Comment by joemi
10 hours ago
Minecraft was very fun and was selling like hotcakes when it had "no tutorial to speak of, no on-ramps for new players". Even nowadays there's no tutorial as far as I know and much of how to play is left to discovery. The achievements tree is a bit of a guide, just by telling you some of the things that are possible, but it sure doesn't tell you how to do anything.
I think having an official tutorial or an on-ramp for new players is not a requirement for a good game. In a broader sense of the word "game", a game is separate from a tutorial, so a good game can exist without a tutorial. Chess has no official tutorial or on ramp for new players, and yet it's widely considered to be one of the greatest games.
As soon as I bought Minecraft I opened the Wiki and used that to figure out how to craft stuff.
It was the first mainstream Wiki-based game. Now, every game does it that way.
You cannot be serious! That comparison is a joke. There's worlds between the complexity of Minecraft and DF.
How would you suggest someone make a good tutorial for DF that doesn't leave the player exhausted by the time they start a new game?
That's my core complaint w/ strategy games. By the time I'm done with the tutorial i have to do other things only to forget everything I learned the next time I get to sit down with it.
At best "hints" or a glossary/help menu is the best way imo.
Why you ask me that?
Unlike dwarf fortress, minecraft is fun and engaging from minute zero, and exposes its systems to you naturally over time. Terrible comparison.
Yeah, I think this actually supports the idea that Dwarf Fortress is needlessly bad at onboarding players. Every time I try to get into it, I end up confused by why people enjoy it and unable to figure out how to play it. Whereas with Minecraft, exploring how to play it was actually fun, with Dwarf Fortress, it felt frustrating and unnecessarily obscure.
That's because the UX/UI is utterly awful. It's cargo cult: the game. (And BTW my complaints have nothing to do with the controls. The actual UX is just... not thought out at all).
Minecraft's early game is relatively boring. Empty busywork like punching trees, village raids and strip mining are vestigial gameplay loops that neither Mojang nor Microsoft had the confidence to fix.
I'd agree that they're a bad comparison though. Despite Notch's inspiration from DF, Minecraft has worse bosses, biomes, trading, mining, diplomacy, cooking, innkeeping and NPCs.
Back in my day, villages weren't even in the game. My highschool classmates and I still found something compelling about it.
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It depends what you mean by "early game." The first night cycle happens within minutes of starting and it's very interesting.
It also has effectively zero physics. I still remember being annoyed at how water worked in Minecraft when playing with my kid, and the fact that trees don't collapse if you cut 'em down.
(Yes, yes, mods exist.)