My problem with Adventurer Mode
Hi guys, please note that this just my opinion:
So I've been playing Adventurer Mode for a month now, at first I only played Fortress but when I found out there was a way to access the Adventurer Mode in the beta, I jumped on it, I love old school rpgs and roguelikes, and DF Adventurer Mode embodies these two types of game perfectly, needless to say I was a bit let down by the gameplay itself, these are the problems I encountered:
-A lack of a lot of QoL features that most games have, look I understand that DF was in development for more than 20 years, and I for sure don't expect it to be completely up to date with modern times but god, why are the settings so limited? I think for a game as big as this, some things should be able to be tailored to your needs, for example an option to change dialogue's color when it's directed for your character, white and grey isn't really of much help, or maybe a setting to minimize the random dialogue happening around, because every step you take you get spammed with 10 pages of dialogue and if you turn conversations off in the options you can't play the game basically.
-The fact that the simulation just goes too far for Adventure Mode.
It works amazing for Fortress Mode because you stay in your fortress 100% of the time, but when you are controlling a character in Adventure Mode it is just so painful, the game becomes extremely cluncky and laggy, to the point that even moving around is painful, even more so if you can only take a step at a time bacause a goose spotted you 400 miles away and decided to start fleeing, locking you in combat for 3 hours and making the game move at snail pace.
Not to talk about the fact that combat is almost completely random, while it works wonders if you are in Fortress Mode, it is hell on earth for Adventurer Mode, sure losing is fun but getting stuck in a chain of attacks that end your 5 hours progress after you only managed to take a step in combat isn't, it has happened to me on really strong characters too while fighting random enemies, no titan or giant, it's just gamebreaking and no amount of "but it's a simulation" can convince me this is not an actual problem, Adventure Mode is supposed to be an RPG but it is just too tedious, and that's because the simulation is too deep and complicated for an RPG, and that's where you start to lose the gamey aspect.
Also about combat I want to say that we all have a good laugh when we see our dwarves getting their spine destroyed, but when it happens in Adventure Mode it ruins your whole character, same goes for most injuries, especially as there is no way to fix it, no magic (yet), no miracolous medical remedy, nothing, the problem with this is that it can be and added challenge the first two times, then it only becomes a burden.
The fast travel system isn't really too bad just very primitive and clunky, and that's really sad because it's the only viable option to travel considering moving in the actual areas is buggy, painful and takes ages.
Now for the biggest problem in my opinion is the accessibilty of the mode itself, missing a lot of quality of life options and beign Dwarf Fortress, it is extremely hard to play and enjoy at the same time, and I think it has to do with the npcs, they are the main way to get info on anything and they are also your guide to find quests, but the npcs in Adventurer Mode are actually the most immersion breaking thing ever, they are extremely simple, hardly have any diverse dialogue and they spam it.
You gotta use npcs to guide you to places of interest and quests but I assure you, most of the time you don't know what they are talking about "The Abbey of Disdain in the Colorful Fruit, there you can hunt Spoggols Skittles the Cruel Lake", you gotta decipher that to understand that the Abbey of Disdain is actually a wheat field in the REGION of Colorful Fruit and that Spoggols Skittles the Cruel Lake is a mice.
This actually is a problem for me on Fortess Mode too because it's really hard to get the context of something when the naming system gives zero context about what, who, where, also it makes the npcs sound very soulles when they say the name of a place of interest, but I think this issue, aswell as the dull dialogues, could be fixed in the future with the new AI stuff going around, something as simple as calling a mountain Mount Blister Shores of Walking instead of The Great Blister Shores of Walking would be a HUGE improvement in my opinion.
I still love DF and I have an insane amount of respect for the guys that made this game, not only did they create a masterpiece but also started a whole new genre, but I think that I will not be playing Adventure Mode again soon, it is just too unpolished for now in my opinion, but hey, that's my opinion, I'm curious to hear what you guys think and if you had similar experiences as me playing the game.