Suggestions to improve the UI

[Battlefront.com]

GSX,

To clear a few things up here, I do appreciate the feedback from BF when it too is positive. I fully realise that your company is a very small fish in a big sea and that right now your in a small pickle as SF probably isnt doing as well as you would have liked it to do.

You understand correctly that we are a small company, you understand incorrectly about the sales. This is, for the most part, a place for people to complain and ask for clarification. Based on the CMx1 discussions you guys all think we made millions off of CMx1 and are living luxurious lives, then you see the discussions for CM:SF and think we're about to go out of business. Both perceptions are completely divorced from reality. One should never, ever think of the discussions here as anything more than discussions. They do not indicate sales or overall acceptance.

The botched launch has probably done the most harm and the amount of time since publishing to having a working product hasnt helped either. I also understand that BF isnt Microsoft or Ubi soft or even Matrix. And I for one wouldnt want it to be.

The difficulties of the past few months certainly haven't been good, but I will once again remind you that "functioning product" is in the eye of the beholder. Some people felt that v1.01 was pretty good, others think v1.05 still sucks. There is a range of opinion and it would be good to remember that.

However, the state of the UI doesnt help the fact that you wanted or still want to appear to the casual gamer, its just too complicted. The reason I asked if the UI was playtested on people who didnt play CM wasnt because of a chip on my shoulder it was a serious question.

Most of the guys who beta tested had some degree of experience with CMx1, though a few had none. I'm going to guess that everybody has some experience with FPS and RTS games, but definitely some more than others.

I am not anti SF anymore than Im anti TOAW or any other wargame. Any modern game should be able to be played straight out of the box without too much effort. If you make it too difficult to learn then in todays gaming climate you simply get a one off purchase that is never repeated and very soon your game ends up heavily discounted in bargain bins, which of course is a good strategy for those other companies, but not I suspect for yourselves.

Unfortunately, wargames inherently do NOT lend themselves to being used 'out of the box without too much effort". It's one reason why wargaming constitutes a % of the game market that probably doesn't even register to the left of the decimal. I will also, once again, remind you that there were loads of people that felt CMx1's UI was unintuitive and horrid to use. Yet you seem to have liked it, which simply underscores my central point:

USER INTERFACE IS EXTREMELY PERSONAL

So I would agree with others here. The UI for me is one of the main sticking points to playing and enjoying the game.

And that is something I would never, in a million years, argue with. Which is why we are doing things that will, hopefully, make it less of a sticking point for you. Just keep in mind that it will never be perfect since there is no such thing.

c3k

As for my statement of "everyone", I did not mean that literally. What do I know what 5 billion people think? I meant it to mean "everyone who has written in this thread to complain about the current UI".

Well obviously 100% of the people complaining are complaining, so I doubt that is what you meant to say since you might as say "when it rains things get wet". What you said, and I corrected you on, is that EVERYBODY agrees the UI is crap. That's a statement that isn't true, so we're left with the obvious and that is all the complaining people are complaining. Not very useful information to highlight, me thinks

Dirtweasle,

So was the original documentation badly designed, or the mousepad with the flawed information? Given that the design of the controls is not the issue one of those choices must then be correct, no?

Er... no. Individuals have different opinions as to what the optimal setup is, therefore we allow them to choose for themselves what they want to use. Unfortunately we can't make those changes magically transform text in manuals and mousepads.

Look, I agree that now since you can map the keys, (even though it makes the mousepad nearly worthless), it's a workable arrangement, but you do recall that the keys were initially not mapped as per the manual? ...and that then they were changed / re-mapped in a patch. ...and that another later patch re-mapped or wrote over them again. Right?

Yes, it was a mistake to not have the ability to customize keys built into the first version, which is why we quickly corrected it. Based on further feedback we revised the format to include user suggestions, which required a different file be shipped with the patch so people could get that functionality. I'm not sure what your point is, though. Are you saying that we should have not listened to customers and kept it the way it was?

As for the mousepad comments... it's still very useful. The primary information it shows is the relative positions and groupings of each Command. That hasn't changed at all, so it's still completely relevant. I suspect that's why out of all the people that have one you are the only one, to my knowledge, that complains about it. At the very least you're the only one that harps on as frequently (and in as many Forums) as you do.

