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Comment by ndnxhs | Hacker News Reader

Dwarf fortress always seems like a brilliant idea wrapped up in a terrible ui and execution. I recently started playing rimworld and its a very similar game but much easier to get started on. The game progressively gives you tips and messages on how to get better and do stuff rather than requiring you to spend hours reading a wiki to get started.

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Yeah, the idea of it is attractive, and learning the crazy UI is half the fun, but once you really get into it you realize that there is no there there. It's nowhere near as complex as it seems, and full of bugs, some decades old. Trade is so easily exploited that there is nothing exciting about the elves coming. You can kill them and start a war, but the combat is so unbalanced and exploitable that they pose no threat. Trade being pointless makes half the items in the game worthless. I recently played until FPS death kicked in making it impossible to continue, and didn't feel engaged enough to start a new fort.

The problem is that the brothers do not play their own game, and it clearly shows.

DF is a "create your own fun" kind of game. If you try to play in an "optimal" way by exploiting the ridiculous trade values of some items and giving your fortress just one entrance with a drawbridge you won't have as much fun indeed. The solution is to simply not do that and set your own rules and goals.

I'd even say that trade and combat being exploitable is a feature, not a bug, since sometimes I simply don't want to bother with those aspects of the game.

>DF is a "create your own fun" kind of game.

That's exactly why i stopped playing Elite Dangerous, devs making empty universes and all the fan boys saying to make your own fun.

I understand that it's a sandbox game, but the list of self imposed restrictions you have to follow to have fun is quite long indeed. Don't wall yourself in, don't use the OP traps, don't farm indoors, don't make bone/stone crafts (really high trade value despite bones and stones being waste goods), don't build using multiple floors (stairs have no movement cost last i checked), etc, etc, etc...

The devs really don't care about making a fun game. I guess their principles don't align with mine, but I won't reward them for leaving bugs unfixed for a decade plus.

I don't think "nowhere near as complex as it seems" is anywhere close to describing what many consider the most complex game ever built, including many industry veterans. Every material has dozens of variables (such as density), every creature's limb acts differently, there are thousands of materials and object types and most are researched thoroughly.

It is the most complex simulation game ever created (though not the most accurate). The fact that it's not very hard to play as you'd imagine, does not mean it is not complex.

If you look at the attributes of some creatures, weapons etc on the df wiki they are highly unrealistic and counter-intuitive. Moreover, the apparent complexity does not translate into fun gameplay, and actually hurts it in the form of high FPS. And the game play is still simple, almost mundane behind the hardcore veneer of inaccessibility.

It's better to think of Dwarf Fortress as a simulation project rather than a game. The developers have stated that improving the quality and depth of the simulation comes before making it playable or fun by games industry standards.

I like this idea much better. It is their intention.

The Steam release will have a new UI:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/975370/Dwarf_Fortress/

New controls as well?

"The game progressively gives you tips and messages on how to get better and do stuff"

Maybe rimworld figured out a tastful way to do that but, so far, every game I've seen it in only managed to ruin the experience.

It has really good detection of which features you are not using and gives you little (textural, easy to ignore) nudges to use them.

the ui problem stem from the very deep menu that you have to traverse and where to find them, and that comes from the sheer amount of stuff you can do in the game

even making it prettier won't really solve the issues at it's root that cause it to work that way

however, if you play with the menu visible (tab key), it's already a order of magnitude easier because at least you see all the mnemonic to traverse the control tree and they are well organized after all.

(compare with rimworld campfire, which is in temperature even if it's a production item, that always gets me by surprise if I don't play for a while)

To me, it is similar to memorizing the spell keystrokes for Moria, the roguelike I played when younger. "mab" to cast a magic missile.

In DF, "bCf" orders the construction of a floor.

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