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[Hakazaba]

Im not sure if this has been mentioned allready but i find that the name can be a turn off to new players. Cant exactly change it now though.

[Okenido]

The name Dwarf Fortress turns off people?

Clearly they aren't meant to play.

[Narmio]

Im not sure if this has been mentioned allready but i find that the name can be a turn off to new players. Cant exactly change it now though.

Do you mean the "Slaves to Armok, God of Blood II: " bit?  I guess that might seem weird, cultish or over-the-top to some people, particularly the "simulation" type of player.  Sure, we all love stories of throwing kittens off towers and cutting limbs off unicorns, but plenty of people who might enjoy the game could (I suppose) be turned off by that.  Not necessarily by the violence or gore itself, but by the idea that the game is some kind of simulator for unending varieties of grisly demise.  We know it can be if you play it that way, but a sandbox is a sandbox.  Some people use the sand to build castles, other people use it to soak up the blood.

So I'd support changing the name from "Slaves to Armok, God of Blood II: Dwarf Fortress" to just "Dwarf Fortress", because DF has now outgrown its heritage and far overshadows the original Slave to Armok. Plus, neither Armok nor Slavery feature in the game, and while it's possible to have a God of Blood, I don't believe Dwarves will adopt deities of the right spheres without modding. Also, that's what everybody calls it anyway.

It comes down to a marketing decision:  what image do Toady and Threetoe want the game to have?  But whether we like it or not, marketing decisions are important.  I doubt a name change would make a huge impact, but it could make some impact. 

[IndonesiaWarMinister]

Im not sure if this has been mentioned allready but i find that the name can be a turn off to new players. Cant exactly change it now though.

Do you mean the "Slaves to Armok, God of Blood II: " bit?  I guess that might seem weird, cultish or over-the-top to some people, particularly the "simulation" type of player.  Sure, we all love stories of throwing kittens off towers and cutting limbs off unicorns, but plenty of people who might enjoy the game could (I suppose) be turned off by that.  Not necessarily by the violence or gore itself, but by the idea that the game is some kind of simulator for unending varieties of grisly demise.  We know it can be if you play it that way, but a sandbox is a sandbox.  Some people use the sand to build castles, other people use it to soak up the blood.

So I'd support changing the name from "Slaves to Armok, God of Blood II: Dwarf Fortress" to just "Dwarf Fortress", because DF has now outgrown its heritage and far overshadows the original Slave to Armok. Plus, neither Armok nor Slavery feature in the game, and while it's possible to have a God of Blood, I don't believe Dwarves will adopt deities of the right spheres without modding. Also, that's what everybody calls it anyway.

It comes down to a marketing decision:  what image do Toady and Threetoe want the game to have?  But whether we like it or not, marketing decisions are important.  I doubt a name change would make a huge impact, but it could make some impact. 

Slavery is featured.
At least in the world-gen, for now.

[Eris]

I love this game. I'm addicted to this game. I love trying to get my friends addicted to this game. Sorry if this is my first post in a "negative" thread, but it's really constructive criticism of something I love, because I want it to be better.

Here's the thing about the UI: sure it's bizarre and unintuitive, but I can live with all of it except that I will never get used to the fact that left/right/up/down (et-freaking-cetera) are not always left/right/up/down in every menu. Current menu navigation consists of at least the following:
left/right/up/down This is the worst by far because sometimes it works, sometimes it shifts you to another target square and cancels whatever you were just doing. l/r/u/d should always do fortress navigation and never do anything else [or pick your key combination]
UMKH
umkh
er
ER
/*-+
9371
8462(whatever, the number ones are impossible to remember)

and all the other bizarre byzantine combinations I can't even think of at the moment.
Throw in that sometimes ENTER selects, sometimes it does something else.
Sometimes SPACE selects. Sometimes it cancels.
Sometimes F9 cancels. Sometimes it doesn't.
sometimes left/right switches between adjacent text columns (such as the trade menu of my stuff vs. their stuff). Sometimes it doesn't. Instead I have to use a separate input to go up and down that list. But it's not the same key/input in every situation. Huh?

