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.
replyThat'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).
replyMinecraft'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.
replyI'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.
replyI had a good number of hours in Minecraft Classic's browser version, mostly in online servers though. Solo wasn't much fun.
replyModern Minecraft is still not much of an appeal to me without mods. I'm happy to see more block games like Vintage Story push the medium forward while Microsoft... wraps up post-production on A Minecraft Movie: Squared, I guess?
It depends what you mean by "early game." The first night cycle happens within minutes of starting and it's very interesting.
replyIt 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.
reply(Yes, yes, mods exist.)