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[Umi]

Honestly, I may be wrong here, but I don't think DF is that horribly complex.  It just has detail pouring from every visible elf tainted orifice.

Most of the processes are the same thing with different materials.  Cooks haul food, process it, give meals.  Carpenters haul wood, process it, give furniture.  Mason haul stone, process it, give furniture.  Brewers haul plants, process them, give beer.  Most of the system is the same thing with different items and results.  Yes, there are some more complex processes and a lot of options, but most of the systems are variations of each other.

The confusion comes in when newbies see the sheer mass of things.  They don't know what this or that does or realize that this and that are in fact the almost the same item and used for the same thing.  I believe the true breakthrough in the learning curve comes when one realizes that each individual item does not have a individual use, but works like the other items in it's class (Ex:  Most rocks are pretty interchangeable, but newbies might not realize that).

I think that to have a truly successful tutorial that could teach the masses this wonderful game someone needs to go through and remove a lot of the fluff.  Break it down the the very basics.  One type of beer, only a handful of types of rocks, 1 type of tree, etc.  Then walk them through how each process is done without getting caught up in the fluff.  After they know the system, then give the fluff.

*Mounts flame shield*

Questions, comments, concerns, stomach ailments?

[Vertigon]

Tutorial Mod: One of everything. Not a bad idea.

[Umi]

Glad to see someone thinks the tutorial mod would be good.  I would love to do this myself, but I don't know enough about modding (Read: none at all) to do it.

Balance wouldn't be much of an issue to take into consideration since it is just to teach the systems, not be the full game.

[Bricks]

While understanding it may not have much bearing on fort mode, the materials system is unbelievably complex.

I think a true "tutorial" would require a highly scripted game, so instead of a mod, it would be better to introduce the concepts and tools slowly.  This is how most city-building and RTS games approach tutorials.  It's honestly not that confusing to see a few types of beer, trees, etc.  The real obstacle is the shear number of designations and buildings, and knowing how each one works.

[nbonaparte]

You don't even have to introduce everything, just what'e necessary to get started. For instance, show how to mine and chop down trees, but leave traffic zones for the player to figure out.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Just doing a "1 type of everything" mod isn't going to do much to cut down the difficulty. While the game really does have lots of content to feed to the systems, it really does have a lot of systems that can't be simplified in a meaningful way as well. The main difficulties come from the presentation, and the "quicksand box" principle. You have a very large list of things you can do, and no (ingame) guide on how to use them, resulting in the "what the fark should I even be doing" reaction from new players, which is only made worse by the inefficient menu system and the fact the whole game is ASCII. The complexity comes from the number of individual features of the game, and ways they are connected to each other - how room quality affects mood, how mood affects working speed, what goods to sell to specific traders, what metals work best for what weapon or armor, how to handle roaming animals, how to hunt, how to defend from sieges, how to kill megabeasts, how to farm, how to work around nobles, etc, etc. DF really does have "detail", or "variety" as I call it, but sheer amount and diversity of content isn't its defining trait. Nor is it something that's difficult to work with.

DF is currently like GTA:San Andreas, if it were an original concept and the first game in the series, came with no guiding plot, no settings menus, and no ingame tutorials. Players get lost in the "quicksand box", faced with a massive array of things they can do, but having no idea of what they should do. What the game really needs is a scripted series of messageboxes that will appear when someone starts a fort. The first one would describe the process of digging and woodcutting, then more would pop up when there were certain quantities of mined stone or cut wood, telling how to set up workshops and get basic infrastructure working. This alone would do wonders to pull the new player up from the quicksand, and make him able to start grasping more complex things on his own.

[Grimlocke]

I agree with the above post, and add the fact that the interface is probabaly one of the biggest hurdles for new players to understand. Not only is it purely keyboard commanded (with only exception being mouse designations) it is also rather unintuitive. For example, a new a player might try to get around to building and using a carpenters workshops without knowing about all the q, v, t and k menus. He fails not because of what he is trying to do is so complex, but because to do it they need to know and understand the majourity of the interface.

The interface also has a lot of menus that only partialy let you do something. You can set an item to be dumped from the k menu, but you still need another menu to make a dumping zone, and yet another one if the item happens to be outside.

Probabaly perfect tutorials will have to wait untill the interface is a bit more refined.

[Tormy]

Honestly, I may be wrong here, but I don't think DF is that horribly complex.  It just has detail pouring from every visible elf tainted orifice.

It is much more complex than the retail games however. Those people, who begin to run around in their room, while yelling "OMG WTF IS THIS?! IMMA CONFUSED!" when someone shows them the game....well they are scared away because ->
1. ASCII graphics. -> It's not for everyone obviously. Tilesets can help a lot, but 'til we don't have full gfx support, a half-assed tileset is not good enough for an "ordinary" gamer.
2. The interface is bad. Period.
3. No "real" mouse support.

