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[lumin]

Good Job, now you're learning!

[Pesty13480]

Yes, quite a bit about the qualities and capacities of my fellow man.

[qalnor]

'We have to be careful here. The interface alone is so challenging in its initial learning curve'

I agree with this. But the solution isn't to make the game really easy once you DO get over that curve.

The solution is, if a solution is needed at all, which I am not personally convinced of, is to make it easier to get over that curve in the first place.

If players are being scared off by the complex interface, then do something to immerse them more quickly into it. That doesn't mean that once they understand the interface the game should be Sim Dwarf where the only challenges are at best an exercise in rebuilding.

As others have said in the thread, there is a legitimate viewpoint that this SHOULD be sim-dwarf, and if that's what the devs want to make it, I have no real problem with him doing so.

In the long term, that's not what I want, but it's not an illegitimate creation.

[dav]

Cliche time: You catch more flies with honey than by calling them cowardly unimaginative idiots.  As many people have mentioned (I think including me), there's many levels that the game could be "difficult."  Also, different people find different things challenging, interesting, fun.  

Rule 1 of brainstorming is that there's no bad idea.  Mocking other people and mudslinging is considered bad form.  And it shuts down good ideas.  

The game is not uniformly challenging.  There's a steep learning curve.  The first fortress or two is doomed, if you just dive in.  Establishment's tough.  Managing the immigrant hordes takes some work and/or floodgates until you get used to it.  Discovering what works and doesn't is hard, especially if you don't read the spoilers.  (It doesn't really warn you the demons are coming or that they can dodge traps.)  Mid to late game has some yet-to-be implemented features that will smooth out the edges.  Probably won't make the game perfect - there's always ideas for challenges.  So let's talk about types of challenges rather than philosophical differences.  That's another thread.

[Darkfall]

Well, if you look at the development plans, Toady has a bigger picture plan for this.  Not by increasing the difficulty of Dwarf mode to make it more Nethack-like, but by making an even bigger picture, so it moves from SimDwarf to something more like SimDwarf + Dwarf Civilization, with wars with enemy factions and things like that.  To get a feel for that, look at the following:

CARAVAN ARC: As a prelude to armies, we'll have caravans actually move around the world map rather than just appear at your outpost. They'll move between each city on the map, though we'll try to stay away from supporting a real economy for the time being. You should be able to find items you traded in your fortress in adventure mode, and a caravan could come to your fortress with an adventure mode item. Related to Core3, Req204.

COUNTY ARC: When you get a baron, you'll be able to send out patrols. Once you get a count, you'll get a village outside your fortress and be able to organize armies. This arc would have to be developed along with the army arc. Related to Core27, Core28, Core29.

ARMY ARC: You should be able to control patrols and then armies in dwarf mode. The adventurer should be able to both go with and command armies. In dwarf mode, you should have the option to control your individual patrol members as you would in adventure mode. This comes back to adventure mode in terms of being able to control each member in a party of adventurers you make yourself. You could lead one and the others follow (as it is currently) or control them all, particularly during tense situations where you don't want to count on the AI. Entities should war with each other from bandit and monster raids to full fledged wars. Upset enties could patrol near their sites, leading to new wilderness encounters etc. Related to Core24, Core25, Core26, Core30, Core33, Core35, Req221.

NEMESIS ARC: The civilization leaders should be fleshed out in many ways. Related to Core11, Core40, Bloat68.

DIPLOMACY ARC: There should be a lot more diplomacy between your outpost and the outside world, especially as you get more nobles. Right now there's hardly anything.

and some of the longer-term stuff:

# HIGH LEVEL PLOTS AND DIPLOMACY: Various intrigue and interesting not-necessarily-violent conflict between entities and individuals. Once you place the actors in place, they should act according to their wants and the wants of their associated entities based on the strength of those ties. Both adventurers and dwarf fortresses can become immersed in the push and pull which arises from the AI. This is already true to some extent (the current quests are all created from the surroundings and entity ties), but these effects can be made pervasive. Since armies and invasions will be done before we get here, there will already be some of this AI in place to work with.

