To dig for example. You have to create a designation for it. But how do you know that unless you watched a video/read a tutorial? On top of that if something is wrong, the game gives you very little clue. Do you have a dwarf with digging task? Is he available? Does he have pick? Can he pathfind? The game gives you no answer other than not initiating the digging (edit actually my bad, i think it gives you some logs for some cases.). Stuff like that is a hard barrier for most players and they won't be able to continue unless they are really committed.
Free software has a price too, in terms of efforts the user has to spend on dealing with issues and shortcomings.
Pay. Or do not pay. But there is no bargain.
Edit: It is a Matrix reference, where Neo asks Tank if he can understand what is going on by just looking at the green characters whizzing in the screen. He answers "You get used to it after a while. ... For example, I see blondes, brunettes, redheads ... "
Edit 2: I guess I remembered it wrong, it was Cypher!
here's where I struggled: I still wouldn't have the hang of managing the dwarves I had and then a new crop would come along. Even with all these tools it quickly descended into me not having any idea who was doing what or why. Or why they weren't doing the things I was asking them to do.
A lot of the things seemed way too roundabout to me too. Like I'd have chickens (or were they ducks? I forget) and I was attempting to breed them. But the whole process of making egg-laying boxes or nests or whatever was tedious and then you had to lock the door to stop the dwarves coming in and taking the eggs.
Likewise, i found the process of feeding the dwarves hard to manage largely because I couldn't easily figure out if there was any food, whether that was because no one was making any or that it was simply all getting eaten. Was it an issue of not having room to stockpile food? Or was the dwarf who could make food doing something else (possibly because he was the only person who could do that or he just happened to be the one who'd picked up the pick for some reason)?
So I never got to that point where I felt like I had a good grasp of my colony as a coherent unit and could then engage in flights of fancy.
I think the last time I tried I then got a monster invading and I hadn't figured out military yet. That was a whole new system to learn and I just lacked the motivation so stopped and never went back.
I’ve struggled to embrace it because my habit is defensive safe playing. In other words “succeeding”- beating your enemies without suffering a loss or misfortune and never having to deal with jank.
My second fort blew up to a yellow “i” which I had no clue was a fire imp (2d DF era volcano embark.)
But I got lucky and found the ascii explosion of ascii booze barrels fascinating.
Embracing that pain makes all the stories of DF interesting. This does include just letting things blow up because you didn’t get the interface and just enjoying the situation you are in.
To a large extent, the new tutorials and helpful community have eroded that ideal, the long learning curve have you a crucial part of the DF experience - loosing is fun.
I have never been able to fully capture the point or explain how fundamental it is to appreciating the game and how it changes your enjoyment of things.
The likely reason for there not being food is underproduction. Causes of that could be not having enabled planting for every season, planting textile crops or crops that need to be processed before they are edible (if the textile crop fields are too large it might be fine on embark when you have only 5 seeds, but end up using up all planting time once the seed count is high), lacking seeds, perhaps from cooking the plants directly (cooking does not give back seeds), or being bottlenecked on field size or planter count. Food will rot if not in a food stockpile, but the rate is pretty slow and easy to outproduce, also if underground the rot will produce miasma making it easy to notice. The next likely reason is that a single dwarf might have become unable to path to food. In such a case the dwarf is likely walled off from the fortress in either the caverns or the surface, because anywhere else there wouldn't be water and they would die of dehydration first. Disabling web gathering at game start helps prevent dwarves being stranded in the caverns. It's also possible all food was forbidden or there was an active civilian alert.
It's a bit complex in that there are many ways to fail, but again the winning formula is simple. For me the learning curve was first giving up because I didn't even know what I was looking at or that z-levels existed, and then a year or two later watching a video tutorial that quickly laid down all the basics, and finding the game relaxing to play after that. Unfortunately I don't remember what the tutorial was and some tutorials out there are pretty mediocre, e.g. anything that recommends making a refuse stockpile outside is not adequately conveying that sealing off your fortress from the outside world is key, and IMO building an indoors well should be mentioned as something you need to do even if the process's not covered.
To make sure they're doing what you want them to do, have them "specialize" into professions. Leave a large bulk of low-skill labor for hauling, and try to keep the number of idle dwarves low (it shows up in the corner and you can inspect with 'u' from the main menu).
Yeah, the initial set up process for industries like eggs take a bit of getting used to. I actually usually have my craftsdwarf start building nest boxes as soon as I've mined out enough stone. You can also selectively 'forbid' individual clutches of eggs rather than locking the door by selecting them with q and going to the nestbox (or t, I forget) and hitting f after scrolling down to the eggs.
For food, it sounds like your issue was not knowing the UI. If you have a bookeeper (set with 'n'->bookeeper, change granularity with 's') with an office they will automatically keep track of your food, which you can check with z->kitchen or z->stocks. You should use a stockpile for food because it prevents food from rotting and keeps it in convenient locations. You can make one with p->f although when just starting a fortress you might instead want to create a general stockpile with p->t(select most things except refuse and stone)->c. Regarding the food production, it's good to limit dwarves in essential industries/positions to have all labors except their particular specialty disabled, including all hauling, and then manage tasks so that those dwarves are not left idle.
Similarly for the graphics, and that applies to games in general. You really stop noticing the graphics around ~30mins into a session, because you're running this asynchronous simulation in your head that only needs minimal information to update. That might be a reason why we remember games we played a long time ago being a lot prettier or detailed.
You are just far more productive with a keyboard, especially once the commands are in muscle memory.
Doesn't sound overstated at all...
Some days I prefer a sickly in-bred imbecile devil-worshipping king, and some days I just want to deal with short sturdy creatures fond of drink and industry.
And then there is the regular updates/DLC thing, which often adds whole new, poorly explained features.
Still a lot of fun though. Breath Status: Held for CKIII
The horrid military UI is inherent to the game. Bugs that are left for months (if not years) like the inability for seiges to enter your site (hiding just offscreen, slowly killing your CPU) or the current persistent bad memories, often makes aspects of the game unplayable WITHOUT the complexity and issues with mods that are necessary. Yes you can play the game in ASCII or with chopsticks or blindfolded with someone barking at what you need to do, but complexity and difficulty is not commensurate with fun or depth. DF is not the only game to fall into this trap.
DF has depth outside of the UI/setup/bugs, but onboarding is what Tarn is addressing (partly) in the Steam release. Good.
I think the difficulty of learning the game is on point.
I think the difficulty of learning the game is overstated: if you follow a tutorial, use a graphics pack, and use dwarf therapist (dwarf therapist is a must, most experienced players also use this because it's just a better UI) I think you can get the hang of the game in a few hours of play time. Probably the biggest barrier to learning the game is the UX but if you're a programmer that will be much easier to learn. I recommend https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Quickstart_gu... and https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Dwarf_fortres... as guides, and I recommend downloading the "Lazy Newb Pack" version compatible with your operating system, as it makes switching graphics and managing utilities/settings very easy.