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[Medicine Man]

More specifically, what problems did you have before learning the ropes of the game?  We figure we are losing 90% of the players because of the UI and other barriers, and that doesn’t even count the ones scared away by the ASCII graphics.  Now, this doesn’t mean we are about abandon the rest of the game to start the presentation arc.  It is just as important to have endless monster attacks from the underground, and challenging sieges. 

What do you think is scaring people away?  The building placement?  Designations?  The embark screen?  Or maybe its finding the right tile sets and setting them up.  We are hoping at some point to build easier commands and tutorials to help bring in more players.  We have to identify the main culprits first.  So what is frustrating you the most about Dwarf Fortress?

I would say the ASCII graphics,the overall difficulty and the MAAASSSSSIVVVVVEEE learning curve.

[Brzhk]

as of 31.08, not being able to have working military is my main problem. I have been doing enourmous fortifications and i was utterly disappointed to see that my dwarves refused to train / to fight correctly with ranged weapons.
Then i falled back on melee weapons and discovered that training was actually not working either with melee weapons.


After two weeks of building towers & security designs (with lots of fun), i was just sad.

I'm currently waiting the version where all military bugs are corrected to start playing again, but it seems to be the most boring bug to correct as it takes a while to be corrected.
No provocation here, i'm a dev as well, and i know for sure debugging can be very boring.

[Draco18s]

as of 31.08, not being able to have working military is my main problem. I have been doing enourmous fortifications and i was utterly disappointed to see that my dwarves refused to train / to fight correctly with ranged weapons.
Then i falled back on melee weapons and discovered that training was actually not working either with melee weapons.

...yeah...
All of my dwarves became legendary dodgers + novice [melee weapon user].  They got murdered.

[Beeskee]

I was playing DF on a computer with one of those auto-adjusting CPU fans, and I could hear it spin up significantly every time I unpaused the game.

[NewsMuffin]

I don't see the problem with the current military screen. I'm not going to say it's better than the 40d one, but it's not as horrible as you think. I've always been able to  get a working military. The trick is to make the armor and weapons before the squad. And only have as many military dwarves that you can give armor and weapons to. Crossbowdwarves are a little harder to set up, but not much. You just have to assign them ammo that you hopefully have a lot of, because bolts do a lot less damage.
I don't think the ACII is that bad. I get by just fine without a graphics set. I don't mind having to loo[k] at creatures to know exactly what they are. If there are a few white 'g's far away from my fort, and it doesn't say 'A vile force of darkness' has arrived, it's a few groundhogs or mountain goats, not really a problem until they get close.

The learning curve, however, is huge. I made five or six forts until I got the hang of it. And  no tutorial helped me. I got it all on my own because I'm a super genius. Probably.

[nickbii]

(*) Because infinite up/down staircases are stupid as hell. I mean... inuntuitive. Hard to imagine in real-life. Can someone explain me how is 3x3 shaft of up/down staircases supposed to look like? The fact that everyone uses such an alien, unrealistic thing just proves the system is badly designed (because the bad design encourages weird choices by making them optimal and most effective). If it was up to me, I would just get rid of them completely, and allow only the simple ones. If you wanted to have a staircase going both up and down, you would have to designate two stair tiles - an up staircase and a down staircase(**). Which may seem more complicated but is actually very intuitive and I bet no beginner would feel confused for a single second.

I wouldn't say an infinite staircase is a "weird" choice. I imagine the 3x3 stairwells are a lot like the ones in a RL skyscraper. They don't function that way (they function more like 9 spiral staircases that happen to be right by each-other), but it's pretty much the only way to represent a big-ass skyscraper-style staircase in-game.

And if you think about it that's what dwarves would build in their fortress if they weren't imaginary. They need to get deep, fast, to get to metals, the most direct way to do that is dig straight down, they don't have elevators. Stairs make sense, it makes sense for them to be central, and it makes sense for the main stairways to be bigger then the others.

Ramps aren't actually less gamey then stairs. You can get on them from any direction, same as stairs. Going up one z-level on a ramp costs one movement point, same as stairs, so your dwarves are still flying, they're just flying diagonally.

[antymattar]

I would give you a hint...: Captnduck, YOU ROCK!!!! Seriously, a tutorial would do nicely.