[PS. I think that the devs of Goblin Camp learned a lot from the "biggest errors" of DF. It's kinda similar to DF [even tho it will be very different], but the interface is much better already, and you can use the mouse for almost everything.]

[Shades]

I kinda of agree with the OP to some extent. I don't think the actual game of DF is very complex at all and in many ways very simple.

The way all the detail is generated is impressive, we have levels of erosion, layers of rock and genetically inherited traits, and the amount of detail in the dwarves personalities really makes it feel alive. To me this is what makes it stand out from the vast majority of games.

Even the interface in DF is 'logical' once you see how it hangs together, sure it's hard to initially understand and could really do with a decent usage of the mouse but the structure of the menus is logical and everything links where you expect it to (for the most part)

[Sean Mirrsen]

I think the discussion might go down this path quite soon, so let's get this out of the way - what is "detail", and what is "complexity"? As I see it, detail is having variations where there would otherwise be a uniform mass, while complexity is having a lot of the would-be-uniform-masses clustered together in a meaningful way. Dwarves having a lot of different personality patterns is detail, while dwarves having meaningful personalities at all is complexity. Having functionally different rock strata and ores is complexity - having such a huginormous amount of them arrayed in semi-(geo)logical patterns is detail. With these things in mind, I think that by volume or noticeability, the details in DF will actually outweigh its complex structure. Masses of creatures, plants, and minerals, detailed health system, detailed history and detailed world generation - these things would likely stand out the most whenever you play. But the thing is, the game isn't any more difficult for all its detail. Without detail it'd become dull, boring. Variety is the spice of both life and games, and DF can only benefit from having more of it. You could only slightly decrease the initial player confusion by removing the variety, but you'd severely degrade the game in the process.

As for complexity, I think the game isn't altogether any more difficult than any decent 4X or other management game out there. That said, it is still considerably more complex than any such game in existence. You can see games that feature troop morale and skills, you have games with simulated economies, you have indirect-control games with some of those parts, you even have castle building games that have some of these things. But no game has all these things together.

No game has you indirectly controlling a group of creatures that can get upset over their pinky toe getting bruised by a garnierite boulder smashing through their underground bedroom roof, which came loose when your landscaping brigade screwed up rerouting the local river into a water cistern that would help you survive winter when everything else freezes. There are no games like this.

[Tormy]

I think the discussion might go down this path quite soon, so let's get this out of the way - what is "detail", and what is "complexity"?

What is detail? This is detail! ->

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Shades]

As for complexity, I think the game isn't altogether any more difficult than any decent 4X or other management game out there. That said, it is still considerably more complex than any such game in existence. You can see games that feature troop morale and skills, you have games with simulated economies, you have indirect-control games with some of those parts, you even have castle building games that have some of these things. But no game has all these things together.

Given that description and the limits to which DF matches it you could probably put a number of simulation games in that category. Startopia and the Tropico games for example. Whats interesting, from my view, with DF is that it feels less artificial, as though it can do a long more than a lot of these games.

No game has you indirectly controlling a group of creatures that can get upset over their pinky toe getting bruised by a garnierite boulder smashing through their underground bedroom roof, which came loose when your landscaping brigade screwed up rerouting the local river into a water cistern that would help you survive winter when everything else freezes. There are no games like this.

A number of games deal with injuries to your units because of you screwing up, although I can't off the top of my head think of one that specifically deals with caveins there are a few that have similistic physics and will crush your units in a similar way.

Sure I doubt any go to the level of damaging your pinky toe with it, but then even in DF that doesn't actually mean much. It's shown and displayed but unless there is a limb or organ injury there isn't really an effect. This is what I count as detail. And one of the many features I find enjoyable about the game.

DF is probably the best game I've played, if it's the most complex I'm not sure but I doubt it and it all depends on what you count as complex.

[Sean Mirrsen]

What do you mean, no effect? Just getting a bruise will give a negative thought. It'll increase the pain level, too. I put all those things together in the sentence to highlight the many kinds of things that simultaneously happen in DF. It doesn't have to be a pinky toe, but it highlights that the game is far beyond the simplicity of a single hitpoints bar.

Complexity is the amount of different systems simultaneously at work. Whether or not that translates to difficulty depends on execution. I'm not sure how to judge the complexity of DF versus the complexity of the Boeing 747 cockpit in Microsoft Flight Simulator - it's all complex, but in the flight sim all the complexity is hands-on - quite literally sometimes. In DF, most of the really complex stuff is in the background - the cliffside that was created with rainfall and erosion in mind, the visitors to your fort who could easily have hundreds of goblin kills during history, all those little things the game generates really add to the whole thing. Every individual feature could be in its way simplistic, but there are a lot of these little features, and they combine into a rather complex picture.

