My thoughts on #dwarfFortress, the Steam edition is the more fun way to play the game if your goal is to build a survivable, interesting fort. The quality of life improvements in addition to the visual changes are a major and welcomed improvement, and I'm thrilled #toady and #bay12games are getting the windfall that they've long deserved. The world is better with this version in it.
For long-time players like me, though, I find myself gravitating back towards the ASCII art for a few reasons. I know how to build a fort. I've built forts in every biome several times. I don't play Dwarf Fortress for the fort building aspect at this point. I play for the emergent storylines and funny coincidences that happen, and I feel it's harder to play this way with the new Steam version.
Everything, emergent storytelling-wise, is slower, requires more clicks, and is harder to consume. For example, I love to examine the battle logs in the ASCII dwarf fortress because you can really piece together how a battle unfolded (often in humourous ways). In the ASCII version, you get a wall of text that is hard to parse for new players. But the Steam log requires so much clicking and scrolling that it's actually annoying to deconstruct the battle logs.
The same goes with looking at the dwarfs. The ASCII dwarfs have basically everything available on one screen. The steam version requires several clicks and submenus to see a dwarf's thoughts, injuries, religious preferences, etc. It's just much easier to miss things.
This is a shame because these connections are where the game really shines for me.
In the steam version, you are less likely to doom your fort due to a silly oversight, but you are also more likely to miss something interesting or profound that is produced by the simulation.
