Hi!
O.o
Wow, this is developing really fast. So much interesting text to read with so many interesting thoughts. Thank you all!
So, I have to pick out some examples, some aspects without meaning any disrespect to those not referred to.
General: Let me stress again, that this thread here is about subjective views, about feelings. It is about the question how the individual members feel about the UI and not about its bugs or its deficiencies according to specific academic evaluation procedures (of course, if your own feelings co-incide with those procedures, it makes sense to include them). As such, there is no universal "right" answer - everyone here has their own answer and while we can ask for details, I hope we can respect that.
Also note that the question was just about "liking" the UI. It is not proposing that the UI is perfect or anything.
Jiri Petru: First of all, I really want to thank you for linking to that other thread. As I said, I want this thread to be something positive/useful, and that link helps channel some of the energy into other venues that may make that energy even more effective.
Your question about how people can feel that way is a bit hard to answer or rather, the answer is a bit hard to put into words.
Basically, at least in my case it is a combination of a natural inclination with an extensive training. The natural inclination I already hinted at before - I am not very fast and not very good at fine jobs, so mouse controls, for instance, are rather daunting for me, unless they give me either a lot of margin for error or give me a lot of time to carefully make sure I am clicking at the right spot. You could say that the input the mouse accepts is too detailed/too fine for me to feel completely comfortable with. Opposed to that, keyboard controls have a very ensuring discreteness.
The other aspect, training, refers not only to having played Dwarf Fortress or other roguelikes. I started playing computer/video games in the late 80s, including things like Wizardry - Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord on the C=64, or SimCity, The Bard's Tale, Ultima III on that machine as well. I thoroughly got used to certain approaches to handling interaction between the user and the game, and thus, while I enjoyed playing SpellForce and got along with Earth 2160 and I even played through WarCraft and WarCraft II (I notoriously fail to reach the end of games (^_^;; ), I simply do not feel at home with their mouse-based systems.
And this favoring one type of input is strong enough to color my perception: if I control a game using a keyboard (or gamepad for action games), I am likely to ignore smaller issues with the controls. The overall favorable view I take on the input cancels out all but the most horrible atrocities. On the other hand, once I notice that SimCity 4 does not allow you to turn buildings with the mouse but requires a keypress in an otherwise pure mouse interface, I feel horribly repulsed and offended by that complete failure of an interface (I am exaggerating - a little bit (^_^;; ). People are less likely to see the flaws in which they like while those in the things they are critical about become even more obvious and glaring.
So, the user interface appeals to me because a) it is keyboard based at the core, b) makes it clear that we are tile-based with the game engine, c) feels rather "texty" (you see, even though I am not really good at them, I really like text adventures/interactive fiction. So, walls of text are something that make a game appealing). I guess there is also some Spartan flair to the very simple design of the menu, which gives it a comforting hardness for me (I need hard edges in my controls as I am too clumsy to handle smooth gradiants).
In addition, there is of course the experience bonus - for most of the commands, I do not need to actually look at the command overview, but I am forgetful, so that the rarer commands sometimes do prompt me to quickly look at the overview, just to make sure. And at least for me, that is usually something that works out very quickly as the keywords given work well with me.
And personally, I don't think that the kitchen screen is actually something you use that often - I basically only visit it to deactivate cooking for brewables, alcohol, and tallow, and then never again. So, it is not really something I miss. And I have grown used to the status view with its subviews of various states - like the animals page showing you which animals you actually have while the status view just gives you two numbers as a rough overview, or the kitchen menu kind of complimenting your stock screen by listing the actual number of processable food items. To me, that tree in the interface makes perfect sense.
I hope I was able to make it a bit more understandable why I feel that way.
Urist McOverlord: I also agree that the tilesets do not replace imagination. I personally prefer ASCII because the symbols are easier for me to tell apart.
However, if you scanned photos of some real life people like George Bush or George Clooney and used them for graphics, I think you can say that you just butchered imagination and my healthy sleep... There are just some things that I can not really suffer :) :) :)
Hyperturtle: Mmmmhhhh, Clippy, the helpful paperclip ... it is actually a cute idea. But I personally rather leave such things out of the game proper. Good for tutorials and fan-art, but quickly becoming annoying once you got used to a game, I think.
Footkerchief: I have to admit that I was really surprised when I read your assessment. I would never had thought you felt that strongly about it, seeing your activity around bay12... (I am aware that the current interface is considered a stopgap of sorts and will be overhauled, but that were really strong statements O.o )
General: Allow me to explain a little bit about my paranoia concerning the mouse input debate.
In my experience, it seems to be very difficult for designers to come up with a really good interface, regardless which path they choose. Sure, the core may be easily set up, but when you get to the details, things often get tricky and balancing the clutter of multiple menus on the same level with the problems caused by deep submenu trees can have very interesting results, to say the least.
I have to admit that I am more than a bit worried about the mouse control question because a genuine mouse based interface simply has to look differently from a genuinely keyboard based interface. You have simply different needs to respond to, different elements that are required. Of course, it is at least theoretically possible to have a game that works perfectly for keyboard controls and also works perfectly for mouse controls, but that would basically require designing TWO good interfaces where most designers seem to have a hard time even putting together one good interface.
The easy way out would, of course, be to have one as the core system and the other as an optional, additional system. But that means that the optional system has to be warped and has to succumb to the needs of the main system. And frankly, I think it is easier to warp keyboard controls to work with a mouse-controlled game, than it is to warp mouse control to work with a keyboard controlled game. So, if that shortcut was chosen, I think it would be likely for the keyboard controls getting the short end of the stick. And this could eventually lead to incompleteness, meaning that you can't solely play with the optional controls, but need the core ones for certain aspects.
The negative consequences of this hybridity can already be seen a little bit in world gen. There is this map painting option, it seems, but as far as I understand it, it requires mouse control. Thus, it is not usable for me (especially since I turn off all mouse elements so as not to have the mouse cursor block the view).
Mind you, that fear is probably exaggerated, but that is just how I personally feel and why I am always wary when people talk about mouse control.
(I hope I remembered all the important points raised)
Deathworks
EDIT: Since ManaUser posted while I typed, I want to quickly point out that I basically feel the same about where the keyboard controlled system stands and what could be improved (although I don't mind the order of keys in the overview :) :) :) :) ).