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[Lancezh]

The top bar on the main download page links to both the forums and the "LINKS" page which has the wiki.  They're about two inches away from the download link.

Thats really nice, there's also a button next to my steering wheel in my car thats supposed to open the trunk. I just never figured it out since i searched somewhere where it used to be on my old car.

[Lancezh]

It fascinates me how people continously deny the help of a tileset. To be frank without a tileset i wouldnt have had the patience to learn the game and thus experience ANY depth of the game.

I'm not denying the fact that other people much prefer tilesets, and a significant portion of players would be not playing without them. I was objecting because the proposal involved sending people straight to the lazy newb pack, which I understand comes with a tileset. I would much prefer the proposal feature an explanation of the difference, and a link to downloads with with and without tilesets.

If you'd take the time and look at the lazy noob pack. It comes with several tilesets and the standard Ascii Version. Its exactly what you just described.

[Capntastic]

The top bar on the main download page links to both the forums and the "LINKS" page which has the wiki.  They're about two inches away from the download link.

Thats really nice, there's also a button next to my steering wheel in my car thats supposed to open the trunk. I just never figured it out since i searched somewhere where it used to be on my old car.

That's unfortunate but what does that have to do with the fact that there's a forum and wiki mentioned in the game, several hundred youtube videos of tutorials, plans for an in-game tutorial when the game is more settled, that there's a Presentation Arc, etc?  I've pointed this all out and you've failed to address any of it, you just keep railing on about how things 'should be easier', and how Toady should give Official Status to the Lazy Newb Pack. 

The game is in alpha, not complete, and compounding that is the fact that it's damned complicated for even the most hardened roguelike/MUD/ASCII-era people.  It's not something that can be made accommodating to more mainstream players easily.  Toady has thought about this a lot more than you have, and he's done a fairly admirable job.  He could do better in some ways, and he will do that in time; but every avenue you've suggested is either In The Game (pointing to the wiki, again, happens when you generate a world), Planned (Tutorials) or Unfeasible (Granting Official Status to a mod made by players in their free time isn't something you can rely on indefinitely for future versions.).

Edit:  To clarify, I have no problem with helping people learn the game, but Lancezh's conception of a new player is someone who, As A Rule, never reads anything or looks anything up when they have questions.  They apparently don't know what a forum is, or how to use a wiki.  They avoid links to them, out of fear.  They don't google anything, either.  I read the article Lancezh linked about the person who had never used a computer before, and while interesting, it really isn't applicable to DF.  DF is very firmly in the corner of "ADVANCED GAMEPLAY". If someone that can't use the basic skills required to find a Halo 2 walkthrough on Gamefaqs, they will need such an excessive amount of help getting into the game that the responsibility to educate just doesn't lay with Toady. 

[Lancezh]

Edit:  To clarify, I have no problem with helping people learn the game, but Lancezh's conception of a new player is someone who, As A Rule, never reads anything or looks anything up when they have questions.  They apparently don't know what a forum is, or how to use a wiki.  They avoid links to them, out of fear.  They don't google anything, either.  I read the article Lancezh linked about the person who had never used a computer before, and while interesting, it really isn't applicable to DF.  DF is very firmly in the corner of "ADVANCED GAMEPLAY". If someone that can't use the basic skills required to find a Halo 2 walkthrough on Gamefaqs, they will need such an excessive amount of help getting into the game that the responsibility to educate just doesn't lay with Toady.

Dont take this the wrong way. I have to deal with people that argue like you every day. What i do for a living is design Usable Interfaces and optimize Interfaces that have proven to not deliver what the designer intended. That of course doesnt mean that my oppinion is more worth than yours, i just want to explain where my view is coming from.

The point i tried to make is, people will approach any system or object they have to interact with with stuff they already know, since everyone has a different experience up to the point where he starts to play DF we have to assume. The article shows that quite nice. The guy doesnt understand the symbols, all he understands is written text, so he looks for that. He COULD understand all the icons a computer interface had if someone would explain it to him.
Since we do not KNOW anyones experience we have to streamline stuff in a certain way (DF does that on many occasions, but just wrong), there's enough studies out there that you can use to achieve that without cutting the game's features. "Guessing" is up to a large point absolutely unnecessary. "Normal" users that dont do work like i do can easily see faults in Usability Design (i.e. they are upset about something or they simply quit a process because of something), however they have a hard time to improve the Interface. They are not the designer in the end, and he's the one who should learn from that kind of feedback.