It's nice that if the customer wants to take the time and make the effort they can change the keys, especially since the mapping to letters made little sense out of the box, but I still don't quite understand why move away from the way it worked for years with the previous product. Seems more like an unnecessary change for no logical reason than a change for improvement.

That's entirely correct. We change things willy nilly without any thinking being involved. In fact, that is our primary directive... to change things that don't need to be changed just to change them, then to hopefully pick the choice that pisses off the most amount of people the quickest. In fact, we intend to completely change everything in CM:SF when we move to CM:WW2. Why? Because it's fun to get you guys riled up and to have a less functional game in the process. Mind you, we won't actually THINK about how to do this because that would mean violating the prime directive you've identified... and that is to do unnecessary things without logical reason.

Now that I've shown how ridiculous your position is by being sarcastic, I'll once again restate what should be obvious after all these years of discussions here:

The CMx2 engine was meticulously made from the ground up without any preconditions. Since the UI of CMx1 was designed for the CMx1 game engine, we made a new UI that was purpose built for CMx2 and did not try to shoehorn in the old with the new. That philosophy is central to all design decisions made, not just the UI. The CMx2 UI is, in our opinion, better designed for CMx2 than the CMx1 UI is. That's why it's different.

Steve

[Dirtweasle]

Argument by ridicule. Nice. I think all you've shown (again) is why I'll never again pre-order a thing with your name associated with it.

[Battlefront.com]

Dirtweasle,

Argument by ridicule. Nice. I think all you've shown (again) is why I'll never again pre-order a thing with your name associated with it.

Well, if you ask for ridicule then you get ridicule. Or do you think that saying we spend years making features without reason or thought is somehow a compliment? Honestly, if you come in here with a bad attitude it will be noticed and responded to as such (you even posted to another Forum that you were gunning for me). Or do you think I'm too stupid to notice?

Either way, you received what you were seeking, including answers to your questions. If you can neither understand them nor accept them, that's your problem and not mine.

Steve

[ January 28, 2008, 12:43 PM: Message edited by: Battlefront.com ]

[Tactical Wargamer]

Well would love to see a WEGO option for MP games

[c3k]

Now THAT would be awesome!

WEGO with multiplayer. Drool.

Of course, with a different UI it would be better. (C'mon, it was too easy!)

Thanks,

Ken

[[hirr]Leto]

Steve,

I think the majority of players who liked WEGO and think that AI in CMx1 is better than that of CMx2 is that they play a lot of PBEM. A lot of the autonomous aspects of CMx1 are good, especially when playing against a human opponent, which I only play myself. I would never play the AI as you are setting yourself up for an irreducible comparison that will leave you disappointed, especially not knowing how either game engine works and "thinks". From everything I have read, CMx2 is without a doubt, a better AI platform.

On the other hand, my sense is that CMx2 can be much more playable against the AI with proper scripted scenarios, and from the little I know about the gaming industry, those games that people can play against the computer on their own time without having to wait for an opponent, either PBEM, or IP, are more popular. I'm not saying that CMx2 is not playable head to head... but perhaps that it does not play as well head to head as the old CMx1 version in the WEGO format, especially from a CMx1 mindset.

On top of that, I think the real problem you have is that this new warfare concept is just not the clear cut force against force of world war 2 CMx1 ilk, and that your concept of blue and red is lost on the "chess game" head to head players who espouse balance. You've said somewhere else that blue vs blue or red vs red may be the way to go for those people.

Once you make a game too "real" you take the surreal balance element out of the equation that allows two players to play against each other thinking that their chances for winning should be dictated by their own capacity. I do not feel that is the sense that players get from CMx2.

Long story short, two radically different games from many perspectives.

Speaking for myself, I would have loved an upgraded version of CMx1, as I am comfortable with it, would love the new toys, etc and would also not have to worry about embracing a new game that my hard fought experience in CM ladders may provide little advantage. That this may have not made business sense to you is also quite acceptable because the gaming world moves on through technology, and thus cannot accomodate a move that is laterally, although graphics and playability may be upgraded. You need to set out building a new game, a new experience.

I was an old Xcom player, and loved the first two, and hoped that the third would be more of the same. It wasn't. They added real time, and the game just didn't play all too well in turn based... it added to much reality to it... to much chaos... and diluted the "surreal" of the old games that allowed one control.

