alt Hacker NewsIt’s the games job to create an on ramp to understanding. It’s not mine to spend 200 hours grasping every concept before I can play “the real game”, that’s just shitty game design.
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You're totally allowed to have that opinion. Time is valuable. It does have a tutorial nowadays, but it's still not easy.
Not everyone _wants_ to learn Dwarf Fortress, and that's fine - it's not for everyone.
But I'm just providing context that, for those of us that have learned, it is a great game.
Not every game can be for everyone, and Dwarf Fortress is not a game for people who want onramps. “Shitty game design” is subjective, I guess.
Maybe the Steam page is too slick? I can’t imagine somebody going to the old dwarf fortress page and thinking “this is a game I’ll pick up easily!”
Somebody didn't grow up with early console games.
Is it your job to define jobs?
>It’s the games job to create an on ramp to understanding.
No, it is a games job to be entertaining for those it was designed to entertain.
>It’s not mine to spend 200 hours grasping every concept before I can play “the real game”, that’s just shitty game design.
Certainly there are many people who take a longer time to learn and grasp concepts and find challenging tasks something to be avoided, and this game isn't for you! That doesn't mean that every game should be designed so that the lowest commoner denominator can understand and enjoy the game! Some people not only enjoy being challenged by complex games, but seek those out those challenges and that complexity. The game market is flooded with easy to learn and easy to win games designed and made for simpletons, so there's no reason for you to complain about the rare game (these days) that deviates from that.
This depends largely on your expectation for what a 'game' should be.
Puzzle boxes, for example, have zero on ramp, and yet many many people enjoy them, enjoy the struggle of discovery.
Arguably the edges of mathematics and science are inhabited by similar people, living where the rules are ill defined, where there is much to be discovered rather than pre-digested and spoon fed.
I have little patience for games that don't spoon feed, so I get where you're coming from. I watched my brother play DF and decided I didn't want to spend my time like that, trying to parse ascii, trying to figure out how all the things interacted.
I also don't like puzzle boxes that much.
To each their own.