be completely automated and only require an active squad be training in an assigned barracks.

This idea is mainly to counter the simple fact that there's dwarves or what have you with that need (practice martial art, fight, do something exciting) that are simply and utterly unsuited to doing any of those things mentally. Anything with below average stress resistance is a write off, meaning someone who uses the militia heavily if they do intend to screen recruits, has to pick based on how brave and stress resistant they are, over damn near anything else, instead of a mixture of factors (pre-existing skill, physical traits, and psychology all together.) Someone could be a perfect recruit for the militia right now in every way but if they're even a little fearful or stress vulnerable enough to have it noted in their profile, they're basically worthless for anything that could even slightly be dangerous, which also includes woodcutting, silk collection, and herbalism since animals may attack them and even if it's something they could punt across the field, that thing attacking them traumatizes them for life, nevermind participating in the vital defense of their home. The stress they receive between corpses and fighting are simply too great for them to do any of that.

I'd also like to throw my vote in for what was floated by Sappho and others - getting what you consider your favorite is a privilege, not a right. Well made food is still good food, even if it doesn't have your favorite drink or hamster eyes in it.

Also if a dwarf or whatever somehow doesn't have a preferred food, they really shouldn't have a need for "decent" meals, since it's obvious they clearly don't care what they eat, even if they like a specific drink. I've seen it often enough for it to be irritating that they still complain and yet if I cook enough of their favorite drink to make sure they can eat it regularly, then they have no favorite drink to actually drink, it's all been used to glaze goat roasts or something.

[MarcusCarab]

Long time player (well, medium-time in DF terms). Been meaning to join the forums for a while, this thread finally gave me the nudge. And yet it feels weird for my first post to be criticism of one of my favourite things, so let me preface by saying: I adore Dwarf Fortress, and I'm in awe of the work the creators do.

Most stuff has been said (including "most stuff has been said") but I do have a specific thought on the meal stress stuff that I don't think has been clearly addressed. I want to try to refocus on the question of new players and quitting in frustration, and to that end I want to talk about how the meal stuff is communicated before talking about how it actually works.

Clear your mind, put yourselves in the shoes of a newish player who has come to grips with the basics of the game and is now digging deeper:

You're finally comfortable with the first phase of building basic fortresses. Now you're taking a closer look at your dwarves and their personalities. You notice that almost all of them are complaining about a lack of decent meals.

"Oh!" you think, "I know what to do about that! I must not have been cooking enough nice meals!" Maybe you'd been toying around with the different meal options at the kitchen, or weren't sure how much to produce, or just hadn't put that much thought into it yet. But now you feel good - you've identified an obvious challenge by looking at your dwarves' needs, and now you're going to solve it.

So you head to your kitchen and queue up a bunch of jobs to produce LAVISH MEALS. You do this for a while then check your dwarves. Hmm... they are all still complaining about a lack of DECENT meals. That's weird. But then again, it does still say your chef is a "Novice" at his job, so maybe he just needs to get better. You keep at it.

Pretty soon you are getting regular notifications that your chef has cooked a MASTERPIECE. You look at a couple of the meals and see that every ingredient is EXCEPTIONAL or MASTERFUL. Maybe you take some to a trade depot, and discover that these meals you are making are apparently so goddamn amazing that the dwarves from the mountainhome will eagerly trade away half their caravan for a couple barrels of them. So you check out some of your dwarves again.

Still all complaining about a lack of "decent meals".

Would anyone not be confused by this? Honestly, it's so confusing that many people show up on Reddit asking about it just *assuming* it's a bug. After all, how could a MASTERWORK LAVISH meal not count as a DECENT meal? Even some more experienced players don't understand what's happening - there's at least one post in this thread assuming the problem is dwarves choosing not to eat prepared meals at all and going for raw food instead, which as far as I know is never the issue, but it's not a crazy assumption. In fact, how many people here figured out the food preferences thing by themselves? I sure didn't - I don't remember where I heard it, but it's just one of those bits of knowledge that has drifted out into the community and so you will be informed of it eventually.

Now, I do think the system itself could use tweaks, but I think the failed communication here is the factor most likely to lead a new player to quit in frustration. They see what appears to be a clearly-communicated problem, undertake what appears to be the clearly-communicated solution to that problem, and nothing changes at all, and the game gives them no indication of why. With or without changes to the system, the thought badly needs to read "frustrated by a lack of their favourite food" or something like that. Not "decent meals".

As for how the system might be changed, just one small suggestion I don't think I've seen here yet: what if every time a dwarf eats, there is like a 20-50% chance (depending on the dwarf) that they are "craving" their favourite food. Those times, they get a negative thought if they can't have it. Other times, they eat any nice meal and get a positive thought from it being a nice meal. Maybe a few rare dwarves are extra-picky eaters and the cravings are more than half the time - but for the majority of dwarves, having good food but not their favourite would at worst be a 50/50 wash on happiness, not a constant drain. Most people don't only enjoy meals that include their favourite food - and indeed most people wouldn't even want to eat their favourite food at every meal.

[Alapaga]

This is my take on this issue, and I share a lot of the previous commenter's opinions.

There are a few things that can end a fort, and stress is the least enjoyeable of them all.

First of all, a few words about me as a gamer. I tend to play everything in a roguelike way, so I rarely spent more than 10 hours in a single fort. The reason? Well, starting a new colony is exciting and I rarely sit and play the same game more than 3 hours at a time. When I come back to a savegame after being away for a while, I forget what was going on before I stopped, and I obviously don't wanna get emotionnally attached to any dwarf.

So the stress has rarely been the reason why my forts have ended. I usually stop playing before that happens out of boredom, or because of the reasons I just listed. That being said, I have played this game for a while, and adressing stress issues has been one of the things that I hated doing. Without external programs like dwarf therapist, I had no idea what my dwarves were suffering from, and it was very frustrating to have to read all the dwarve's toughts to be able to figure out what's wrong with them.

There are two ways to adress this issue.

- Either you guys want the game to be played with some level of autonomy on the dwarf side, since they rarely rush to do the jobs they were assigned anyways. So that could include seeking shelter when the rain is an issue, or grabbing an item when they desire to own it.
- Or else, you want the players to micro-manage the dwarves, including making them happier when they are stressed. And that would necessitate some remodelling of the current interface, to include a status screen. It doesn't have to be perfect, but it would be visible at all times and reminds the player what are the big issues causing stress to the colony. If the issues are obvious like the corpse of a thousand goblins beneath the drawbridge or some miasma coming out of a pit, an easy way of dealing with said problem (maybe use a cart to haul the corpses to a big mass grave, or a way to light the pile of corpses on fire).

Also, you guys should decide whether dwarves have short or long memory, and make it coherent. For example, a dwarf can remember that he was exposed to rain for months, but they somehow forget that they should avoid the miasma in the butcher stockpile they visited 5 minutes ago and forget to change their path on the way back to NOT go through miasma again... They remember vividly being punched in the face a week ago, while they are sipping some fine mead that should make them forget about it because they were passed out drunk every night since then. It doesn't mean that having long term effects of alcohol-induced depression shouldn't be a thing, but man, they are dwarves for a reason, the liver should occupy half of their internal organs by volume.

I hope my ideas were helpfull to advance this conversation, thanks for reading me! Bay12Forums Strike the earth

[EmperorJon]

Would anyone not be confused by this?

As someone who has played DF on and off for at least 9 years now... I have only just learnt this from reading this thread right now.
I never knew that complaint was for the food pref.