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[NordicNooob]

I think there's a few major problems for anybody looking to get into the game. I tried to make the stress one short, so this time I'll make you regret not putting a smaller character limit on these comments. Time to throw everything I can think of and see if anything sticks.

1. The graphics. Steam release will fix this problem, of course, Meph's work looks fantastic from what we've seen and it will definitely help new players not be as spooked as they would by looking at a text-based game.

2. The UI. You guys have known for ages that it needs some TLC to be a good UI, but maybe some of my suggestions could help nail stuff down. There's a lot of unintuitive-yet-functional things about the UI. At the least, I'd love to see mouse support on so many more levels, there's just so much it could improve.

A lot of things should be condensed, and there's enough that I can start a sub-list.

A: Maybe we could not have q, v, t, and k as different ways of literally just looking, which is normally a passive thing with the cursor.

B: Next, possibly some kind of core change to what defines rooms, zones, stockpiles, and burrows as to not have an overwhelming amount of invisible areas. Stockpiles and zones could maybe be turned into one thing, with stockpile being a new kind of zone, and the more room-like zones (hospital, tavern, temple) being turned into actual rooms. Burrows and military alerts definitely need to be turned into one thing with settings to govern their exact behavior so you can decide who gets locked down and how much permission they have to leave their lockdown area.

C: Announcements could maybe also be simplified, with just a single announcements tab that can sort by different things instead of announcements, combat reports, mission reports, and petitions.

D: Un-necessary menus should be removed. Instead of having a Depot Access menu, make that a thing you can view from the depot building. Integrate the nobles menu with the units menu, maybe let us right click on a civilian in the units menu to change jobs, military status, nobility roles, and all that good stuff sort of that view does. Or just integrate it with what v normally does in the unit menu, if keybinds are kept as per usual. There's a few almost useless menus like R (rooms/buildings), h (complicated minecart stuff that I still hardly understand after a year of pretty heavy play), l (lowercase L, which is just redundant zone control except separated from the zones themselves and only relating to locations), and lastly, o (orders menu, which mostly belongs in the status menu tabs or shouldn't exist). There's a lot of interpretation and personal taste for how exactly menus should be condensed, but my opinion is that it needs to be done. Condensing menus and making them into simple settings and sub-menus will greatly contribute to removing some of that paralysis of "oh god there's like 18 menus and I only know what two of them do" feeling when you just get started.

E: The notorious military menu. There's a lot of problems, but most of them could be solved by changing up the creation of squads. I'm imagining something like:

Spoiler: Steps of making a sqaud: (click to show/hide)

1. Wait for the user to say "hey, I want to make a new squad"
2. Ask them who they want to lead the squad, and if they'd like to add any other members. Also please let us search for specific names/roles/nicknames or whatever, nobody likes having to root through a hundred names to find the new migrant cheesemaker they wanted to draft. DFhack sort of adds this, but I think it's a really nice thing to have permanently for real.
3. Ask them what uniform they want to use, or if they'd like to make a new uniform. Ammo and supplies should be part of uniforms.
4. Ask them what schedule they want the squad to follow (scehdules could be saved like uniforms?), or if they want to make a new schedule. Not sure how making a new schedule would work with patrols (since they need you to leave the menu to decide where you want them to go), which are sort of useless right now. I've never used a patrol nor have I seen any reason to. Training location would also be decided in the schedule step, so a certain schedule would say to train not only at a specific time and with a specific number, but also with a specific location. Might be cool to give a bit more time control instead of just months (like an interactive calendar or something?), so that we can tell our dorfs to train near the fort entrance if we're expecting a siege or caravan that needs to be killed or protected, but go back near the caverns for regular duty in case some nasties show up down there.

This would be a "let me walk you through making a squad" for new players and also just be convenient for everybody, since all of these things need to be done anyways. Appropriate condensing of uniforms/supplies/ammo would need to be done in the actual menu in addition to the new squad creation thing, and schedule creation would need to be a lot more interactive than flipping through settings until you find the one you want.

F: I feel like units menu should become a hub for all the settings and info you need on your dwarves. Right now I have to rely on third-party utilities (specifically Dwarf Therapist) to manage my dwarves' labors in a reasonable amount of time and to keep track of stress. The unit menu has the potential to be that and so much more, and just be a one-stop hub for anybody trying to do anything with any dwarf.

