Sigh... that's the entirely wrong approach. There's a very large difference between making it easier, and making it so that when they play the real game they've got no idea what's going on. Plus, a DF where everything was 'Rock', 'Animal', etc. would be boring as shit.
Well, yeah, the depth of the game is necessarily restricted for this. However, with only one type of every resource (and in self-descriptive, simplified, generic form), a new player can learn the mechanics of the game more easily.
Here's my reasoning: Vanilla bombards players with choices, and the vast majority of those are cosmetic choices regarding items, and this can distract from learning how to play the game. Take the Prepare Carefully option for embarking: in vanilla, there are hundreds (thousands?) of items to choose from, and
four versions of each type of livestock (male adult, female adult, male child, female child), and skills. Skill are functional, and we can't simplify them, but there are way too many livestock options, as well as several foods per animal. There is no functional difference between all these options except price.
Once in a fort, stockpiles get the same simplification, and further more many decisions can be made in abstract where in vanilla the player is given multitudes of specifics.
Now, the transition from this simplified view of the game to vanilla might indeed be startling. I won't argue that won't happen. It would actually be best if detail could be layered on during the game, but that would require Toady to build that as a feature*.
What isn't important is showing off the depth of the game immediately. Sure it looks impressive, but as long as the UI is crap, it actually distracts from the task of learning how the game works. If that distraction can be minimized by reducing detail, then the player can focus more on learning the UI, and can delay appreciating the detail until the mechanics are learned.
* That would be a great feature to apply some more differences between races, not just for making the learning curve shallower. I doubt
every member of the other races should be able to identify and recall the name of a chunk of rock they just glanced at like dwarves do.