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[Magua]

#1: I agree with everything Anu said.

#2: To answer the original question, my original problems with DF before learning all the ropes was the complexity.  It went something like this:

1.  Generate a world.  Well, ok, that was easy.  The default world generation actually worked quite well.

2.  Locate an embarkation spot.  Problem.  What do all these symbols mean?  Where's a good spot?  What's all this information on the right?  What *should* I be looking for?

3.  Preparing the group.  My, that's a lot of skills.  What *should* I buy?  I mean, ok, mining and masonry seem like they would be useful and dwarfy...but woodcutting?  Carpentry?  And let's not forget that some other important ones (Brewing, anyone?) are waaaaaay down the list.  This doesn't even get into the buying of items.  Obviously I need food, but how much?  Why can't I afford to buy an axe for every one of my dwarves?  Etc.

(Of course, Play Now! bypasses this screen, but unlike the default world generation, it doesn't fix the problem that the new player doesn't *know* what's important, and it can leave them high and dry if it doesn't give them some important thing.)

4. Starting out, some tasks are pretty easy -- digging was easy and intuitive.  But others were much harder; I got lucky and had soil to plant farms on, but I can't imagine the hardship that a new user would have trying to irrigate an area for farming.  Setting up stockpiles was also difficult -- do I need one of each stockpile?  How big do they need to be?  With a bit of toying around, workshops were easy to figure out, but the sheer number of them again overwhelms -- *obviously* my dwarves have to have a kitchen, right? 

5.  Dwarven labor takes a lot of getting used to.  You figure out you need wood for beds, fine, and you figure out how to designate trees to be cut down, but no one cuts and you don't know why.  It can be awhile before you figure out it's because no one has the woodcutting labor enabled.  It can be even *longer* to figure out if you don't have an axe.

What helped me through my first fortress was following the "Your First Fortress" guide on the wiki -- although now I see it's been heavily edited, the version I followed was essentially a "step by step" or a tutorial.  What I would've loved is some sort of "more info" about any given item that would give the information that the wiki gives.  Or, could even just link to the wiki, that'd be fine too.  I want to know that soapmaking and alchemy are highly ignorable, but that brewing is not.  I want to know that microcline is just a rock, but that hematite is used to make iron.

That is, as an experienced player, I enjoy the complexity and diversity, and look for ways to make the complexity more and more manageable (see Anu's post), but as a newbie, I found it overwhelming and confusing.  That was my hangup.

[Pie]

I agree with you (Anu), good sir! However, I am unsure as to how you could make the initial set up different each time (or at least requiring some sort of decision to be made). Perhaps seeds could only be planted in certain types of soil, meaning that the location of you farm plots (and so your fortress) has to be carefully dictated. And then perhaps certain types of soil is extremely dangerous to dig through (due to collapses) and thus must be navigated carefully.

[skipdog172]

I'm not sure how to rectify those issues Magua. They are the same issues involved with any complex game. When you don't know how things work, things are confusing. We don't want these things dumbed down...the solution is to use the wiki and read/watch a tutorial...which I think is the most common step for players who go "huh??"

[Footkerchief]

the solution is to use the wiki and read/watch a tutorial

I think he does know that.  It's still a shortcoming of the game.

Also, Anu's analysis of turnoffs for experienced players is excellent.

[skipdog172]

the solution is to use the wiki and read/watch a tutorial

I think he does know that.  It's still a shortcoming of the game.

Also, Anu's analysis of turnoffs for experienced players is excellent.

Yeah, I realize that. I'm just not sure how you can change this without dumbing down the game or creating a very elaborate in-game tutorial.

Anu makes very very good points. I completely agree.

[Anu Necunoscut]

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.

I was talking about MOO1, which is quite different in my view:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

MOO2 made some serious errors, in my view, in pacing, variety, and balance (such as captured ships, which like captured cities in MOM undermines the unique experience of playing as one race or the other).  It's still a wonderful game, don't get me wrong, but as you say, you can play with the equivalent of Dark Elves in MOM and roll over everything without consideration for the unique environment or opponents in a particular game. 