3. Looking at what people have hacked into the game could give a really good idea of what people want to see flushed out. From DFhack's generic menu improvements to Legends Viewer's complete revamp of an entire game-mode there's a lot of utilities (or even just DFhack commands) that add nice quality of life features. I'm not sure what direction is going to be taken regarding third-party content creators, since there's an awful lot of stuff to do and if people have already done it, why do it again for no reason other than official-ness?

That's all I can think of for now. Whatever you guys do though, know that Dwarf Fortress is literally the best game I have ever played.

[DG]

Personally, I think that a tutorial isn't the greatest of ideas. In my opinion this game lives and dies by the wiki for both newbies and veterans. That is unlikely to ever change. As an aside, the best indication of whether someone will be a longterm DF player is how much enjoyment they get from simply reading the wiki articles. If it feels like tvtropes to them they'll probably stick it out.

I worry about the ongoing maintenance costs of keeping a tutorial up to date with subsequent game updates. If certain things are in a tutorial then inevitably a new consideration when deciding on what features to put in next will be "how much work will it be to add/change this in the tutorial". Right now that doesn't matter, some very cool people take it upon themselves to add to the wiki. Rather than a tutorial, I think it would be better if Tarn or Zach actively helped out the wiki people with info on new features (or old obscure ones) so there is less speculation in the info. People often encourage Tarn to bring outsiders in to help him with the project. The wiki is an integral part of DF and it is already outsourced to the community and it works pretty well. An ingame tutorial that is simple topics that hyperlink to the wiki would be great, I think. It has the advantage of being written by players for players so it avoids the disconnect which has encouraged Zach to start these last two threads.

