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[Rowanas]

I suppose if your goal is to play a game that looks like gibberish to the uninitiated so you can chortle at their ignorance, then yes, ASCII is superior.

I take my victories where I can (Actually, I like to think that constantly processing text to graphics to meaning might keep my brain from melting into goop in my old age.

If dwarf fortress ever went primarily mouse controlled, I would stop playing it. I know where things are, I don't want them changed.

I find this coming from a DF player to be ironic. Toady makes seismic changes to game play every few versions. I figured you' be used to "stuff changing." And I doubt DF will ever go to a primary mouse format. At worst it will probably be a fully hybridized version.

True, I've gotten used to ever-changing minor shifts. Things come, things go, but they always do so at a nice, relaxed pace. If things were changing every five minutes and I had to go and reset my keybindings just to play (or spend 15 minutes adapting to the new control scheme), it would irk me.

[FuzzyZergling]

I personally think that adding mouse control (not replacing the keyboard control) would make it better, but I'm fine with what Toady gives us.

[Zrk2]

Unmodified ASCII tiles so I am not casual.

[nenjin]

Because using a tileset makes you casual, despite the 1,000s of hours you put into DF?

Oh well. I guess every culture has to have people like that.

[FuzzyZergling]

WE ARE THE ELITE.
YOU WILL BOW TO US.
OR BE DESTROYED!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Not really.

[Patchy]

I can play with either, though I do prefer a tileset over the ascii. I grew up playing the nes and snes, and I have many fond memories from those games. Graphical tilesets like ironhands and phoebus do a respectable job of bringing back the look, feel, and general nostalgia of those older games for me. And really, ascii is jus another tileset if you ask me. It jus has the look and feel of games from another bygone age of gaming.

[Biowraith]

My thought process when playing ASCII:
A "d"...  What's that again?  It's not a dwarf, they're the face-looking things.  Unless it's a dead dwarf...  Do they look like D's?  No...  Is it a dog?  A donkey?  No...  Donkeys are big D's...  It's a dog.

My thought process when playing with a tileset:
How'd that dog get outside?  I thought I locked all the doors...

Yes, obviously, if I played with ASCII enough I'd learn what the symbols mean and it'd become like second-nature.  But it isn't at this point.  And when I set down to a relaxing evening of DF after a frustrating day at work I don't really want it to feel like more work.  I don't want to struggle to figure out what I'm looking at.

This, basically.

I started out on ASCII, and while I did ok with the terrain and stationary objects, I was struggling a little with creatures and such.  If I'd toughed it out I would have learned that too and it'd probably all be second nature to me now, but instead I downloaded a tileset, picked it up much more quickly than I was with ASCII, and never looked back.  I actually got so used to the tileset I started with (Dystopian Qantas I think) that I can't use any other tileset without it seeming wrong, weird, and in some cases unreadable.  I have however cannibalized a few of the newer sets to account for things missing from the original (possibly as a result of game additions), and to change some of the terrain tiles that just looked nicer, so I now run my own mishmash of various other peoples' tilesets.

[nenjin]

I can play with either, though I do prefer a tileset over the ascii. I grew up playing the nes and snes, and I have many fond memories from those games. Graphical tilesets like ironhands and phoebus do a respectable job of bringing back the look, feel, and general nostalgia of those older games for me.

This for me. Add in some 8 and 16-bit midi music, and it's like I'm playing Dragon Warrior again, only something much more kick ass than Dragon Warrior (or whatever.) It's a look I enjoy.

[NobodyPro]

I once read an article in Lit about how movies and video games are destroying our kids imaginations because they no longer have to imagine characters and events like they would if they were reading a book.

But walls of text and walls of tiles are still just as hard to work out as where that bloody sniper is in Far Cry 2 multiplayer. *pkow* *ping* ARGH! *sprays flamethrower in circles around me* *entire server runs*

[celem]

As with many posters I started with ASCII, however as soon as I found a tileset I glued on like a limpet.

This game has a mental learning curve, as someone pointed out a page or so up you mainly learn by running a series of forts into the ground/hell.  One fort you handle food production, irrigation.  Then you have a fort where you learn the military aspect etc etc.  I must have built 25-30 forts now and i still start new ones to learn techniques I havent explored much yet (aquifer busting, everything to do with decorating objects, pumpstacks)

The point, I guess, that im trying to make is that a representitive graphics solution is one less way for DF to abuse newbs who are likely struggling to maintain sanity as it is.
Im fairly confident I could learn the ASCII, I have for other rogue-likes, but im still learning DF as a game, its all a lot harder when I dont know what im looking at.

[Ifeno]

i cant stand tile sets...or the weird replacement colors...default graphics ftw^^

[Fancy Admiral]

Dorten, or something which lets curves look nice.  I like making elaborate curvey architecture, or just massive circles.  The original tileset doesn't do much for that.  The rest of the characters needn't be modified from the basic ASCII mappings.  That's kinda annoying to me, actually. 

[Pawn]

To each his own. I've been reading up on DF some before my first attempt at a fortress, and I want to start with ASCII so that I get used to it. In addition, knowing the ASCII will be advantageous because I'll be able to more readily understand the majority of screenshots from threads and stuff like Boatmurdered.

[Sutremaine]

The original tileset doesn't do much for that.  The rest of the characters needn't be modified from the basic ASCII mappings.  That's kinda annoying to me, actually.

It's amazing the difference it makes making the floor, wall, stair, etc. tiles look a little fancy. It really makes the areas of the map that have been worked on stand out too.

[Illanair]

I spent my childhood playing SNES and later consoles, not playing/making MUD's online. A visual player if you will. Tilesets seemed natural when I first picked up the game - though I am getting tired of certain icons being used more than one place at a time (Floodgates, Gender Icons etc..)

But more importantly - Tilesets have an equal pixel ratio. As much as I like looking at the ASCII screenshots, I really don't like how each tile is "taller" than it is wide. 

On a sidenote - It would be awesome if tools such as Stonesense could be implemented as frontends for the game, and not just pretty "preview" screenshots. But there's a time for everything (Dual core support kthxbai )