0023002: "Dwarf Fortress Syndrome" - Arcen Idea Tracker (Bugs and Features)

ID	Project	Category		Date Submitted	Last Update

0023002	AI War 2	GUI		Mar 12, 2020 3:57 am	Mar 13, 2020 12:15 am

Reporter	Flypaste	Assigned To	Chris_McElligottPark
Status	closed	Resolution	unable to reproduce
Product Version	2.009 Plenty Of Tuning

Summary	0023002: "Dwarf Fortress Syndrome"
Description	I have no idea how I never realized it earlier, but I'm coming to the conclusion that this game has severe dwarf fortress syndrome as I'd like to call it and I believe this might be hurting the game significantly. The developer of dwarf fortress makes a point of paying as absolute little attention to the game's GUI as physically possible. He puts all of his dev time into content, to the detriment of the game's usability for everybody. Nobody can enjoy a game with great content if the UI is actively interfering with their ability to experience it. Games that seem to adamantly refuse to put time and care into their UI to the detriment of their players I believe have "dwarf fortress syndrome". At this point, with 250 hours of game playtime, I have come to the conclusion that the foremost thing in my mind that is restricting AIW2's popularity is its neglected UI that is in severe need of love and care. Examples of this that have irritated me recently to the point of not playing the game are notification clutter and custom starts not saving. If I were a new player with 20 minutes of playtime, I would have just refunded after experiencing either of these incidents: I would have tolerated them 6 months ago, but the game is in version 2.0. Two. Point. Zero. Not beta. It's had a DLC and the 2nd DLC is in progress. It doesn't get an "early access" free pass for having a UI that's barely serviceable from me anymore, and I doubt it gets a free pass from people trying it out on the steam store today.
Tags	No tags attached.

Strategic Sage Mar 12, 2020 4:48 am reporter ~0056478	I think Dwarf Fortress syndrome is an unfair label given that Arcen has most definitely not disregarded the UI, and most of the feedback on the steam forums is not about the UI (though certainly there is some of that). Having said that, I agree with the thrust of what Flypaste says here. I think it is absolutely imperative for the success of AI War 2 that a significant effort be made before multiplayer and DLC2 come to tighten some things up a bit. Removing as many obstacles as possible that exist between players and the fascinating strategy of the game is something that holds an importance that cannot be overstated. Examples: Fleet movement. There's no good way to tell ships to attack a specific area (regardless of what standing orders you give them) without also ordering the flagship there - which you often don't want to do. You can attack-move a target, but that means having to give new orders every.single.time. the target dies. Things like this make combat frustrating and tedious. Seamless integration of quickstarts & custom starts, saving custom starts, etc. Currently, you can spend a long time setting up a complex game and if you misclick or forget a single setting anywhere you have to start over from scratch. Saving a preset doesn't allow you to change details of it, so you can't just make one and then tweak it for the next try. ** Backwards compatibility of profiles, so settings aren't lost when going into 'last stable beta' while awaiting a hotfix. I think it's overly harsh to refer to the UI as 'barely serviceable' - I've seen worse in many AAA titles. But again the thrust of the concern here is one that, as a barely controlled fanboy of Arcen, I absolutely and unequivocably share. If multiplayer comes in, with a number of potential customers saying they are waiting on that right now, without tightening up some of the issues a severe price will be extracted in potential success of the game.

Chris_McElligottPark Mar 12, 2020 12:05 pm administrator ~0056481	Thank you for the specific notes, Strategic Sage. I've made tickets with actionable items related on those. That's useful, as are general other requests that people have. Flypaste: I'm closing this issue as not something we can reproduce, as you've provided no particular actionable content, just general insults and the assertion that we should do better. While I do understand that you're feeling frustrated, I've laid out the context for what we are focusing on and why, multiple times. Ignoring that and then also ignoring all the work that we and volunteers have put into the UI does not feel particularly good, on a personal level, and it's also not helpful in any sort of actionable sense. If you want to see issues resolved, you have to be specific, and it's generally helpful if you can stay at least somewhat neutral in your presentation of it. Berating us, which you've now done at length here and in multiple forums, is not the way to generally get anything from anyone. I'm glad that you feel so passionately about the game and want to see good changes come to it, and that is certainly my goal also -- and UI is certainly part of the roadmap.

