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[Mickey Blue]

Yahtzee is funny to watch in terms of seeing somebody find interesting new ways to rant very quickly but his reviews often leave something to be desired.  There seems to be an idea amongst some that if you admit you are heavily biased then you can go about saying heavily biased things without issue.. This is not true, while everybody has a bias you don't get a free pass on it just cause you own up to it.

Case in point his reviews of MMO and JRPGs, he just doesn't like that kind of game, which is fine (honestly its been a long time since I played either genre either), but his almost always rags on this that are at the very core of those games.  It would be like if I said that I hate Romantic Comedy #112344 because its just a sappy love story about two people who 'couldn't be more different' but then fall in love anyways in a series of comedic events.. Sure that may be a valid reason not to like a movie but that is what a romantic comedy is about.. Or saying I don't like Horror Movie #12223 because it was filled with tension and had a lot of gore in it.  At some point you just don't like the genre and even the best game/movie/book/etc of that genre just won't appeal to you.

A few other points mentioned in this thread:

As for DF, I love DF because it is one of the few truly immersive games I've played in my entire life and certainly recently and immersion is what I chase when it comes to gameplay.  Don't get me wrong, I can enjoy a game that isn't immersive, I just won't enjoy it for as long or possibly as much.  But as a game DF suffers from a terrible interface (sure some people here can brag about not using any third party programs but I'm guessing most people do), and unintuitive gameplay features with no in-game or even game-sponsored help for them(c'mon, anybody here not had to look up how to do something fairly basic on Magmawiki or on the forums?).  That said it is 'saved' by its community.  If nobody had ever created Dwarf Therapist, or made a video tutorial of the game, or wrote long epic stories on LetsPlay, or created and updated a massive wiki style help manual how many of us would be playing this game right now? Be honest, even if you no longer need those things now how many of you would have ragequit long before getting the hang of it without those things?  Heck I still use therapist and while I 'can' play without it its far less fun.

I love Dwarf Fortress, Its one of my favorite games, but its got flaws.  Now maybe 'its in alpha' but they are still flaws.  I have full faith they will be worked out on their own over time because, frankly, Tarn has done an amazing job with this game in the time I've spent with it, but there is no point pretending they don't exist or acting as if the fact that its in alpha means we shouldn't bother identifying them as flaws.  Saying something is in alpha or beta is a footnote, an explanation of why those flaws are there and some kind of insurance that there is more development planned.. But if one were to review the game it would have some glaring issues that I think become less obvious once you get the hang of it.

ETA:

As for comparing Dwarf Fortress to Minecraft.. They are radically different games.  I played Minecraft for a long time because it was a fun world to explore and you could create all sorts of things and then share them with others online, but once you got your fill of that there wasn't really anything left to do.  DF on the other hand I've been playing for years and still haven't done much of the stuff you can do with it (to be fair DF has been out far longer then Minecraft).  I like DF more then MC but I still think MC is a great game and I've gotten a lot of enjoyment out of it.

-MB

[Yolan]

I studied Japanese for almost 8 years, and I can say a total of three phrases.

You say this in the past tense, but just in case you are thinking of giving it (or another language) another shot...

www.ajatt.com

 

[PlainTextMan]

I totally cracked myself at the Zero Punctuation review of minecraft, not so much for the content but the style. Minecraft I am yet to play. So anyway, I'd actually like to see some DF review of his, even though it is unrealistic to expect one and the review probably wouldn't be very well encompassing of the game.

EDIT: now on to thread derailment!

and it relies on third party programs to make itself playable to anyone too weaksauce to play the game by itself.

Fix'd. Real men Dwarves play the game without 3rd party programs.

I can manage large forts with vanilla interface, cause that's just the way I got to know the game. I am real dwarf. Muhahahaha.

My greatest wish if for Tarn to have a fey mood, withdraw into his office for a week talking to no one, only to emerge with a fun and intuitive interface that can be easily adjusted.