I do research on entrepreneurs and find that the element of "control" is a huge factor for most people, and they would rather control their future rather than predict it... as far as they can control things, they don't have to predict. Thus a game injecting "reality" into the matrix may not sit well with some people... for others, they will appreciate the "reality". For the former, the game is not fun... for the latter, it's a hoot! But your dealing with two entirely different cognitive perspectives that cannot be reconciled easy.

I for one wish you the best on the WW 2 version, but already realize that I a control type wargame player, and will probably not like it either. For us, the only thing we have to look forward to is CMC... thus I can understand why you have to deal with so much bitterness on these boards... the passion of those of us for the original CMx1 burns pretty bright.

As a business economist, I understand your position from an unattached perspective. Most others here cannot.

The awful reality of the situation is that you have to determine the power of your stakeholders, and TBH, us old CMx1'rs just don't have a lot of clout.

Anyways, I hope this ramble adds some much needed clarity (I doubt it, but I tried).

Cheers!

Leto

[Battlefront.com]

Leto,

We've covered this ground a bunch of times already, but I'll just say that we understood all of this (and a lot more) back in the middle of CMBB development when we realized we had to scrap the existing code because it was too difficult to work with and further more that radical change to the underlying game system was necessary because it was becoming too dated. Obviously some people don't believe this to be true/necessary, but it's easy to say that when said person only has $45 riding on the gamble and they don't have any of the facts in front of them.

We also knew that by not doing WWII that we'd anger some people and please others. It's a tradeoff and the WWII people should be gracious to understand that we're not their personal game developers. We have other interests ourselves and we have every right to pursue them.

If the market doesn't want our products, then the market will decide that. It already decided that CMx1 was a dead end, so instead of allowing the market to for sure kill us off we did the sensible thing and created a true, ground up redo of the original engine's concepts. Whether this will succeed in the long term is obviously still yet to be decided. Having said that, we feel we've got the product we need to keep ourselves afloat for the near future and we have no regrets about the decisions we made to break away from CMx1.

How does that tie into this thread? Well, because of what I said a few times here already. We tailored a new UI to a new game system. Since no game is perfect, we've been changing things based on user feedback. For some what we're doing is welcomed, for others nothing short of trashing the whole engine and turning the clock backwards 4 years will do. For those people... we have nothing more to offer them, for the rest we do.

It's rather simple

Steve

[ January 28, 2008, 03:13 PM: Message edited by: Battlefront.com ]

[[hirr]Leto]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

Leto,

We've covered this ground a bunch of times already, but I'll just say that we understood all of this (and a lot more) back in the middle of CMBB development when we realized we had to scrap the existing code because it was too difficult to work with and further more that radical change to the underlying game system was necessary because it was becoming too dated. Obviously some people don't believe this to be true/necessary, but it's easy to say that when said person only has $45 riding on the gamble and they don't have any of the facts in front of them.

We also knew that by not doing WWII that we'd anger some people and please others. It's a tradeoff and the WWII people should be gracious to understand that we're not their personal game developers. We have other interests ourselves and we have every right to pursue them.

If the market doesn't want our products, then the market will decide that. It already decided that CMx1 was a dead end, so instead of allowing the market to for sure kill us off we did the sensible thing and created a true, ground up redo of the original engine's concepts. Whether this will succeed in the long term is obviously still yet to be decided. Having said that, we feel we've got the product we need to keep ourselves afloat for the near future and we have no regrets about the decisions we made to break away from CMx1.

How does that tie into this thread? Well, because of what I said a few times here already. We tailored a new UI to a new game system. Since no game is perfect, we've been changing things based on user feedback. For some what we're doing is welcomed, for others nothing short of trashing the whole engine and turning the clock backwards 4 years will do. For those people... we have nothing more to offer them, for the rest we do.

It's rather simple

Steve

I agree wholeheartedly. Kuhnian paradigm shift logic in full effect.

The mechanisms are there for those who wish to contribute feedback to the new game, whether or not you like or even play its current iteration (as long as the understanding is there that feedback does not mean instant adoption).

And hey, it won't be for everyone. I'm still eternally grateful to BF for CMx1 even though I don't play CMx2.

