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[Riemann]

I really do not think that there is no connection between unmet needs / distraction and stress.

The investigation by Loci is interesting:

Far too many people are conflating needs with stress. Needs are a separate system, primarily resulting in distraction, not stress. Yes, difficult and impossible needs are annoying; yes, unmet needs add a handful of minor bad thoughts; but needs are quite unlikely to be a source of "game ending stress".

To illustrate that point, I modded dwarves with [NO_EAT][NO_DRINK][NO_SLEEP], disabled weather, invaders, and immigration, and removed the active season (and clothing) tokens from the mountain entity. I then embarked with sets of leather armor, assigned uniforms, isolated each dwarf in a one tile area, and let the game run for 10 years. Despite *actively not meeting* all of their needs, not a single dwarf complained about stress, threw a tantrum, or went insane. This is a worst case scenario; even a dabbling overseer can be expected to satisfy some of their dwarves' needs by, say, brewing alcohol and assigning work, so "real game" stress from neglected needs would accumulate even slower than in this test. Additionally, the moderate stress from unmet needs could presumably be offset by positive thoughts the dwarves experienced. If you want to see some heavily-distracted-but-sane dwarves, you can download my test embark or recreate the setup from the description above.

But there are too many possible explanations of the result due to the mods needed to run the test. We just don't know what side effects may have been disabled due to all the codepaths that were cut off.

I will try to do some more digging into my recent late game fort ( http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=175583.0 ) with dwarf therapist. See if I just had a lot of internal-ragers. But the correlation between multiple stacked different kinds of distraction and stress was just too big to ignore.

And really, if we are talking about the actual point of this thread ( "We have been going through some extensive testing to find the biggest problems for new (and old!) players that make them give up in frustration." ) then the needs system and distraction is absolutely one of those things.

In all of the UI the unmet needs look bad. Players will want to "fix" the problems their dwarves are having. That kind of empathy is what makes DF such a good game. And right now that is impossible or requires tedious, game breaking micro.

All of the stuff in worldgen and adventure mode is really interesting to read about on the dev blog. No question about that. But worldgen and adventure mode could be in the same state they were literally 10 years ago and it wouldn't impact the actual gameplay experience of Dwarf Fortress hardly at all. The broken needs system and stress problems actually do make a huge impact on gameplay.

[Symmetry]

It's confusing because many "haggard" dwarves will have no bad thoughts in the top block except unmet needs.
I don't doubt Loci's result but it just raises more questions than it answers to me.

[Hyndis]

It's confusing because many "haggard" dwarves will have no bad thoughts in the top block except unmet needs.

I see the same behavior all the time. A wall of positive, happy thoughts and yet the dwarf is still haggard. There does not appear to be any way to reduce stress no matter how charmed of a life the dwarf lives. All the luxuries in the world, every need met, and still stress climbs.

The lack of control is whats frustrating. I understand if I screw up and doom everyone its my own fault. Flooding the dining room with pressurized water from an ocean is entirely my own fault. This doesn't cause me any frustration because cause and effect are linked.

Stress frustrates me because cause and effect are not linked. I have no idea what causes stress and I have no ability to reduce stress. I have zero control about this, yet I'm punished for it anyways. This isn't fun gameplay.

I'm not asking for a magic de-stress button (thought DFHack has one), I just want a clear path to calm dwarves and remove stress. I wish the game told me what to do so that I can do it. Does the stressed dwarf demand a zoo with a hippo and a parrot as exhibits? I can work with that! Just give me a path to fix the problem.

[FantasticDorf]

It's confusing because many "haggard" dwarves will have no bad thoughts in the top block except unmet needs.

I see the same behavior all the time. A wall of positive, happy thoughts and yet the dwarf is still haggard. There does not appear to be any way to reduce stress no matter how charmed of a life the dwarf lives. All the luxuries in the world, every need met, and still stress climbs.