If there must be a more standard tutorial I suggest that none of it is in a generated world. They should be little vignettes that are very focused, self-contained and cut off from distractions that are irrelevant to what you are trying to teach. If a player can build a replication of space invaders in the tutorials it is a mistake. It would be a mistake to have a player generate a world, choose their embark etc etc and then let them play a tutorial and continue into a fortress proper. You don't want them learning about mining designations only to have them distracted by a bunch of grey langurs raiding the wagon. A human brain learns best when it's focused on a few tasks at a time. I suggest fake little rooms with one dwarf, something like the arena mode, with discrete very restricted scenarios that are designed to get basics across. There could be slightly bigger ones that are a bit more like a mission to teach intermediate and advanced things. The main idea is to focus on what the player is trying to learn. If they want to learn about weaving and clothes making, they shouldn't be in a situation where they have to worry about their tutorial dwarf having to eat or sleep or anything else not strictly related to the task at hand.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Most importantly, these tutorials should all be standardized. They should be the same for everyone, irrespective of what settings you've chosen or if you've dicked around in the raws. Why is this very important? Because no matter how good the tutorials are, there will still be questions people ask of others about the tutorials. Right now when a newbie asks a question there is a lot of diagnosis and scene setting required before you even bother trying to answer it. If all the tutorials are the same, with no variance to how they are generated, then they can be learned by veterans and they can easily answer any questions that come up without having to first forensically quiz the player to narrow down all the possible cause and effects.

~~~edit for multiple typos

[Sver]

A lot of people mentioned difficulty levels/mitigation and gradual introduction of challenge, so one thing that can help with both of these is to somehow draw newbies' attention towards the existing settings in d_init.txt - either through ingame hints to go check it out or direct toggles/sliders. Perhaps, with some additional advice on what are the good value ranges for new players, and which are good for mitigating a particularly difficult aspect of the game. To illustrate my point, I've recently figured out that INVASION_SOLDIER_CAP and INVASION_MONSTER_CAP can help a great deal to those who find the whole clean up/corpse stress thing bothersome, without having to disable invasions completely. And there are multiple other settings, like WEATHER and population caps which are rightfully mentioned as problematic in this thread multiple times.

[Bumber]

IMO, a tutorial should just consist of teaching the basics. You select it from the main menu and it starts in a pre-configured embark, like the arena. Tutorial dwarves don't get hungry, thirsty, angry, hurt, etc.

It starts out by teaching you the digging designations, then has you fell some trees. Next it has you build some constructions with the wood, and moves on to farming and setting up a still. The plump helmets instantly mature and it has you order some booze production. Once that's done, your dwarves all run to feast on plump helmets and wine. It has you order and set up some dining areas and beds. Then it moves on to clothing, militia, weapons, stockpiles. You trade with a caravan. You kill some kobolds and reclaim their loot. You set up a hospital, well, drawbridge, and a tavern. It congratulates you on completing the tutorial, and refers you to the (overhauled) help pages and tooltips for further learning. It disables tutorial protections, throws a goblin siege at you, and reminds you that losing is Fun!

[PatrikLundell]

@NordicNoob: Requiring you to build trade depots in various places to be able to find a suitable place to build one, and then tear down the unwanted ones isn't very practical Sure, it wouldn't hurt if you could query the trade depot for why it no longer seems to be accessible, but that can't replace the current functionality completely. I was wrong.

The current requirement to build a kiln/glass furnace for the sole purpose of hosting clay/sand collection jobs doesn't make sense either, but early clay collection may be important on some embarks, so I don't think you can just throw it into the current manager, which I believe requires certain facilities in place to be used (I don't use it, and so don't know for certain).

There is no way around the fact that DF has, and will continue to have, a huge number of control functions. Helping newbies navigate in that forest ought to be centered on highlighting the subset they're likely to need and explicitly make clear that the other controls can be learned gradually later. However, what you're likely to need early on depends on what happens early on...

You can't just hide away the "complex" functionality deeper into menu hierarchies, as that penalizes experienced users who actually want to use the functionality (and sometimes quite a bit). Going through 5 levels of menu choices every time one is needed is going to kill enjoyment fast, and the three level building menus is probably about as deep you can make it without making it a pain to use (setting up clothing production of a full set of clothing for a specific size (non default) is definitely a chore, which I typically avoid by dedicating clothier workshop to clothiers of specific races).

And, by the way. Loosing isn't fun. Loosing, figuring out why you lost, learn from it (which may well involve wiki reading) so you can deal with similar situations in the future is fun. I.e. the fun is in the overcoming part, not the loss itself (although that part may have a story value).
Oh, the overcoming part may well involve multiple failure while trying to overcome the challenge, but, again, it's the challenge and progress that's the fun part, not the losses themselves, although they can help prolong the fun parts.

[AnarkiJ]