Seriously though, as a UI design fanatic, I must say the game's interface is a mixture of five parts horrible, three parts ingenious, two parts sassy classic n-curses, one (?) part clearly communicative (given the medium) and 0.4 part nice to use. Still, it kind of really fits the game in a unique way. However, I find that now that I know the game controls very well, and also some good fort design strategies for simplicity, I can pretty much fluently manage my fortresses.

Then again, I should really probably give the 3rd party tools a try some time.

[zwei]

Seriously though, as a UI design fanatic, I must say the game's interface is a mixture of five parts horrible, three parts ingenious, two parts sassy classic n-curses, one (?) part clearly communicative (given the medium) and 0.4 part nice to use. Still, it kind of really fits the game in a unique way. However, I find that now that I know the game controls very well, and also some good fort design strategies for simplicity, I can pretty much fluently manage my fortresses.

Would you care to make more indepth review of UI?

[Draco18s]

We've done this before.

[Cespinarve]

We've done this before.

And we'll do it again.

[PlainTextMan]

We've done this before.

And we'll do it again.

Hahahaha! Yes, again and again. We'll do everything repeatedly, a bit different each time, and in part that is what makes the Internet awesome.

Would you care to make more indepth review of UI?

Why do you ask?

Well, I could, and perhaps some time I'd like to do that. But serious and proper UI review (formatted readably to anyone else) of such a complex piece of software takes my brain into overdrive (as much as designing the UI for my one games and wares can, though they tend to be much much simpler than DF) and the process can take quite some time because I always try to think how can this be done better? And think up several alternate solutions. So perhaps I'd do an in-depth review of DF's interface some time, but most likely not. Especially now that I am a biased and experienced user, and DF's interface will p'rally keep evolving a lot.

[slathazer]

I think Yahtzee would like the game if he had time to learn it, but he doesn't seem like the kind of guy who would enjoy trying to build a fortress over and over again. I would be interested to see what kind of complaints he'd have, though.

[Jiri Petru]

Well, I could, and perhaps some time I'd like to do that. But serious and proper UI review (formatted readably to anyone else) of such a complex piece of software takes my brain into overdrive (as much as designing the UI for my one games and wares can, though they tend to be much much simpler than DF) and the process can take quite some time because I always try to think how can this be done better? And think up several alternate solutions. So perhaps I'd do an in-depth review of DF's interface some time, but most likely not. Especially now that I am a biased and experienced user, and DF's interface will p'rally keep evolving a lot.

You should probably know there's a thread dedicated to it. That said, feel free to come in and post your observations or even alternative solutions. The thread needs some love now that I've abandoned it. I've thought about the interface a lot, and wrote several posts, but I've given up when I've realised there is no chance Toady will do anything substantial with the interface in the next 10 years. It feels like an very pointless thing to do, writing UI recommendations for Toady.

[KurzedMetal]

Well, I could, and perhaps some time I'd like to do that. But serious and proper UI review (formatted readably to anyone else) of such a complex piece of software takes my brain into overdrive (as much as designing the UI for my one games and wares can, though they tend to be much much simpler than DF) and the process can take quite some time because I always try to think how can this be done better? And think up several alternate solutions. So perhaps I'd do an in-depth review of DF's interface some time, but most likely not. Especially now that I am a biased and experienced user, and DF's interface will p'rally keep evolving a lot.

You should probably know there's a thread dedicated to it. That said, feel free to come in and post your observations or even alternative solutions. The thread needs some love now that I've abandoned it. I've thought about the interface a lot, and wrote several posts, but I've given up when I've realised there is no chance Toady will do anything substantial with the interface in the next 10 years. It feels like an very pointless thing to do, writing UI recommendations for Toady.

I've read this many times, but it still makes me sad every time i read it.

