I think it a loss that a game with such original complexity has the most primitive graphics. Nobody wants 3D acceleration, but an upgrade to a simple 2D with sprites and effects with a better interface, would open it to a wider crowd.
It's been said before, but in the opinion of many would-be DF players, it's really the interface that could use a massive amount of love. The ascii graphics may not be your cup of tea, but at least they would be functional if, IF the interface/controls/menu systems weren't all so horrible and obfuscated and totally inconsistent with each other. I've come to the conclusion that the developers get some sort of sick joy out of putting this incredible, tantalizing core out there but making it completely inaccessible to the average player. Maybe that's their strategy to weed out non-diehards until "it's ready".
Thanks for the link. While it does indeed looks nice, it's not what I had in mind. This is basically isometric 2D. You're looking at a plane. Things that rise up, like pillars, are not shown. You could not see that dam the way it really looks like in my linked picture.
A good 3d GUI for DF would be challenging. Usually[1] most of the game takes place in corridors/caves that are underground, so the naive approach would have everything obfuscated by solid rock.
[1] Obvious nitpick: some players do indeed challenge themselves to build everything above ground.
The UI may be bad and need improvement (personally I find it no more complicated than any other CLI, even if it is a little inconsistent), but you can't complain about the default tile-set being ugly and unreadable and how "even the most primitive 2D tile-based GUI would make Dwarf Fortress better by orders of magnitude" when there is a rich and dedicated group of fans who pour a lot of time into making the game look, in a lot of cases, very nice.
And as your sibling poster said, if you really cannot stand the 2d, there is Stonesense for rudimentary 3d graphics.
Gnomoria is one of the few "early access" games on Steam that seem to be working out well, despite the effort being a one-man operation. If Dwarf Fortress seems too intimidating, Gnomoria is a good place to start. It doesn't have anywhere near the depth of DF, but many of the core concepts are the same.
I don't want to sound harsh at all, but if someone can't get over the quirks of the UI and the abstract ASCII art, I think it's not the kind of person that will love the complexity of the game either. The UI of DF is actually a pons asinorum.
Go is an incredibly complex game but its complexity is not arbitrary. DF has both go like depth complexity and arbitrary waste of time complexity. Many people like depth but don't like bad interfaces.