That aside, statements like:

"If someone that can't use the basic skills required to find a Halo 2 walkthrough on Gamefaqs, they will need such an excessive amount of help getting into the game that the responsibility to educate just doesn't lay with Toady."

is a complete denial of existing usability problems that could be eased with simple tweaks. It puts the user or player onto a lower level saying "i figured it out, its your problem you idiot". You dont have to study usability to see that there are major issues that havent been touched for years.

There is not such a thing as "my god our users are stupid" in Usability for a good reason. There's also a saying "if the user can't find it, it doesnt exist." To shift the responsiblity to the user is a cheap way out, but certainly not the right one.

[Shades]

From my view a number of the new tileset aren't really any easier to understand than the original one, most are fairly obscure with their icon images and this will probably remain true until people start making higher resolution titlesets. However that is an aside and there is a number of differing views.

As to your original post I would agree that the game is not friendly to new players but I would question if this is a good stage to make it so. Even with the wiki and tutorials a lot of the bad ui design is still there and will still cause problems and until Toady gets around to the various UI updating tasks it probably isn't worth pushing it so much, that said a more obvious link to the wiki on the homepage under a 'how to play' type paragraph would probably be a sensible idea.

With regards to the lazy newbie pack link however I couldn't disagree more. Although I think the tools there are great and a lot of hard work has gone into the various parts I think the pack itself is a mistake (for new players) and far more confusing than the standard download due solely to the amount of content there. For semi-new players it's a great way to get all the tools required though.

[Jelle]

There's no harm in at least trying to get as many people interested. The game should definatly get a tutorial when all game features have been implemented.
A link so community made game resources and guides is not a bad idea for until the time comes the game is ready for a full tutorial.

[Rowanas]

Maybe I'm the voice of elitism here, but I think that DF should stay as impenetrable as it is now, more or less. Humans, being the perverse creatures that we are, thrive on challenges. This gem of a game is a constant challenge, and by throwing new players into a quagmire of stange symbols and horrible, horrible failure, we strain out those unworthy to experience the full majesty of the game.  If you've not got the patience and perserverance to succeed, then why should the mighty Toady One (armok be with him) stoop to hold your hand?

You've got a brain in your head and an internet connection. Figure it out yourself.

[ed boy]

It fascinates me how people continously deny the help of a tileset. To be frank without a tileset i wouldnt have had the patience to learn the game and thus experience ANY depth of the game.

I'm not denying the fact that other people much prefer tilesets, and a significant portion of players would be not playing without them. I was objecting because the proposal involved sending people straight to the lazy newb pack, which I understand comes with a tileset. I would much prefer the proposal feature an explanation of the difference, and a link to downloads with with and without tilesets.

If you'd take the time and look at the lazy noob pack. It comes with several tilesets and the standard Ascii Version. Its exactly what you just described.

My bad, it's been a while since I last downloaded it.

[Lancezh]

Maybe I'm the voice of elitism here, but I think that DF should stay as impenetrable as it is now, more or less. Humans, being the perverse creatures that we are, thrive on challenges. This gem of a game is a constant challenge, and by throwing new players into a quagmire of stange symbols and horrible, horrible failure, we strain out those unworthy to experience the full majesty of the game.  If you've not got the patience and perserverance to succeed, then why should the mighty Toady One (armok be with him) stoop to hold your hand?

You've got a brain in your head and an internet connection. Figure it out yourself.

You're right it sounded horribly elitist and on top of that blatant ignorant. Furthermore you justify the bad UI as a tool to keep idiots away. Way to go, i'm once more speechless.

[Dae]

Maybe I'm the voice of elitism here, but I think that DF should stay as impenetrable as it is now, more or less. Humans, being the perverse creatures that we are, thrive on challenges. This gem of a game is a constant challenge, and by throwing new players into a quagmire of stange symbols and horrible, horrible failure, we strain out those unworthy to experience the full majesty of the game.  If you've not got the patience and perserverance to succeed, then why should the mighty Toady One (armok be with him) stoop to hold your hand?

You've got a brain in your head and an internet connection. Figure it out yourself.

You're right it sounded horribly elitist and on top of that blatant ignorant. Furthermore you justify the bad UI as a tool to keep idiots away. Way to go, i'm once more speechless.

I agree with you that any game purpose is to be played, but it also needs to be appreciated. Not to be elitist either, but it would be a shame to dumb down the game so as to make it more accessible. With that said, it is obvious that there are lots of room for improvement before going there, but I know there are some very clever people who would love the game but who would be too lazy to do all the micromanaging and would ultimately ask something along the lines of "Hey, toggling jobs on and off is nothing but a hassle, why don't we automatically turn all of them on ? or give dwarves a job when they reach adulthood and they can only do that for the rest of their lives ?".
It's not really a stupid idea, but it would remove something from the core gameplay.