And for the rest of you bragging about being "hardcore DF pro players", just because you don't you 3rd party programs: i feel pity for you. What are you trying to prove? it's a single player game for Armok's sake (even better... it's just a game). And the most used 3rd party programs don't even "cheat", just give faster and better interface than the ingame alternatives.

EDIT: damn, i reread it

[DeKaFu]

And for the rest of you bragging about being "hardcore DF pro players", just because you don't you 3rd party programs: i feel pity for you. What are you trying to prove? it's a single player game for Armok's sake (even better... it's just a game). And the most used 3rd party programs don't even "cheat", just give faster and better interface than the ingame alternatives.

I make a policy of not using third-party programs or mods, because I don't want to become reliant on them and have to wait for them to be updated when a new version comes out. This holds true for all games that update regularly, not just DF.

That said, I just successfully switched to ASCII after using nothing but graphics for years, so I am a hardcore DF pro player now. Nyah.

[KurzedMetal]

That said, I just successfully switched to ASCII after using nothing but graphics for years, so I am a hardcore DF pro player now. Nyah.

Being one is not the same as bragging of being one. The former is probably a good player having fun his own way, the latter... well, i just don't like them
I'm usually pretty hardcore in gaming too (actually i think we all are a bit hardcore or we wouldn't be playing DF).

[PlainTextMan]

You should probably know there's a thread dedicated to it. That said, feel free to come in and post your observations or even alternative solutions. The thread needs some love now that I've abandoned it. I've thought about the interface a lot, and wrote several posts, but I've given up when I've realised there is no chance Toady will do anything substantial with the interface in the next 10 years. It feels like an very pointless thing to do, writing UI recommendations for Toady.

Well thanks for mentioning it, neighbor. The 'fountain of ideas' definitely seems like a good idea after all, but whether it is successful of course depends on The Developer and his (respectable) decisions.

Apparently, well, sadly... every game will have its downsides. In my own experience, it's so easy to let things get left behind when coding up awesomeness. The price of progress, I dare say.

But, the designers have worked on and taken DF to some pretty amazing and unexpected places. It's likely Toady will eventually turn to this forboding subject of the interface some time. Should be exciting times. One day...

Being one is not the same as bragging of being one. The former is probably a good player having fun his own way, the latter... well, i just don't like them
I'm usually pretty hardcore in gaming too (actually i think we all are a bit hardcore or we wouldn't be playing DF).

Well said. Yeah, a sense of superiority of being hardcore about anything in general is off-ticking. Sometimes it's a matter of being better indeed, but most of the time its just a matter of time. I'm good at music because I've "wasted" a lot of time behind instruments (and google, yey!) I'm hardcorely good at DF mostly because I've quite simply held on and played it a lot.

Which decidedly does say at least one good thing about anyone truly hardcore at DF... certain determination!

Or chronically not having anything better to do (OH NOES!)

[Greiger]

I figure many of the players can use the vanilla UI because when they learned to play it was the only thing available.  Probably if some of these other programs were around back when we started we'd be just as addicted to them as others are.   It's not so much a superiority for using only the vanilla UI, its more a "I learned this well enough that it is perfectly functional to me and see no need to learn a 3rd party UI".  I do seem to notice that many folks I see in these discussions talking about not using utilities for UI stuff in the past are old guard, probably not a coincidence.

Ascii graphics are great though, you don't have to use some other person's icon hints as to what something looks like, you make it up in your head, which feels more immersing. As a bonus you also don't have some out of place letters walking around among your tiles for creatures not given tiles yet, and if you mod you don't have to know how to do sprite art well enough to make icons for your own stuff.

[Alastar]

 I prefer CP437 characters over graphical tilesets because I find them prettier and more practical. Clean, consistent, legible at various levels of zoom, and Toady used them to very pleasing effect (rain, waves, carnage).
If I just want to feel smugly superior rather than playing the game how I enjoy it most, I look down on the geeklings who refer to them as ASCII

However, I would like a more usable and polished interface.