[antymattar]

AND THE TOAD "SAID LET THERE BE BEARDS", AND THERE WERE DWARFS. AND THE TOAD SAID "LET THEM DIG, DIG, DIG UNTIL THEY ARE SO FED UP THEY BECOME ADICTED TO DIGIN...AND BOOZE", AND HE ALSO SAID "LET THEM DIG BIG PITS THAT THEY CALL 'MOUNTAIN HAALS' AND LET THEM GET STUFF THAT SPAWNS BY ITS SELF WITH NO NEED FOR A WORKSHOP", AND THERE WAS ALL THIS SHIT.  BUT THE TOE SAID "LET THERE BE NO POSSIBLE WAY FOR PEOPLE TO ADVANCE OTHER CIVILIZATIONS THAT ARE IMMORTAL AND GET ALL THE NEESARY RESOURCES GENERATED IN WORLD GEN BECAUSE THEY HAVE A LIMITED BRAIN SPAN THAT DISABLES THEM TO MAKE WORKSHOPS AND ACTU;Y NOW DIG BANYTHING BESIDES PITS", AND THE TOAD SAID "AND LET THERE BE BADASSES WHO BUILD THE CLOSEST THING TO SOMETHING RESEMBLING A FORTRESS, AND THEY SHAL BE CALLED GOBS AND HOBOS." AND THERE WERE... WTF?!!!

The history of lower earth:1:1: the toad and the hamster

I'm not trying to offend you, its just that those are the things that anoy me a LOT. I want to be able to make them make new types of cities. And I want them to be smart. oh and fix the quest part please. It anoys me, every time its some bronze golem. why cant they tell me to go and get then their grocery list or something?

[Draco18s]

The trick is to make the armor and weapons before the squad.

This is a problem.  This "workaround" should not be necessary.

[Murphy]

The most annoying thing is that I can go great lengths to populate the world with interesting sites by playing dwarf mode, enrich its history by adventuring, and then, after all this, I suddenly get a "Nemesis unit load failed" - and it's unplayable. So much effort gone to waste...
I'm forced not to play a single world for too long, and this is what turns me off.

[The Architect]

Really, Murphy?

#1: Learn to use backup saves. Not only is this an alpha game, but that's just common sense with any electronic media.

#2: Nemesis unit? Are you talking about a mod that corrupted the save files? That's hardly the fault of the developer.

#3: This is the wrong place for an unexplained, unqualified rant.

Anyway, #1 should be helpful to you. By doing one simple thing, you can continue playing the same persistent world. Toady has gone to extreme lengths rebuilding this program to ensure that the saves are continuously compatible from version to version, and he has succeeded. In fact, he spent the better part of a year making it possible to play a single world for as long as you want.

I think there are a hundred people ready to say the same thing once they read your post. I'm not saying this to be intentionally offensive, but it's inane to the point that I am truly stupefied.

[Footkerchief]

#2: Nemesis unit? Are you talking about a mod that corrupted the save files? That's hardly the fault of the developer.

He's talking about this bug.  It was widely reported in prior versions.  It's a severe bug that so far has proved difficult to track down.  I thought everyone knew about it by now.

#3: This is the wrong place for an unexplained, unqualified rant.

Hopefully you now understand that this thread is a perfectly fine place for Murphy's post.  As it was for this previous one.

I'm not saying this to be intentionally offensive,

Instead of making these disclaimers (which do nothing to defuse the situation), perhaps you could try to soften your tone and get all the facts before making snap judgments.

[Toady One]

Yeah, Murphy's post is fine and posts like that are what this thread is for.  Please do not jump on people like that!

[TheyTarget]

The worst turn off is the withdrawl from not playing it. Also starting a fort takes so long. I prefer the mid game, where I got like 50-80 dwarf. My dwarfs mine so slow. I just wish I could start with one legendary miner, so that I can get a fort going right away.

[Solace]

Well, for current annoyances, recently I had to scrap my world because when I tried to load in, it immediately crashed, regardless of what I did. I don't think it said anything about a nemesis module, but... yeah. Had to delete everything and remake a world.

However, after powering through there really isn't anything about this game I hate, but I guess I'll put down what stopped me from getting into this game (successfully) my first several attempts... actually, the whole world gen business. Basically I didn't know I had to make a world, then accept it and start over and choose a new place and then start in that place and do stuff. I sort of imagined that I was tossed into a wandering around game mode right after world gen, except for some strange reason I couldn't find who/what I was controlling or any actions I could do. XD