# LATE GAME: As you kill the large creatures, the world becomes more... boring. The game can be prepared for this kind of change and move over into a sort of fairy-tale/Beowulf/Robert E Howard type of hybrid with human civs and occasional monsters so that things continue to be interesting. This already happens naturally in a way, but the dialogue and reactions of people to these changes should be there to fully adjust to the new setting. Related to Bloat149

So, looking at that, it seems to me that Toady's plan isn't to make the current Fortress mode more difficult, per se, but to make it only a piece of what the larger game is about.

And if you think the current sieges are a piece of cake, you can bet that a war with an advanced civilization will be a bit more difficult.  I'm sure he can code it to where, once an enemy civilization sees your fancy steam channel or weapon traps once or twice, they can find a way to get around it the next year, and then your standing army better be prepared.  

[ November 14, 2006: Message edited by: Darkfall ]

[qalnor]

quote:Originally posted by dav:
<STRONG>Cliche time: You catch more flies with honey than by calling them cowardly unimaginative idiots.

Rule 1 of brainstorming is that there's no bad idea. Mocking other people and mudslinging is considered bad form. And it shuts down good ideas. </STRONG>

I agree, except I would add one caveat:

'This topic seems a little pointless to me.'

Is not a legitimate idea. Saying that there's no such thing as a bad idea isn't the same thing as suggesting that people can say whatever they want without risk of mockery.

Otherwise there is no internal consistency to what you're saying. If you apply one standard to comments like 'This topic seems a little pointless to me' and another standard to comments like 'I think people in the latter camp have no imagination and fear other, perhaps more interesting challenges' then what you're saying has no meaning.

What the latter quote said just reflects the 'opinion' of the person who responded to the former quote, and you are in effect (by your own backwards definitions) 'shutting him down' for posting his 'ideas'.

And now I'm doing the same thing to you. It's a never ending loop of stupidity that has no coherent meaning because it is impossible to recognize a failure without causing a similar failure.

Nobody supporting making the game harder has attacked anyone who has just said 'well, you guys are entitled to your opinion, but I for one am personally happy with the present level of difficulty of the game'.

Virtually everyone in this thread has been civil on both sides, but when one person breaches civility, they open themselves to attack, and nobody on either side of a discussion should defend them for their 'views'.

'I think everyone should shut up' is not a view.

[dav]

Edit:  Never mind.  This is OT, and is an endless loop.

[ November 14, 2006: Message edited by: dav ]

[Pesty13480]

Again, Darkfall, my point is that all of the planned difficulty-releated aspects of the game  are limited to the military and what one can do with the military. I'm hoping for a little bit extra just to throw things up and make it so that each and every dwarf you have does not necessarily get to survive with just a small touch of planning.

That means some extra difficulties and challenges unrelated to: 1. Getting invaded. 2. Invading.

[ November 14, 2006: Message edited by: Pesty13480 ]

[Darkfall]

quote:Originally posted by Pesty13480:
<STRONG>Again, Darkfall, my point is that all of the planned difficulty-releated aspects of the game  are limited to the military and what one can do with the military. I'm hoping for a little bit extra just to throw things up and make it so that each and every dwarf you have does not necessarily get to survive with just a small touch of planning.

That means some extra difficulties and challenges unrelated to: 1. Getting invaded. 2. Invading.

[ November 14, 2006: Message edited by: Pesty13480 ]</STRONG>

Interesting.  I can see what you are saying.  

