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[Rowanas]

It's annoying that you can't have sparring areas and separate barracks for beds.

[Andir]

1) Cutting Trees/Gathering Plants. As it stands, you have to designate certain plants for this. When your harvesters run out of designated plants/trees to gather, they stop working. On countless occasions I have gotten so involved with other projects I will forget all about woodcutting until I get the message "can not construct bin: no wood:, which grinds any wood-related industries to a halt, including glass and metal. It would be nice to tell your dwarves to just go chop wood, and they would chop it from anywhere they can find.
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2) Quantitative Stockpiles. In DF2 I seem to have a problem with either having too much or not enough. Lets take the wood example again. I want to keep my workers supplied with wood, but I don't want him cutting wood when I have more then enough already and my cutter could be doing something else(like hunting). It would be much easier if you could tell him to "keep this stockpile at 40-80% full". Say the stockpile is 30 squares. When there is less than 12 wood in the stockpile, he will go cut wood. When it reaches 28 wood, he will stop cutting and go do something else. This could eb used for everything; stone, food, booze, metals, etc.

I'd actually prefer designated wood chopping areas that the Dwarfs keep clear.  It would be nice if they planted seeds from fell trees to maintain a tree farm of sorts as well.

[G-Flex]

It's annoying that you can't have sparring areas and separate barracks for beds.

Reading the recent dev notes would solve your qualms about that.

And those of some other posts in here, actually.

[Rowanas]

We don't want salves, we want to whine about our problems!

[smokingwreckage]

I would like to reserve a set number of bags and barrels for each (and any) plant or other processing task.

So, min 50 barrels for booze, 4 barrels for syrup, 6 bags for quarry bush leaves. Maybe set maximums, too.

Also, I'd like the Farmer's Workshop and Quern to be able to automatically trigger to process nearby candidates, so I don't have to either buggerise about with Quarry Bushes or have a massive bag industry to ensure a mass of surplus bags at all times.

[Areyar]

Dwarves don't use salves. They just clog up yur stockpiles. IMX

[Khyron]

There's a lot of little stuff that annoys me, and I've made suggestions aboust most of it. I think the biggest ones are :

1) Forts getting bogged down with little hauling tasks. Solution : Have a dwarf pick up several items (Based on weight) before storing them.
2) When I customize an immigrant to a different job because I didn't need a fifth Cheese Maker, it becomes a bit of a nightmare going through the unit list to find him. I've got brown-colored masons grouped in with my planters, I've got my Glassmakers listed right there with my Jewelers, it's a mess. Some sort of custom sorting on the unit list would be so nice.
3) Catsplosions. I love cats and I love forts full of cats but I really wish they'd eat some of the vermin they kill, and the pathing kills my work PC
4) Nobles. I like the idea, I hate the implementation. There should be SOME kind of benefit you get for having them around.

Things that WERE on the list but I removed because they're coming next version :

1) Wounded dwarves being useless and cannot be treated.
2) Sparring produced more casualties than raids
3) Burrows reduce a LOT of the annoyances I had.

There's more but those were the biggest things.

[Slogo]

An order for automatic plant processing would be cool but also problematic given that things like sweet pods can go into both bags and barrels.

I find it annoying to have to queue up Process Plant R, Process Plant (Bag) R, Process Plant (Barrel) R, Mill Plant R every harvest.

[Kogan Loloklam]

I actually strangely remember what I had trouble with my first time playing dwarf fortress. I started in this really awesome terrain I could somewhat visualize crossing a brook or something (maybe a river?)

I went through the problems of Learning how to dig, discovering picks are nessary for digging and dwarves die with their equipment, learning that dwarves need water and food, and finally learning that farms cannot be built anywhere but the ground has to meet certain situations.

How I would fix my problems is a "Pre-Made Tutorial fortress"
Something a player can load up and run through help menus to understand how to make a fortress work. If a player had a step a-b-c thing to follow with an already established fortress, it would resolve some of the people who quit from difficulty. Graphics cannot be helped unless a graphics pack is included in the first game.

A save game with seven dwarves in a tiny dug-out fortress with a simple door, a bed for half of them, a ready farm plot that needs to be prepared to expand it, and most important, a step by step detailed instruction on how to deal with it.

That is how to get players past the initial barrier. MOST IMPORTANTLY-- It has to be independent of any searching, and all accessible and clear in the game.

[Ghavrel]

Doing this specifically as stated would be extraordinarily difficult unless you just brute-force the generation of worlds and search each one until it finds one with a site having the given parameters, which... is fine, but would take forever.