About the whole tileset/ASCII thing, I'm not especially fond of ASCII but I never found a suitable tileset. "What is that, a goat or a goblin ? Oh, it's a goblin, I can tell because it's a green goat." I find more straightforward to directly make the distinction between a white g and a green g.

Also, as an aside, it's been a few weeks I read your posts here and there, and it seems to me like your primary way of dealing with people is insulting them. I can't picture you communicating with people IRL in any way other than getting dysentery so you can shit down people's throats while digging up their child traumas. Sarcasms are very fine, insults and agressivity are mostly pointless and such an attitude is merely irritating. If you know your subject and are a professionnal, your arguments should be enough. Calling someone ignorant has never gotten anyone to side with your opinion.

Anyway, I think there was a thread somewhere with moccups of what the game could look like with a proper UI, without even touching the ASCII display. It'd be nice to have the suggestion of someone in the market !

[Urist_McArathos]

I personally think that even with an optimized UI that makes tracking your inventory and controlling your dwarves MUCH simpler and more intuitive, the game will still be more than complex enough, and the learning curve high enough.

Take a recent refinement: multi-z level digging designations.  That's a huge UI fix.  It's going to make, for example, designating the digging of a magma piston MUCH faster.  It will do precisely NOTHING to help you understand how to make one.  That's just an example off the top of my head.

Heck, DwarfTherapist makes managing your dwarves laughably simple compared to the nightmarish way it's handled in game right now; yet, it doesn't do a thing for helping you get how to optimize your labor force.

Trust me, we can be elitist and trim away stifled newbies while still making the game more accessible.  The question is the amount: dwarf fortress is a complex game, and at some point it just won't be possible to make it any more accessible without departing from Tarn's vision.  I suppose the only real issue is where that line is drawn.

[DFPongo]

I bounced off this game 3 times before the Complete newbies guide made it work for me. And it is still too hard for me.
Aside from upgrades to the game to make it more intrinsically accessible, the newbies guide is the perfect intro.

[Rowanas]

Maybe I'm the voice of elitism here, but I think that DF should stay as impenetrable as it is now, more or less. Humans, being the perverse creatures that we are, thrive on challenges. This gem of a game is a constant challenge, and by throwing new players into a quagmire of stange symbols and horrible, horrible failure, we strain out those unworthy to experience the full majesty of the game.  If you've not got the patience and perserverance to succeed, then why should the mighty Toady One (armok be with him) stoop to hold your hand?

You've got a brain in your head and an internet connection. Figure it out yourself.

You're right it sounded horribly elitist and on top of that blatant ignorant. Furthermore you justify the bad UI as a tool to keep idiots away. Way to go, i'm once more speechless.

Heh. Awesome.

[Capntastic]

You still haven't acknowledged that all of the solutions you suggest are in the game, planned, or infeasible.  You're trying to paint me and others as elitist, argumentative people, when you won't even have a discussion in good faith, and concede that you're making a big deal out of things that are already addressed. 

[Greiger]

I would have to agree with Capn here.  There's stuff ingame to point somebody to the wiki and the forums.  And it has been mentioned many times in the past exactly why community made stuff as a rule aren't made official, it would delay updates too much if Toady had to wait for new tiles to be made, utilities to be updated and all those kinds of things like what's in the LNP. 

And if somebody who works one one of those things leaves, then what?  Tilesets all have their own styles, somebody making a tileset leaves suddenly all the new creatures would be drawn in a diffrent style, or stuff be delayed even longer so that the new artist can match the old style.

And as my own addition, teaching somebody to use their computer well enough to get to a wiki whenever somebody starts the game  seems overkill, the game is far more complicated than others out there.  Not knowing how to use a link is the least of a computer newbie's problems.  It seems absurd for toady to teach a person to use all these things like the internet and how to use your file system in a help file, when that's more the kind of thing for a basic computer competency class.

This game is clearly not the kind of game a beginner computer user would really be good at playing anyway, if it could be that would be great, but there's no reason to dumb down the game or put together a 3 page tutorial on how to do basic things like use your computer.  The tutorial on using your computer is not Tarn, Threetoe's or any game programmer's job, or even something their time is well spent accomplishing.

And dumbing down games to reach a wider audience is in my opinion what is wrong with most of the commercial games these days.  Spore was looking to be great, then it got dumbed down so hard that it didn't even resemble what it promised to be.  I would rather that not happen to Dwarf Fortress.  Belive it or not the game already used to be a lot harder to get into.