So for context, I'm a fairly new player to DF, I've known about it a long time but bounced of it many times before finally getting into it. It was something that I always thought I'd love but UI is a nightmare. Learning to use keyboard and not mouse for 90% of controls was a major learning curve, and that's as someone who has been playing PC games for what I would consider a long time. When I finally broke through it was by watching youtube videos of other people playing, and not from reading the wiki. Indeed I've only ever used the wiki a handful of times and think that trying to direct new players toward it is gonna be a huge turn off for a lot of players, it was for me for literally YEARS. I would consider the fact that a large portion of the audience on steam are used to more modern methods of tutorials in games, and its more likely particularly amongst younger players, that they're going to gravitate to resources either in the game or on youtube, anything else that requires more work to learn how to play is where you're going to lose a vast majority of new players.

I gather a lot of longtime Dwarf Fortress fans might feel like putting the effort into the learning the game yourself is part of the game experience, and I would argue it's not a necessary one although it does define a large majority of long time players early experiences of the game. To some people, learning to play a game like this is probably part of the fun, but it also narrows the appeal to the subset of players that are okay with putting the work in. Some form of in-game tutorialisation should be present so long as the game is an abstract system of menus navigated by keyboard, with a mouse as standard almost all of the UI could do with a complete overhaul, but if it comes to sticking with keyboard there HAS to be something in game to get players digging, and figuring out how to set up supplies of food and water while learning how to designate rooms. I feel like that is the bare minimum a player needs to know before even feeling like outside resources are even going to be all that helpful to actually learning how to play at all, before learning how to play better.

Obviously this is a consideration made for new players so I suppose any guides or in game tutorials would obviously have to function in an optional capacity so as not to interfere with the game experience as it is for people already playing.

Thanks for this opportunity to offer some feedback on a game I finally learned to love after a decade of frustrating half attempts previously.

[treptoplax]

Well, I'm reiterating some older points here, but:

Some kind of tutorial is likely to be very useful, possibly starting with pre-built forts.  This is, I know, awkward in Dwarf Fortress, but I think it would make it much easier to break up the tutorial into bite-size pieces:

Here's a functional year-2 fort that won't fall apart if you do nothing useful for three months; build a new dining room, or forge a set of copper armor, or order the civilians indoors and ready the military to repel the invaders that just arrived.  I think this will really help people make the jump from total noob to low-intermediate skill; Kerbal Space Program has something like this for tricky skills that are critical for serious gameplay (docking, orbital rendezvous, powered landing).

An intuitive inspection UI is critical.  The noobs *must* be able to click on a space and figure out what's there and the properties of all the things there.

Digging, especially anything 3D-related (up/down stairways, dig vs channel) is terribly confusing just from the UI.  I don't have a solution, other than maybe limit tutorials to dig and ramps at first?

The whole contruct/build system is surprising.  To build a bed I first have to build a carpenters workshop, then build a bed, but I still have to *install* the bed somewhere, a bed sitting in a stockpile can't be used.  A wall or kitchen on the other hand I can build from random piles of stone.

There are too many separate UI systems to do similar things, but in particular the whole zone/room/location/warren thing seems totally arbitrary.  To designate an area as a pasture I use one UI, to designate a safe zone in event of attack I use another, to designate a room as a bedroom I click on a bed, but to designate a room as a temple I... designate it as a meeting area zone and then set that to be a temple in the location menus?  I think?  I honestly can't remember without the UI in front of me...

Having a clear error when jobs stall is critical.  (This isn't totally terrible now, but could be better).    If I can't build a bed, make sure I know it's because "can't install bed, must construct bed in carpenter's workshop".  "can't construct well, require rope or chain" etc.

[Nopenope]

I'm not a new player but I've bounced on and off for a decade now, and introduced a few players to it. In my opinion there are only two fundamental issues with the game (the UI, graphics and all that stuff can be easily fixed so they're not really fundamental and can be worked through with patient tutoring):

1. The game always kinda feels the same. Yeah I guess there are many new complex mechanisms and frameworks and stuff but fundamentally, the gameplay remains the same and has remained more or less the same for a decade. There were many major changes with DF2010, a few major ones with DF2012, but these days most upgrades happen under the hood and new players are barely aware of new features. The wiki is sorely obsolete and some of the new stuff is practically undocumented because new players haven't encountered it and old players have bounced off. I get that a lot of structural under-the-hood work is needed before gameplay features get implemented but the issue has only grown larger and the gameplay features fewer. There is little difference in gameplay between DF2012 and DF2014, when you factor the amount of time spent to do that upgrade. Yeah the world was activated, but how does that really change the way I play my fortress, in an actual game? The few players I've introduced to the game eventually get bored because the new stuff is hard to test out due to how invisible it feels. I don't think the way release cycles work with years spent under the hood with barely noticeable changes is healthy if you want to retain new players. I obviously don't know the intricate details of the game's inner workings but you've got to work something out with less waiting and more concrete gameplay changes. I'm rather pessimistic about the Big Wait to be honest and expect the community to bleed players over the 3+ years it's going to take.