Only if you keep the world generation exactly as it is... which would be silly if you intended to change it. 

I realize the world generation utilizes relatively complex geographic features, but perhaps it would be better to allow for some fudging in order to accommodate players? For instance, have worldgen as is, and then when a player specifies a combination which doesn't exist in the world, the option to create/modify an area to fit said specifications could pop up.

By way of example. Let's say I'm looking for a site with an aquifer, HFS, flux stone, and a magma pipe. I search for it, and the game gives me a partial match; it has everything but the magma pipe. A box could pop up asking if I want the game to modify the playing area to match my specifications. If I say no, nothing happens; if I say yes, it adds a magma pipe to the area.

Maybe it's impossible, programming-wise, but it makes more sense to me than brute forcing it. 

[rarx]

What really got me into Dwarf Fortress was mayday's graphics pack and the fact that my friend got on TeamViewer and taught me how to play.
TeamViewer is a free remote assistance program.

[Neruz]

Doing this specifically as stated would be extraordinarily difficult unless you just brute-force the generation of worlds and search each one until it finds one with a site having the given parameters, which... is fine, but would take forever.

Only if you keep the world generation exactly as it is... which would be silly if you intended to change it. 

I realize the world generation utilizes relatively complex geographic features, but perhaps it would be better to allow for some fudging in order to accommodate players? For instance, have worldgen as is, and then when a player specifies a combination which doesn't exist in the world, the option to create/modify an area to fit said specifications could pop up.

By way of example. Let's say I'm looking for a site with an aquifer, HFS, flux stone, and a magma pipe. I search for it, and the game gives me a partial match; it has everything but the magma pipe. A box could pop up asking if I want the game to modify the playing area to match my specifications. If I say no, nothing happens; if I say yes, it adds a magma pipe to the area.

Maybe it's impossible, programming-wise, but it makes more sense to me than brute forcing it. 

Just better documentation of the world painter would be nice; it's possible to get some incredibly fine detail with that thing, but it's impossible to work out how to use it.

The ability to 'place' features in specific locations would be verah nice though.

[Anu Necunoscut]

What screws DF's fun factor?

Performance, accessibility and lack of a challenge curve seem to be the main points made here.  Taking into account how people apply terms of praise or blame differently and do so in different tones, I think there is near universal agreement on those main points, and most of the bickering is simply over how people are expressing those points individually, whereas actual content remains nearly the same.

I'd like to address a different point entirely: the formula player.

All this remarkable randomized simulation needs a gameplay purpose, eventual or otherwise.  The major gameplay purpose for robust simulation, as I see it, is to preclude the triumph of the formula player.

The formula player is the guy who sits his ass down and fiddles with enough shit in enough ways for enough time that he uncovers some rote sequence of actions that always beats the game's challenges dead, barring only the most peripheral elements of variance. 

Once the formula is learned, the mystery and danger of the gameworld is utterly gone.  It becomes like solving the same crossword puzzle over and over again.  The player will lose the feeling of exploration and awe, and take meager refuge in the following:

-any randomized peripheral challenges that cannot be utterly planned for (such as combat)
-attempts to produce new challenges by self-crippling (which always feels somehow empty)
-focus on creative aspects of the game over the main challenge (often to excess!)
-mods, which are usually slapdash, quirky, and unbalanced (often in tedious ways)

None of these are -bad- things in their way, but when they're all that's left, the game will only be fired up when the player is in a certain "mood," which can occur as seldom as once a year, and then only for a few days' time.  Frequent replayability in a general sense is dead.  For a game dependent on donations, that's a problem.

Those who argue for hard-coded monster spawnings are missing the point--almost immediately the formula will be modified for these challenges, and the novelty will again be gone, requiring yet more antagonists that are disembodied from the proper game, without ever solving the complaint.  Most of the ballyhooed challenges of 2D were only challenges due to errors in the interface or in dwarf AI.  The elephants of Boatmurdered would have been a non-issue if forbid-on-death or stay-indoors were working properly.

DF's random simulation elements are a perfect means to upset and topple the formula player's supremacy.  The key lies in their usage.  Simulation elements can be employed to require situational, fresh thinking from the player; yet it can also lead to a mechanical and joyless world that is essentially a long uneventful drizzle dotted by moments of extreme frustration and damnable tedium.

