My defense of the DF "bad UX" is that it is a complex machine, and like with many complex machines you have to read the manual.
I played a good amount of DF as a student. Never built things too complex cuz it is hard, but after reading some wikis and playing around with it, I ended up getting it.
There is obviously something about how the UX is foreign, and that with other choices it would be more accessible. But I found that the initial hump is the main thing, and that afterwards it's fine? But I am the kind of person who enjoys Dwarf Fortress!
It is great when people can design things that are understandable out of the box, but I feel like it is OK to design something that requires a bit of upfront learning, if those different designs are serving purposes.
The bad metaphor: it's OK if a bus driver has to take some classes to figure out how to operate a crane.
I love DF but its interface is not just different, it is definitely bad.
Worse than not following any conventions is that it is deeply inconsistent. It is inconsistent in how it presents the same information in different places, in how you navigate different seemingly similar menus, even in what key is used for the same action across menus.
For instance, searching in a list is done with q, S, or f depending on in which menu.
Most people don't want to do homework before they play a game. Super Mario Bros. is a game that was alien to many of the first people playing it, but people still played it without reading the manual because the game is intuitive at teaching you what to do.
A good video game teaches you what to do, it doesn't demand you learn yourself. Then it tests what you've learned through gameplay.
Poor analogy. In Mario, the goal is to move forwards and back, or jump, and run towards the end. In Dwarf Fortress, its to manage a small civilization. The only other examples of games akin to it are RimWorld (difficult without a wiki), Factorio (difficult without a wiki), and at a stretch if we're talking simply complexity, the Paradox Grand Strategy games which are frankly unplayable without a wiki, despite having a UI.
Comparing DF to Mario is like comparing a kiddies first play car with an F1 car.
It’s more than that. The game is not _that_ complex and it doesn’t have to be so hard. It’s also not impossible to have the game walk you through your first playthrough. People don’t want to read a manual before playing a game. They want to see those in game popups pointing out features as they play until they are fully warmed up and can play alone.
I played a good amount of DF as a student. Never built things too complex cuz it is hard, but after reading some wikis and playing around with it, I ended up getting it.
There is obviously something about how the UX is foreign, and that with other choices it would be more accessible. But I found that the initial hump is the main thing, and that afterwards it's fine? But I am the kind of person who enjoys Dwarf Fortress!
It is great when people can design things that are understandable out of the box, but I feel like it is OK to design something that requires a bit of upfront learning, if those different designs are serving purposes.
The bad metaphor: it's OK if a bus driver has to take some classes to figure out how to operate a crane.