Who knows? Perhaps CMx2 WW2 will be an advance that even someone like I will want to play some day. And if not, c'est la vie.

But out of all the wargaming companies out there, I think you guys still have the greatest promise for delivering what wargamers want... no matter the context.

I think that little point has been lost on many.

Anyways, end of my two cents, I shall return to lurker mode.

Cheers!

Leto

[Battlefront.com]

Leto,

And hey, it won't be for everyone. I'm still eternally grateful to BF for CMx1 even though I don't play CMx2.

Who knows? Perhaps CMx2 WW2 will be an advance that even someone like I will want to play some day. And if not, c'est la vie.

A fantastic attitude, so kudos to you We do not expect our customers to always like what we do, but some customers expect that they should always like what we do. Hence the problems when their expectations do not match with what we intend on delivering. And I'm not talking about buggy product... that's something separate and we're definitely trying hard to make up for that. Nobody's perfect and I would think that people playing a single game for 7 years should be a bit more forgiving since, on balance, they've come out way ahead of the average gamer that burns through a $45 product ever couple of months.

But out of all the wargaming companies out there, I think you guys still have the greatest promise for delivering what wargamers want... no matter the context.

I think that little point has been lost on many.

Thanks and I do believe it has been lost on many because to some customers it's a Pyrrhic relationship. Either we give them exactly what they want, or we might as well burn in Hell for all eternity. Not a healthy, loving relationship for sure, but it's not unexpected since wargamers have a long history of mood swings

It's the age old dilemma for wargamers; they need smart, dedicated people who are willing to work long hours for very little compensation to get the sort of wargame they long for. Yet to voluntarily put up with all the grief they get from customers, even when the game is well received, the developers also need to be dumb as rocks. To quote from one of the best inspirational speeches in movie history:

Otter: I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part.

Bluto: We're just the guys to do it.

Rock on Jim, wherever you are, for giving us the inspiration to keep going forward and not quit after the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor!

Steve

[markl]

I suppose this could be considered off topic, but to me the interface has been considerably improoved with the patches.

I have played quiet a few computer games over the years and the interface has always been up for discussion. With FPS I like to use the arrow keys to move, but I do get buy with WASD if that is all I can use. I have purchased a few programable keyboards and controllers over the years that have really made it easier for this sort of game.

For me the new mouse controls are a real breakthrough that I hope others follow.

I would like to see more effort in fixing some of the game play issues themselves than the interface at this stage.

If possible could the interface be made more modable? and let the community play around with it. That way Battlefront could spend some time on the other game play issues themselves.

Just my thoughts.

Cheers MarkL

[Skinnedpuppy]

I think the problem with the UI is that precedents have been established for various game types.

If you look at FPS every single one uses WSAD for movement controls, Space for Jump, C for crouch etc There are variations for the game specific commands but the core is the same every time.

This extends to RTS in a similar way with conventions established for various mouse clicks and gestures.

Now Battlefront have done something different that defies the already established conventions meaning a new interface style has to be learned.

Whether it is better or not has largely been ignored because people are more focused on the fact it is different and want it to be the same as the style they have already learned. When people say it’s un-intuitive it’s because is not the established RTS Control System.

IMO standardisation is a good thing, you shouldn’t change it unless you’ve proven some significant benefits.

[Battlefront.com]

MarkL,

I suppose this could be considered off topic, but to me the interface has been considerably improoved with the patches

Thanks!

For me the new mouse controls are a real breakthrough that I hope others follow.

According to some you're wrong for thinking this, but of course I think they are wrong for thinking you shouldn't be thinking that

Skinnedpuppy,

I think the problem with the UI is that precedents have been established for various game types.

That is certainly 95% of the objections, yes. Especially the ones who are directly stating that we should have left the UI *exactly* as it was in CMx1. The irony is that UI broke a lot of conventions too and it's part of the reason we had a lot of flak about the original UI. It's just that people got used to it and now forget that at the time they probably were complaining or at least reading lots of complaints from others.

If you look at FPS every single one uses WSAD for movement controls, Space for Jump, C for crouch etc There are variations for the game specific commands but the core is the same every time.

