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.

Minecraft'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.

I'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.