The lack of control is whats frustrating. I understand if I screw up and doom everyone its my own fault. Flooding the dining room with pressurized water from an ocean is entirely my own fault. This doesn't cause me any frustration because cause and effect are linked.
[snip]

I'm not asking for a magic de-stress button (thought DFHack has one), I just want a clear path to calm dwarves and remove stress. I wish the game told me what to do so that I can do it. Does the stressed dwarf demand a zoo with a hippo and a parrot as exhibits? I can work with that! Just give me a path to fix the problem.

Saying that, that's exactly what's supposed to happen though,  least in signficiantly earlier versions before the tavern arc, the highly interesting statue gardens, zoos and pieces as popular party venues cleared schedules for some chin-wagging and revellry, but alone being put into locations and working 24/7 isn't really as stimulating as a entirely selfishly relaxing activity for knocking off stress.

• I won't knock priests and mayor/manager's ability to console dwarves having a difficult time, you can definitely lower the limits to something more manageable.

Closest thing i've had is when dwarves want particularly nowhere to go, maybe because locations are overcrowded they'll go back to their private holdings and start injesting throughts of pride over their bed and other furniture. 'Treasure Rooms' intiatives are something to try, even though they don't acknowledge the statue garden or zoo amongst their posessions for private use, even though only they, thier spouse and children can freely path to it.

[UncleSporky]

I learned so much while reading this thread...and in fact it's now making me lose a lot of motivation to keep playing my current fortress, if this is what I have to look forward to. 

I play the game in rare spurts and I think stress wasn't fully implemented last time I played.  Because I like to use the Lazy Newb Pack and also like playing on the most stable releases of things, I'm playing on the 2018 version, without any tweaks that may have happened to stress in Villains.  I realize that's less helpful for feedback but I felt compelled to post my thoughts anyway.

Early on I had most dwarves generally happy, as I usually was able to do in previous versions...though they weren't becoming ecstatic as they usually did.  And I had one particular dwarf, who practically nothing had ever happened to, who was just miserable.  Even as someone who uses the wiki quite a bit, I had no idea what was wrong with this dwarf or how to fix them.  Their thoughts were full of "admired own fine bed," "slept in a palatial bedroom," "were satisfied at work recently."  It really didn't indicate what the problem might be.  And they started tantruming, and continuously "conduct meeting," which I learned was an attempt to scream at the management.  I figured this particular dwarf's traits must've been a perfect storm of badness, so I let them starve in a locked room.  (Old habits die hard...forgot you could exile.)

Except after reading this thread, I've looked through some other dwarves' personalities, and they're all getting on that same road.  Personality changed for the worse after getting caught in the rain once several years ago.

Someone else started dipping down into the yellow, again for essentially no visible reason at all in a fort full of wonders and peace and good food.  This time it was a longstanding skilled dwarf I was kind of attached to and didn't want to lose.  I tried many things to fix their stress but it didn't seem like anything could really reduce it.  I locked them in a room with the expedition leader in an attempt to force them to yell at each other for a while, but they both just stood there with no job.  Didn't know what to do.  I ended up targeting the dwarf and typing remove-stress into DFHack, but even so I regret it.  They immediately shot up into the ecstatic range, and are essentially a drooling lobotomized happy dwarf.  It felt so artificial.

But reading this thread, it sounds like that's the only recourse.  Gotta remove-stress -all, or edit the raws to reduce/remove the effects of stress, or do both.  But I really don't want to have to do that.  I already customize the game in a few ways to my liking, such as limiting to 50 dwarves at the moment, but this just feels so cheaty, and not what's intended, and certainly damaging to the individuality of the dwarves as characters.  But on the other hand, I don't want to have to deal with dwarves losing their mind all the time for no good reason; no good reason from my point of view of course, I personally don't think being caught in the rain once is cause to become a bundle of nerves ready to explode at any moment.  That may be how dwarves are, but if that's going to be the case moving forward, then the game is going somewhere that I can't follow.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Um....you know that rain causing too much stress is a BUG right? Not working as intended. The game isn't "moving in that direction". It has stress issues which need to be fixed exactly as Toady said not a week ago:

Toady (talking about this thread)

Yeah, the thread has been great.  We have about twenty angles to work with there, and some of them are straightforward enough that they should come up in the parallel releases rather than with the Steam/itch release.  I haven't run any numeric tests yet, so I'm not going to pin it on anything, but between siege bodies and rain and food and cave adaptation etc. there is a lot to check and change.  The needs discourse is fascinating since it doesn't seem(?) to be a numeric stress problem, but it is a presentation problem, so we'll still need to address it.  The changes made to friendship forming and vulnerable dwarves in the recent 47s is just the start.

