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[Knight Otu]

It seems that most let's players and streamers on Youtube and Twitch get the work order conditions wrong, only creating the generic condition rather than using R and P (or if they do, they manage to get themselves confused and going back to the DF Hack version). I feel those two options need to be more prominent than the generic add condition.

[JEB Davis]

I'm just reaching the point where I don't consider myself to be a noob anymore, having learned how to keep my fortress mostly safe, how to make a cistern & well filled by water from the surface, have defeated a forgotten beast, outfitted a small military with steel, and other things like this that are "old hat" for experienced players.

I just spent hours reading this thread (and before that, Threetoe's other one about stress)... excellent threads!
I'll keep my suggestions short, without going into detail because they've already been discussed a bunch.

FOREMOST:
Set aside new feature development for a while and fix the bugs, especially:
  a. bins
  b. archers
  c. a few others that my tired brain can't recall at the moment

SECONDLY:
  c. consolidate & streamline the menus
  d. combine the functions of "t", "v", "q", and "k" into just one or two rather than four

THIRDLY:
  e. no in-game tutorial (this would take away too much time from the more important things above)
  f.  no in-game tutorial (it was easy and fun to learn using the wiki and youtube tutorials and the lazy newb pack)

Thank you for this most wonderful, complex, labor of love!

CONFESSIONS:
  1. The first werebeast was a complete surprise and !FUN! at the time, but wanting to concentrate on learning more before dealing with another, I retired the fort and found out how to edit them (and vampires) out temporarily while I learn more. I'll bring them back later.
  2. I use Dwarf Therapist extensively.
  3. Haven't played vanilla (although in my defence I do love Sil and other ascii roguelikes). Vanilla DF is just a bit much for me as a beginner.
  4. Learning with the Lazy Newb Pack was excellent!
  5. I really enjoy Masterwork DF, but now have scaled back a bit on that complexity and just use Meph's tileset install.
  6. The escalating stress problem, I'm trying to avoid by changing the creature_standard.txt STRESS_VULNERABILITY tweaked down a bit, but I've not gone more than about 3 years yet so that remains to be seen.

[Erendir]

Another experience from my newest try at DF (I'm not exactly new, but pretty much a noob):

Migrant waves are overwhelming.

It's hard for me to familiarize myself with the new dwarves when there are suddenly 50 of them and the 2nd year isn't over yet.

With the initial 7, I spent time planning their skills on the embark screen, then assigning and adjusting labors in the initial phase of the fort. When the first migrant wave arrived I was just starting digging more permanent bedrooms (only had a dormitory till then). I got the migrants more or less settled by the end of the year. There were 16 dwarves and it was already a bit strenuous to keep track of who is who. But then in the spring of 2nd year, 25 more arrived, which more than doubled forts population and I gave up on managing them.

This is not exclusively an issue of (missing) UI for labor-management. I think the migrant waves should be smaller and less frequent, and/or (if possible) adjustable via diplomatic means.

[PatrikLundell]

Migrant waves can be adjusted manually through adjustment of the pop cap after every migrant wave, which is a bit clunky, but it actually works (although I wouldn't expect newbies to know about it). I definitely agree that better controls and a more reasonable default migrant influx rate would improve things considerably for newbies, though.

[Arbinire]

honestly the biggest addition to the game to help out the "noobs"(heck, it'd help me out and I've been playing 10 years now)....an In Game management menu that's equivalent to what we use Dwarf Therapist for now.  Having to go in and assign jobs individually is a PITA and it'd be nice to have such a screen in game, even if it were a bit slower and required more navigation to adjust for a lack of point and click controls, it'd be much faster than what we can currently do without it.

[Pvt. Pirate]

honestly the biggest addition to the game to help out the "noobs"(heck, it'd help me out and I've been playing 10 years now)....an In Game management menu that's equivalent to what we use Dwarf Therapist for now.  Having to go in and assign jobs individually is a PITA and it'd be nice to have such a screen in game, even if it were a bit slower and required more navigation to adjust for a lack of point and click controls, it'd be much faster than what we can currently do without it.

to be honest, that's a PITA even with those tools, although not as much as without.
it does work when you got less than 20 dorfs, but after that, its unbearable.
that's also the reason why i use dfhack autolabor plugin and just limit the workshops by skill or assign dorfs to workshops directly.

[Schmaven]

honestly the biggest addition to the game to help out the "noobs"(heck, it'd help me out and I've been playing 10 years now)....an In Game management menu that's equivalent to what we use Dwarf Therapist for now.  Having to go in and assign jobs individually is a PITA and it'd be nice to have such a screen in game, even if it were a bit slower and required more navigation to adjust for a lack of point and click controls, it'd be much faster than what we can currently do without it.

to be honest, that's a PITA even with those tools, although not as much as without.
it does work when you got less than 20 dorfs, but after that, its unbearable.
that's also the reason why i use dfhack autolabor plugin and just limit the workshops by skill or assign dorfs to workshops directly.

Dwarf Therapist has some cool hidden features that make it much easier.  You can create a labor template of various enabled labors, name it, and then batch apply it to as many dwarves as you like.  The custom profession templates persist from game to game too.  So I just set up some basic ones, and then in just a handful of clicks I can assign over a hundred dwarves in various fields.

Before I figured that out, Dwarf Therapist was indeed a chore.  Now it's super easy.  The work was just in setting up the initial custom professions. 

