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[zwei]

I do not think that complaining about lack difficulty in this game is fair.

It is not targeted at hardcore "ima bettar that u!" competitive player, but rather at builders, designers and explorers.

If there is ever "campaign" mode, game should, of course offer apropriate challenge.

Bedides, right now, challenge is not mechanics, but user interface - once that is fixed, mechanics can be tuned and most inapropriate exploits fixed. But you need to make people stop battling UI before you can make then battle goblins.

Main problem with UIs is this: Sheer amount of stuff. And it gets worse with every release because new creatures are being added (trees, minerals, item types ...). This ever increases screen clutter. Golden medal goes to interface for bringing items to depot - it is the one part that handles required sorting and filtering well. Contrast with Grime medal for actual trade interface which has nothing of that sort, yet is closely related.

It is hard to find items and creatures.

Secondary problem is organization. Menus show their history of commands being added. New features are not incorporated to existing structure, but being added. Why is there z-animals menu when there is u-animals menu which can both be merged? both are very late adition or had recent makeover.

It is hard to find commands to do something with items and creatures you had trouble finding.

Tertiary problem are inconsistencies. Same actions often have different commands. Similar concepts completelly different implementations.

If you found what to do and how to do it, you can't apply that to ther parts of game.

I wonder why toady never simply took month or two to develop stable and robust widged library - "item list", "being list"

[OMGTANGERINES]

For me? The military screen. That thing is utterly ridiculous. The menu at my local chili joint makes more sense, and they had to actually hire someone to explain it as people came in.
For new players, the WHAT THE FUCK DO I DO ARGH factor. Even if you manage to gen a world, the interface isn't conducive to learning. The fact that when I found the "?" menu it didn't tell me jack shit didn't help much either.
Everything else I like though.

[Antioch]

Yeah, militairy screen, I really prefer the old system with a professional army, primarily because it was actually clear what dwarfs were in the military.

That, and immigrants not being useless.

[chevil]

I hate the moments where your military is equipped and training, you have food, booze, clothes, tradegoods and you have no good idea how to expand your fort. I usually just leave the game running and do something else til something interesting happens.

[Mr. Palau]

I hate the moments where your military is equipped and training, you have food, booze, clothes, tradegoods and you have no good idea how to expand your fort. I usually just leave the game running and do something else til something interesting happens.

Thats when you do a mega-project, or insure all of your citizens dien on only the finest foods, drink only the finest booze, and all of masterwork bedrooms. (the last bit will make the nobles mad so you should plan out some accidents in advance.)

First on my DF christmas list is a military overhaul. I want it to keep track of dwarves, their equipment and supplies, squads, their tactics. I want it to be modular, so I can see it for individual Dwarves and for the squad as a whole. I want a summary screen, which doesn't change anything but just lists everything from all the other screens.

Then the Military Equipment bug, as that is horrible. SO much unnecessary micro management. It is also just horriblly annoying when your star champion goes ino battle without wearing the proper armor and gets himself slaughtered.

Then Undead reanimating indefiniatly, which really just kills emersion after it is cut to pieces and still comes back.

Then the two AI bugs, the doctors not treating patients properally and the not cleaning up blood, leading to your entire fortress dying.

That would make DF perfect. I can't think of a feature I would want more than these bug fixes. Hell if DF added ten big features without fixing these it wouldn't be as good for me.

[NTJedi]

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. 

The lack of graphics is the number one reason most don't even try the game.  The game doesn't need any fancy graphics.
Also... I believe if you provided a tutorial game with a fort prebuilt and all the shops prebuilt it would help provide players a safe healthy environment to learn while also discovering what's possible within the game.  The player can then safely learn how to build an extra new shop/building of each type on their own and at their own game pace.

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 believe many gamers start leaving because time after time when 5 or so dwarf years pass a veteran player has created a successful stable fort and there's nothing left to challenge them except dying from the endless demon hordes behind the adamantine.  If you play the game beyond 5 years you'll see the game needs more events and challenges during late game.  To keep players addicted add late game content to challenge their forts such as natural disasters, assassins, global events, unique visitors, special buildings(schools), and more deadly sieges(armored_cyclops_army).  Players will want to wait an experience those features because the first 5years usually has players busy with other game aspects.
If you're wondering what's frustrating from a technical aspect then that would be when the game starts dying from dropping FPS.  Losing a fort to FPS after lots of love and effort was involved is a painful disaster.

[Draco18s]

Then Undead reanimating indefiniatly, which really just kills emersion after it is cut to pieces and still comes back.

Have you not seen Braindead?

[Reudh]

NTJedi has a good idea.

Once you get an established fort, as it stands there is very little content.

Thief? Bang, captured.
Siege? Bang, nuked with MAGMA.

or in my case: Infernal Ash Instant-death cloud? Build a long tunnel that protects dwarves up almost to the map edge.

I can see it becoming more difficult when we get enemies with Diggers and Sappers, though.

The FPS issue I believe is the worst thing putting me off. I don't really want to make new forts if they're just going to decay into disuse because of massive item vectors and crazy happenins'. DFHack cleanmapall and cleanowned helps a lot, but I can't really play a fort once it gets to 20 fps. It takes years for a year to pass.

[Mr. Palau]

Then Undead reanimating indefiniatly, which really just kills emersion after it is cut to pieces and still comes back.

Have you not seen Braindead?

Wow, that mom was durable (... no double entendre intended)

[Draco18s]

Then Undead reanimating indefiniatly, which really just kills emersion after it is cut to pieces and still comes back.

Have you not seen Braindead?

Wow, that mom was durable (... no double entendre intended)

"I kick ass for the lord!" *Eaten by zombies*

[oven_baked]

No way to preview embarks, i've abandoned forts immediately due to terrain features not being there.
Cliffs are the main offenders.

[Draco18s]

Cliffs are the main offenders.

Sheer cliffs are very very rare right now.

[Kogut]

Wouldn't it be easier to link some of these tutorials from inside the game instead?

Wiki is linked.

[zwei]

Wouldn't it be easier to link some of these tutorials from inside the game instead?

Wiki is linked.

I am just looking at "?" screen.

1) wiki link is not differentiated from rest of text, nor is it clickable or selectable with keyboard.
2) actual links are being selected by +/- keys, not tab and shift-tab, nor are they clickable.

That is ... just ... well ... why? Sigh.

[NW_Kohaku]

No way to preview embarks, i've abandoned forts immediately due to terrain features not being there.
Cliffs are the main offenders.

You do realize that "previewing" an embark through any means more detailed than the current cliff indicator and possibly letting us see the layer stone types, (which, at least for the surface layer or stone, would really be appreciated, so we can at least tell whether it is igneous or sedimentary stone before we embark,) is impossible as there is no data that the game actually has until it generates that embark, right?  Basically, a "preview" would be no different from embarking to get a look at the lay of the land and then force-quitting.

In fact, in older versions of the game, the murky pools would be in different places on the map based upon how large your embark area was, simply because the seed used to generate the landscape was being used at different times.