CONSISTENCY IS IMPERATIVE
If you can't have consistency, then at least allow full KEYBINDING. I have no problem spending the time configuring all the wacky [that's the kindest word I can use, by far] menu navigations for myself.

Frankly, I don't care what the coding hurdles are; that excuse is a non-starter. Up/Down/Left/Right and/or menu-navigation is older than ASCII. We're talking fire- and wheel- computing technology here.

I'm not asking for mouse support or even shift/control select of multiple objects, or even pageup/page down features (although they exist now, I'd rather lose those and get consistent l/r/u/d). I'm just asking for them to be the same in every freaking menu. However crazy they are, I can deal with it.

One recommendation I have is that when you have multiple columns like in trading, you can use L/R to switch between columns. But in others you need to add some silly combination of keys to do one column, and another set of keys to navigate the other.
Instead, just use the same combination of keys (such as L/R/U/D, but whatever, it doesn't matter) but for the second column, use SHIFT + L/R/U/D.
This means that your L/R/U/D (or whatever) keys are the same, all the time, every time, in every situation, for the first column on the left.
Then those exact same keys (gasp!) are used on the next column, except that you have to hit SHIFT.

This is assuming that it's impossible (hah!) to make it so that you can't just switch back and forth between columns as necessary with Left/Right keys.

Again, if you can't do any of this, just put all this crap in the keybind menu and I'll take care of it myself.

Sorry if this post is convoluted and confusing. This is a reflection of the subject matter, not the author's grasp of language and sentence structure.

P.S. I don't play first person shooters, but you might consider a WASD option. Think about it:
up/down is standard (thank god for small favors)
left/right can then be used for increasing/decreasing quantities [ENTER to select/deselect]
and sidestep left/right for shifting between menu columns.

That would make a lot of sense to a lot of gamers. I swear to god, if you sold a Z-Board for this game, I would buy it. (Too bad, because that's $50 you could have, instead.)

[Noble Digger]

DF is great, and I found that stumbling through the learning curve (and dying horribly) was a great part of the fun. Now that I am a "veteran" player and capable of handling whatever the game throws at me, I find myself a bit more 'turned off'.

If anything turned me off as a newer player, it was spending large amounts of time paused and designating things, but that seems inevitable. This isn't simcity where the day-to-day actions of units are abstracted out. DF operates in 2 separate time scales. On one hand, days and weeks go by very quickly, but on the other hand, dwarves walk around and work in real-time, ostensibly taking days to walk across the map or perform a simple task, and in the same stride, having a real-time battle with an enemy.

[Jay]

The problem with asking people what turns them off, is that if you change any of the basic mechanics like controls/starting graphics, etc, you'll cheese off the long-standing players that have learned to use them as they are.

Other than adding more mouse support, I just don't see how much of this can be used without getting some portion of the current playerbase angry.
I play ASCII, and I certainly don't want to see a tileset implemented by default until it can be done properly, as in the Presentation Arc..

I know this thread is asking what turns me off about DF, but that's the inherent problem: The idea of changing the presentation of the game that I'm used to before it should be (Presentation Arc..) is what turns me off.

[Footkerchief]

The problem with asking people what turns them off, is that if you change any of the basic mechanics like controls/starting graphics, etc, you'll cheese off the long-standing players that have learned to use them as they are.

Other than adding more mouse support, I just don't see how much of this can be used without getting some portion of the current playerbase angry.

I personally don't care about having to relearn the interface.  The changes will be mostly incremental and they'll make things easier for me in the long run.  Besides, no long-standing player is going to quit over interface concerns like a newbie would.  They'll whine, but this is one case where I feel safe saying that they can suck it up and deal with the utter horror of improvements.  I mean, this is a community that gets nostalgic about bugs.

Also, a decently moddable interface will make it very easy to revert to classic-style controls.

[Andir]

The problem with asking people what turns them off, is that if you change any of the basic mechanics like controls/starting graphics, etc, you'll cheese off the long-standing players that have learned to use them as they are.

Other than adding more mouse support, I just don't see how much of this can be used without getting some portion of the current playerbase angry.

