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[Su]

There's also the other ones who are seemingly suffering from extreme stockholm syndrome. Regarding what you said about the new labor system, it's untrue and you haven't bothered looking for the way to do it in the new version

that labors cannot feasibly be set on a per-dwarf level? i'll give you the benefit of the doubt, perhaps there is something i've missed; but please don't insult my intelligence.

The old v->p->l labor assigning was extremely tedious, obnoxious and unintuitive.

agreed.

Dwarf Therapist was required to make managing easier, and even that was still relatively tedious with having to scroll and manually assign per dwarf for any fortress above size 20.

an aside: i installed therapist on a couple of occasions but found it clunky and its workflow immersion breaking to the point that i legitimately prefered to use the old system over it. i GREATLY prefer dfhack's built-in manipulator plugin and consider it the peak of this particular design space.

DFHack autolabor was a good step towards what we have now

i wholly disagree! where previously there was a game in optimising labor settings, autolabor removes the concept entirely - it is like the difference between casual play and watching a credits warp TAS [obviously for people who don't care or otherwise don't want to engage with the system, autolabor-like tools are fine; just don't force them on me].

but by far the worst is the agonizing tedium of the mouse. we genuinely cannot fathom why anyone - least of all the adams brothers, for whom playing the game is essentially a job - would prefer such an inaccurate and slow input method when what we had already was almost perfect.

This is very closed-minded. I'll tell you why I, and a lot of other people prefer the mouse control over the original.

i don't care if other people like to use the mouse. if that's what you prefer, great! i have a connective tissue disorder. so like i said previously: using the mouse is *physically painful*.

Exactly like the labor system, the old control scheme wasn't even close to perfect, you've just convinced yourself it was because you're used to it. You haven't even tried to see the positives of, and most likely even attempted to use the new mouse-based system.

please stop putting words in my mouth. your armchair psychologising is neither accurate nor welcome.

To act as if some of the horrendous UI navigation controls were somehow faster than just moving and clicking once is dishonesty at worst, and rose-tinted glasses at best. If you disagree, I'd like you to explain to me how shift + to navigate each menu entry in a list was "faster" than a simple mouse move.

? shift+ is a single gesture of my hand. the mouse is moving my arm across the desk, or worse, a series of repetitive scrolls on the laptop touchpad. have you never seen how fast people use vim??

Let's not even mention designations, which were an absolute nightmare with the keyboard. Needing macros to make it less tedious isn't a solution - it's part of the problem.

this statement baffles me. what does it even mean??? in what upside-down bizarro world can macros possibly be part of the problem???

Regarding "inaccuracy", if you're unable to click the huge buttons properly, I think you may need to get your hands, your vision, or your mouse hardware checked. It's not hard to use, and I'm not exactly a professional FPS player or anything.

see my statement above. i can click things, sure, but not with any kind of speed - and i'd be surprised if you can either.

[therahedwig]

Hey, guys, can we have a truce? Like, fans of the new UI accept it's missing things, and fans of the old UI accept that the missing things are not out of spite?

Because I am afraid we'll otherwise see an increase in terribly mean things being said, and that will make it impossible to identify the precise things which need to be improved, which is a pity, because breaking down a bad time into concrete problems tends to be the best way to solve all of them.

[Celarious]

Fine, as you begged me to in DMs, I'll reply to your message, Salmeuk.

Now you can just select "use closest material" and check "keep building after placement" and it's one click per building, exactly as said. Even my carpal tunnel ass thinks this is less work.

this is useless for people who enjoy specificity in design ... so its useless for a lot of players

Ah yes, the standard "pretend like the entire playerbase plays like you to justify screaming about a feature". I've seen this with other people in the community, who like to claim that their specific playstyle is "a majority of the community" because they don't want to feel insignificant. The reality is, "a lot of players" is most likely, at most, 5%. Unironically trying to act as if being able to spam click down furniture is bad or useless for "a lot of players" is delusional, and counters reality. Even a long time veteran, Vargskelethor Joel, who in theory would be most hesitant to use this, immediately took a liking to the ability to spam place like this.

look, to completely dismiss people who don't want to use a mouse is a bit silly. DF made it's niche and then, with this new version, sort of failed to retain that feeling, and is honestly very much a different game because of it. this is not something objective, but entirely subjective.

