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[nenjin]

So uh, let's all welcome the new guy, as we venture on to the old ground of tile vs. ascii and everything else.

[Ghills]

The only people mentioning "dumbing down" the game are the ones arguing against it. Nobody suggesting UI improvements has suggested removing features, or providing 1-2-3 guides.

UI improvements are about expanding access to features. The vast majority of DF players never do really cool things, like building pump stacks. Most of the players I've seen have admitted to not even using integral parts of the game because the features aren't presented in ways that are accessible. The military is a perfect example of this - there's so much in the military interface that people can do, but it's so obscurely arranged that most people never get to use it.  UI improvements would let players use more of the game. 

[Greiger]

My bad then I got some kind of dumbing down vibe in there someplace, it seems to have only been mentioned once and it stuck with me as a terrible thing to do and somehow linked it in with the whole it's not Tarns job to make the game playable for even the most computer challenged thing.

At any rate this whole the game doesn't provide any indication on where to get help thing is absurd.  The readme (which there is absolutely no reason NOT to read) tells you of the wiki.  It's not Toady or anyone else's fault if someone doesn't know what the hell a readme is, and there should not need to be any more pointer to the community than that. I've seen games that even lack that.  But lo, what's this?

Spoiler: Why that's on the first page of the manual!  Where you would sensibly go if you were having difficulty (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: And even if you didn't read the title page and missed the "Press ? at any time for the manual" and just tried to go to the first thing that looked like it would start the game (click to show/hide)

That's not one, not two, but THREE, things pointing you to the magmawiki.  One of which you can't start playing the game without seeing unless you already know enough about the game to download a save and properly place it.  Surely if you are playing a game for the first time you are actually going to take the time to read what it's saying. 

If not, well, I don't know what to tell you.  I'm afraid I can't fathom how you would miss those, I guess the same way how the OP can't fathom how somebody could possibly prefer the game with the default tileset.

[kaijyuu]

IMO all we need in terms of accessibility is the help screen in DF listing the url to the wiki. The wiki has everything needed for newbies, including tutorials, explanations on the more complex things, and info about tilesets for people who like them.


EDIT: Oh, and probably a relevant analogy:

Say you have a toaster that, when plugged in the wrong way, will short out. When it does, is the problem A) the idiot user who plugged it in the wrong way despite warnings/etc, or B) that the toaster can be plugged in wrong in the first place.

If you picked A, please god never go into user interface design or anything like that. Going back to the analogy, you'll note that every electronic appliance in your house has the two differently sized prongs or works when plugged in either way. There's a reason that was chosen over educating their users.

[HunterBlackLuna]

I guess the point was more along the lines of "yes, there are ways to point nublets to help." That is something that is to be recognized and commended, however, I can't see a compelling reason not to put in more ways to point people towards help and make the game more accessible. In the original Starcraft, you could only select like twelve units at a time. I can't use human speech to adequately explain what a pain that made managing any decent army, at least for me. It was abysmal and completely unnecessary, an artificial bit of difficulty that didn't test my skill as a general or player. Starcraft II implemented the ability to select more than twelve units. Yes, professionals and veterans could expertly hotkey groups to get around this and move a big army as if he had the power to select it all, and that was part of their skill, but would you say that change dumbed down the game?

Of course DF is going to be an impenetrable wreck to somebody who isn't interested in learning it in the first place, but we definitely shouldn't be making the design ethic of an interface "you've been given ample chance, and if you refuse to take it, well, guess you're screwed, ain't ya" in any situation ever. It's not an interface's job to decide who's worthy to play the game or use the program or whatever. The only way I was recently able to pick this game up was with the critical assistance of the Lazy Newb Pack and the open, helpful community here as well as the wiki. Without it, I wouldn't be having fun, much less !!Fun!!.

Everyone deserves as much of a shot as we can give them to see if DF's their cup of tea, and anyone who gets turned away because of artificial obstacles, even if they don't meet your standards of diligence, well, that's kind of a shame.

And of course I really have no concrete suggestions for how to help or anything, I'm more arguing about design philosophy and stuff. There's a will, there's a way and all that. (Jesus, DF players of any group of people should know that. Live in a gigantic statue of a Dorf? OF COURSE! Flood the world with magma to kill the fucking Elephants? You betcha!)

