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[PatrikLundell]

Up until now I haven't considered the (in)justice system to be part of the basics, and I don't see tutorials covering everything except the advanced stuff being possible to cram into the Premium release, unless either outside help is used to make the tutorials, or the Premium release appearing a year or two later than I'd expect the deadline to be. Regardless, covering just the required stuff in tutorials will result in a large number of tutorial hours for players to slog through, which I don't think many people would have the patience for. I don't have the solution to that problem.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Up until now I haven't considered the (in)justice system to be part of the basics, and I don't see tutorials covering everything except the advanced stuff being possible to cram into the Premium release, unless either outside help is used to make the tutorials, or the Premium release appearing a year or two later than I'd expect the deadline to be. Regardless, covering just the required stuff in tutorials will result in a large number of tutorial hours for players to slog through, which I don't think many people would have the patience for. I don't have the solution to that problem.

Did you read the article on the tutorial where Toady said he would just regenerate a limb if your miner happened to not have one? He can easily rustle up 50 immigrants and an election for when you're ready to learn about the justice system.

But, "tutorial from start to finish before playing" isn't the only way. Helpful pop-ups when something new is happening, linking to more info in the in-game encyclopedia is how other complex games like Unreal World manage it.

We don't have an in-game encyclopedia which is an issue. Unless someone's working on one behind the scenes, but surely just making the justice screen self-explanatory would work fine.

I know there are dozens of pages on how to cheat the system for those that want to avoid all risk in-game. But demands for picks when there's no metal is borderline buggy behaviour anyway which should be just fixed. Doesn't really need any explanation beyond "this might be fixed someday". Incredibly rare event for a noob anyway (I'm going to try a no-metal embark challenge!).

[PatrikLundell]

The issue is that DF is so large that covering the basics is a lot of ground to cover. Sure, it's possible to code a tutorial for any given piece, but the sum is probably too large. Similarly, pop-ups can help a fair bit, but again, you'd need a bazillion of them, and some way to bring them back up again (getting a pop-up on whatever else when in the middle of a crisis is likely not to be remembered well).
An in-game encyclopedia, or even the old fashioned thing called a "manual" could help a fair bit, especially with wiki links to cut down on the volume. However, the volume is still large, and Toady's attention probably ought to be elsewhere, so handing the task of writing it over to someone else would be useful.
Sure, it might be possible to make the justice screen reasonably easy to use, but the limited screen real estate available doesn't allow for it to cover all the other pieces that have to be in place for the whole system to work (again, in-game encyclopedia entries accessible from the page could provide that).

I agree newbies aren't going to suffer from no weapons grade metals that often, but it will happen (and probably reasonably often if you count the "I haven't set up a metal industry yet" case), while lack of wood would be more common (at least if you count not having breached caverns yet as no access).

[wierd]

I would suggest some "Canned embark" "berry farms".

EG, embarks in known isolated areas that get traders, but don't get invaders, available as pre-generated worlds saved right at embark.  These would be created in subtly, but increasingly more difficult environments, exposing the player to more and more challenge, until they are ready to roll their own world, and pick their own embark.

This would allow for a "standardized educational experience" with an official tutorial type arrangement.  It would be long and involved, and keeping player attention might be challenging.  However, this would sidestep a good deal of the randomness of the education process, and allow for more consistent user education.

[therahedwig]

My other suggestion regarding saving the noobs is for adventure mode; lords will very easily suggest you go and slay a megabeast/nighttroll or something like that, and even with a lot of companions, fights like that (which are often in tiny tiny tiny diagonal corridors) require a thorough understanding of the DF combat system.

So my suggestion would be to have lords try to ease in their hearthspeople with some easier tasks before they get send out to fight the more powerful creatures.

[Shonai_Dweller]

My other suggestion regarding saving the noobs is for adventure mode; lords will very easily suggest you go and slay a megabeast/nighttroll or something like that, and even with a lot of companions, fights like that (which are often in tiny tiny tiny diagonal corridors) require a thorough understanding of the DF combat system.

So my suggestion would be to have lords try to ease in their hearthspeople with some easier tasks before they get send out to fight the more powerful creatures.