[Putnam]

That may be how dwarves are, but if that's going to be the case moving forward, then the game is going somewhere that I can't follow.

How is this thread, made by one of the games' creators specifically because the stress and personality changes are a problem, and indicator that they don't want to change it?

[madpathmoth]

I'm a new player, and dwarf stress spirals are the biggest thing keeping me from playing Fortress Mode.  It feels awful to try and get started; from the moment I see my dwarves around their wagon I feel like I now have a vague but very real timer on how fast i have to get EVERYTHING done before my dwarves start becoming miserable due to things I can't control.

Rather than enjoy the game, if I embark I expect to have to spend a couple hours frantically trying to make sure I know EVERYTHING about Fortress mode so that I waste as little time as possible immediately doing everything I can do avoid stress, which I just simply cannot do.  Even if nothing "bad" is happening, any random minor cause of stress will begin to pile up from the very first second while it feels like the few painfully obscure ways to reduce stress (a "mist-generator"? are you kidding me?) require so much micro-management while literally stress just pops up everywhere at all times.

Basically Fort Mode feels like if you inherited someone's farm, and then from the moment you got there, they told you that you had to provide for and take care of their seven children while the land is actually on fire somewhere already and you have no way to put it out.  It's not fun.  All of the fun bits of the game would be accessible AFTER I have reached a stable point, but currently this game seems designed to ensure that doesn't happen.

Let me get my thoughts in order.  My issue as a new player is that immediately after embark, 1) stress begins to build immediately before any counters to it or ways to cope can even be planned, 2) the ways I can help dwarves deal with stress require enough time and resources to make that I can easily have many stress problems before those are even achievable, 3)sources of stress outnumber and outpower de-stressers even on top of being ridiculously inconvenient, elaborate, and tedious to the point of frustration

Dealing with stress IS the game right now, and it really doesn't feel like a rewarding or enjoyable one.

Not to mention, you know...  Maybe I'm asking for something unreasonable, but like, combat?  It's pretty cool?  A huge amount of detail went into it and it produces some of the most dramatic and interesting moments in the game.  I'd sure love to be able to focus on that, explore and play around--  oh look all my dwarves are suicidal now due to dead bodies and the horrors of wars.  That entire culture of warriors and craftsmen in this world of incredible violence where multiple wars are waged 24/7 and many many many conflicts can LITERALLY only be solved by violence...

Once AGAIN this game punishes the player for doing things the way they are presented to them.  "Losing Is Fun" if you can actually learn from the experience and do better next time, but...  This game is so misleading, all the time.  Purposefully obscuring what the impact of the player's actions are, or what the source of anything is (negative or positive).  And right now, if you aren't playing Fortress Mode the exact right way (like say, having every possible source of Good Thoughts by year 3 for your dwarves, with no deaths, handling every siege perfectly) then your reward is having even less time with your fort before the effort you put in goes down the drain.  Very very unrewarding of an experience, and the idea of that pushes me away.

You're basically building the game to push players towards doing as little as possible, because the ONLY way to avoid stress is to never be exposed to it, currently.  Avoid fighting.  Avoid the outdoors.  Don't build anything experimental.  Keep the caverns closed.  Fill this checklist of needs for every dwarf.  Don't bother anyone.

And it still doesn't work from what I can tell?  This game truly feels like things only get worse right now, even outside of Fortress Mode.  World gen, necromancers just taking over every world with more than 250 years of history (more than 125 even in my experience), adventurers all just becoming traumatized husks within two weeks, forts all become miserable insanity-filled hellholes.  Is there so little POSITIVE programmed into this world?  Is that why it feels like you have to reinvent the wheel every time you want to do one-tenth of what's required to keep dwarves sane for a period of time?