In MOO1, I really can't think of any valid formulae except for basic expansion and planet improving, which are extremely abstract and peripheral aspects of the game--they allow you to do all the fun, varied stuff that is the focus.  MOO1's balance isn't perfect at all, of course--there are uber races that can run away with the game easily (such as the Psilons, Klackons and Humans) and others that are almost always weak sisters (Mrrshan!).  But if you play as an intermediate race, everything from the very first move will be different given a different race, map, tech tree, opposing races (or the same ones with different personalities), events, etc.  Even when multiple players play the same start, the outcomes can be wildly divergent--one missed planet here, one missed opportunity for diplomacy there, different priorities in production, etc. can all make for a meaningfully different outcome.  Often in other games, that difference means only a delay of the inevitable.

In MOO1 there's no one optimal path up the tech tree, no one uber race that guarantees victory (though Psilons are close, you can still be outmaneuvered diplomatically or stomped on by alliances), no rote unstoppable ship designs, etc.  While the mechanics of all of it are relatively simple, they are varied to the point where you can't really just follow some checklist and waltz to victory every time regardless of the specific conditions of each game.

When there is an optimal path that needs little to no changes no matter the situation, the player never feels like he is required to make the utmost use of his abilities and the game mechanics to meet varied, unique challenges except for the first process of uncovering that path.  Often he will instead intentionally handicap himself in an attempt to generate fresh challenges from the game, or create self-imposed tasks.  Both usually are fairly empty-feeling, although the latter is pretty expansive given how creative DF allows you can be.

I agree with you (Anu), good sir! However, I am unsure as to how you could make the initial set up different each time (or at least requiring some sort of decision to be made). Perhaps seeds could only be planted in certain types of soil, meaning that the location of you farm plots (and so your fortress) has to be carefully dictated. And then perhaps certain types of soil is extremely dangerous to dig through (due to collapses) and thus must be navigated carefully.

The key is to avoid making the situational challenges tedious, arbitrary or crippling.  That way meeting the challenge isn't a frustrating annoyance, but an enjoyable experience.

I think one important thing to remember is that piling on challenges that aren't fun to meet (or are always solved in the same way) is not desirable.  Plus, we don't want to limit player creativity in any artificial way, or remove any depth from the game that can any way provide for those fun emergent challenges.  What do I mean by tedious, arbitrary and crippling challenges?  Some examples in recent DF:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

-A tedious challenge is posed by squad leaders running off to drink, sleep, eat, etc., which causes squad members to do nothing.  The basic solution is to make every soldier his/her own squad, which is certainly boring and not at all fun or creatively challenging. (it's great that this is being changed!)

-A noble request for glass items on a sandless map is an arbitrary challenge.  There's no logic to it, and it isn't fun to meet as there is no chance of success, nor is there opportunity for creative player input.  Another would be spawning in a rampless pit during an ambush in adventure mode.

-There are very few crippling challenges in DF.  This is due to its robust mechanics, as even 7 uneducated hillbillies with only a single pick or a few stones can build up an awe-inspiring fortress given a few years.  Or to avoid self-imposed challenges, if most of your important dwarves are lost to a tantrum spiral, you can still have a chance to rebuild even given a single dwarf

I think your farming example might not be too bad--the problem is that it generates variety by removing abilities.  I would rather retain all the features, and instead see varied challenges arise from the player's use of those features, modified by specific fortress environment and civ relations. 

Different fortresses compositions (in terms of site, style, dwarves, leaders/nobles, neighbors, relations, and production) should lead to different challenges, antagonists and antagonist behavior.  If they don't, then DF's robust mechanics (as with MOM's magic system) simply allow the player to figure out an ultimate strategy, that will meet all threats almost without regard to where, when or how it is employed.  This kills the game.

[Magua]

If the wiki is required reading for playing the game, it's text should be available within the game.

If a tutorial is required for understanding how to play the game, it should be available within the game.

A lot of the "What does foo do?" could be mitigated by either having in game links to the wiki, or perhaps including a snapshot of the wiki with the game.

I mean, I'm a fairly good player at this game, and just yesterday I had to consult the wiki to see how the cloth industry worked (what buildings took what inputs and gave what outputs).  I pretty much find >

A tutorial could be done just by presenting prompts at certain early points in the fortress.  "You've arrived!  Now you should do X, Y, and Z."  Link to the wiki / wiki snapshot for more information.

