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[Rex_Nex]

I'm just going to say, personally, that Dwarf Fortress was not hard to learn for me. I am not an avid roguelike player. I don't spend time playing games that have difficult UI. I really have no excuse for picking it up so easily.

The way I look at it, DF is not really that complex. The community here makes DF out as this sheer dropoff of a learning curve, but is it really that difficult for most people? I watched one (1) 30-minute tutorial online and I was good to go. Sure, it will take a very long time for someone to become normalized with the many, many systems DF offers the players, but the core gameplay is quite basic. You feed, clothe, and protect your civilians whilst trying to keep the happy. To do so, you click combinations of buttons (which are mostly shown on the GUI right in front of you) to build or designate things. Different options can be set, and... well, yea, that is pretty much it.

Some more complex things exist; I.E military setup and different construction tricks, but to be perfectly honest the rest of the game is a matter of learning the few keyboard controls that are not shown to you. Once I memorized what  ">, <, k, v, t, +, and -" were, the rest was a matter of looking at the lists of keybinding on the GUI and pressing the one I want.

Sure DF is counterintuitive at times, but a sheer cliff of a learning curve? I think not.

All in all, do you agree with the notion that DF is hard to pick up?

[DrPoo]

i have been here since early 2010 and i still dont know how to play the game.
Maybe im just dumb, but i cant get that irrigation to work, theres no flux stone ANYWHERE, aquifiers everywhere, its near impossible to find a good newbie spot.

[Rex_Nex]

I believe you can just hit "f" in the embark screen and have the game search for an area with flux and no aquifier. If your having trouble getting a world to gen a map like that, start a custom map and make it a Region, not a Island, which is the default setting.

Lack of flux and aquifiers aren't really going to stop someone from learning the game though

[Doomshifter]

i have been here since early 2010 and i still dont know how to play the game.
Maybe im just dumb, but i cant get that irrigation to work, theres no flux stone ANYWHERE, aquifiers everywhere, its near impossible to find a good newbie spot.

If you've got any sort of decent world, sites like this should be all over the shop. Try looking near mountains, that's the best location for fortresses.

As for being hard to learn, the only thing that took me a little while to figure out was that 'd'ig did not just automagically dig down for you. I was trying to 'd'ig on the surface layer, until a friend told me that I had to carve stairs first =u=;;

[shadenight123]

i tried df once. the ascii graphic didn't make me go further.
i tried it again. and again the ascii graphic and the "what do i do" made me stop.
The third time i read boatmurdered, mustered the courage and went with a wiki.
And precisely at that time i realized there also was the "lazy newb pack". and TILESETS.
*epical facepalms of eons ago*
it's not difficult to learn df. Its difficult to pick it up.
once you manage to "pick it up" the rest is easier.
sure, you die, you lose, the booze disappears, magma explodes. and so on, but that's fun.

[Rex_Nex]

i tried df once. the ascii graphic didn't make me go further.
i tried it again. and again the ascii graphic and the "what do i do" made me stop.
The third time i read boatmurdered, mustered the courage and went with a wiki.
And precisely at that time i realized there also was the "lazy newb pack". and TILESETS.
*epical facepalms of eons ago*
it's not difficult to learn df. Its difficult to pick it up.
once you manage to "pick it up" the rest is easier.
sure, you die, you lose, the booze disappears, magma explodes. and so on, but that's fun.

Pretty much my feelings too. Its not the learning curve that is the problem, its actually walking over to the curve after seeing the lack of graphics, etc etc.

[The Merchant Of Menace]

Yeah, I spent about 15 minutes browsing the wiki and was set to play, I think the learning cliff must have been on vacation that day or something.

The graphics didn't bother me at all, but I'm big into roguelikes, so that's somewhat expected.

[Logen910]

No, it isn't very difficult to learn the basics of the game. Only the more complex features need some time to work them out. In my case, i even had a working steel production on my very first embark. I really do not understand how people can play a two or three year fortress without hitting the first cavern. All fortresses i lost where either flooded with water or magma, destroyed by a giant cave in or because of creating a loyality cascade when I got bored of them. I think it depends on your ability of imagination and maybe a little bit on your intelligence. But the most important requirement is to be fascinated by the game, so you have the will to master it.

[peskyninja]

Only in the first couple of days.

[Wastedlabor]

It's easy to learn, hard to optimize.

Example: it's easy to make a magma trap, but it's harder to make it flawless. Without looking at someone else's fort, you'll need many iterations.

[King DZA]

I watched captain_duck's tutorial to ease into the game. That, and countless amounts of wiki visits. Had little to no problem with the ASCII(In fact, I find it harder to decipher tilesets). Although, this actually brings up a point many seem to be missing. It seems like the main reason it was so easy for most of us, is because we had the basic controls of the game handed to us on a platter, via tutorials and the wiki. I think It's safe to say that, without these sources of info, the learning curve would have seemed far steeper, and most of us would be royally fucked.

[The Merchant Of Menace]

Not really, the ingame manual teaches you pretty much everything you need to know, the wiki is just better organized.

[Reudh]

I struggled a bit (had no roguelike background beforehand), gave up, downloaded the Bentgirders tutorial from DF Wiki, followed it closely, and built from there.

Every successive fort I have had has gotten better and better though.

[Funk]

not if you read the wiki when you get stuck.

[Caz]

Nah. I learned to play (not very well, kept dying at the end of first year by running out of food, this was back when irrigating farms was a bit more complicated) without using the forums or the wiki. I actually found DF on some demo cd from a gaming magazine.

Using the wiki as a guide makes it piss-easy, however.