Talk:Personality traits, values, and goals

Move article

Since this article covers more aspect of a creature's personality than just the personality traits, perhaps it should have a different title such as Personality Aspects. And should Needs be added to the article since they are part of a creature's personality tab? Jecowa (talk) 18:09, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

Or perhaps leave the traits here and put values and dreams in their own articles? But maybe it's good that traits and values are together, though, since they are similar and easily confused. I don't have to already be able to tell values and traits apart; I can just search for "conceal emotions" to find the appropriate section. It's especially helpful since different sources use different terms for values and traits. You have the old wiki terminology, the DF50+ in-game terminology, the Dwarf Therapist terminology (which is a mix of official terminology with old-wiki terminology). Jecowa (talk) 18:55, 10 October 2024 (UTC)

It seems that the reason this is structured so oddly is that originally Dreams, Values, and Needs did not exist; there were only Personality Traits. When Values & Dreams were added to the game, they were placed in the Thoughts and Preferences screen along with the Personality Traits, and so they were placed within the Personality Traits article on the wiki. Then, later, when Needs were added to the game, perhaps unaware with how this had previously been handled, it was decided that Needs needed its own article, breaking consistency with the rest of the things displayed in the Thoughts and Preferences screen.

For references, with the current v50.14 layout of the UI:

• Personality Traits are found in the "Traits" sub-tab of the Personality tab
• Values and Dreams are combined in the "Values" sub-tab of the Personality tab
• Preferences are displayed in the "Preferences" sub-tab of the Personality tab
• and Needs are displayed in the fourth and final sub-tab of the Personality tab

Needs and Preferences currently both have their own articles, while the rest are combined into Personality traits.

I think it makes sense to split them up, but it also might helpful to have traits and values listed together so I don't have to remember or think about which of BRAVERY and LOYALTY is a trait and which is a value. Jecowa (talk) 19:31, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

A problem with having Values and Personality traits in the same article is that in links to specific values or traits, it's impossible to tell if it is a trait or a value until clicking the link. Jecowa (talk) 01:46, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps it would be possible to split the article, but also have a combined article that just automatically mirrors the tables from the pieces. Jecowa (talk) 01:55, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

Another way to deal with the links issue without splitting the article would be giving "trait:", "value:", or "dream:" prefixes to all the link anchors like with the two perseverances. Jecowa (talk) 03:05, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

To be honest, this should probably be three separate pages: one for Personality Traits, one for Personality Values, and one for Personality Goals (the actual name Toady uses in the data structures - it just happens that all but 3 of them are Dreams). --Quietust (talk) 16:32, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

I think that explains the MAINTAIN_ENTITY_STATUS and STAY_ALIVE dreams. I wasn't sure if those two were supposed to be there. MAINTAIN_ENTITY_STATUS especially seems odd. Just like technical goals that don't really matter as a player. IMMORTALITY is the third? I think calling them goals is fine. The goals aren't confusing like the traits, values, and maybe attributes. And there's not a "dreams" tab like with "traits" and "values".

Are they actually called "personality values" and "personality goals"? Values and goals seem like completely different things than personality traits, just grouped together to help make better use of space in the character sheet. Are they called "personality preferences" and "personality needs" too? Jecowa (talk) 19:20, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

At least within the code, Values are "struct personality_valuest" + "enum PersonalityValueType", and Goals are "struct personality_goalst" + "enum PersonalityGoalType". And yes, Personality Preferences are "struct personality_preferencest" + "enum PersonalityPreferenceType" (and are actually distinct from the traditional Preferences "struct unitprefst" + "enum UnitPrefs" which are stored at the Soul level) and Needs are "struct personality_needst" + "enum PersonalityNeedType". --Quietust (talk) 13:34, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

That's interesting about 2 types of preferences. Traditional preference is like preferring dwarven wine, and maybe personality preference is like preferring friends and romantic interests who have particular personality traits?

If they need to be have something before them, maybe say "personal goal" instead of "personality goal". A potential problem with calling it a "personal value", though, is that values can also be cultural. Except when used with traits, I think "personal" sounds more normal than "personality" as a prefix for values, goals, preferences, and needs.