[Anu Necunoscut]

I think both tutorials and information pages are necessary:

Learning -how- to mine or develop an industry would ideally take place via an in-game, optional tutorial.  Learning what -objects- are modified or required by actions like mining or woodcutting (or what a creature is, does and can be used for) would ideally be shown on an (i)nformation page, always accessible from the menus in-game.

Like Magua, I've often had to comb the wiki for a specific tidbit of information (such as what plants and such immediately edible/cookable, or where and in what receptacle they are processed).  Also, if I see a creature I've never encountered, I'd like to be able to hit "i" from the "v" menu and get a generalized description of what kind of creature it is and what it does.  Same goes for stone, tools, etc.  For example the information screen for workshops would show requirements, inputs and outputs--with the ability to access the information screen of any of the related items.

If we are to have randomized creatures to some extent here (which would be great!), we'll need an information screen of some sort to let us know how big it is, what it seems capable of, and what dwarfish uses it might have, if any.

[Lehawk]

* Mouse driven embark screen OMG. Arrows do one thing, ijklIJKL another, and +-. Mouse everywhere would be nice too.

* Make it easier to select an individual dwarf when several animals/dwarves are in the same spot.

* Need a way to deal with animals early on without needing rope/cage, instead of them hanging out at the meeting areas. Stop trainers from getting a hoard of war dogs following them. Dog should be faster and able to keep up with legendary masters.

* Make it easier to go back to the location picker and a way to pull up the location picker after embarking to see the geology/elevation/etc of your spot.

* Choose where to spawn wagon instead of random, or movable wagons and spawn at a border.

* Site finder next-prev keys or stop searching after first find.

* Ship with decent starter map, small and large pls, and a very fast quick start.

* No up/down stair and make digging down/up automatically create the other stair. Building up stair would require the 2 material and auto build the stairs down (then you don't need the build down stair option).

* Notify/pause when dwarves are first attacked or stuck.

* Crazy mandates that can't possibly be fulfilled.

* Stop sudden population explosion in winter of first year. Should get 2-4 each for summer/fall/winter of first year to help prepare.

* I'd like to be able to read the names of items. Giant Spider Clo... over and over in a dwarf's inventory doesn't help much. (maybe they should start poorer)

* Stop the dwarves from starting a job, walking to the job and then after they start working they stop to go back and drink/eat/break/sleep/party. This has happened 3 times in a row on a quick job.

* Stop the dwarves from going outside to drink from a river when I have plenty of booze. This happens when a large amount of dwarves are drinking at the same time (they ignore drinking zones sometimes too). In fact, why can't they get get a mug/goblet some food and then eat/drink in the dining room.

* Stop the constant parties.

* Make it easier to select areas for designation. Mouse used in all places not just in the one place.

* Stop the dwarfs from mining out 98% and then starting on a new area.

* Automatic cleaning of stockpiles of stone.

* When dwarfs drink/eat/sleep keep their job active so you can see that they are actually doing it and not going to start something different.

* Seed collection with bags please and not dozens of jobs when people eat or brew plants. In fact, there should be a policy option to stop dwarves from eating raw food.

* Make more things automated without harassing players. Like the cook should be able to be set to cook a lavish meal when possible and not alert the player when he runs out and not require the player to add another cook lavish meal order. Also the brewer, smelter, farmer workshop etc.

* A display how much total alcohol and food on the side of the screen, with a warning that it's dropping so fast that in 3 months you'll run out.

* Irrigation with a bucket pls. Better pond filling AI would be nice.

* More mouse support (did you hear me first time haha). Click on a stairs/ramp to change z. Hold right click to view (like 'k') left click to select.

* Harvest job activate/deactivate, along with pond filling and any other jobs that can't be turned off. Ability to set Trade at Depot and Meeting to a higher priority.

* Eat, Drink and On Break together! Grab some food, a goblet, fill it and then go to the dining room to take a break and eat/drink on break. Also let them socialize at the same time. Ability to grant vacation time to help morale.

* A good thought for arriving at the fortress.

* Matching pair of wagon pullers, though same gender to be more realistic. Ability to choose type at embark.