I personally don't care about having to relearn the interface.  The changes will be mostly incremental and they'll make things easier for me in the long run.  Besides, no long-standing player is going to quit over interface concerns like a newbie would.  They'll whine, but this is one case where I feel safe saying that they can suck it up and deal with the utter horror of improvements.  I mean, this is a community that gets nostalgic about bugs.

Also, a decently moddable interface will make it very easy to revert to classic-style controls.

And as Autocad and several other apps has pretty much proven, you can still have your keyboard commands and make a mouser interface.

[Noble Digger]

To be honest, Toady has shown so far that he can make improvements and changes to DF without ruining it--consistently--for something like 6 or 7 years. All the incremental minor UI improvements have been universally good and helpful. I think it's as people here are saying--as long as change is slow and positive (and even better, optional) I will still love this game.

I love having a huge, bloated INI file to edit and make things as I want them. I love the back-end of the game being accessible to me so I can make balance and gameplay changes for myself that Toady wouldn't necessarily make. He leaves us a lot of freedom to play DF how we want, and yet maintains a great base game such that DF isn't *only* a sandbox game. There are ostensibly a handful of goals that are 'built in' and given to you, and adding more of those will give the game some appeal to less-creative players. I hope he doesn't go buck-wild with punishments for circumventing some or all of these goals (for example, if your home civ lays siege to you for drowning nobles. IT WAS AN ACCIDENT I SWEAAARRRR)

[Fourth Triad]

I think df needs tutorials most of all. I mean shit, I've been playing for years and I still can't figure out how to train xbow dwarves or how to setup a wind powered water pump.

[Jakkarra]

I think df needs tutorials most of all. I mean shit, I've been playing for years and I still can't figure out how to train xbow dwarves or how to setup a wind powered water pump.

Xbowdorfs;

give some dwarves Xbows, build archery targets, make archery targets into rooms (facing the correct direction) put dorfs off-duty.

most importantly DO NOT TRAIN WRESTLING theres a bug that if they know how to wrestle they cannot train with an xbow.

oh, and make sure they have wooden or bone bolts. they wll not use metal ones.




Wind powered water pump;

heres a diagram, much easier.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

   PG--------GW

P pump
G gear assembly
W Windmill
- horizontal axle

make sure the horizontal axles are facing in the correct direction (choose when building) vertical axles go up/down zlevels, not upwards on the map.

an axle takes 1 power to use, so dont build too many

gears take 5, as do pumps.

make sure the winmill is creating enough power to make everything work.

check the wiki for more information

[Neonivek]

I've read the Wiki and I never understood it well enough to ever build machines by looking at it. (It is practically intentionally left confusing)

I have seen a video tutorial that helped me learn somewhat... but the Tutorial itself is injured by the fact that I think it was made by the person just filming what he was doing at the time making the whole thing rather sporatic.

[Andir]

I think df needs tutorials most of all. I mean shit, I've been playing for years and I still can't figure out how to train xbow dwarves or how to setup a wind powered water pump.

First, make them military with weapons of crossbows, put them off duty from the military screen ("V" if I remember) and erect an archery target in the build menu and designate it's room (an indoor range of sorts) by building the archery target, then designating to the room.  Only off duty bowmen will practice, and they need practice ammo.  Put a stockpile near the range with cheap ammo.

Edit: heh, Jakkarra beat me to it.

[Kalphoenix]

Hmmm...well...I'm a perma-noob.  These kinds of games are generally just too overwhelming for me, but I really have enjoying playing DF on and off and tracking it's progress.  This from someone who still doesn't "get it," I would hate if the game got dumbed down.  I LIKE the ambition-level of the game.

I'd say the BIGGEST issue for me isn't the graphics or how complicated the game is, it's the save-game deal:

The game has a HUGE learning curve (Try it and die, and start over again), and while I don't mind that, coupled with the current way saves work in the game, it's a huge turnoff.

So, that leaves me manually creating a backup of my work and alt-tab-deleting out of the game to close it if I don't want to save.

And I'm told I'm NOT supposed to alt-tab-delete out of the game, because it can cause issues with corruption?  Ick.  Not being able to exit without saving or abandoning is a huge turnoff.

I had to give the game up initially until I got one of the tilesets that had a built-in embark profile saver, it was just too time-consuming to build embark profiles over and over again as I learned how to play the game.