Which is why the default keys were like that, even though I personally don't like that setup. During testing it was agreed, by consensus, that we should not break the FPS convention even though it didn't make a lot of sense to keep it. That's basically the problem we've been butting up against the whole time...

Whether it is better or not has largely been ignored because people are more focused on the fact it is different and want it to be the same as the style they have already learned. When people say it’s un-intuitive it’s because is not the established RTS Control System.

Very true, but the UI for RTS and FPS games are often contradictory. Normally a game is so clearly one or the other that people don't give this a second thought. In RTS the mouse is dedicated to issuing orders and checking on units, in FPS it is used for "looking around" (or aiming, if you like) with the camera. Since RTS games are all top down or isometric, and FPS games are inherently first person in a 3D environment, it makes sense that the mouse behavior is not the same.

In a FPS game you need to have far quicker, more precise, and more diverse control over where the camera is pointing. Especially in a free flowing 3D environment. Since the ability to point the camera literally is a matter of "life and death" in a FPS game, and the mouse offers a far superior instrument for achieving that, it makes sense that the mouse is the standard for navigating the environment.

The original CMx1 games used an interface that was unique to it, but it more-or-less conformed to RTS conventions. We felt, and many customers agreed, that it was clunky. The RTS camera controls meant a heavy reliance on the keyboard for navigating the map. That was sorta OK at the time because the lower level of detail in CMx1 meant that you could be less precise with the camera and still probably see what you needed to see. Lay of the land, exact placement of units, etc. was really not all that important most of the time. When it was, the camera controls were quite clunky. Not too big of an issue since the game was WeGo, but still annoying.

IMO standardisation is a good thing, you shouldn’t change it unless you’ve proven some significant benefits.

With CMx2 we found early on that the old CMx1 UI wasn't going to work. So we set about trying to make the UI more like a FPS game and NOT like an RTS game. However, there are elements absent from FPS games that still apply, namely the 3rd person perspective and the whole notion of issuing Commands from a rather lengthy list of possibilities (FPS games have less than a half dozen in general and they are always immediate one-offs).

Therefore, just like CMx1 we were faced with two established conventions and a game that required elements of both, but in doing so could not conform to either. So ironically, those asking us to conform to a standard are asking us to abandon the CMx1 UI, which is fine but I get the strong sense that isn't what they want. Probably because they've told me so a thousand times that they want the old non-conforming UI back in "as is" And then there is the problem of which standard, FPS or RTS, that we should go with.

The bottom line here is that no matter what we chose to do we would have a significant portion of our users cheezed off at us. Some because we didn't choose their particular desired "standard" (RTS, FPS, or CMx1), others because we did and they found it doesn't work very well. Therefore, we decided to simply do what was best for the game and then go from there.

It is clear to us that a significant portion of people want the original, clunky and non conforming, CMx1 UI available in CMx2. Why? Because they are used to it, nothing more than that. They are also largely WeGo players, which makes a bit of sense because the CMx1 system really doesn't work well in RealTime. So we're adding additional UI features into CMx2 to help the WeGoer's enjoy the game better. But we aren't going to rip out the existing UI simply because they personally don't like it.

In the end the CMx2 UI will not conform to either RTS or FPS standards because it isn't in the game's best interest to do so. What we'll wind up with is a more-or-less CMx1 non-conforming UI and a CMx2 non-conforming UI to choose from. If people don't like that, there's not much we can do about it.

Steve

[Dirtweasle]

You know I'm not talking about the whole look and feel UI as being unsatisfying or poorly laid out or designed.

It's the counter-intuitive keyboard shortcuts or hotkeys.

Are the hotkey files sharable? If so, does anyone have a hotkeys file that has mapped the commands to the CMSF style, you know where M = Move, and F = Fast and R = Reverse and so on are like in the past where the shortcut keys had better relevance to the order?

[M1A1TC]

Originally posted by Rollstoy:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by c3k:

(P.S. Melnibone; I will, one day, reassign hotkeys.

For your own sanity, do this as quickly as possible! You must be really enthusiastic if you can play the original system!

Here are some of my hotkeys ...