I wish I could give more specifics on what key mechanics are problem-causing, but I haven't been playing for very long, and this is me trying to convey how negative the experience can be for newer players due to the obscure stress system (and everything tangentially related to it being at least as obscure and punishing).

[muldrake]

I find a lot more dwarves than previously become unsalvageable and just need to be expelled or launched into magma.  I even build a bridge for it fairly early on.  Just station them on it and pull the lever.  No dwarf, no stress.

[Shonai_Dweller]

I find a lot more dwarves than previously become unsalvageable and just need to be expelled or launched into magma.  I even build a bridge for it fairly early on.  Just station them on it and pull the lever.  No dwarf, no stress.

Previously compared to when? From before 47.04 initial stress fixes?

[muldrake]

I find a lot more dwarves than previously become unsalvageable and just need to be expelled or launched into magma.  I even build a bridge for it fairly early on.  Just station them on it and pull the lever.  No dwarf, no stress.

Previously compared to when? From before 47.04 initial stress fixes?

Previously from 0.44 or so and the couple years before then.  It seemed like there was a period when stress was almost nonexistent.  It would be nice to have something in between that and when tantrum spirals were normal.  I'm not really having spirals but it's only by aggressively handling dwarves who seem inevitably to lose their ability to cope.

[Libash_Thunderhead]

I find a lot more dwarves than previously become unsalvageable and just need to be expelled or launched into magma.  I even build a bridge for it fairly early on.  Just station them on it and pull the lever.  No dwarf, no stress.

I haven't check recent version, but last year, you have only 3 kinds of dwarf, eventually.
1） stress = 0, probably new migrants
2)  stress = -9999
3)  stress = 3000+

The 3rd type are usually unsalvagable, your efforts just delay their doom.  Sadly, the most efficient way is removing them。
Also it appears soldiers have a lower chance to snap, so maybe military training is necessary for a heathier fort.

[FantasticDorf]

Also it appears soldiers have a lower chance to snap, so maybe military training is necessary for a heathier fort.

I won't commit to saying that disicipline might give a division factor on inputs of negative stress as much as they're expected to just blunt the negative input of certain situations but all the best stories of tantrum spirals usually come about with a crazed dwarf with a axe.

[Splint]

Also it appears soldiers have a lower chance to snap, so maybe military training is necessary for a heathier fort.

I won't commit to saying that disicipline might give a division factor on inputs of negative stress as much as they're expected to just blunt the negative input of certain situations but all the best stories of tantrum spirals usually come about with a crazed dwarf with a axe.

The barrage of good thoughts from sparring, teaching, improving skills, and learning actually can save some dwarves. I've had a couple problem dwarves make a turnaround from a long stretch of training.

However this is with the newer releases, and in a fort that actually needed fresh soldiers.

I imagine in a lot of forts this isn't really the most viable option, particularly smaller ones where having three squads training grinds everything to a halt for a year and a half cause that's half your people under arms training, and some forts just aren't going to need vast numbers of fighting dwarves at any point.

Forts that seldom have sieges due to an isolated location, ones that button up and wait out sieges, or that make use of various contraptions to end battles probably aren't going to ever really need more than two squads for mop-up or to deal with animals that slip in and cause a ruckus; those in metal-poor biomes may not be able to properly equip more than that either. In these kinds of places military training just isn't going to be as vital or useful as they would be in a place that has to deal with constant threats from the local fauna and/or enemy assaults, leaving many dwarves who want to serve not being put into squads simply because they aren't needed, can't be properly equipped to begin with, or because doing so would severely disrupt day-to-day fort operations.

[Putnam]

You can pretty easily set up squad schedules to have a good chunk of your dwarves training at all times, which helps with stress a lot. "Minimum dwarves training" is actually... "maximum dwarves training". They automatically shuffle out of the squad if they have other needs.