Two representative examples (from the same company!) might help:

Master of Orion--

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

An absolutely brilliant game, almost infinitely replayable, that heavily requires situational thinking.  Its random elements afforded -meaningfully- unique challenges with every play, and upset almost any imaginable formula.  Varying racial personalities, goals and proclivities actually have a profound impact on how the player needs to react to the gameworld--an honorable militarist Psilon needs far different handling than a pacifistic technologist Psilon. 

The randomness in the tech tree assures there can be no "one true path" of progress through the game, while the tree's redundancies always keep the player from feeling crippled or deprived. 

Shifting alliances and diplomatic relations have a profound impact on one's game--making one different decision in one turn can cause a completely different outcome.  The AI is extremely simplistic, but -feels- advanced due to the interdependence of so many factors.

While the races aren't balanced, it's hardly necessary as the best ones feel completely unique to play as or against--playing the Darloks or the Silicoids as you would play the Humans, for example, will lead to complete disaster.  Playing as the same race versus two different sets of opponent races also packs on variety and unique situations.  The creative aspect (ship design) is likewise inextricably tied to active and important use by the player in the gameworld, and is likewise situational and resistant to formulas.

The boring aspect of the game is building up one's planets and expanding, which coincidentally is easily reduced to a formula.  Competing for space versus an opponent, however, is rarely boring!

Master of Magic--

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Such a beautiful, expansive game, but ruined by its flaws.  The AI is dumb, races are varied mostly by being mirrors of each other (or crippled/ boosted in tedious ways), and winning is supremely easy.  Though the magic and experience systems are robust and imaginative, all one needs to do is gather a stack of experienced shooters with enchantments and one god-like hero--at that point you can seal up any wizard in the game just by marching your stack of supremacy up to his/her place of residence.

Why should you?  Because the pacing is off.  90% of each turn is building new buildings in your cities, in the same order, over and over again.  (Built smithy, build marketplace; built marketplace, build armory x however many cities you have), for the course of the entire game! 

The opponent AI is worthless, as they declare war either instantly or after a short time, yet aren't a threat.  Their armies wander aimless, hobo-like over your territory to no purpose, and the (admittedly cool) global enchantments are simply an annoyance.  It's as I described above--a long uneventful drizzle dotted by frustrated wizard-sealing.  This despite an extremely complex magic system that encourages creativity.  The player takes refuge as aforementioned--fighting stock monster lairs, building up heroes, and experimenting with magic.

DF needs more of the good kind of simulation and randomness.  The kind that allows for a meaningfully different experience on each playthrough, requires situational thinking, and above all punishes those smug and complacent formula players!

I don't -want- to be able to simply plop down the same building plan, train the same military, plan the same food/workshop system, and make the same preparations for the same challenges.  It's too much like solving the same crossword puzzle again and again.  Achieving supremacy in DF should require a meaningfully different path on every playthrough, grounded by the world's unique and volatile elements. 

After a marksdwarf massacre of gobbos, I want to see them packing big and effective shields.  After a failed siege due to a moat and walled-in entrance, I want to see a shovel brigade and mines, or evil pet critters that can burrow through walls.  I want factions/religions and personalities to cause meaningful disturbances within the fort and between races, subject to limited (and situational) player response.  I want the specific type of site/goods of a fort to attract specific critters (sentient and otherwise) from -outside- the 6x6 area.  I want ambushers to suborn another civ's caravan, hide themselves within the wagons, and then be revealed well inside my triple redundant OCD fortifications.

These are all random musings, but the reason we bang on about this and can get testy is because we care about the game quite a lot.  To me the main gameplay element missing (aside from the above technical concerns) is the ease the formula player has of dominating any map.  Challenges to this rote gameplay should be logical and robust as opposed to arbitrary and disconnected (read: hardcoded random spawnings, arbitrary cripplings), but they should exist!

[sweitx]

...lack of a challenge curve...

Just to be picky, Dwarf Fortress does have a challenge curve.  It's a step function smoothed with a low variance gaussian.  The difficulty went from easy ("Oh look, my little dwarfs are walking around") to holy crap hard ("OMG!  Why are those little blue c turning my dwarfs red?") in the matter of three minutes.

[Rowanas]

While much of what you say is true, I argue with your point on MOO. I play MOO2, and there are formulas for it. It doesn't matter who you play against, a telepathic race whose ships are outfitted with as many assault pods as possible will always win. It's because unless you lag behind severely in technological progress, you can always fit more assault pods than your foes can fit PD weapons, and you need never bother with a rounded military, because the conquered ships of your foes will provide all the muscle that you don't. Fucking amazing game though.