Fair enough. As I said, I agree with adding the old keyboard controls back. Just stop being weirdly abrasive about it, saying shit like "how could tarn do this???" and understand that he's most likely working on it.

So when you dismiss various opinions as "you only tried it out for a few minutes, you have stockholm syndrome" what are you even saying?

Yes, actually. Have seen many, many instances of old players INSISTING that x or y was removed, are corrected by a new player who's found the new location of said feature, and then old player goes silent. It most likely is a case of them looking at it for a few seconds, deciding every function was removed, and then complaining.

That players who enjoy a game for certain features or functions are wrong? They are simply, "bitter"  look its been out for like a week or so, bitter isn't even the right vocabulary word for the situation lol.  How can you write that out without laughing at yourself?

Yes. As I said, this is very common in most games. Veterans who are extremely averse to change, having convinced themselves that the old system was perfect. This happens in the span of minutes, a week isn't even necessary. Just because people got used to eating a steaming pile of shit in the dumpster, doesn't make those systems good, nor does it make their "certain features" good. So yes, based off past occurrences and the predictable whining by old-timers, they are simply bitter.

it is also telling that you dismiss the various "stop-gap" measures that actually functioned perfectly fine for what they were. I did not use therapist, I did not use autolabor; instead, I used the labor managment screen accessible from the 'l' key within the unit list with DFhack installed. This screen is perfection, imo - it displays immediately the skill level of the dwarves, allowing you to highlight entire groupings of skills at once, AS WELL AS allowing you to create custom profiles to apply to whatever dwarf you wish.

You mean the inferior Therapist that DFHack added into the game? Do you want to know why most people wouldn't consider using that DFHack labor management feature? Because it looks like this:



Games don't, and shouldn't, release with such obtuse and badly designed interfaces. Sure, functionally it may have been """perfection""", and yet I've had to explain to new players who tried using it (because they were unable to find the vanilla v->p->l labor management) how it works after they got confused. Not that it helps, because the characters at the top are unhelpful for determining which skill you're toggling. Regardless, even if they should, Tarn has specifically stated he doesn't want to just add a Therapist-style spreadsheet into the game.

This sort of thing should have been considered in the new version. Again, there is no bitterness here, just confusion - you want people to play this game, but you provide them with hampered tools for doing so?

It has been considered and then promptly dropped, as I mentioned above. The only hampered tools were the old interface. As even you agree, the vanilla labor management system was unusable. Claiming "DFHack tho!" proves my point further, because needing external tools to make the vanilla game playable is a BIG problem with any game. What Tarn is doing is fixing that past problem, and un-hampering the tools of the game. Unless, of course, you'd like to claim that we SHOULD compare the vanilla release of a commercial game to the modded version of the classic game?

look, us veterans are just waiting for DFhack so again, this really is not the stockholm syndrome you think it is. merely stating how silly these changes are in comparison to readily available community sourced plugins is, well, not an invalid way to criticize a game.

It is. The very fact that you needed "community sourced plugins" to make the classic game bearable is the problem. But even if it wasn't, begging the single developer to implement these community modifications is selfish. Most other game developers understand this, and avoid doing so due to the sheer feature creep and ever-escalating community expectations that it'd place on them.

Regardless, if DFHack is going to get updated anyway, why are you trying to shoehorn this into the vanilla game? Just keep using DFHack and be happy. Don't try to force your "perfect system" onto others. Not everybody wants that level of micromanaging.

To act as if some of the horrendous UI navigation controls were somehow faster than just moving and clicking once is dishonesty at worst, and rose-tinted glasses at best.

tldr; The same way you genuinely cannot fathom why people would prefer mouse, I cannot fathom how people managed to play with the terrible keyboard controls. I say this after having to use them for many years.

look, I don't know what game you are playing, but I can play old DF like 5x as efficiently as the new version, even after putting in 20+ hours over the last week trying to figure out if it truly is as broken as people are claiming. And yeah, I am not compelled by the idea that I will now need to spend 5 hours for every 1 that I used to spend doing various tasks.

