New players need direction more than anything. Tutorials are a good idea on paper, but I don’t think a tutorial is the solution for a game as complex as this. As others have mentioned in this thread most will probably skip hours of tutorials anyway. This to me just seems like a massive waste of development time.
The wiki and tutorial videos are great, but not to many people will want to spend hours there either.
I think the major issues to address are the Complexity, and the FPS issues.
Complexity/Interface/Tutorial:
Problem: Too much information without an easy way of comprehending it all can be overwhelming to the player and will make them give up before the 2 hour steam refund policy.
Solution/s: Organize the information via simple and intuitive categories with modern expectations in mind. Utlize popular UI design philosophies to achieve this.
1. Hovering over and item name or category should provide a simple tool tip pop up. Each object should display enough information to the player including what is can be used for when viewed via tool tip. This will give the player an idea of what they can do with all the Magnetite they just dug up for example.
Magnetite:Can be smelted into
iron at a
smelter.
2. Break the menus up into categories and sub-categories with enough information to explain the purpose of the menu. Everything in the game should have a tool tip including menus. The goal here should be to keep it clean and easy to look at with simple to understand categories. Color coding is a quick visual indicator of what that objects purpose/category is. This should be done with the font and/or backgrounds if icons are planned.
Example:
Buildings >
Workshops (Tooltip: Workshops allow dwarfs to produce items) >
Butcher’s shop (Tooltip: The
Butcher’s shop is used to extract components from animals and creatures.)
Viewing the
Butcher’s shop:
A
Workshop used extract components from animals and creatures.
Requires profession
Butcher.
Butchers can extract
Meat, organs, Fat, Skulls, Bones, Hooves, horns teeth, Shells, Skin, Wool, Hair, Cartilage, Nervous tissue, Feather, chitin, scale, and nail from animals and creatures.
3. Clicking on the object name should lead to a built in encyclopedia available via the help menu explaining the more detailed uses and purpose of that object.
4. View Rooms/Buildings should also indicate what rooms and buildings can be built and what furnishings they require to be considered a specific room.
5. It would be helpful if dwarfs needs from their thoughts and preferences occasionally appeared as a thought bubbles over their sprites. This would be a good way of telling the player what they should provide for that particular dwarf without the need to navigate in game menus for each and every dwarf. Additionally adding in a sub menu for needs may be a good idea and would do wonders to help balance the stress system. This provides goals for the player as well, which is another potential problem players may feel is missing.
Example:
Prayer hand icon over the dwarf would indicate a need for prayer. The player will then set a goal for themselves to dig out an area to build a temple to the god that particular dwarf worships.
FPS death:
Problem: Every item in the game is tracked constantly; the more items on the map the more fps will drop. Path finding jobs in big sprawling forts cause FPS to drop due to longer routes requiring more calculations.
This will definitely provoke many negative reviews on steam as this sort of thing isn’t tolerated by the average steam user.
Solution/s:
1. Add in an easy way to destroy items for good and better consolidate items for index tracking purposes.
a. Things like clothing, food, corpses, etc. should completely decay than disintegrate after a short amount of time if left outside of storage.
b. New buildings: Pyre, Compost pile, and Magma Incinerator.
Pyre: Converts organic items into ash. Have a menu with which objects should be incinerated. Things like tattered clothing, enemy corpses and rotten food could be on by default.
Compost pile: Rotten vegetation could be defaulted to here. This could serve as an alternative option of irrigating tiles to make them muddy. Much like designating a farm plot the player could designate an area to be fertilized via compost. This would make those tiles fertile for planting purposes.
Magma incinerator: Permanently destroys items. This would replace the atom smasher with a logical replacement.
c. The manager system should be paired with the stockpile screen in a way that allows the player to better control and understand how many goods they need rather than just mass producing items at a corresponding workshop. The manager screen should be the default way to manage production for new players. This would help reduce the overwhelming designation menu design and insane micromanagement need for those who don't love that type of game play.
2. Break up hauling to be a profession/s rather than a shared job that every dwarf does. This will limit longer distance path finding jobs to fewer dwarves.
a. Hauler: Hauls items to and from stockpiles.
b. Miner: Hauls stone and ore via mine carts/wheel barrels to stockpiles.
c. Workshops only pull from their stockpiles by default and haulers will provide a limited number of resources to the workshop directly if no stockpile is linked. This will prevent crafter dwarfs from performing path finding jobs for materials and will also keep them safe within the confines of the fort so you only need risk your peasants for such tasks.
3. Have cleaning be a primary profession to help keep clutter down. Cleaners would utilize the magma incinerator, compost pile, and pyre. I notice this task is usually ignored due to how dwarfs prioritize tasks. For less organized forts this adds to FPS death.
4. Migration waves should be smaller in size and even frequency by default. This would have an added benefit of getting to know individual dwarfs better and focusing on investing in them more.
5. Map size smaller by default.
Difficulty concerns:
Difficulty should be determined via multiple parameters and a peaceful mode should be made for new players that will avoid things like sieges, were-beasts, and forgotten beasts.
Other than that I think good modding and tile set support being established is important. Even if its not used in the scope of the vanilla steam release. I may be biased about this, but I think it would do wonders to add to the lifespan of the game, especially considering the long release cycle droughts.
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Topic: *We need your help to save the noobs!* (Read 102741 times)