2. FPS death is a major issue that constrains everyone's gameplay. Having to explain to a new player that "no, you probably shouldn't do that, because your computer won't handle it" is a major mood killer. It's all the more egregious since they usually expect the game to go fast due to a lack of graphics. There are many cool features that some computers cannot enjoy. Visitors are cool as hell but many players cap them because of lag. Bustling fortresses with 300 dwarves are cool as hell but may players cap them to sub-100 numbers. Caverns are cool as hell but many players abstain from breaching them. The worst part is that all these precautions are eventually useless since the fortress will slow down to a crawl. It's frankly demoralizing, you explain to a new player that losing is fun and the many ways they could lose but the actual way they quit is because they grow bored of running their fort at 5 FPS for hours.

The rest is relatively trivial and can easily be fixed and I trust you will with enough feedback. The above two issues on the other hand make me much more pessimistic about the game's ability to retain new players over the very long timescale you've set for yourselves.

[Pillbo]

I didn't have the time to read this whole thread, so apologies to any redundant suggestions. Some things I think would help:

Better/more clear info in reports and descriptions.  Like instead of a battle report that just reads: "The spinning alder logs strike the woodcutter in the leg crushing it!". How about "The woodcrafter fells the alder tree and the falling tree crushes his leg!" Or in a military report for a creature being attacked by marksdwarves you get a lot of "The flying bolt misses the bat!" before one strikes but there isn't anything indication about who shot the arrows. Maybe an option to read a gamelog style combat report with slightly more specific info along with the individual creature logs?  It makes group battles a lot more cohesive when reading group combat as opposed to a goblin's combat log where he could punch 1 dwarf, get kicked by a second, and maim a third while the log can make it look like a one on one fight. Making combat logs more specific (without making them even more bloated with text would be really helpful) I like reading them but it usually becomes a burden when I can't tell who was fighting who, so I just give up. Even a way to make the current combat logs clickable would be good, click the line of text about the swordsdwarf who was injured and see their name and wounds/thoughts/whatever is helpful. This would also help a lot with the werebeast problem, if the game would make it easy to find out who was bitten exactly.

Mentioned early were the corpses, after an Elven invasion you get a lot of "Iwame corpse" type items that won't tell you if it's an elf or a giant fly or anything about the creature.  How about added at least the race/species, and preferably that species description and their civilization and job, or really any info we could have read about the creature before it was a corpse or bodypart.  It matters if you want to dump elves and butcher their mounts.

Corpse stockpile vs refuse->corpse stockpile. This is so confusing, there are so many ways to make that more intuitive- sentient stockpile, citizen stockpile, intelligent creature stockpile, take your pick.  How about an option to only put butcherable items into a stockpile and skip the need to deselect each of the hundreds of 'learning' creatures you can think of from your butchershop's stockpiles, and not fill it with teeth and other junk that is useless.

A way to simplify item names in menus. It's nice to be able to read the items description and learn about it, but it's really not helpful when you have pants called "Tileth Sneakcavern the Stormy Gore's Forgotten Beast Silk Trousers" (from my latest game) because all you see in the menu is "Tileth Sneakcavern the Stormy...", it could be a head, silk, clothes, a weapon, or anything else. When I see one laying around I have to pull up the items description just to find out what it is, it should be the opposite, I should see what it is and bring up it's description to see it's composite materials. I'd rather look at an items description to learn about it than have to scan dozens of variations of "trousers" looking for a different item in a stockpile. It's more helpful to see I have 20 pairs of trousers than 20 different names for trousers.

Make some obvious assumptions for the player. If a noob designates a downstair across multiple z-levels just assume it's first a downstair, then up/downstairs until you get to the last level, then an upstair to end it.  Digging stairs frustrates all noobs, myself included for a long time.

Make the DF Hack 'Planning Mode' feature for building furniture a default built-in ability (also change the name 'building/build', it's not helpful to anyone trying to place a chair, nobody 'builds' a chair into a room, you build a chair in a workshop- it's not intuitive and that is a really big deal. You build a wall or a workshop, you place or install a chair or bed.)  When a noob wants to put a bed in a room it's maddening to not be able to, but have the option right there, not grayed-out on the menu.  Allow people to place furniture without having it yet, but give them a message telling them "You don't have any beds to place here, build one out of wood (select trees to chop with [d -> t]) in a Carpenter's Workshop (built with [b -> w -> c]), then it will be placed here by a dwarf with the furniture hauling labor activated."

Grey out unusable options in menus, and/or make menus filterable or sortable.  I'm thinking of the forges, I still don't use them from the workshop menu because it's annoying to choose the material first then the item, only to find out I don't have that material or that item isn't available in that material. Also make searchable menus like the managers screen smarter. If a user is searching the work 'door' show all the door options, even the ones like portals with different names, grey out the ones that the user can't use currently.

