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Comment by cjhveal | Hacker News Reader

I personally agree. A lot of those disagreeing with you find the ASCII graphics to be a barrier to initial entry, which is true, but it is a barrier that you can overcome quickly and feel quite comfortable with. On the other hand, having spent many hours with the game, the UX issues you mention are what block me from building fluid muscle memory and being able to really get into the game.

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Graphics is not the main issue here.

There are other issues that are much more important. Like the jobs interface. I don't want to have to run Dwarf Therapist alongside it, when games like Rimworld and ONI manage just fine.

I've been playing for some time using dfhack's "autolabor" feature, and it streamlines things immensely.

Granted, it ends up essentially just turning on every profession for every dwarf, but it's still possible to restrict workshops to certain dwarves. For example, you might have a carpentry workshop set to produce endless amounts of wooden shields, but only allow skilled carpenters access to it.

Yeah Rimworld does pretty well. I wish it had Z-levels, so I could, like, master the technology of "the basement", but in terms of user interface it's pretty good. There are some mods that improve on vanilla's interface, but the default UX is still solid.

Nope, I tried it several times and I just can't stand ASCII graphics. I'd rather play Dota or anything else instead.

Fair enough-- for me a lot of the joy of the game is in using it as a collaborative story teller and filling in the gaps it gives me. Having underspecified graphics gives me more freedom with my mind's eye, but I can understand that not everyone approaches it the same way and wouldn't get the same out of it even with a lot of effort.

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