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[Neonivek]

The game's problem for new players is also it's greatest strength imo, it is far too complex for newbies and most people in general

There is a difference between Complex and Convoluted (uhhh... Sorta... One definition of Convoluted is Complex). The problem isn't that the game is too complex for "Newbies" but that it is too convoluted for them. Things that are convoluted are more complicated then it should be connotatively.

The game should be approachable so that newbies can get right in there and be capable of playing after a short period of time (tutorials are good for this). It should also have enough depth that if explored it is extremely fulfilling.

I mean what did you just describe? Farming? Should farming be a real barrier to learning the game? Giving the players the ability to see what seeds they have available for farming when a farm is selected would be great. Could be worse though, I've seen people's suggestions on how to make Farming more complicated.

To sum up: We can keep the Complexity in Dwarf Fortress without making it more difficult then nessisary for new players to just learn how to play. (Thrive and play are different though)

[Footkerchief]

That display idea I promised earlier
I had thought for a while that a good way to make the display easier to approach, especially with the new graphical tweaks, would be to draw not one layer at a time, but to draw the layer the player is looking at as well as every layer below it(to a certain point.  Ten to fifteen layers should be sufficient.

Things such as unmined stone and open areas would be rendered as transparent, so that the next layer is visible below them.  The exact render depth should be an Init value.

Every layer is rendered at 80-90% scale of the one above it, with the top layer rendered at 10%.  Every layer is centered on the XY cordinate of the tile the player is looking at.

This allows a clear way to show the 3D aspects of the world as well as allowing players to see into those massive pits they've dug out, and in my opinion allows multilayer monitoring better than an isometric viewpoint would allow.  I also anticipate that it would lead to more interesting fort design, such as balconies and overpasses, since such structures would now have a visual impact on what the player sees, and it has a minimal impact on the rendering pipeline, because ultimately, it's only an expansion on the viewport settings currently in place.(Render the current layer, the 10-15 layers below them, and have them stacked and scaled in the draw thread, which is almost entirely desynchronized from the game thread)

Another idea I had for this layout was the idea of making the opaque stuff on the current layer semitransparent, with a value in the Init files to let the player set how semitransparent it is.  This allows the player to monitor stuff on both the current level and the level immediately below.  I wouldn't advise more than one layer of X-ray vision of this sort, as it would get visually confusing, but in my opinion, the DFMA already shows the effect off nicely, so it's been shown that it can work.

An additional idea would be to have fluid layers --that is, magma and water-- be highly(or completely) transparent below the surface, so that a player can see to the bottom of a pool of water or magma at a glance.  Perhaps making the surface layer of a fluid normal(or perhaps 30% transparent.  It would be another Init value), while the underlying layers are all 90% transparent(another Init value) would produce a nice "haze" effect.

The idea here is to compress as much useful information into the screen as a player can make sense of, in a way that the player can make sense of it.

There was a Suggestions thread about this, although your idea goes more in-depth in a lot of ways (you could paste your post in there and bump it).  And yeah, I'd forgotten, but only being able to properly see things on the current z-level was one of my first (and lasting) peeves too.

[change name please]

Finally, you still have this attitude is that you're the one who's finally telling it to Toady like it is.  Yours is not the first or the most eloquent expression of those sentiments, and even if it was, he knows much better than you that Armok-style bottom-up development has major problems, and that the current game is seriously lacking in cool things to do.  He AGREES with you there.  So why the refusal to acknowledge that the next version is going to introduce at least as much, if not more, new stuff to do than the 2D -> 3D switch did? 

Considering the rate of the current dev-process and the features that take priority, we are liable to experience the heat death of the universe before 3D eclipses 2D in the amount of things to do.  We've waited two years and the only major improvements since the move to 3D have been 1) the location finder and 2) multiple construction selection.  The reason that complaints like mine have to be brought up is that Toady seems particularly dense about many complaints that ought to be nigh-intuitive - you mention that only now is he finally integrating solutions to "YOU HAVE STRUCK MICROCLINE!" after literally two years.  The fixes to so many of these issues are so short and sweet there is no reason to not integrate them right away - location finder was almost an afterthought, just a little addendum to an update.  It would be the work of five minutes to nerf crossbows out of being deadly chainguns but these things that are in the player's interest are largely orthogonal to the things the devs want to toy around with.

