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[Inarius]

I know Shonai, that ingame tuto is something in the Steam preview.
It's just that i think it's complicated to do. It's a lot of work. But, however, i think many people won't play the game unless it is in. So...well...

[Blomquistador]

I think it would help a ton if there was a "Reactions" screen. (Much like there is a "Stone" screen in the 'z' menu that tells which stones are used for what metal production, and which are magma safe).

The "Reactions" screen could hold recipes or workflows on how to produce certain products.
For example. Soap: Prepared Fat (Tallow) + Lye Containing Item
You could go into "Lye Containing Item" and see that it would be "Ash (Wood Furnace) + Ashery + Empty Bucket"

This would help new players learn to make things that most of us take for granted.
It's instinctual to me that a screw pump is a block, enormous corkscrew, and a pipe section. But this is not immediately obvious.
(I know that you can sometimes see this if you try to queue one up and you get an announcement).
Having a set screen with all reactions would be extremely beneficial. Especially for mods that add custom reactions to the raws.

Just a thought.

[PatrikLundell]

I think it would help a ton if there was a "Reactions" screen. (Much like there is a "Stone" screen in the 'z' menu that tells which stones are used for what metal production, and which are magma safe).

The "Reactions" screen could hold recipes or workflows on how to produce certain products.
For example. Soap: Prepared Fat (Tallow) + Lye Containing Item
You could go into "Lye Containing Item" and see that it would be "Ash (Wood Furnace) + Ashery + Empty Bucket"

This would help new players learn to make things that most of us take for granted.
It's instinctual to me that a screw pump is a block, enormous corkscrew, and a pipe section. But this is not immediately obvious.
(I know that you can sometimes see this if you try to queue one up and you get an announcement).
Having a set screen with all reactions would be extremely beneficial. Especially for mods that add custom reactions to the raws.

Just a thought.

Probably not worth the trouble, and it might get messy to handle mods. The wiki should provide the info for vanilla (with new players repeatedly reminded of that source of info), and for mods a decent mod should have a description of what it does, including its custom reactions. Also note that mechanically listing everything will get so long that people will complain they can't find anything in it (not to mention mug/goblet/glass/... for the functionally equivalent object using different reactions (materials and/or workshops), and overlaps (e.t. bone trinkets vs bone scepter).

[LoneIgadzra]

Hi Zach, thanks the efforts! If you are still working on gathering and prioritizing feedback, here is my experience as a new player who knew exactly what DF was and wanted to play it because of its reputation as difficult to learn and insanely complex.

1. Military screen. Anecdotally, I bounced off this screen for an entire year. It is extremely confusing, different from most other screens, and tiny. It's also a core part of the game. You have to read everything very carefully to avoid making a mistake. You also have to write down the dwarves you want to draft, because there is no context or stats shown in the citizen list. My wife just had a squad training for an entire year to be wrestlers because she didn't know she had to assign them a uniform. I knew (from reading the wiki) that I had to assign my first squad uniform, but couldn't see how to do it, and then kept screwing it up.

2. Likewise, the "squads" menu is just not very discoverable. I had to google how to make my military do anything, or even start training.

3. I could not find the labors menu and dwarf statistics after searching for a while, and just used Dwarf Therapist. Now that I know where it is, there are some issues that might be easy to fix: There ought to be a way to switch from "View Thoughts and Feelings" to the z "Status" menu. You should be able to access the z status menu using the k look command. There needs to be a way to view "big picture" of dwarf skills and labor settings, to find under-allocated dwarf to give a job to, or a strong dwarf to draft into the military.

4. Marksdwarves. Something any new player will want to try, and be frustrated by. In short: Bolts in bins being locked to one dwarf at a time, the aforementioned military screen, the many steps needed to create a working archery range, crossbows being used for melee even though ammo is available, etc.

5. Being unable to find metal. This can be pretty frustrating / confusing. I think any new player would expect to be forging amazing things out of metal. I was pretty bummed in my first fort when I realized all I had was zinc, and I would have to start over if I wanted to be forging awesome metal weapons. If you add some kind of feature to help a new player choose an embark, I would recommend including some metal they can make weapons out of.

6. Inconsistent menu semantics. Sometimes an option is showing what it is set to currently, sometimes it shows what it will change to if you press that letter. Yikes.

7. Menus that don't provide enough context. This is very common, and very frustrating for an advanced beginner. For example, with the new guild system when I go to make a new location it doesn't highlight the guilds I've accepted petitions for. Additionally the locations in my fortress are listed by name only in many places, even though I cannot possibly remember whether the farmer's guild is the "Guild of Hail", or that the tavern is named "The Rattling of Cages".

[Yakefa]

Hello, new player here. To sum up my experience with Dwarf Fortress after my first fort: DF will create various types of problems for me to solve, but solutions are oftentimes difficult to figure out or entirely cryptic to new players.