Can you now? If we can make up fake numbers and exaggerate, then I'll do the same. I can play new DF at least 2x as efficiently as the old versions. Designating mining? Not a problem anymore. Placing beds, doors and general furniture en masse? Very, very easy with "keep building" and "use closest" checked. Oh, "but the specificity!!!", so you agree the new system is faster then?

Don't get me wrong, I do agree that interfaces like workshop tasks need hotkeys for each task, as it would be a lot easier than clicking every time.

please read into the history of the mouse-user interface in contrast to the keyboard, you might educate yourself into a new opinion. also, somewhat ableist to dismiss people's valid complaints about being unable to use a mouse due to various medical conditions....

The history being that almost every game on the market uses the mouse for the majority of controls with the keyboard also being utilized in tandem to create good interfaces? Most games don't provide options for only one of those, and as I said, I agree with Tarn adding the old scheme, just don't be as abrasive about it.

Yes, if they actually have medical conditions, then they should've said so instead of just "the inaccuracy!!!!", and maybe it'd have seemed less whiny.

FOR INSTANCE, in my most recent megaproject The Spry Volcano, I spent a good amount of time designating walls. However, due to the fact I was building a pyramid, I needed to create a series of slopes, which were not simple to designate, in fact this required a significant investment of time to simply lay down the plans.

The new version does NOTHING to support this style of building. So particularly creative players see little to no gain from the new methods of construction designation . . . in fact, they see losses in productivity.

The old method of designating walls was even worse, because you had to use UMKH to extend the length EACH TIME.

To act as if your niche style of building, which most players won't be doing, makes the entire new interface slower is dishonesty and blowing things out of proportion.

It's not like the new interface makes things less tedious, its just different tedious, so like... what gives?

Acting as if the new system of designation and control is even remotely on the same level of tediousness as the original is you spiting modernization for the sake of it. Change = bad isn't a valid argument, and never has been.

Just stop being weird about it, and politely ask that Tarn add the old scheme back.

So yes, while I do agree that Tarn should add the old schemes for those who spite modernization, I think it's fine to simply suggest he do so without being aggressive about it or attempting to project your coping of the old system onto others.

please don't project the hastily written posts of a few forum-goers onto the whole crowd. your use of dismissive language also belies a certain misplaced snark - what community are you a part of, that makes you think that tone is appropriate?

Yeah, guess that's my bad. Sorry about that, I've seen a lot of weird aggressiveness and sheer toxicity from a few on the Steam Forums and on here - and it's been irking me. Guess it's not everybody, but I'd still like for the OP I was replying to, to have been a bit calmer about the requests.

As I mentioned, I had problems with the old interface for the entire time I was using it, but I still do agree that Tarn should re-add the old control schemes.

[Celarious]

There's also the other ones who are seemingly suffering from extreme stockholm syndrome. Regarding what you said about the new labor system, it's untrue and you haven't bothered looking for the way to do it in the new version

that labors cannot feasibly be set on a per-dwarf level? i'll give you the benefit of the doubt, perhaps there is something i've missed; but please don't insult my intelligence.

Yeah, sorry about that. It takes a bit of setting up but if you create a work detail for all of the labors you know you'll be needing, and afterwards you can simply add any dwarf to it as needed. Of course you'll need to set every dwarf to specialized, which I still find easier than before.

Dwarf Therapist was required to make managing easier, and even that was still relatively tedious with having to scroll and manually assign per dwarf for any fortress above size 20.

an aside: i installed therapist on a couple of occasions but found it clunky and its workflow immersion breaking to the point that i legitimately prefered to use the old system over it. i GREATLY prefer dfhack's built-in manipulator plugin and consider it the peak of this particular design space.