[Alastar]

You can also ignore most of the complexity with a hard-and-fast solution that works most of the time, sometimes you have to actively look for it.

It doesn't matter how many subtle details in defensive design the game enables if we can baffle attackers just by closing our doors, or abuse their pathfinding to lead them into a deathtrap or simply in a circle until it ceases to be funny.
Even though it's still rough, the material/damage system has little nuances that can be ignored but are there for people who appreciate them. For example, density is generally accepted to be the most important property for blunt weapons, making silver the strongest regularly available choice. However, that only applies against armoured opponents - against unarmoured ones, you want some combination of density and strength/hardness. Steel and bronze would do better here, although that's almost useless knowledge (against unarmored opponents, sharp weapons end the fight far more quickly).
Most practical applicatinos of fluid-based machinery can be achieved with a crude and straightforward approach... but overengineered solutions for trivial problems are their own reward and the game supports them gloriously.

If the game seems to lack complexity, it is only because at the moment there is little that forces you to play as tight as possible. Include the occasional siege that includes an engineering corps, natural disasters, a greater tendency to get involved in a civil war etc. and make things unpredictable enough that good design becomes mandatory and simple catch-all solutions impossible. Dwarf Fortress would show what a complex game it can be. At the moment it's more of a complex toy - the complexity is there, but you don't need to explore it to compete. Which, thankfully, doesn't stop anyone.

[NW_Kohaku]

Well, I can agree with the OP with regards to complexity and detail, and in fact would actually take it a little further:  When you get right down to it, this game's economy isn't complex at all.  It doesn't even match the complexity of games like Emperor or Pharoah (Sierra Citybuilder games), which are both older and less ambitious games. 

Seriously, this is all you really need: http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Industry  And the game basically breaks down into four raw materials: stone, metal, wood, and food.  And most of those only have two tiers at most of production, generally speaking, you can just turn stone directly into virtually anything you need, and all you require is the proper workshop for making that one specific kind of good.  Which workshop do you really need?  Who cares! Build them all! They all only require one stone to build, which is so common you literally can't get rid of it fast enough, and can be deconstructed almost instantly if you make a mistake.  Just build workshops until you find one that builds what you want.

Dwarves have needs, yes, but they're so simple and basic that it's pretty hilarious - food, drink (which is just food that has been to a still), a bed, maybe a dining hall that will keep them ultra-happy, and a relatively secure fort.  Only that last one is remotely difficult to satisfy, and a simple wooden door is generally enough to keep many threats out, and backing that door up with enough cage traps and stonefall traps solves the rest.

So, what else is in the game?

Geology is nice, but you don't really have to care, especially now that with enough layers, you're guaranteed to get everything you want besides sand, anyway. 

There was this thread on obsidian that expanded into vulcanism in general: (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=61946.0)... we have exemplars of mafic, intermediate, and felsic rocks for both igneous extrusive and igneous intrusive stones... but they don't really matter, as they aren't in any way meaningfully distinguished from one another, with the exception of Gabbro (mafic intrusive) occasionally having Kimberlite (which is actually supermafic intrusive stone that makes up much of the real world's mantle, but which was only created roughly around the time the earth was entirely molten), which very rarely has diamonds.  It would be a complex game feature to have actual magma flows that track the magnesium and iron (mafic) quantities of the magma, losing those minerals to quartz deposits as the magma matures into felsic magma, potentially generating pressure and turning into pyroclastic felsic volcanos or even just having runny mafic volcanos... but all magma is the same, and you find different kinds of igneous intrusive stacked on top of one another haphazardly because the game can't tell the difference between one or the other.

Individual training and injuries and hospitals are unique highlights, but generally, the military works as a simple "stack mash"-type combat for those who want to see this game in its most simple terms possible - like most 4X games, you can simply build units with bigger numbers and if that isn't possible, just make a "bigger stack" of units, and then just open the gates, and throw them at the enemy - no strategy possible, much less required.  The biggest stack of numbers wins.  Quality in DF far outstrips quantity, and as such, lone champions can essentially single-handedly sweep whole battlefields of inferior troops with inferior weapons and armor.

Yes, the "learning cliff" of this game is largely in the presentation - you have to go somewhere else to read what it is you need to do in order to survive.  Yes, a "tutorial mode" with pop-ups or whatever would help this...

However, once you have "survival" accomplished, the problem is that there isn't much beyond that at this point.  It's just details that are meaningless (who remembers the facial features of any dwarf beyond their starting seven?) Nothing but HFS or maybe a really, really lucky roll on the procedurally generated creatures table making things like giant crabs that breathe incindiary sleep gas, or just plain FPS decay will seriously threaten your fort.

What the game needs are more serious complexities to running an established fort to keep the game interesting beyond just making megaprojects and occasionally pulling the "Boatmurder" lever to wipe out yet another goblin seige.