- Won't be a surprise, my main gripe is the UX. I get it that players aren't supposed to have an easy life and "fun" (aka struggling for survival) is the overarching design philosophy. While I'm not talking about removing complexity, streamlining the menus and tasks would help newer players on focusing on the actual fun management parts of the game. Can we make building fortifications and multi-level walls easier? Can we move furniture? Can I have a better way to understand what makes a "decent office" acceptable for a mayor? Etc etc... Quality of life please!

- On the same topic, the Peridexis Lazy Newb Pack was essential in helping me getting into the game. It regroups many tools (DFHack and Dwarf Therapist on the top of the list) and options that make the game (a bit) easier to handle. DFHack makes text more readable and I ended up using quite a few DFHack commands to help with my fort: quicksave (game can crash), buildingplan (placing furnitures before they're built like Rimworld), burial (allowed to put dead dwarves in unowned coffins), digv (dig the selected vein), etc. Also used some of the "auto" commands like autofarm or autobutcher.
Somehow the steam version needs an ingame version of Dwarf Therapist, additional options and quality of life offered by DFHack and similar tools.

- Lack of guidance early game. The game is overwhelming for a player starting in 2020. The amount of hidden information for a new player, most of you who have been playing the game for years and saw the game growing progressively can't really fathom how difficult it can be for a new player to get into the game.
Had to look up on the internet find a "cheatsheet" explaining what to do the first day, then what to do the first week, first month, first year.
I'm wondering how it is possible to figure out features without the wiki or reddit or youtube, some of them are counter-intuitive.
Rimworld has a very simple and straightforward tutorial to get the ball rolling, wouldn't be a bad idea to have a look at it.

- As а new player, I made the "mistake" to build my fort on the first level below the ground. As soon as I started cutting trees, lots of open spaces appeared everywhere which compromised heavily the defenses of my fort. From there, there was no easy way to find those empty spaces and fill them. That's an example of cool features DF does, but can become rather offputting because of the lack of accessible ways to fix the problem. I didn't even know I had holes in the ground before invaders came and jumped through all these holes.

I don't want to sound harsh or anything, I actually love Dwarf Fortress for its depth and the possibilities offered to the player. But all the quirks are preventing the game from being accessible to wider audience. I'm inbetween this wider audience and the core player not wanting to taint DF soul with casualizing the game. But UX is not casualizing a game, it's a way to make the experience as enjoyable as possible.

If I had one suggestion, it would be to hire a UX designer specialized in management games and have him make an overhaul document, and have a separate team work on this overhaul while ToadyOne keeps the creative development for himself as he always did. This would require a lot of code refactor (everything?), it can't be done by one person alone and won't happen otherwise.
He allowed artists to help with the art, so why not the UX?

[Bumber]

- As а new player, I made the "mistake" to build my fort on the first level below the ground. As soon as I started cutting trees, lots of open spaces appeared everywhere which compromised heavily the defenses of my fort. From there, there was no easy way to find those empty spaces and fill them. That's an example of cool features DF does, but can become rather offputting because of the lack of accessible ways to fix the problem. I didn't even know I had holes in the ground before invaders came and jumped through all these holes.

That's actually more bug than feature. There's another variation of it that occurs even if you build a level deeper.

[muldrake]

- Lack of guidance early game. The game is overwhelming for a player starting in 2020. The amount of hidden information for a new player, most of you who have been playing the game for years and saw the game growing progressively can't really fathom how difficult it can be for a new player to get into the game.

Not to be sarcastic or anything but the game has always been this way.  If there is a person who ever found this game easy to get started with I have yet to meet that person.  Some of this is unavoidable because of actually complex game mechanics that interact in not easily predictable ways, and I don't think this kind of thing needs to be "fixed" because it isn't broken, but stuff like bins not working and not being able to figure out why dwarves don't do jobs, related to obscure mechanics, probably should be.

[Yakefa]

- Lack of guidance early game. The game is overwhelming for a player starting in 2020. The amount of hidden information for a new player, most of you who have been playing the game for years and saw the game growing progressively can't really fathom how difficult it can be for a new player to get into the game.

Not to be sarcastic or anything but the game has always been this way.  If there is a person who ever found this game easy to get started with I have yet to meet that person.  Some of this is unavoidable because of actually complex game mechanics that interact in not easily predictable ways, and I don't think this kind of thing needs to be "fixed" because it isn't broken, but stuff like bins not working and not being able to figure out why dwarves don't do jobs, related to obscure mechanics, probably should be.