I mean fair enough, but I think DFHack's labor management should stay with DFHack. If you see my previous message to Salmeuk, I don't think it's very... viable to put in a commercial game, especially not with a bit of simplification. Plus, I'm not a fan of such micromanaging. Wouldn't the best of both worlds be that it stayed available in DFHack?

DFHack autolabor was a good step towards what we have now

i wholly disagree! where previously there was a game in optimising labor settings, autolabor removes the concept entirely - it is like the difference between casual play and watching a credits warp TAS [obviously for people who don't care or otherwise don't want to engage with the system, autolabor-like tools are fine; just don't force them on me].

That's the thing though - the new system is closer to Autolabor than therapist or anything else. The game essentially manages itself if you don't specialize, removing the need to micromanage. While it's fine to want to micromanage or spend time optimizing labor settings, I think the new system is a good in-between. I don't want to have the micromanagement of optimizing labor from the classic game forced onto me either, so I'm very happy with the new. For the record, I never used Autolabor because I had enough other issues with DFHack and crashes that I didn't trust it to be stable.

but by far the worst is the agonizing tedium of the mouse. we genuinely cannot fathom why anyone - least of all the adams brothers, for whom playing the game is essentially a job - would prefer such an inaccurate and slow input method when what we had already was almost perfect.

This is very closed-minded. I'll tell you why I, and a lot of other people prefer the mouse control over the original.

i don't care if other people like to use the mouse. if that's what you prefer, great! i have a connective tissue disorder. so like i said previously: using the mouse is *physically painful*.

My bad then. Just when you said "it's inaccurate" seemed like a bit of a generalization, but I can fully understand for anybody who has a disorder relating to it.

Exactly like the labor system, the old control scheme wasn't even close to perfect, you've just convinced yourself it was because you're used to it. You haven't even tried to see the positives of, and most likely even attempted to use the new mouse-based system.

please stop putting words in my mouth. your armchair psychologising is neither accurate nor welcome.

Sorry, just what I said seemed most likely, based off how overhauls/major changes to games usually go. People forget and get used to the new system after some time.

To act as if some of the horrendous UI navigation controls were somehow faster than just moving and clicking once is dishonesty at worst, and rose-tinted glasses at best. If you disagree, I'd like you to explain to me how shift + to navigate each menu entry in a list was "faster" than a simple mouse move.

? shift+ is a single gesture of my hand. the mouse is moving my arm across the desk, or worse, a series of repetitive scrolls on the laptop touchpad. have you never seen how fast people use vim??

I'm sorry, but shift + requires me to move my hand over to a rarely-used part of the keyboard and spam the button for each item scrolled. It just wasn't nice to do.

Just in case, have you tried setting your mouse sensitivity higher? Would ease the movement requirement a bit.

Also, I don't actually scroll in menus either, I click and drag the scrollbar. I find the scroll speed too slow, maybe should be configurable?

Also Vim is terrible, purely because of its controls.

Let's not even mention designations, which were an absolute nightmare with the keyboard. Needing macros to make it less tedious isn't a solution - it's part of the problem.

this statement baffles me. what does it even mean??? in what upside-down bizarro world can macros possibly be part of the problem???

Yes, if you need macros, external tools, mods, etc to make a vanilla function bearable, that's a problem with the game. It means the game is inadequate.

Regarding "inaccuracy", if you're unable to click the huge buttons properly, I think you may need to get your hands, your vision, or your mouse hardware checked. It's not hard to use, and I'm not exactly a professional FPS player or anything.

see my statement above. i can click things, sure, but not with any kind of speed - and i'd be surprised if you can either.

I understand about the disorder you mentioned. In terms of me, I can actually click UI buttons far faster than I could look at, remember and then reach to the esoteric and inconsistent keybinds the game had before. Can remember lots of cases where even the on-screen keybind listing is in a weird position, so I constantly had to look around to find it. The new UI has been far easier and faster for me as a result.