Honestly I think that starts pulling away from what dwarf fortress is. Part of its appeal is that the world is what it is regardless of who you are. You want to fight a dragon, sure go ahead, but be prepared. The townspeople complain of dragon attacks because they're suffering dragon attacks, not because a level 30 adventurer happened to wander into town.

[therahedwig]

Honestly I think that starts pulling away from what dwarf fortress is. Part of its appeal is that the world is what it is regardless of who you are. You want to fight a dragon, sure go ahead, but be prepared. The townspeople complain of dragon attacks because they're suffering dragon attacks, not because a level 30 adventurer happened to wander into town.

Your lord should know better though. Like, random villagers and joe smoe at the tavern is fine, but the lord (who is giving these things as an assignment, sorry for the confusion) should know you've never ever scared a hedgehog in your virtual life?

[Shonai_Dweller]

Honestly I think that starts pulling away from what dwarf fortress is. Part of its appeal is that the world is what it is regardless of who you are. You want to fight a dragon, sure go ahead, but be prepared. The townspeople complain of dragon attacks because they're suffering dragon attacks, not because a level 30 adventurer happened to wander into town.

Your lord should know better though. Like, random villagers and joe smoe at the tavern is fine, but the lord (who is giving these things as an assignment, sorry for the confusion) should know you've never ever scared a hedgehog in your virtual life?

Ah, well yeah maybe. They should never have brought back hearth quests really. But too many people complained about the rumour system, I guess.

[therahedwig]

I don't think the hearth quests themselves are all that bad, it gives you a sense of a central location to return to, where people are waiting for you, which can be quite helpful when a world is too overwhelming and histfigs are just kinda hard to communicate with. And especially if you're new to adventure mode (or just new to the game in general), someone that tells you what to do is necessary, which is why it is especially kind of painful when that figure just sents you off to a suicide mission, and you can't go 'uh, boss, is this the only task you have for me???'.

[TheBeardyMan]

We never really knew that were-creatures were such a problem for new players.  This is because I think no one really knew it was a design flaw.  It's not a bug so we didn't pay attention to it.  It obviously ruined a lot of peoples fun.  They are set to come once you have 20 dwarves, which is way too soon.  We have since changed that for the next release.

Thresholds at which new challenges appear (e.g. the 20 dwarf threshold for werebeast attacks) should in general be configurable. And not just population thresholds - also the created/exported wealth thresholds and time thresholds.

Also, when a player decides that they're ready to face a new challenge for which the threshold is a population threshold, and they've been using population caps to avoid it until now, they shouldn't need to save, quit, load a configuration file into a text editor to edit a gameplay configuration parameter, and reload their save. Population caps should be properties of the current fortress mode game, editable in one of the game menus, and saved to a file in that game's save folder - not gameplay configuration parameters of the game install that can only be changed with a text editor while the game isn't running. The population cap configuration parameters should still have their place - but as initial values for new fortress mode games only.

Also, new features with a high risk of causing game balance problems should have tweakable parameters to control their impact on the game. Adding a parameter to tweak grazing - which was notorious for game balance problems, the largest herbivores were unable to feed themselves - was a step in the right direction here.

[PatrikLundell]

While parameters, and ease of changing them, is a good thing, I don't think it will save the newbies, as they won't know how to change them (and to what values).

The parameters ought to default to "sensible" settings for newbies, possibly with several sets of groups of settings available as alternatives (primarily for when they're not quite as new to the game, but it would also be helpful for old timers who want to adjust the settings to the same ones after each update), but if a newbie has to change settings while still a newbie, the settings are probably off (note that even newbies may want to change settings for various reasons, but it shouldn't be almost mandatory to progress with the game).

[Radircs]

Sure that I will repeat a few things but I was already thinking about open a similar thread specialized on GUI so I want to get this in on top of some other things.

So start with the GUI the current one is OK well technically its great in most parts but sadly don't piggyback a lot of muscle memory of new players what is an unnecessary obstacle.
To begin with, a good mouse-keyboard interaction would be helpful.
- WASD movement of the courser, a tooltip that emulates the look command you hover over something for a second or so.
- If you in the designation or zone/stockpile creation menu mousdrage to mark an area.
- Radiant menu with right-click for the major commands that need a special courser position (look, unit, build properties, build inventory). Left-click to execute the last command if you not in a sub-menu like designation.
- Build menu streamline like why the heck workshops have their own menu but beds, doors, coffer, cabinets are not in a sub-menu for furniture?
- Since you mostly on the left side of the keyboard with a WASD control place often use menus around there. On top of that, you can go and click with the mouse on a point in the menu to go deeper or activate that point. (like klick on channeling in the designation menu instead of using the shortcut keyboard command its maybe not the most efficient way but you don't need to lock up what you need and then search for the right key you can just click with your mouse if you already look at this point anyway)
This are just some examples with the military I donīt even want to start its a mess. Since its already shown this will be overhauled I wait and see how this play out before I want to make to much fuzz about it. But yeah way to unnecessary complicated.