[Dae]

Sorry about bringing the "dumbing down" thing, it's just that there is a fine line between making something easier to understand and making it easier so it's more understandable.
Lancezh is right in that the game could very well be more accessible, but it doesn't have to be at the detriment of the game, which means the fanbase should handle that and let Toady develop the game.
The in-game help screen is a little bit of a joke. I've never gotten any useful information from it and last time I checked (granted, it was a very long time ago) it was outdated. The best would be a clickable in-game link to a wiki page "First time player ?" featuring links to tutorials and explaining how to use the wiki so you can find out how to use the game. However, I'm not sure such a link is feasible as it is.

Also, there is the link tab, but it's not particularly appealing. Plus some players might never have used a wiki to get information about a game (DF was the first game I encountered that did that). Perhaps a big link "First time player ?" RIGHT next to the download link would be useful, yeah. Keeping in mind that every such thing would be thought out as requiring as little time as possible from Toady.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

Minecraft and Terraria which are two pretty mainstream games both lack a proper ingame tutorial and are games most people would move from to DF.

Now you could argue that they're a lot easier and less advance than DF which has it merits but those games in particular (mainly the crafting side) and near impossible to learn without a guide or wiki page open.

Yet these games are still exetremly popular, so obviously it can't just be the lack of tutorial alone that is stopping DF being acessable to all people.

[Lancezh]

The only people mentioning "dumbing down" the game are the ones arguing against it. Nobody suggesting UI improvements has suggested removing features, or providing 1-2-3 guides.

UI improvements are about expanding access to features. The vast majority of DF players never do really cool things, like building pump stacks. Most of the players I've seen have admitted to not even using integral parts of the game because the features aren't presented in ways that are accessible. The military is a perfect example of this - there's so much in the military interface that people can do, but it's so obscurely arranged that most people never get to use it.  UI improvements would let players use more of the game.

Thanks for pointing this out. I've said it countless times in other topics and here.

----> A better UI does NOT mean that you CUT ANY stuff OUT! <----

Its makes stuff more accessible, i couldnt agree with you guys more, i would not want to have the game dumped down, so if we discuss this please acknowledge that fact or we jump around different trees here...

[Lancezh]

Minecraft and Terraria which are two pretty mainstream games both lack a proper ingame tutorial and are games most people would move from to DF.

Now you could argue that they're a lot easier and less advance than DF which has it merits but those games in particular (mainly the crafting side) and near impossible to learn without a guide or wiki page open.

Yet these games are still exetremly popular, so obviously it can't just be the lack of tutorial alone that is stopping DF being acessable to all people.

That is a good argument, but Terraria is very intuitive in itself, which DF isnt, hence the need arises even more for a Wiki. You can do ALOT in minecraft without reading anything basically your imagination is the limit. If you want to manage switches and other stuff you have to consult some tutorials unless you want to figure out yourself how switches work from 2 sides.

This is simply not possible in Dwarf Fortress since you have to run a fort on the side and you can't just try limitless, your dwarfs start to starve, die eventually from other stuff and you havent got a proper feedback why, and furthermore what to do against it.

In Terraria you consult the Wiki because you might want to see what else you havent discovered yet.
In Dwarf Fortess you consult the Wiki to not have to much fun to soon or to fight problems that arise with mc uristdouchebag thats running around naked in your fort.

In Minecraft this is = torch, you're fine.

Terraria is a pickup game that builds on exploring the world itself its not so much about building.

While Dwarf Fortress is also a bit dull on the exploring side (not talking about adventurer mode here!) after a couple times but leaves you with SO much possibilities to be just a mean bastard. Hence the comparison is wrong...

[Gatleos]

The user interface of Dwarf Fortress is hard to understand. The game itself is difficult. Thus, it is very hard for newcomers to get into it without a fair bit of effort.

Everybody here knows that, so there's no need to discuss it further. What this thread was created to discuss is a solution to the problem. The original suggestion goes like-a so:

Solution:

- Deliver at least a standard save without having to create a world first. Standard Embark, so they can click on "Start Playing"

- Use the efforts from the community and place a Note for new users before they download:
"Dwarf Fortress can be quite hard to figure out first, you may want to consider to check out this great ressources by the community before getting started"
[Link to Lazy Newb Pack Thread]

What exactly are you suggesting by this? Should we get Toady to put a huge disclaimer on the download page? There's not much more we can do here on the forums that we aren't already doing, so that must be it. I just don't see the point of discussing this any further when we are literally doing everything we can possibly do to acclimate new players already.