I think it's kind of nice to have traits and values together, but it also makes sense to separate them. I think there might be some historical reason to keep them together in that I think some of the values used to be traits. And with them combined, I only have to search one article to find MARTIAL_PROWESS. But maybe I would learn to tell them apart faster if they were in different articles. Jecowa (talk) 19:24, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Doubled values

"The ability to learn allows a creature to have values or values." No it doesn't; it is, in fact, a typo (or contains one, at least). Although I can't quite put my finger on what was intended - I'd have, as usual, fixed it myself if that were the case. Silverwing235 (talk) 20:48, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

It originally said "values or dreams" in the creature token article, but I changed "dreams" to "values" for the values section of this article. Jecowa (talk) 21:58, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

Plural article title? On a wiki?

Although singular titles are preferred, it's only preferred. Sometimes it doesn't work as well. In addition to it sounding a little weird, the singular version of "values" has a different meaning. If the article was titled "value", I might think it's "value" in the sense of getting the most value out of your ores or getting the best value out of trades with merchants. Using the plural "values" makes the meaning more clear, and it matches the wording used in-game for both it and "traits" in their respective tabs. Jecowa (talk) 05:52, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

Daggers

These personality traits all have daggers next to them with no indication of what they indicate:

WASTEFULNESS† VANITY† AMBITION† GRATITUDE† IMMODESTY† HUMOR† VENGEFUL† HOPEFUL† CURIOUS† PERFECTIONIST† TOLERANT† THOUGHTLESSNESS† ORDERLINESS† EXCITEMENT_SEEKING† IMAGINATION† ABSTRACT_INCLINED† ART_INCLINED†

Checked an old version from 2022 and the DF2014: version, and no mention of their purpose there either. Jecowa (talk) 10:27, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

Nvm, found it above the traits:

Traits which are marked below with "†" also contribute to relationships – values which are significantly different (i.e. greater than 60 in one creature and less than 40 in the other) will contribute toward the formation of grudges.

Jecowa (talk) 10:44, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

Table vertical alignment

Just a note that links to the anchored names of Traits, Values, and Dreams now lead to the tops of their rows. The downside is that the row headers are no longer aligned center and are instead aligned top so that the anchors can sit at the tops of their cells. Jecowa (talk) 10:41, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

Empty Space / White Space in Tables

At first I thought this was something solvable– The tables had formatting errors causing cells to take up too much space and not take advantage of all the empty space around them. Then I realized it was intentional and there was meaning being conveyed by the cell height of the Effects column.

Since the tables are quite large, it might be helpful to have a summary list somewhere with links to their main sections below. And maybe the sections below could link back up to the compact version at the top, so you can quickly get back to the table of contents after checking one out in further detail. Or maybe put the table of contents at the bottom and call it the index.

Maybe the summaries could still indicate what the traits and values effect. For example, maybe say "Receives (un)happy thought when slaughtering/caging animals and felling trees."

It looks like there are 50 traits, 33 values, and 15 dreams. It's a lot of stuff to scroll through. The dreams are already pretty compact, so maybe they don't need a summarized version.

Maybe put the summarized descriptions in the same cell as them so we can use multiple columns for compactness without causing confusion on which descriptions go with which traits or values. Jecowa (talk) 17:08, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

An advantage to placing the summaries at the bottom instead of the top is that then they would be right next to the dreams, which do not need a summary. Jecowa (talk) 18:45, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

Does this have anything at all to do with the ability (or not) to do anything about the massive, overwhelmingly space-hogging blocks of green and blue in the 'Token' columns of the 'Trait' and 'Value' tables? Makes for quite the intimidating opener when browsing, you see. Silverwing235 (talk) 11:01, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Maybe could rotate the text in the left column to make it vertical? Could also move it above their sections instead of to the left, but that could make it confusing on if they are the labels for the sections below or the sections above. Jecowa (talk) 19:21, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Unknown personality traits and values

I saw these mentioned in other articles and don't know what traits or values they refer do:

• "guarded in relationships with others" - Liar & Consoler - fixed
• "Straightforward" - Flatterer - fixed
• "Reserved" - Conversationalist - fixed
• "self-conscious" - Comedian - fixed

Jecowa (talk) 05:18, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

It looks like the names of some of these changed around the 0.40 or 0.34 eras. Here's what I think these are:

• STRAIGHTFORWARDNESS = Value:TRUTH
• "is guarded in relationships with others" = a range of the former "STRAIGHTFORWARDNESS" (which is probably now the value TRUTH)
• "Reserved" = a range of Trait:FRIENDLINESS
• "self-conscious" - I think the most-likely suspect is MERRIMENT. There used to be a "SELF_CONSCIOUSNESS" back in ~v0.34. Jecowa (talk) 06:37, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Just updated the above 5 articles to reflect the info in this article. Jecowa (talk) 21:50, 14 October 2024 (UTC)