1) A thought on the topic of disease: if you were to implement a deadly disease that would be capable of jumping from dwarf to dwarf, there would have to be some in-game method to contain it.  I mean, you couldn't just have the sick dwarves running all over the place infecting each other with nothing the player can do about it.  And there's no real method for a player to manually direct the sick dwarf to a sick room or anything like that.  I guess the most likely method would be for the dwarf to retire to his room of his own violition until he feels better.  Other dwarves would bring him food and water, and each time they do, there is a chance that the good samaritan dwarf contracts the disease too.  This would present the player with an ongoing choice: do you lock the sick dwarf (or dwarves) in their room(s), preventing more caretaker dwarves from getting sick, but abandoning the already sick dwarves to death?  Or do you hope that the caretakers don't catch the disease before the sick ones get better.  Could provide an interesting choice, both from a moral aspect and from a gameplay perspective.  Your legendary metalsmith gets sick -- do you risk dwarves to keep him alive?  What about when 3 or 4 more dwarves get sick?  At what point do you have to contain the plague and condemn the sick dwarves to death?

I suppose instead of having them retire to their own rooms, you could also make a hospital, defined from a bed (so beds can be three things - bedroom, barracks, or hospital), and dwarves will go there when they are sick.  With the same risks -- anyone coming to help the hospitalized dwarves may get sick themselves.  And if the sickness becomes too widespread, you could always lock the hospital up and leave the sick dwarves to die, but again, that would be a difficult choice, particularly if those dwarves were valuable to the player either from a skill perspective or from a sentimental attachment perspective.  You could also implement some sort of higher noble who would have the effect of making dwarves in the hospital less likely to spread disease -- he brings some knowledge of sanitation and sterilization.  Might even be a use for the House Råsh, which currently doesn't do much at all.

In a way, there is already a form of "sickness" in the game with strange/fey/fell moods.  Dwarves are randomly stricken by these conditions and if they go poorly they can result in other dwarves dying.  But I can see an implementation of sickness being an interesting addition as well.

2) As for blights, I don't know if that would be significant or not.  If a blight hit in the early game, particularly the first year or two, a new player would basically be screwed without anything they could do about it.  In the late game, on the other hand, it probably wouldn't make a whole lot of difference, since most fortresses end up with more surplus than one season's planting and even if they did run low, there's a bunch of horses/mules/cows/cats for emergency food.  Basically, I think a blight condition would only make the actual "hard" part of the game (the early years) more hard, and not really significantly add to the difficulty of the game phase you are concerned with.

3) One thought I had: as your fortress gets bigger, perhaps there could be competing factions within your own fortress.  Maybe the guildmasters can randomly become offended by each other, trigging a fortress-wide rise in hostility between their guild members.  So then, for example, you could have your carpenters and masons angry at each other and when a carpenter and a mason pass in the hall, there is a chance they would fight.  This could happen randomly (not all the time, just occasionally) and would last until the guildmasters reconcile, or until some higher-level noble looks into it and orders a halt to hostilities.

You could have similar situations once Toady implements the "barrow" system, with dwarves from different sections of the fortress having inherent dislikes for each other.  For example, the metalsmiths stationed near the lava might think of those stationed near the front of the fortress as "skygazers" and "shallow dwellers", and have a chance to fight them, take their stuff, bully them around, etc.  

All of that kind of dovetails with  your "evil dwarf" suggestion, but could provide a more widespread issue and also could present a sense of larger scale for a fortress that breaks into these kinds of factions once it becomes big enough.

[ November 14, 2006: Message edited by: Darkfall ]

[Pesty13480]

I love the idea of guilds competing with each other and getting angry over perceived slights and the excess of the nobles. See, that's what I wanted this thread to be about, completely glorious that ideas that will keep things fresh and very much in the way of interesting. I think, equally, it would match up with "jealous" workers who are upset about the good works of their legendary contemporaries.

See? Your idea was fantastic and if I were Toady, which I am not, would gladly implement later on in the development process.

[Markavian]

I've put alot of hours into DF already more then most console games (mute point), but as it stands I haven't reached past the Magma Flow and pushed onwards.

I'm terrified of seiges, I'm finding alot of challenge from designing defences.

So, I'm quite happy with DF at the moment. The most interesting areas to make things more difficult are where tough choices need to be made.