* Less panicky mothers. Or at least kill the notification for it.

* Be able to hire mercenaries or pay for immigrant of chosen type, but at a high price.

* Bookkeeper can issue special jobs for cleaning/sorting stockpiles (bins, barrels, bags). This would be the price of more precision instead of just more time spent updating. This would also be good for combining the same type items into better stacks.

* In general, portable containers should be used to gather multiple objects of the same type before delivering them to the final destination.

* Less dancing around while digging. Designate channel one horizontal line and see then another 50 tiles away and watch the stupidity. Better yet, try to channel a 3 wide horizontal line, starting at the center line then both top and bottom lines at the same time.

* An in-depth guide in world builder parameters and the ability to see every reason a for failure so I could choose to forgo on certain items. A sound should be played once a minute after it finishes.

* In-game options that contain as many options in the init file as possible.

* Merge 'q' and 't' functionality. It would be nice to see why [CLR] is on the 'q' view and not have to reselect the workshop with 't'.

* Artifact stockpile.

* Stockpile's "take from a pile" persists until cancelled. Should also handle swapping barrels in the case of a 1x1 drink only stockpile.

* Setting priorities on jobs! A miner who needs to get a place started always seems to want to move items. So then I turn off the moving jobs. Then later when he runs out of things to do, he is useless until I remember to re-enable moving stuff or give him more to mine. It's the same with pretty much everything else. My woodcutting/carpenter mayor never wants to meet or trade until turn off those jobs or they run out for example.

* Small patch of sand on every map so you can make some glass, even if the only patch is on the other side of the map.

* Persistent drought conditions on most maps I've played. Why would lakes dry up only after arriving?

* Protect from getting ambushed by archers in the first year and having them invade your fortress killing everyone in the first winter.

Some of these turned into just feature requests, but most of them are reasons why I get tired of playing a single map for over 2 game years. Why I keep restarting and ultimately just stop playing altogether. Occasionally I pop back in hoping for change, but these reasons pop back up again. I really like the game concept alot though.

[Timst]

Actually, I like ASCII graphics. They are, in a way, good looking, but most of all they are -simple- and describe simply and straightforwardly what is happening. You can't say the same of other ancient graphics (some pixelated sprite were totally impossible to decipher, whereas everything is equally clear in ASCII).

But yeah, the redundancy of up down left right / * + - umkhUMKH pgup pgdown is awful. The num keypad can help a bit (in adventurer mode for instance), but that doesn't cut it.

I, like everyone, had a hard time to figure how to get started. But I must be one of the rare dudes who actually managed to get started with the online manual, so it's not totally useless. Of course, for advanced features, the wiki was really helpful.

A few random things now :

- Someone on the forums said something that I liked a lot : "Make surviving the winter an accomplishment again". That's SO true. The only fort I had a problem with was my first one... I didn't managed well my resources and effectively got a food shortage during winter, with dwarves hunting vermin and all. It was FUN. Now the main threats to my forts are the goblin ambushes, who manage to kill a hauler or a woodcutter from time to time.
Food is overabundant,
Weather or temperature has no effect whatsoever on the dwarves,
Stuffing 2 or 3 golden statues in a dining room is enough to keep the whole fort happy,
Goblins sieges are a joke,
Traps are overpowered,
A simple moat can drive anything off, from a goblin army to a dragon,
There is perpetual motion wheels and magma proof wooden walls,
Marksdwarves act like they're wielding a machine gun, etc.

Surviving the first winter isn't any harder than surviving the 15th summer actually.

* Also, the AI. It's pretty good right now, but the pathfinding drain computer resources like there's no tomorrow, the dwarves have arbitrary ideas about which side of a wall they should be in front of when it come to mining / engraving / building / etc., they also have this strange North-West priority (IIRC, but it may be SW or something else), meaning than anything in the NW of the map will be prioritized, even if there's work in the south of the fort and the NW job is at the other end of the map.