[ImBocaire]

A link to any sort of utility, community-made or not, is a de facto endorsement of that utility. In other words, making it "official," even if that is not the intent. And Toady has stated time and time again that he will not be making any third-party utilities official. Ever.


Also, it's a disservice to new players to immediately refer them to tilesets. The CP437 isn't the problematic interface; it's just the graphical representation. The problem is the thoroughly intimidating hard-coded interface. Giving a newbie a copy of DF with a tileset will give them a game that is slightly prettier, but no less impenetrable.

[franti]

I like the dificulty. Weeds out people without determination or the knowledge of how a search engine works: i.e, rude, rednecky 10 year olds (ever played a PSN game? it's awful).

[Cespinarve]

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 talking about any new content here, what i'm saying is to point people at the right place. Community Ressources and the DF Wiki namely. I personally didnt find out about the wiki until i searched something in google and it popped up.

I cant recall any ingame reference to it other than the one i had from watching a tutorial from DJ Fogey.

To use this as an argument so the game does not get TO popular... well i'm speechless lol 

I'm with you on this. I grew up with text adventures, not ASCII roguelikes. ASCII is really hard for me to follow, so I don't. I need tilesets for me to play.

[Lancezh]

A link to any sort of utility, community-made or not, is a de facto endorsement of that utility. In other words, making it "official," even if that is not the intent. And Toady has stated time and time again that he will not be making any third-party utilities official. Ever.


Also, it's a disservice to new players to immediately refer them to tilesets. The CP437 isn't the problematic interface; it's just the graphical representation. The problem is the thoroughly intimidating hard-coded interface. Giving a newbie a copy of DF with a tileset will give them a game that is slightly prettier, but no less impenetrable.

Well I see your or rather toady's point on that matter actually. Its a very valid one...

The second paragraph i dont agree. I never read some stories about DF as soon as i've seen that the screenshots are CP437. Well you could argue that this is the case since i never learned it. Well no, the thing is, i can understand EVERY screenshot with another tileset than the one i'm used to (ironhand) be that mayday, phoebus and whatnot, the only thing that makes my eyes bleed is CP437. You can argue and argue what SHOULD be, but it wont change that fact, i dont feel like looking at these screenshots and understand them.
What i'm asking for is giving people a choice before they think: OMG i dont learn this ASCII stuff this is way to complicated. I can tell you, it WAS a help for me, and i'm 100% certainly not playing any release without a tileset. Still not, i wont, i dont see the point of it. Just because it doesnt add any depth or accessability for you does not mean that this applies to the rest of the people, all of them have different backgrounds and i'm saying theres a BIG chunk of people who DON'T learn the CP437 style, who ARE mature, who DO fit in here, who are NOT idiots.

Like me.

I'm cozy.

Your life would be empty without me. Admit it.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

Graphic/titlesets in no way improve the UI. Infact many seem to make it worse with confusing symbols throughout text and defualt icons changed (+/-/gender symbols).

Like I said before, if you take out the human element of people not liking the look of the "ascii"/CP437 there is no proof that one has any benefits over the other.
One has to learn the stock tileset and one still has to learn a graphical tileset. You can't tell me you knew what a Nightwing was the first time you saw one using a graphic set.

The way Dwarf Fortress is heading an offical tileset will be impossible. How would a tileset draw a randomly generated creature? It would have to use a stock image, now tell me how that defers from an ampersand? Either way the player still has to click on said creature and read it's description.

That said your rebuttel about looking at different graphic sets and seeing the same thing isn't a very good one.
I can do the same with any font based tileset since I'm used to them. I'm not used to the graphic sets however and it just looks like a whirl of strange icons and colours.
It works both ways you see. I gave up playing Kobold Camp because I hated the graphic set, it was confusing and I had to "relearn" what the icons meant.

I'm not really understanding what you want. All you keep saying is that some people prefer tilesets. Good for them, we have tons of different graphic and tilesets to download from the wiki.
Do you want an offical tileset? How would that end up working when we don't even have full graphic support yet?

The only time I've ever been annoyed with people using graphic tilesets is when they upload pictures to the wiki or attempt to explain a super cool blueprint. Best to keep it stock for those occasions.