Fluffiest Mar 12, 2020 8:12 pm reporter ~0056496	I'm also attaching a couple of UI issues that are complete fun-killers for me at the moment, I hope that's ok. * Getting the selection I want is a _huge pain in the ass_. If I open the fleet panel and right-click a fleet to select it, the camera gets pulled to it, which is almost always not what I want. 0007137:0022391 There's no way to select individual units within a fleet without moving the camera to the planet they're currently on. I want to be able to right-click a fleet in the fleets pane to select it, then press a hotkey or click a button to transform the selection from "Strike Fleet Indigo" to "32x Fusion Bomber, 3x Raid Frigate, 1x Fleet Transport" or whatever. I also want to be able to open the fleet overview for Strike Fleet Indigo from the fleets pane, then click a little "select me!" button next to "Raid Frigate Mk1, 3/3" and get the raid frigates added to the selection. Holding ALT (the default "remove from selection" key) and clicking on one of the unit types in the bottom-right selection list should remove that unit type from selection. It doesn't. 0007136:0022464 ** Holding ALT and pressing 3 should remove Fleet 3 from the selection. It doesn't. * Double-clicking on a planet in the galaxy map pulls you directly from the galaxy map to the planet map (good), but it also clears any ships you have selected (bad). 0007216:0022616 * Ordering units (not fleets) from planet to planet causes them to become deselected. This is a total pain in the ass when trying to micromanage raid frigates. 0007206:0022871 * It is currently impossible to have a combat factory that has engineers out, and is replenishing fleet losses, without having it also launch its drones and aggro the entire system. 0007287:0022888 ** On top of that, once the drones are launched, there is no way to make them abort their attack run and return to the factory. 0007206:0022670

Fluffiest Mar 12, 2020 8:17 pm reporter ~0056498	Sorry, I messed up the syntax and all the links in that post are wrong. Here's the corrected version. I'm also attaching a couple of UI issues that are complete fun-killers for me at the moment, I hope that's ok. * Getting the selection I want is a _huge pain in the ass_. If I open the fleet panel and right-click a fleet to select it, the camera gets pulled to it, which is almost always not what I want. 0022391 There's no way to select individual units within a fleet without moving the camera to the planet they're currently on. I want to be able to right-click a fleet in the fleets pane to select it, then press a hotkey or click a button to transform the selection from "Strike Fleet Indigo" to "32x Fusion Bomber, 3x Raid Frigate, 1x Fleet Transport" or whatever. I also want to be able to open the fleet overview for Strike Fleet Indigo from the fleets pane, then click a little "select me!" button next to "Raid Frigate Mk1, 3/3" and get the raid frigates added to the selection. Holding ALT (the default "remove from selection" key) and clicking on one of the unit types in the bottom-right selection list should remove that unit type from selection. It doesn't. 0022464 ** Holding ALT and pressing 3 should remove Fleet 3 from the selection. It doesn't. * Double-clicking on a planet in the galaxy map pulls you directly from the galaxy map to the planet map (good), but it also clears any ships you have selected (bad). 0022616 * Ordering units (not fleets) from planet to planet causes them to become deselected. This is a total pain in the ass when trying to micromanage raid frigates. 0022871 * It is currently impossible to have a combat factory that has engineers out, and is replenishing fleet losses, without having it also launch its drones and aggro the entire system. 0022888 ** On top of that, once the drones are launched, there is no way to make them abort their attack run and return to the factory. 0022670

BadgerBadger Mar 12, 2020 8:42 pm reporter ~0056499	Fluffiest, I would suggest making a new bug report with those suggestions.

Flypaste Mar 12, 2020 8:48 pm reporter ~0056500	fwiw I lost the willingness to put detailed and specific effort into bug reports when all of my modloader reports were (and still are) ignored, such as this one: 0022488

Chris_McElligottPark Mar 13, 2020 12:15 am administrator ~0056504	Flypaste, your requests have not been ignored. But there is precisely one person able to really deal with that particular issue (me), and I have to prioritize that against all the other things that happen to fall to me. It may be a few months. There are many other issues that are on hold while I pursue higher priority items. That does not mean they are being ignored. If you see other people working on things you deem lower priority, bear in mind that's not really related as they don't have the knowledge of this particular framework to do much with it. It's a process. It would be great if everything could happen instantly, but you know what our workforce is, and we don't have identical skilllsets, either. Making our job harder by not properly making bug reports just slows things even further.

Date Modified	Username	Field	Change
Mar 12, 2020 3:57 am	Flypaste	New Issue
Mar 12, 2020 3:58 am	Flypaste	Description Updated
Mar 12, 2020 4:48 am	Strategic Sage	Note Added: 0056478
Mar 12, 2020 11:43 am	Chris_McElligottPark	Relationship added	related to 0023006
Mar 12, 2020 11:47 am	Chris_McElligottPark	Relationship added	related to 0021338
Mar 12, 2020 11:56 am	Chris_McElligottPark	Relationship added	related to 0023007
Mar 12, 2020 11:56 am	Chris_McElligottPark	Relationship added	related to 0022930
Mar 12, 2020 12:05 pm	Chris_McElligottPark	Assigned To	=> Chris_McElligottPark
Mar 12, 2020 12:05 pm	Chris_McElligottPark	Status	new => closed
Mar 12, 2020 12:05 pm	Chris_McElligottPark	Resolution	open => unable to reproduce
Mar 12, 2020 12:05 pm	Chris_McElligottPark	Note Added: 0056481
Mar 12, 2020 8:12 pm	Fluffiest	Note Added: 0056496
Mar 12, 2020 8:17 pm	Fluffiest	Note Added: 0056498
Mar 12, 2020 8:42 pm	BadgerBadger	Note Added: 0056499
Mar 12, 2020 8:48 pm	Flypaste	Note Added: 0056500
Mar 13, 2020 12:15 am	Chris_McElligottPark	Note Added: 0056504