[CyberianK]

I think the Were-creature change was great to save the noobs. Once you get some experience its not an issue anymore but I remember it causing me some great pain when I started. Sure fun is a part of it but it was probably a bit too scary for new players when a Weregiraffe kills everyone 5 minutes after you started the game.

Have to agree with huge migrant waves being overwhelming for noobs. I think smaller waves would be better or make a setting to limit them max and set the default low.

Overall the defaults are also bad for FPS death. Default embark size should be 2x2, world size small and pop cap 80. If theres no revolutionary change for FPS death that is but it seems there isn't.
Multithreading seems to be outside of the scope of this project. And pathfinding seems to be the most expensive but I guess if there would be a magical solution to this like doing pathfinding less frequent then he would have gone for it already? So I guess we get only tiny constant FPS improvements balancing out the FPS increases for the new features? When I regularly stop playing DF its usually because of FPS death even when I am taking all the precautions (small fort, small world, destroy items QSs...).

[Pvt. Pirate]

honestly the biggest addition to the game to help out the "noobs"(heck, it'd help me out and I've been playing 10 years now)....an In Game management menu that's equivalent to what we use Dwarf Therapist for now.  Having to go in and assign jobs individually is a PITA and it'd be nice to have such a screen in game, even if it were a bit slower and required more navigation to adjust for a lack of point and click controls, it'd be much faster than what we can currently do without it.

to be honest, that's a PITA even with those tools, although not as much as without.
it does work when you got less than 20 dorfs, but after that, its unbearable.
that's also the reason why i use dfhack autolabor plugin and just limit the workshops by skill or assign dorfs to workshops directly.

Dwarf Therapist has some cool hidden features that make it much easier.  You can create a labor template of various enabled labors, name it, and then batch apply it to as many dwarves as you like.  The custom profession templates persist from game to game too.  So I just set up some basic ones, and then in just a handful of clicks I can assign over a hundred dwarves in various fields.

Before I figured that out, Dwarf Therapist was indeed a chore.  Now it's super easy.  The work was just in setting up the initial custom professions.

having an ingame option to automatically assign jobs according to dorfs' skills and so that all workshops are potentially manned would definitely help.

[darkhog]

Overall the defaults are also bad for FPS death. Default embark size should be 2x2, world size small and pop cap 80. If theres no revolutionary change for FPS death that is but it seems there isn't.

I've actually made a suggestion what could pathfinding be replaced with to both increase performance and make movement of units more realistic.

[Tryble]

Military Dwarves being difficult to control, and their behavior being a bit suicidal. 

I would love an option to order dwarves to hold their ground, for example when stationed.  Currently, military dwarves rush out as soon as they sight an enemy, which can result in some dwarves running off individually to engage a horde of a billion goblins while their squadmates who didn't see anything stay behind.  If they could be told to not pursue further than a few tiles or so, that would be super useful.

Similarly, patrolling dwarves generally run their path whenever they're free, but they do so as individuals.  Patrolling is an interesting option and I like to use it, but I'd be much more willing to use patrols in dangerous areas if the patrol would walk together while running the route.  As of now, setting a patrol of dwarves on the surface or caverns is dangerous since they'll typically encounter threats while alone, even if they have many squadmates running the same patrol. 

[SheepRFriends]

I have enjoyed reading the entirety of this thread over the past few days. I have been playing since 2010 and I consider myself an advanced Fortress Mode player. I think some of the suggestions here are good and some are terrible. My $0.02 is this: No matter what you do, not many people will have the patience to enjoy learning to play DF and even people that do learn how to play effectively might not be interested in an open sandbox with no end goal. So don't bend over backwards for noobs.

That said, everyone could benefit from the following because they enrich the entire experience from learning to play to mastering hell:
1) The new graphics and sound
2) Bug fixes for stress, socialization, ect
3) An enhanced UI (searchable lists, point and click mouse usability, better organization of the menus and submenus, some screen ala Dwarf Therapist for dwarf management)
4) FPS preservation
5) Simplified toggling of game parameters like weather on/off, temp on/off, pop caps, visitor caps, invasion thresholds, ect (I don't mind editing d_init and init, but it can be a hassle)
6) Better military commands (just being able to toggle between 'hold position' and 'classic AI' would make a big difference)

[MrMagolor]

More site search filters. Namely, being able to filter the presence of various stone layers, as well as being able to search for trees. Especially the former, as it's very frustrating when you embark on a flux + shallow/deep metal location with no sedimentary = no iron, steel, or Coke.

[Pvt. Pirate]

More site search filters. Namely, being able to filter the presence of various stone layers, as well as being able to search for trees. Especially the former, as it's very frustrating when you embark on a flux + shallow/deep metal location with no sedimentary = no iron, steel, or Coke.

so including the dfhack embark assistant

[PatrikLundell]

More site search filters. Namely, being able to filter the presence of various stone layers, as well as being able to search for trees. Especially the former, as it's very frustrating when you embark on a flux + shallow/deep metal location with no sedimentary = no iron, steel, or Coke.

so including the dfhack embark assistant

The reason embark assistant was written as part of the external tool suite DFHack was a demand from (mostly experienced) players to find ideal embark sites according to their wishes. What newbies need is probably a newbie filter with few or no options, rather than a bewildering array of options for things they know little about. If the search filter for (slightly more) experienced players was updates as well, it would be great, but I'm not sure that would rank among the highest priorities for tasks to be dealt with before the Premium release. I'm sure there would be complaints if the newbie filter always found steel prerequisites while the normal one didn't allow you that precision (including bug reports), though.