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[Soadreqm]

A "good UI" (and UX) is also very much subjective and depends on what you're used to.

I'd say there are still SOME things that are objectively good or bad. For example, look at OpenXcom. It's the open-source remake of the 1994 X-Com: UFO Defence (or UFO: Enemy Unknown, if you were European), and visually it's completely identical. Graphics designed for a 320x200 resolution on a CRT screen, and an interface designed for a mouse. Keyboard optional, though you probably couldn't launch the game in 1994 without one. The open-source version adds scaling options and filters to make it look less blocky on a modern display, and lets you use a higher resolution for some interfaces like the world map and the tactical battles, but for a large part, that 320x200 resolution was so deeply baked into the game's graphics that it's impossible to change.

So instead of a graphical overhaul, the open-source version just tries to make the interface as painless as possible. The 1994 version was designed almost entirely for the mouse, but OpenXcom adds keyboard shortcuts. While you can still click on the little pictogram of some squares to open the battlescape map, for example, you can also just press 'm'. Everything is searchable. Selling an alien corpse in 1994 meant scrolling through a your entire base inventory to find it, but now you can just hit 'q' and type part of the item name to filter the list. Same for buying, manufacturing, research and both aircraft and soldier inventories. There's tools to save those inventories, to quickly reapply them to a new batch of soldiers after the previous ones die. Despite having two entirely different layers to the game - the base building and logistics, and the tactical alien battles - it aims for consistency across the interface. The search hotkey is always 'q', and middle clicking always gives you more information about what you clicked at.

The open-source interface is clearly better than the 1994 original. It adds new functionality, and doesn't get in the way if you happen to be playing on a tablet and want to keep using the mouse controls.

[vjek]

Yeah. It's hard to know sometimes if modern interfaces are actually better, or just that people have gotten used to things.
...

For me, the new DF UI is so different that it makes it considerably more difficult to create new worlds with advanced worldgen.
And what I mean by that is.. I used to be able to use single keys in menus.  Very quick & efficient.  It was predictable, reliable, consistent and most of all? FAST.
Now?  Nope.  Not for me.  The amount of nonsense involved in just trying to create and world, check it for whatever feature, exit, delete it, and try again?  Cumbersome, tedious, annoying. SLOW.
It's bad enough, for me, that 47.x is probably my last version for iterative worldgens.  50.x is just too inefficient for me, but, as always, YMMV, and perhaps it will be improved in the future. 

As others have said, I have no interest in having a game made exclusively for me and my play style, but.. it is a real shame, in my opinion, that 10+ years of 'how it was' got thrown out.

[Metruption]

Funny thing is the 47.05 method of "Build a coffin, wait for it to be placed, select it, turn it to burial=yes" is basically the same amount of effort as the new "place 1x1 tomb zone, build coffin on it." Except you don't have to wait for any coffins to be built. With the added benefit of being able to build funny single room burial chambers for everyone if you really want to with the multi function.

It could be better, sure. Hopefully will be at some point. But it's closer towards a unified system that the scattered "everything works differently" system we had before.

After all the coffins are build I can tap a directional button and then the button to toggle burial in a rhythmic fashion to easily mass designate, something a macro could easily do. The new system to create 1x1 tomb zones requires multiple precise mouse clicks per tomb zone.

[Metruption]

Unfortunately I accidentally broke my 47.05 installation by inadvertently installing a 50.0x DFHack development build over it, so I can't even play 47.05 right now.

Just download and play it....
Every version of dwarf fortress ever made is free to download right here. Always has been, always will be. You can't somehow "break" that...

Downloading an older version of dwarf fortress and then setting it up just right with dfhack, dwarf therapist, twbt, your preferred tiles, your preferred init, your preferred d_init, configuring all of the dfhack plugins just how you like them is not such a trivial endeavor.

[Metruption]

With two programmers the mystery of how to make a macro remains secret forever? Not very likely....

The issue is doing it well in an environment that has dropped full keyboard support in favor of a mouse-oriented GUI.

You can create mouse macros right now using 3rd party tools. It's just garbage due to the aforementioned issues.

When was keyboard support dropped? Was there an announcement?
Strange thing to decide after so many announcements and comments after release that further keyboard support was going to be coming up.

Or did you perhaps dream it?

You can no longer play the game without a mouse. A significant amount of keyboard support for the game has been dropped.

[Goldbeard]

I am increasingly experiencing a lot of issues that I can't help but feel should have been caught with even the most basic of testing prior to release.  Yes bugs are to be expected, but there are gameplay design decisions that are just baffling.

My impression of DF has always been that release is testing. Which sorta worked on all versions free to download, donate if you like. I can see it might throw normies used to larger company releases on Steam.

I speculate that managing volunteer testers would delay the release cycle for Steam and legacy players both. But I'm not in the business to say for sure.

two months on and I'm playing more and more 47.05 because it simply flows better. the premium version just kinda hurts to play (literally, the forced mouse interactions are killing me... ) The new game content is honestly great but not worth the switch in UI atm.

Yeah I rolled back to 47.05 after only a couple hours of 50. Muscle memory alone makes keyboard UI option a necessity for me; I was hoping mouse would be an optional overlay but that was not to be.

The great thing about DF is it is an option. Everything's still up, and I'm grateful for that. I am resigned that for me the Big Wait has already begun, but fortunately I'm having Fun in 47 so that's okay.

[Putnam]

There are volunteer testers, I was one of them, it's just that there's kind of a lot of stuff in the game.

The Big Wait hasn't already begun, what? Adventure mode isn't going to take years, plural, unless something really, really awful happens in the process.

[muldrake]

Yeah I rolled back to 47.05 after only a couple hours of 50. Muscle memory alone makes keyboard UI option a necessity for me; I was hoping mouse would be an optional overlay but that was not to be.

I keep separate installs of 0.47.05 with LNP and the Steam version.  I have yet to really do a full fort in 50.  I'm slowly becoming more comfortable with it although I'm barely past being semi-okay with the current form of advanced worldgen and the new embark system.  So far as I know, embark-assistant isn't yet available in dfhack.  Having that might be the tipping point.

[alfredbaudisch]

> - arrival of certain nobles ends caravans from your civ.

I can't speak of the other issues, because I started playing DF with the Steam version, so I don't know how they were before. But this one is bugging me a lot and is being a dealbreaker. As soon as nobles move in, caravans bring only food from now on (or don't come altogether).

[muldrake]

> - arrival of certain nobles ends caravans from your civ.

I can't speak of the other issues, because I started playing DF with the Steam version, so I don't know how they were before. But this one is bugging me a lot and is being a dealbreaker. As soon as nobles move in, caravans bring only food from now on (or don't come altogether).

Is that new?  The arrival of a monarch (king/queen for dwarves) has always at least removed your ability to negotiate trade deals with the outpost liaison (since you are no longer an outpost). 

[Blue_Dwarf]

I can't speak of the other issues, because I started playing DF with the Steam version, so I don't know how they were before. But this one is bugging me a lot and is being a dealbreaker. As soon as nobles move in, caravans bring only food from now on (or don't come altogether).

This happens before the nobles move in. The baron simbly unlocks wagons.