So now how to get the noobs to survive at least longe enough to get hooked after we remove obstacles in the way how the game plays its the gameplay itself that maybe stomp them because of the lack of knowledge.
A complete tutorial would be a bad design decision. Forcing players in a sandbox game to do stuff even if it's just the first time is REALY bad. Better is to give them just goals to archive. Rimworld, for example, does it with just warning you about critical stuff like "he there is no food" to inform you that you maybe have a problem. DF, on the other hand, could give you in the embark some warnings For the start something like "he Aquifer are not easy to handle and can be a source of trouble for underground exploration, continue?" or "Ther is a Tower nearby this location this will mean you probably attract relatively soon a necromancer, continue?"  would be huge.
Ingame some basic quests on your first fort (and never again) like, "Your Dwarfs will need Food and Drinks. Build a Kitchen and a Still" would be already enough. Of course, you could explain every step but most players are not complete morons with an IQ of short under 80 like some tutorials want to make you believe. Just give them a direction to start with should do the trick to keep them around until the FUN hit them and they start to lose their first fort and want to use the newly gained knowledge to tackle the game in another one again this time better and bigger and maybe survive the FUN that kills them the first time to encounter more FUN.

[Ghills]

DF simply doesn't display information that players actually need to know. It's also not consistent enough for players to guess. 

Why are mining, channeling and cutting under a menu opened by pressing d? Why do the workshops have the keys assigned that they do?  There's no internally consistent logic that a new player can rely on, they have to memorize a lot of arbitrary stuff in order to play at a reasonable speed. This is punishingly boring.

How do players know what is causing stress and what is supposed to relieve that stress? They mostly can't, unless they look at the wiki. Where do they learn about skill degradation?  They mostly don't, unless they look at the wiki. How do players learn about reasonable fortress design & pathing? They basically don't, unless they look at the wiki.  Etc.  So, so much actually important information that is vital for effective in-game decisions isn't in the game. This is crap design, it's put off everyone I'd introduced the game to, and it's why I simply don't interact with large parts of the game. 

At every point the player has to make a decision, the important considerations are "What information is relevant for this decision?" and "Is this information clearly presented in-game and easily accessible from the screens where players make this decision?".  DF frequently fails to display relevant information at all, and even displayed information is hilariously opaque or not clearly relevant to situations where it is relevant.

Over the past few updates, the parts of the game that don't require massive out of game memorization, or specifically changing my playstyle to avoid punishment and fort loss, have shrunk tremendously. That's the opposite of what a game should be.  Players need to know the information that is relevant for the decisions they are making, and they need to be able to play a game in a way they find fun.

ETA: Since Toady and ThreeToe apparent didn't know that werecreatures were aggravating and unfun - will infiltrators be disablable?  Visitors aren't, which is bad enough (who wants to be completely incapable of stopping randos from wandering in? It's historically inaccurate, and it's bad design that potentially overrides player decisions.  Gate guards are a necessary missing feature from the visitors arc), but if infiltrators can't be turned off, that's terrible.  At the very least, new players will need a detailed overview of what infiltrators are and how to spot them.  They also need to be always noticeable in some way. Not being able to spot them would be...not good.  Gameplay features that can disrupt or reverse player decisions and aren't configurable are always a bad idea.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Werebeasts are set to attack later. They'll be completely unchanged otherwise. So, no, not likely that other features will be turned off. Visitors, besides monster slayers, only come if you choose to let them, so kind of irrelevant comparison.

[Silicoid]

-Military AI is quite hard to get a handle on, and to learn how to effectively defend your fortress.
-Ramps can sometimes be confusing.  Sometimes I'll be there for quite a while trying to figure out why a ramp is not working properly.