Earlier quoted context omitted.
I kinda liked the earlier version of the game, before guides and tools made it easier to get into. This is not a dig on guides, its instead an appreciation for what the game taught me - the idea that losing could be fun. Before that I would always play in a manner that guaranteed success, re-loading if something went wrong. With DF it was either something going spectacularly wrong, or utter boredom when I decided to…
> This is not a dig on guides, its instead an appreciation for what the game taught me - the idea that losing could be fun. I disagree. Losing a game because of undocumented behavior or bugs has never been fun for me. Sid Meier - "A game is a series of interesting choices."
I think that with a proper tutorial there'd be a much more immediately interesting set of choices. I would say though that Civilization has always had obviously bad choices that aren't clear to new players - most games take this approach where the player is given a lot of obvious choices to feel good about rejecting. The difference is that in most games these choices are rather artificially created and clearly signaled because they're obviously wrong (Sorry - are you sure you wanted to create that Barbarian with 18 WIS and CHA and 3 STR and CON?) - in dwarf fortress it's harder to detect those terrible choices due to having pretty much every option open to you as soon as you start a new game (except a few gated features like Law and Nobility).
That all said - maybe you could make a fortress work where you set up a pottery commune and don't actually set up any agriculture - just try and rely entirely on trade to feed your dwarves.