In reference to the title of this topic, the goal here is not to debate whether it is possible to succeed or not in DF as a complete beginner, but how to improve the first-time experience of new players.
It is not broken, it is simply non-existent. Does it mean we shouldn't consider adding in-game tutorials? The game has always been this way and that's also one of the reasons why it's always been a niche game. Rimworld has come in the meantime, and it's a pretty good reference for UI and controls.
 
In Rimworld, there is a tutorial mission that explains all the basics and how to survive your first winter, but still lets you figure out the rest. Tooltips, pop up message, glowing UI/arrows, help understanding the UI better when playing this tutorial mission. The game takes the player hand through the early stages of the game and afterwards, it's gone.
For DF, it might need more than one single tutorial because it's difficult to encompass all areas in one go.

[Shonai_Dweller]

You all know Toady already decided to add a tutorial, right? Whether or not the game needs one is irrelevant. What people think it should contain is the kind of feedback they need right now.

[muldrake]

In reference to the title of this topic, the goal here is not to debate whether it is possible to succeed or not in DF as a complete beginner, but how to improve the first-time experience of new players.
It is not broken, it is simply non-existent.

This is actually in the pipeline, it is planned for the Steam version.  I'm somewhat skeptical of how much can be packed into an in-game tutorial but anything at all would have to be better than nothing.

[Putnam]

I don't think this kind of thing needs to be "fixed" because it isn't broken

Frankly, this sort of opinion can only be had if you close your ears and shout "LALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU EVERYTHING'S FINE". If you decide to ignore literally all feedback, then yes, this is a valid take, but it also makes it a worthless take that has absolutely no place in the discussion. Maybe actually listen to new players on whether the new player experience is up to snuff? Might be reasonable? Complaints don't come out of thin air. New players' suggestions are probably useless, yes, but to say it's "not broken" is hideously false. The complaints come from a real place.

I find the game eminently playable. This is because I haven't been a "new player" in a decade, and I know the entire game in and out. I am simply not allowed to form my own opinion on the new player experience as of now. I cannot experience that, it's not possible, I can never be a new player. New players know what the new player experience is like.

[muldrake]

I find the game eminently playable. This is because I haven't been a "new player" in a decade, and I know the entire game in and out. I am simply not allowed to form my own opinion on the new player experience as of now. I cannot experience that, it's not possible, I can never be a new player. New players know what the new player experience is like.

True but short of breaking it for those for whom it isn't broken, i.e. those who already play it, not all of these concerns are addressable.  The general complexity of the game isn't a brokenness even if there are certain specific things that can be fixed (bins and stockpiles and the military screen and almost innumerable things that actually are broken), not all of them can.  I have not gone senile in the past five years, though, and while I certainly can't be a new player again, it isn't as if my memory of that has entirely vanished to the point I can have no opinion on it at all.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Hmm. Yes, I also have memories of playing for the first time. And while things like setting tilesets and switching to full-screen, then switching tilesets again to something not incredibly tiny, and so on frustrated me no end, the game itself was no different from many other complex games. Feels overwhelming, but I knew how to dig into a cliff face at least and from there on it's just experimentation.

I've never understood where Toady gets his, "worldgen is over and players are now faced with a menu with the option Start Game, it's so confusing" worries from. The tiny front menu is far, far more welcoming to me than the multitude of options the Lazy Noob Pack offers.

Now, I knew how to dig into a cliff face, because I'd watched a couple of minutes of a YouTube video. That perhaps can and should be taught. But after that? I just played and referred to the wiki if I needed a guide and worked things out a bit at a time.

I choose to play complex games, always have done. Games with manuals usually. In the olden days that was a mark of a fine game. Big bulky manual to read on the train home from the computer game store (remember those!?). That is of course the issue. I come in knowing I'm going to have to work and learn how to do stuff if this feeling of being overwhelmed is ever going to go away, and that perhaps is not what the modern gamer wants. Whether they want Dwarf Fortress at all is highly debatable though.

Improve the interface, fix the bugs, teach the basics in some kind of in-game tutorial, but leave the complex stuff for people to work out for themselves, Steam Achievements or something can probably motivate people to learn about forges and the joys of magma crabs. But really, don't make the game any less complex than it is. Even if you end up losing those players who's philosophy is "if a game needs a tutorial/manual/wiki, it's broken".

[Putnam]

worldgen is over

the concern is more about the fact that the first thing you're presented with is "create new world", which with default settings will take you approximately 15 minutes to deal with, then "start game" puts you into an inscrutable screen with no less than 3 ASCII maps and an gigantic mess of keybindings

[Shonai_Dweller]

worldgen is over

the concern is more about the fact that the first thing you're presented with is "create new world", which with default settings will take you approximately 15 minutes to deal with, then "start game" puts you into an inscrutable screen with no less than 3 ASCII maps and an gigantic mess of keybindings

Yes, this is definitely a concern. It's not what I was talking about though.