Applying tensile strength this and density that to every material in the game does not alter gameplay one bit - as far as these things are concerned, there are really only two or three hardnesses or temperatures that the player ever interacts with.  You defend this as though establishing some kind of bottom-up universal constructor is somehow necessary to a solid game, when all that matters is the player's empirical experience.

I have to say, I'm also looking forward to blister-spitting critters being the new Fire Snake Venom and medicine becoming the new alchemy.

[change name please]

What I think makes DF incredibly hard for newbies is that the hardest part of the game is generally the starting of the fortress, you need to quickly start farms and get booze production up and running before your dwarves start killing each other, yet once you have the beginning down, the game is too easy, trap yourself with a moat and you are safe from everything. What I personally would do to make DF more accessible to the average person would be to make the early game a bit easier and the later game a bit harder.

This isn't even an essential idea of accessibility - it's just a primary gameplay flaw that effects every player from lowliest noob to highest pro.

[Volfram]

There was a Suggestions thread about this, although your idea goes more in-depth in a lot of ways (you could paste your post in there and bump it).  And yeah, I'd forgotten, but only being able to properly see things on the current z-level was one of my first (and lasting) peeves too.

Thanks.  I checked it out(I like it, though I think my system's a slight improvement), and took your suggestion.

[G-Flex]

We've waited two years and the only major improvements since the move to 3D have been 1) the location finder and 2) multiple construction selection.

Pay more attention to development. We've also gotten a very much revamped worldgen/history system, for instance. Just because you don't see a change right away doesn't mean it isn't there, or that no work got put into it. Watch a world generate sometime and you'll see.

[Aqizzar]

He's saying that all those frills like worldgen and history really doesn't have a direct impact on gameplay itself.  That while impressive, it could just as well not be there, and the game would control and react exactly the same.

I won't say he doesn't have a point, but he lost a lot of credibility tagging himself "Hitlers Cumrag" anyway.

[Kardos]

Hitlers Cumrag, -

Never mind, I had a few good paragraphs of reasons why your name is equal to your intelligence, but every one of those points have already been stated.

[Davion]

Edit: Not going to bother.

[DeadlyLintRoller]

One thing might be to include an options screen instead of making people edit a .ini file

Seconded.

THE Biggest issue is the UI. I think a few redundencies in the controls may be a quick and easy immediate fix. It took me forever to figure out the easy way to slaughter animals (through the stocks screen after I spent a VERY long time staring at the butcher shop options. That is the example that sticks out in my mind other than the inconsistant way of scrolling through various screens.

The other issue of the what the heck am I supposed to be doing? perhaps can be solved by some sort of dwarf advisor, that can chime in and say "I see you have built a dining area, perhaps now is the time to build some bedrooms."

And I agree that the game needs a dwarfopaedia.

[change name please]

We've waited two years and the only major improvements since the move to 3D have been 1) the location finder and 2) multiple construction selection.

Pay more attention to development. We've also gotten a very much revamped worldgen/history system, for instance. Just because you don't see a change right away doesn't mean it isn't there, or that no work got put into it. Watch a world generate sometime and you'll see.

The problem with this is that the player is not invited to take part in this action at all.  If the player were to make the history himself through his actions, that's one thing, sure, and then the history of his actions would be a neat summary a la a succession game write-up.  However, the bulk of changes made to DF3D have been, as stated, worldgen, history and other appearance trackers, which happen completely independently of the player and are not the player's toys.

People have long been rationalizing these and other "improvements" as leading up to some grand vision, or that the later, actual gameplay updates will come easier once we have these modifiers in place, but I just don't see it.  The player could have wars without any underlying religion worldgen process to supposedly motivate it, for example, and the wounds system was already quite thorough enough.  While I admit that giving a beast a skin of iron or whatever will definitely make it more difficult, I don't see how these gameplay concerns couldn't have been handled through some careful tweaks to the existing system.

