AWKWARD ZOMBIE

Now, that's not what we're saying at all. What I'm saying is that a tileset helps you understand what going on, and it's actually possible to kinda figure it out on your own.

If I could figure out how to start playing it would be cool. But I can't. Because I don't know what is going on. It's like being left alone at birth.
Well, I found out how to find an area to start in, but then nothing, I have no clue what to do.

Then look up a guide.

Well, there is the dwarf fortress wiki, but even I couldn't understand that. I found this nice one, tell you everything you need to know, provides you will a download of dwarf fortress with a good starting place and a good tileset. I like it so far.

The wiki is excellently written, with a good starting article for your first fortress. I don't see how you couldn't understand the starting article there :/

It's a huge flaw in game design when you have to check a guide online to get started.

Well, it might of had something to do with me being at most ten at the time, so yeah. I had little patience. And, even more annoying then I was now.

Hah. Clearly, the game is terrible and poorly made because a ten year old can't figure it out?

You don't have to. Some people figured it out on their own, obviously; who wrote the wiki?

I don't see that it's a huge flaw. It's a complicated game, yes. If it was less complicated, there would be less that you can achieve within it.

A considerable portion of the players don't get it at first. A game today is expected to be intuitive, and Atari 2600 games are more intuitive than this, honestly. Saying that the developer supposedly wanted to "focus on the gameplay" doesn't excuse the fact that he didn't bother making a tutorial, manual or whatever.

I don't want the game to hold my hand all the time, I just want to know how to do the basic things.
I don't even know how to move the dwarves, or if I'm supposed to move them. Admittedly, I didn't bother searching for the controls, but why do the arrow keys initially allow you to choose where to start the game in the world, and then switch to the camera control?

I'll check the wiki someday and see if I can get it to work.

Their loss. He isn't catering to every single player out there. No game appeals to every demographic.

A game today? You mean a commercial game? This is a completely free game being made by one guy. In his spare time. He's doing an amazing job.

He did, in fact, make a manual. There are four different help screens within the game. All the keybinds are listed inside the game. From memory, he even lists a few tips on workshops.

Again, I stress that it's a positive factor that it's complicated. Some people like complicated games. Clearly, you're not one of them. That doesn't make it a poorly made game.

It just looks like he's expecting everybody to know as much about the game he developed himself as him.
Like he was making the game for himself as opposed to making it complicated on purpose.
A game can be complex and not just confuse everybody the second they start playing.

what spoony said before

you are a pussy

a big one

Right, here's a short guide to understanding ALL of the symbols:
-Floor. This is represented by periods, commas, apostrophes, and sometimes pluses.
-Wall. This is represented by filled colour tiles.
-Creatures. These are represented by letters.
-Dwarfs. These are represented by smiley faces.
-Everything else. These are represented by using the letter L when you come across them.

FUCK SO COMPLEX RITE?
But if you're really having trouble adapting to it, you should play around in the RPG Adventure Mode first. It's a lot less complex!

And if you can't get started, it's your own fault for not checking out a tutorial.

As for the steep learning curve after the basics, well, that's part of the fun really. The main focus of DwarfFortress is that you lose! A lot!



Now on the subject of graphic tilesets, well, it's really a matter of personal opinion. I prefer ASCII, because it leaves more to the imagination, which is one of the things that makes DF so fun; also, many characters are used multiple times for different things, so tilesets can often screw things up.
I also use Stonesense because it allows you to see things in proper 3D - DF only shows one layer at a time - but because this computer is so flipping slow I only use it for screenshots.
The one thing I really do recommend using is DwarfTherapist. Assigning jobs is the one big thing that the DF interface does NOT do well, whereas DwarfTherapist makes it a breeze.

The other thing I will say is that the controls are very... hap-hazard. Sometimes you have to use letters/numpad, sometimes you have to use the arrow keys, sometimes you get to use the mouse! It's something you never really get used to...

Now, that's not waht I'm saying. I was saying it was my fault that I couldn't understand, having zero patence for a complicated game at the time. I'm playing it now, I get the gist of it, and I'm going to dick around till I understand. It's a fun game, just a little hard to really get into. Not that that's a bad thing.

You are meant to lose in DF. Half the fun is losing in funny ways, the other half is the road to that losing in funny ways.