Make some sort of furnace/crematory/bonfire/pyre workshop for trash disposal.  It's a huge burden dealing with corpses and trash, with no good options.  dumping it into lava works but it tough for noobs to figure out and same with atom smashers. I don't have a problem with atom smashers but they are unintuitive, there should be a way to designate things for destruction instead of a work around people have to find in the wiki.

Allowing cleaning orders, to mark an area with a rectangle or whatever for cleaning, either once or an ongoing order.  I've had the same mud in parts of my fort for decades, but I found my tavernkeeper cleaning the road through the desert recently. A lot of people want to build perfect forts and cleaning goes a long way towards feeling accopmlished.

Related- a way to designate things for hauling.  As in, this item is a hauling priority, get it before dragging more boulders from the mines.  Same as with cleaning, it gets annoying seeing clothes everywhere and dwarves hauling useless items instead of something you want to see moved.  The answer now is using DF Hack for auto-dump, Noobs don't know that.  Also give some information about why an item marked for hauling is sitting for months - "This sock is marked for hauling but there is no available stockpile space for socks."

Slightly less noob-problem.  A way to prevent dwarves from decorating XXitemsXX from "decorate goods with ..." designations from the manager or workshop.  Actually making these orders more specific would be great, and I'm not sure why it isn't. I'd love to set a decorate specific items with specific items types, like "decorate swords with forgotten beast bone".

Some kind of "you need more shirts/shoes/pants/drinks/food" message to let you know what kind of problems your dwarves are having. Then info on how to make them, like "you need more shirts make an order at your clothier" or "you need more shirts, build a clothier workshop to make them" type thing.

It should probably be harder to accidentally trade wood to elves.

YES, some give the trade screen some indication that an item contains wood, or some way to filter out wood containing items like you can with mandates. Yes it's funny to piss the elves off without knowing it's an issue, but it's not fun to spend 30 mins tediously trading, carefully avoiding wood and still piss them off and get nothing from the effort when you can't even find the item that was problematic in the first place.

Less job cancellation spam. Especially with burrowing, it only makes finding useful information more difficult when 500 jobs are all cancelled and clog the announcements.  Can't you make those jobs suspend or pause until they are available again without throwing logs at the player? Also jobs being cancelled and removed because of some issue, I still haven't even been able to figure out why this happens but when a construction job (wall, floor) is straight up cancelled and removed that is VERY unhelpful, it should always suspended instead. When it's cancelled and not suspended the player has to see the announcement and find where the job was supposed to be and recreate it.  A way to find suspended jobs would be a big help too.  Right now I usually just run DF Hack unsuspend all frequently and hope it works.

A lot of people mentioned difficulty levels/mitigation and gradual introduction of challenge, so one thing that can help with both of these is to somehow draw newbies' attention towards the existing settings in d_init.txt

I disagree, this defeats the purpose of making the game more friendly to noobs by saying "teach the noobs to change the game instead of making the game more playable". Making Easy-Medium-Hard settings that change the init.txt, or adding a GUI that allows noobs to change  individual settings IN THE GAME, that will edit that init.txt is a much better option to keep the game friendly to new people.  Telling new players to start editing game files in order to play the game more playable is 100% the wrong move, make the game change those setting itself. You could probably even (continue to) hire Meph to make something like his masterwork GUI to change normal game settings saved in the txts without having him dig into the source code.

[PatrikLundell]

- DON'T make an auto "correct" feature! It's OK to have a warning (preferably being able to disable those warnings) asking you if you wanted to do X instead, but to silently change orders given on the assumption that some simple reasoning knows better 90% of the time is horrible.
- A magic incinerator (i.e. one capable of destroying everything you feed it, rather than leaving bits that couldn't be burned behind, but not magic in other ways) would be a nice feature, in particular if it wouldn't result in destruction shock when damaged masterworks items are destroyed.

[scourge728]

as much as I don't want to, I have to give a +1 to major bug fix arc, maybe the ones that are really amusing and not harmful can stay (Otherwise known as the Goat sim approach to bug fixing, but including more than just crashing bugs in the fixes)
I would also like to suggest just not having personality changes from being rained on, or at least some kind of counter that the more times it happens, the more likely for some change to happen, since really rain shouldn't cause someone to be filled with constant internal rage

[Khalvin]

This is epic Zach! Thanks for taking on this deluge of information.

My wife volunteered to be a guinea pig. She has been interested in playing after watching some Youtube videos with me. So I explained some of the basic controls and then stepped back and took notes on what she did. I told her I would answers her direct questions and I would try not be leading in my answer. My hope was be quick resource to overcome the issue you and Tarn are already going to address, such as the UI.

She jumped right past the embark screens to get straight into playing because she did know they would be very important. Lucky for her she landed on an okay, temperate location without an aquifer and little rain.

she began digging an entrance hall into the hill and was immediately confused with understanding what 'inside' and what was 'outside'.
She next had trouble moving up and down z-levels, she at first she thought the game was throwing her around the map when she would press '>' and '<'. Once she understood the yellow X cursor stayed put when moving up and down, she quickly got to work designating a central stair with branching chambers.