As I said to Salmeuk, sorry if I popped off a bit. I was a bit irked after seeing some... behaviour from a few others. I agree with you and others about Tarn re-adding the old control scheme as an option. I think we should have more faith in Tarn to do the right thing, as he's been doing for the past many years. It's fine to dislike the changes, just seemed to me like you could've been a bit calmer about them. I do also think the new UI is missing a lot of things, like a dedicated report and announcements window, workshop hotkeys, etc.

[Putnam]

Yes, I am personally waiting for DFHack/Therapist to come out so I don't have to hear people complaining about the work details system anymore. Some of the complaints are perfectly valid (not being able to see what the default work orders are assigned to) but a lot of them are just, like, intense difficulty in reworking the "manage dwarves" brain into a "manage labors" brain that the game is clearly trying to push? And if it's that hard, then yeah, the tools will still allow for dwarf management.

[Bumber]

There are a lot of changes. Is "b, p, r, <click>" better than "b, d, enter, enter"? Probably not but it doesn't seem worse.

Only if you have three hands. Otherwise you need to move one between the mouse and keyboard.

Good thing the context had literally nothing to do with specificity of design, then?? It was about how many button presses it takes to mass place bedrooms.

It did with respect to constructing floors. Most people probably don't want a mess of random colors, and don't want to wait for dozens of boulders to be hauled to a stockpile before designating. Thankfully v50.03 re-added the feature.

[MrNewVegas]

There are a lot of changes. Is "b, p, r, <click>" better than "b, d, enter, enter"? Probably not but it doesn't seem worse.

Only if you have three hands. Otherwise you need to move one between the mouse and keyboard.

Yeah, I agree. If you cut out the mouse entirely then it's very hard to argue that literally any hotkey on the keyboard is not at worst a small hand movement away. Especially when you consider that the amount of times you use it is basically compensating for how difficult it is to remember. Need to use a hotkey a hundred times? Even if it's something like shift + random hotkey you're going to pick up on that and have it memorised quickly. If it isn't an important hotkey you're not going to have to use it very often so looking it up doesn't seem to be as much of an issue (looking things up in DF is not hard).

Having to re-settle your hand to the mouse, locate the cursor and move the cursor where you want is a non-trivial thing to do (and re-settle back to the keyboard, I suppose, but I don't really count that). Certainly more than enter twice, something everyone knows how to do without even looking. It's not especially difficult to switch to the mouse like that in the sense that it's something anyone can do by shaking the mouse (especially if you've got that "shake to illuminate" windows feature enabled) but I find arguments that the new UI is anything but strictly worse than the old UI for people who took the time to learn what the UI wanted you to do somewhat unconvincing. It's not like you were learning something bad that wasn't any faster than a mouse, either. You were learning something that was somewhat opaque but had *a lot* of resources *and* once you learned it you could do things much faster than with a mouse and clicking everything.

The problem with a mouse and keyboard is you need to make a decision when you're doing computer input: you either use a mouse and keyboad and you lock out the entire right half of the keyboard away from a WASD user as a reasonable hotkey but in exchange you get access to a mouse (and all the advantages and disadvantages that entails) or you ditch the mouse and gain basically every key press on the keyboad (but you lose a mouse). DF clearly made the decision (I honestly have no idea why he did it but it wasn't a bad idea by any metric) to open up that hotkey territory at the expense of the mouse, and for the life of me I cannot actually think of any way that the practical use of the mouse wasn't fixed by dfhack. I mean, if you're going to try and compensate specifically for this lack of a mouse, dfhack seems to do everything you'd want while still emphasising keyboard controls. You don't get clicky buttons anywhere, but the design philosophy of hotkeys doesn't need the mouse for clicky buttons. The only places where I'd say it's measurably better to use a mouse is for designating things, and possibly for a hitherto undesigned military UI rework (I mean, not knowing about the steam UI at all) and DF hack does that quite neatly in my opinion.

People chose to use the mouse for things like windows and etc. because a clickable GUI really is a good idea for most things, I don't disagree. In fact, I am not really in favour of *not* having a clickable UI, I just think that there's good and reasonable justification for wanting and asking for keyboard only support, legacy style.