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[Jarod]

Hello Urists,
Just bought and am playing the new release. Loving the graphics and am intrigued by some of the UI changes, but ultimately very excited for Toady and Threetoe for their great work and the new players it will bring in. But my only request is too keep the old control scheme in the game so we don't need to use a mouse and can play with the muscle memory we've all learnt over the years we've been playing. Personally I've been playing for over a decade and have bounced off the new control scheme entirely, and so would love to see in future releases the old-style controls be an option. Personally I know the old menu system was quite daunting but there was a logic and consistency in it and I guess I've come to love it after a very long time with it

[Metruption]

Agreed, I was unable to find a way to control the camera with numpad.

[Belerad]

I have to agree, but also have to mention, even if I would get used to the new controls sheme, I would prefer the older version, because it is much faster an efficient and the new one feels somehow clunky. But the thing that bothers me at most, is the new jobprofile system. Maybe I just miss a thing or two. But as far as I've seen it, I can just declare job profiles and set Dwarf to those profiles and not give every single dwarf specific jobs I want him too do.

Also a few things that i would recommend:
- A Hotkey to hide the UI in WorlGen and maybe in Fortress Mode.
- The possibility, to recreate the world with the used settings, after the world is created or just the old (a) abort world gen. At the moment there is just "Play now" and "Return to main Menu and Save World"
- Better defined Lines in the Menus
- On Embark Screenm, lets have the jobs been in alphabetical order

Because this Post looks so negativ, i have to mention that I really do like a lot of the new stuff like the Music and Ambient sounds, the new UI and the neat looking Graphics are just awsome and I am happy with most of the magic that did happen in the last years.

[Salmeuk]

I believe it is planned that the classic mode will release with the old control scheme adopted for the new features. but this is planned for later....

the new GUI has me conflicted as an experienced player. I'm trying to eschew my ingrained hotkey habits, but am finding that any use of the mouse is regrettable.

[LuuBluum]

There is a "keyboard viewer" option in settings which I think restores at least some of the old way of navigating via keyboard? I've not tried it, myself.

[Eniteris]

I was looking forward to the new UI, but I have to agree; without full keyboard controls this game has no flow state. But even independent of that, the new UI has many strange and unintuitive decisions. Escaping out of menus doesn't have consistent behavior. Scroll wheel is dependent on your mouse location. There's a lot of complaint about the new announcement system and how reports disappear.

I don't mind the new hotkeys, but the issue is that you need the mouse so the hotkeys are inaccessible. But even without hotkeys, the new UI is even more inconsistent than the old UI.

Given the state of the current UI, I think it would be a good idea to offer old UI.

It might be interesting to run the numbers on how many people playing Classic (after it is released) use the mouse.

[LuuBluum]

I don't think "offering the old UI" is an option at this point, at, like, a technical level and with how the game is developed. The only way forward is to fix what's there, rather than try to go back.

[nshapter]

For a dozen years I played keyboard only because I use a mouse at work, and it causes me pain to use any it more than I do.
If there's never a way to play the premium version with the keyboard, this may be the last time I play.
I'm in a lot of pain, wrist joint popping, after playing last night.
I can't tell you all how sad this makes me.

[LuuBluum]

For a dozen years I played keyboard only because I use a mouse at work, and it causes me pain to use any it more than I do.
If there's never a way to play the premium version with the keyboard, this may be the last time I play.
I'm in a lot of pain, wrist joint popping, after playing last night.
I can't tell you all how sad this makes me.

If you go to settings, there is a "keyboard cursor" option there. This removes the mouse requirement for designations, and lets you do things like dig designations and all the rest of it in the old style, using entirely the keyboard.

As far as I can tell there is no way to actually navigate a menu with exclusively the keyboard, however. I don't think there's anything restricting that from being added, so perhaps in an upcoming patch or two?

[ZM5]

Yeah, I agree on fixing what's here now and maybe at most introducing a classic-esque hotkey scheme (and allowing for keyboard-only playthrough - I really dislike being forced to use the mouse when q-hotkey was much faster for immediate tasks like making several beds).
I don't think I'm alone in this, but I'm kinda feeling like while some of the UI and QOL changes have been for the better, there's a lot of minor annoyances that add up and questionable design choices that make things feel like "1 step forward, 2 steps back". Might be good to compile a list of what veterans in particular dislike and what could be fixed to make things easier for people to adapt and what needs changing.