* Dwarves have also the lower sense of duty and accomplishment I ever saw. Even dwarves that have the related personality traits will drop work as soon as they feel a bit hungry / thirsty / drowsy. It's especially annoying if you consider that :

- They will do that for every task, regardless of the importance. IIRC, dwarves endeavor a bit more at  rescuing people or following military orders, but that's won't stop them to stop working at the worst time possible.
- Even if they had to travel across the whole map to fulfill the job, they will happily return to the fortress every time they feel some need, including when they didn't actually began the task and were just approaching. It's like you're travelling by car to a city 200 km away, and at 15 km of it you would say "hm, I'm a bit hungry. Let's return home".
- Of course, after eating / drinking / sleeping, they will never take the task again (excepted if they have nothing else to do of course). But even if they did, the task would have been reinitialized to zero (apart from jobs like building), so yeah...

* Livestock. They're killing framerate, and the techniques used to effectively raise and breed them without destroying your FPS are pretty counterintuitive. The whole "impregnated by spore" thing is silly, they should at the very least need a contact even for 1 frame. Even with the "animal" screen, it's hard to keep record of the animals, especially when there's a lot of them, and the whole ownership think don't help either. Maybe a sum-up screen with the different species present in the fortress, number of animals of each kind, male/female ratio, number of stray animals, etc., could be useful ? Also, they seem to eat pebbles and drink air.

There's also other things, but that the biggest points I can see right now. Oh, and it'll be nice to fix some of them (at least the easier one to fix) before adding new feature, but that's just my advice.

[lastofthelight]

Honestly I think most of these concerns are, while perhaps valid, missing the point. In order to have most of these concerns you need to be familiar with the game. I have friends who adore the story of Boarmurdered and are well acquainted with DF from listening to people talk about it, but whom will never, ever play it due to the absolute lack of an interface. I can get past that. And it says in the start of the thing that...they realize that. But I'd underline that and put some circles around it. I tried showing them screenshots of Mayday's graphics set, and even that didn't help.

[Timst]

Well, the topic's title is "What turns you off about DF ?". Of course, I know people don't want to play the game because of the graphics, not because of the management of the livestock, but I tried to list the things that annoy me the most in the game.

[Kavalion]

More specifically, what problems did you have before learning the ropes of the game?

What problems didn't I have?    It would just always be difficult to accomplish what I thought was a modest starter project for my fortress.  I needed to read up on how to do everything and often I still couldn't get it to work the way I wanted it to.  Sometimes it just couldn't work the way I wanted it to, like getting a competent military.  Legendary or killed-in-training-accident seem to be the only two options.

I think that a major, major benefit to the game, especially in the eyes of a newcomer, would be eliminating a lot of the tedious parts.  I think a lot of that is planned already, though.  Stuff like making it take less time to set labor options, having an intuitive interface that's easy to navigate, making dwarves do stuff more sensibly like clean raw fish before catching more fish.

And also just make newbie goals easier.  Let's say I'm a newbie and I'm thinking of what to do next after setting up bedrooms, a dining room, and a storage room full of food and booze.  So, I decide to make a lookout tower above ground for defense, so an invading force would have to enter the tower before getting into my fortress.

I decide to build the tower walls out of gabbro rock blocks, the tower floors and roof out of pine wood blocks, and make it large enough to have a barracks and armory for ten marksdwarves.  The roof will be lined with gabbro fortifications and statues that I pretend are fearsome stone gargoyles, which will be decorated with whatever gems I happened to find in my mining.

I'll have all kinds of problems making this tower as a newbie.  I'll probably end up encrusting the beds instead of the statues with gems because of how the decorate item tasks work (very annoying, have to do a lot of work setting up stockpiles properly).  Using only pine wood is very impractical and difficult to set up.  Just building all the blocks and laying them down will take huge manpower and a lot of time.  My dwarves will probably get stuck or I'll fall victim to the corner constructions becoming inaccessible a few times.

So, yeah, very hard to make anything nice in Dwarf Fortress, and making nice things is what it's all about, so it can turn off new players. 

P.S.  I also wanted the tower to be circular!

[Granite26]

Well, the topic's title is "What turns you off about DF ?".

Yes, but if you read the actual post underneath it, it's targeted at new players and retention problems

[Timst]

Oh, right. Then it's obvious, and I guess it was said a lot of time during on the 46 pages of this topic : The ASCII art, the UI and the lack of a real manual. There are few newbies that manage to overcome this and get turned off by something else.