Aside from basic tutorials on what each menue does and how to dig and change z-levels, the / * - + <page up> and <page down> usage in the menues really bugs me. If the menues at least had a unified system for moving around and selecting things, it would be a major imporvement in my opinion.
Also, legendary thread, because ThreeToe posted in it.
Edit: Upgrading to full Unicode would be a good step in my opinion. It would allow for the game to retain its ASCII feel, but diversify what symbols represent what objects, allowing the creation of full graphical tilesets by the players, instead of forcing today to spend a few weeks on art projects.
YES, especially to that last part.
Frankly, I think the ASCII is quite practical, and a nice feature for me. Of course, some things in the UI aren't communicating as clearly as they could (should!)
eg. ambigious symbols, inability to descern my legendary spear from another steel spear on the ground etc. but overall it's more the UI navigation and generally incoherent interface that bothers me, even as an experienced player who by and large enjoys the game.
Even if tile sets worked and looked better, the game would still be massively complex and slow to learn. Ostensibly pictures of real-life-recognizable things like buckets and beds are easier to memorise than symbols, so I'm definitely not against that users should have the option of a nice working tile set. However as has been said by several people now:
In-game tutorials for the newbies, please! Not that the tutorials on the wiki are bad, just that they aren't always up to date, and that they are not immediately visible to dabblers who try out the game.
Extensive in-game tutorials should be difficult to create and maintain. Perhaps tutorial fort recordings or some things like that can be packaged with each release. These can then be maintained by the community, and/or kept simple enough for maintainance by Toady and Three Toe. Or perhaps an in-game link to an official wiki tutorial would suffice.