[Su]

we're in the same boat as nshapter. the last few days have been quite literally painful.

a lot of things in premium seem to have been "streamlined", ostensibly to save newbie brains from frying - but all that's done is paper over the complexity with systems that take away control, making them more confusing and frustrating than they ever were to begin with. it's impossible now, for instance, to fix a stair that was mistakenly designated as a down stair to be an up/down stair; reports, when dismissed, are memory holed and lost forever; labors cannot be feasibly set on a per-dwarf level; 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.

the specific details of hotkeys are unimportant [though we really wonder what made them decide on b->p->r for doors...], and a dfhack plugin to display the current available ones onscreen in order to ease the cognitive load shouldn't take too long to materialise, so we have no real complaints nor desire to return to the old ones. but please, toady - if you change nothing else, let us ditch the mouse!!

[LuuBluum]

we're in the same boat as nshapter. the last few days have been quite literally painful.

a lot of things in premium seem to have been "streamlined", ostensibly to save newbie brains from frying - but all that's done is paper over the complexity with systems that take away control, making them more confusing and frustrating than they ever were to begin with. it's impossible now, for instance, to fix a stair that was mistakenly designated as a down stair to be an up/down stair; reports, when dismissed, are memory holed and lost forever; labors cannot be feasibly set on a per-dwarf level; 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.

the specific details of hotkeys are unimportant [though we really wonder what made them decide on b->p->r for doors...], and a dfhack plugin to display the current available ones onscreen in order to ease the cognitive load shouldn't take too long to materialise, so we have no real complaints nor desire to return to the old ones. but please, toady - if you change nothing else, let us ditch the mouse!!

As mentioned above, there's a "keyboard cursor" option in settings that at least lets you ditch the mouse for designations and constructions and whatnot. Doesn't solve menu navigation (and I spun up a suggestion on that one), but that should at least help somewhat.

[Salmeuk]

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.

if I had to hazard a guess, these decisions were not made by the brothers, or they were convinced by people less familiar with the game that a mouse was necessary for good steam reviews. The 'mouse' as an interface device is agreed upon as the 'most important' part of a user's toolset for interacting with video games, but this was not always the case and it should not be assumed that cursor-directed clicking somehow makes the game easier to navigate. I say this, being one of the few people who USED the mouse in classic for mining designations.

this is not a strange, obscure opinion, and many of us forum-goers expressed concern over this very thing months before release.

The difficulty curve has been flattened, but this puts a hard limit on the ability of experienced players to efficiently interact with the game's interface . . the risk here is that our concerns are ignored or nullified and this whole generation of DF players is sort of lost. to something as silly as the need for a GUI.

[LuuBluum]

Honestly, I don't even think it's that. I think it's that Tarn genuinely didn't know what people were looking for in an interface. When you hear people complain about the awful interface for over a decade, and then when you go to overhaul it hear people complain about the change itself, I imagine it can be a bit jarring.

If nothing else, I do agree that there should be a means to fully control the game via keyboard. We have designations and whatnot tackled with "keyboard cursor". Now we just need menus.

[Shazbot]

It has been impossible to get into the old DF fugue-state where I sit down, hit buttons on the keyboard, and out pops the mining designations for a multi-layer apartment complex or a gatehouse or a plaza with a central well.

To be wholly honest I would rather play Classic, but eventually Steam will fix most of these problems, and I won't be able to bring Classic into Steam.

This release is kind of like a glass-bottomed boat over a coral reef where Classic was scuba diving at night. You are both experiencing the same world, but while the boat is a very accessible view you aren't going to get wet and be fully immersed. Information is certainly easier to get in front of your eyes; click a dwarf, click their tabs, see what they're up to. You can recognize a dwarf by his hair color, clothes and beard now. That's good. You can no longer build bed left left down enter enter wait query designate plus plus assign down down down enter.

So yeah. Mixed feelings.