Varying the flow of the land, making it less predictable would be a challenge. At the moment, you can plan out a fortress (to a large extent) before you dig a single block. Having horizontal (inplace of vertical) obstables would be cool. Perhaps a river flowing out of the mountain.

Better control over the units would make seiges better. I'm too scared to fight at the moment because I can't guarentee that the dwarves will go where I tell them to. If there were better controls I'd be confident to hit seiges head-on.

Handling disasters creatively would be more fun. Difficult can be imposed by self regulation as suggested, but the most fun difficulties are where the player has to solve a new problem.

With random caves, different sorts of random beasts. Perhaps timedelay problems? In other games (Space Empires IV) thheres a condition where the local sun will explode in X amount of time. This forces the player to evacuate all of the planets in that solar system.

Maybe have chasm expansions which slowly make parts of your dungeon fall away. New magma flows, waterfall openings.

Perhaps snakeman encounters can be backed up by a 'snakeman nest' somewhere in the cave which the player can defeat (sort of a quest within fortress mode).

I think adding quests ontop of fortress mode, where you take a designed fortress and explore the world would be the most interesting way to expand the game play. If there are new challenges, then new difficulties will arise and keep the game fun. Thats my view on increasing difficulty.

[krige]

quote:See? Your idea was fantastic and if I were Toady, which I am not, would gladly implement later on in the development process.  

Nudge nudge wink wink  

But jokes aside, the guild idea is pretty good.

But think: does the game really need to be extremely difficult? As long as it's fun and long (and it is), it shouldn't matter, and with the learning curve, the increased difficulty would turn off A LOT of new players. Maybe some "expert mode" perhaps?

[axus]

I don't think the game should be made difficult for everyone.  During alpha stage it's OK to test ideas that make the game harder and hopefully more fun.  When the game is out of alpha stage, I think there should be some sort of scenario control or difficulty settings so that it can be fun for people who aren't as good at the game.

[Pesty13480]

quote:Originally posted by axus:
<STRONG>I don't think the game should be made difficult for everyone.  During alpha stage it's OK to test ideas that make the game harder and hopefully more fun.  When the game is out of alpha stage, I think there should be some sort of scenario control or difficulty settings so that it can be fun for people who aren't as good at the game.</STRONG>

It's not so much a matter of an expert mode or scaring off new players, I don't mean 'difficult' in that way. I mean that after a fort is decently established, it would be neat to see various bad things befall the fortress - nothing completely fatal, just small things that'll tinker with your overall goals for your respective fortress.

And once you get established, you're pretty much not a new player - that's where I'd like to see the difficulty increased a bit. Not at the start, I agree the game is intimidating as it is, but toward middle and later parts of the game.

[qalnor]

As someone who has posted a lot on this thread in support of making the game harder, I have to agree with Pesty on this particular subject.

I don't see any virtue at all in making the game more complicated for new players. If anything, it would be perhaps nice if by the end of beta (this is alpha) there was some sort of tutorial structure to dilute some of the difficulty associated with entering the game as a new player.

To add a further point: the game already has a ratcheting mechanism for difficulty. Namely, players have a great deal of influence over how difficult the game is in early stages by selecting what sort of map they play on.

For a new player who is experimenting with the various choices, there is a considerable difference between starting on a heavily wooded peaceful map and a scorching hot sinister map with very few trees.

But for a player who is experienced -- and mind you this not a 'talent', it's very simple learning process that anyone can accomplish -- there is no real difference between these maps except a small amount of occasional inconvenience.

I wouldn't support any changes to the game which I thought would make it more complex for a new player to enter into the game.

If an idea makes the game harder without leaving the learning curve at or at least near its present level for new players, either it's not a workable idea or else some preferably parallel racheting mechanism would have to be incorporated.

One thing should be said, however, in addition and that is that while there is overlap between the concepts of 'difficulty' and 'complexity', there is also quite a bit of difference between these concepts.