[Sordid]

He's saying that all those frills like worldgen and history really doesn't have a direct impact on gameplay itself.  That while impressive, it could just as well not be there, and the game would control and react exactly the same.

I won't say he doesn't have a point, but he lost a lot of credibility tagging himself "Hitlers Cumrag" anyway.

Oh I will say that he doesn't have a point. It's basically like saying that the Lord of the Rings would read the same way without the Silmarillion. And while that is true to a certain extent, the latter does make the whole experience far more enjoyable if you take the time to delve into it.  And DF isn't exactly what I'd call a casual game.

[Mailbox]

He's saying that all those frills like worldgen and history really doesn't have a direct impact on gameplay itself.  That while impressive, it could just as well not be there, and the game would control and react exactly the same.

I won't say he doesn't have a point, but he lost a lot of credibility tagging himself "Hitlers Cumrag" anyway.

Oh I will say that he doesn't have a point. It's basically like saying that the Lord of the Rings would read the same way without the Silmarillion. And while that is true to a certain extent, the latter does make the whole experience far more enjoyable if you take the time to delve into it.  And DF isn't exactly what I'd call a casual game.

Reading the World Generation history gets tiresome after the 3rd world and it's laughable to compare several novels to the generated history.

Dwaf Fortress may not be a causal game but it doesn't have to be obtuse in order to be enjoyable.

[Footkerchief]

We've waited two years and the only major improvements since the move to 3D have been 1) the location finder and 2) multiple construction selection.  The reason that complaints like mine have to be brought up is that Toady seems particularly dense about many complaints that ought to be nigh-intuitive - you mention that only now is he finally integrating solutions to "YOU HAVE STRUCK MICROCLINE!" after literally two years.  The fixes to so many of these issues are so short and sweet there is no reason to not integrate them right away - location finder was almost an afterthought, just a little addendum to an update.  It would be the work of five minutes to nerf crossbows out of being deadly chainguns but these things that are in the player's interest are largely orthogonal to the things the devs want to toy around with.

Applying tensile strength this and density that to every material in the game does not alter gameplay one bit - as far as these things are concerned, there are really only two or three hardnesses or temperatures that the player ever interacts with.  You defend this as though establishing some kind of bottom-up universal constructor is somehow necessary to a solid game, when all that matters is the player's empirical experience.

I have to say, I'm also looking forward to blister-spitting critters being the new Fire Snake Venom and medicine becoming the new alchemy.

I would include the expandable grid size thing as a third substantial improvement, but yes, you're correct that the last year and a half were thin on Real Gameplay.

Your mention of crossbow fire rate and material tensile strength is actually an illuminating comparison.  They're both things that, by themselves, are relatively trivial to implement, but only one of them is incidental to the current development goals.  Toady likes to have a definite focus for development, which means that some of the scattered small problems get fixed as a matter of course and others go unaddressed.  This approach has definite upsides and downsides and there's nothing wrong with you stating them, although you should give him more credit for having recognized them already.  I just take issue when you go on to say "and that's why we aren't getting any new gameplay," which just doesn't hold water now like it did when you started saying it six months ago.

[Neonivek]

That while impressive, it could just as well not be there, and the game would control and react exactly the same

Yeah but isn't that one of the points of playing Dwarf Fortress as opposed to a strategy game of some sort? (Hmm I really should get my hands on Dungeon Keeper 2)

Is it really better to strip down Dwarf Fortress to its bare elements?

One problem Footkerchief is the game is still in Alpha and people are expecting gameplay improvements of a Beta game. If Dwarf Fortress was a human body it would be a Skeleton missing half its bones. You need the bones in place to support the meat or else you have to cut through the flesh. I am surprised there are any Game improvements (which there are because Toady would have got bored like he did with the first Armok). I probably shouldn't defend Dwarf fortress so much but I've kinda seen other Alpha games be torn up by the community as well for some of the same reasons (Not all mind you)