She became frustrated with only having two miners digging. She asked me how to designate more miners which lead to a second explanation of the menus.
She was then confused when the newly appointed miners didn't do anything. I had to explain that miners needed picks to dig. And that she only had two picks.

She next determined to make a farm space and reasoned it should be as deep as possible. When she went to build the Farm Plot. The Build Menu reported that the rough stone area she wanted to build on (needs soil or mud, mud is left by water) according to the UI.

After thinks on that Tooltip. She decided to dig a shaft from the farm area to an above ground pool. her intention was to funnel the water down to her farm. The dig job was set to happen underneath the pool and when the miners reported (Damp Stone Detected) she assumed they would stop digging. She set a new tunnel to dig from the side, planning on channeling it down into the first tunnel.
Instead the newly opened pool flooded into the fortress before the channel operation occurred, pouring water away from the farm below.
Exasperated, she has decided to try again another time and has gone to bed. Here is an honest reaction from a seasoned gamer playing DF for the first time on an ideal Embark(by chance mind you.)

To sum up, the Tool Tips helped her understand why she couldn't do something so long as the tool tip was clear. I know this echoes what a lot of previous posts have said.
Also, all of the most important information is hidden behind seemingly unimportant UI screens. Had the Embark screens been more focused, she may have spent more time being careful. But she saw all of the information there and said "I'm just going to start."
While I was explaining the systems, she asked repeatedly what the difference between the Build menu, the Designation Menu, the Stockpiles Menu, and the Zones Menu was. For her, she expected these to all be the same Menu. She also repeatedly pointed out that different Menus that seem to do similar things all have radically different controls.

[Stonar]

I wrote this all out on Friday while I was waiting for my username to register on the forums, so apologies if I'm being repetitive, but:

To me, there are a few pieces that get me as a still fairly new player:

First is this statement: "Starting a fortress should be relatively easy given the right embark." The right embark isn't super trivial, and even when it is, there are things that aren't easy to understand when following getting started guides and the like. Even once I find the menu for searching for a spot, do I want trees? Aquifers? Metals? Flux? Savagery? Evil is a simple thing to determine I don't want, but... Just some way for a new player to skip from "I've generated a world" to "I'm embarking on a beginner fortress" would be excellent - all of the configuration for embarks and what goods you're bringing with you are... overwhelming.

The second thing that got me and still gets me is how job suspension works. You get a warning in a place that you're not really accustomed to looking (as a new player,) and 2 months later, all of your dwarves are dehydrated because you didn't realize your still got suspended. To exacerbate issues, I put it on repeat, which I always assume means "Do this whenever you can," but the suspensions mean that when I inevitably make mistakes, even once I fix them, I have to go back, find the suspension, and clear it. Once you're in the swing of things, suspensions are somewhat rare and easier to fix, but as a new player, constant suspensions are really rough.

And the last is the value of nobles, and their requirements. I recently came back to the game after being away for a while, and despite knowing vaguely that I needed nobles, and figuring out how to assign them, I couldn't remember what they were supposed to do, AND it's unclear why I would need them on a lot of screens. When trading, there's no indication that you don't know what things are worth, and worse, it looks kind of like weight is value. When looking at your stocks, it tells you that you need a broker to determine value, but doesn't tell you that you need a bookkeeper. And, well, nobody even mentions what the manager does in getting started guides, and the menu is hidden behind two button presses. And even once you assign them, they don't actual work until you fulfill their requirements, which you can tell from the noble screen, but not from the screens where you're looking for the information. A lot of the learning of DF happens when you find a thing, and think "Huh, I wonder how to do that," and things like stocks and the trading screen don't clearly say "This screen will be more useful once you have a properly-beofficed <manager, bookkeeper, etc>"

[Pillbo]

Make some obvious assumptions for the player. If a noob designates a downstair across multiple z-levels just assume it's first a downstair, then up/downstairs until you get to the last level, then an upstair to end it.  Digging stairs frustrates all noobs, myself included for a long time.

- DON'T make an auto "correct" feature! It's OK to have a warning (preferably being able to disable those warnings) asking you if you wanted to do X instead, but to silently change orders given on the assumption that some simple reasoning knows better 90% of the time is horrible.

However it's done, there needs to be a simple, one-step way to dig a staircase across multiple z-levels from the surface.  I have never shown this game to a person who did not complain about that mechanic, it really annoys people and is a perfect example of a way to make the game more friendly to noobs. I'd also guess it is far less than 10% of the time someone would designate a downstair across multiple z levels in one command other than by mistake trying to dig a continuous staircase, maybe more like 0.1%.  Have you ever done that for any reason, or are you aware of anyone doing that? Genuinely curious, can't think of a reason it would happen.

Another suggestion is the same idea with constructed stairs, it's incredibly annoying to not be able to make them span multiple z-levels in one command. Right now you have to wait for it to be built, then add another, wait, then another until it's the height you need.  That's 100% annoying and unnecessary.

[Bumber]

However it's done, there needs to be a simple, one-step way to dig a staircase across multiple z-levels from the surface.

Why not just use up/down stairs?