M ... Move

Q ... Quick

S ... Slow

F ... Fast

A ... Assault

B ... Blast

U ... Hunt

R ... Reverse

T ... Target

Y ... Target light

V ... Cover Arc

N ... Face

H ... Hide

O ... open up

D ... Deploy

+ ... aquire

\ ... split team

Best regards,

Thomm </font>

[Pandur]

hehe, the important thing is that 60% of the buttons you "know" already, if you map em like in CMx1. mine looks nearly identical, the outcome is the same. it is fluid and compftable. the only downside, in WeGo you cant lean back and relax while issueing commands with the mouse only, you allways need one hand on the mouse and one for the shortcuts.

when you are used to useing shortcuts its no hassle.

[M1A1TC]

Ive never use hot keys in CM1, just the mouse. I only play WEGO, single player.

As you can see, I am not a happy customer with CMSF UI

[Other Means]

Originally posted by Dirtweasle:

You know I'm not talking about the whole look and feel UI as being unsatisfying or poorly laid out or designed.

It's the counter-intuitive keyboard shortcuts or hotkeys.

Are the hotkey files sharable? If so, does anyone have a hotkeys file that has mapped the commands to the CMSF style, you know where M = Move, and F = Fast and R = Reverse and so on are like in the past where the shortcut keys had better relevance to the order?

Here you go.

[Pandur]

Ive never use hot keys in CM1, just the mouse. I only play WEGO, single player.

As you can see, I am not a happy customer with CMSF UI

i play WeGo only too, and i have the habit of having to finish a scenario in one go if its possible by any means. so i take a moment with much time when i plan on playing a big battle and play a monster 8 houers WeGo session. naturally after 5 houers you notice the attrition

there i start to lean back, relax, eat something, use the mouse only on CMx1. at that point CMSF gets a bit problematic for me too, but well at that point i am also that much dug into the scenario, i dont care anymore that moment

[Dirtweasle]

That's what I've been doing is mouse clicking through, and it kind of sucks, but have not taken the time to sit down to edit the keys.

Maybe I am just spoiled playing with my 360 and the PS2 before that and become used to going to a screen inside the game where you can move command shortcuts around if you want to.

[M1A1TC]

You are not spoiled, you just expect good game design

[Pandur]

Maybe I am just spoiled playing with my 360 and the PS2

not to start a PC vs consol discussion, but you cant compared that. consols are primarily made for "ease of use". you plug it, put in the disc and play. while you have to maintain different sort of drivers of all sorts, maintain your hardware, upgrade is some cases, if you own a PC.

for that workload you get multifunctionality, a consol will nerver have anytime soon, simply becouse it wouldnt be foolproof than.

point is that it would be most tragic if you cant edit the keys in the programm on consols as you can NOT edit it anywhere else. you can not manipulate text files on the game CD.

while on the PC its not optimal but it can be asumed that the users wich really like to have it different do that simple step, i guess.

enough about Consols vs PC

[ January 29, 2008, 01:32 PM: Message edited by: Pandur ]

[c3k]

I'm just glad that BF.C is working on improving the UI by adding functionality for those who aren't comfortable with, or used to, hotkeys.

Thanks,

Ken

[Battlefront.com]

M1A1TC,

Ive never use hot keys in CM1, just the mouse.

Honestly, I don't know how you guys ever finished a game of CMx1 playing with just the mouse. Ungodly slow. Even the static, "must memorize" hotkey system of CMx1 was a lot faster and easier to use than mouse only IMHO. But obviously each to his own.

Dirtweasle,

That's what I've been doing is mouse clicking through, and it kind of sucks, but have not taken the time to sit down to edit the keys.

I think that's part of your problem with the UI. It is true that as of v1.05 the game is not designed to be a primarily "mouse for everything" experience, hence the problems mouse only guys are having with it. However, it is untrue that you have to use unintuitive, oddly placed hotkeys that need to be remembered. I only have to remember to keep my hand centered over the 9 relative keys and I'm pretty much set. Very little need to move, very little need to remember anything. The defaults are like that too, but in the wrong place on the keyboard for my tastes. Not surprising since, as I've said many times, this is more about personal tastes than there being a "one right answer".

This is another thing to keep in mind when talking about "standards" of RTS and FPS games. The standards are only guidelines, really. I know that I do not play a single game with its default key setup. One reason or another I find it better for me to move them around. When I'm done my setup doesn't look much like the standard. I doubt many people keep things to the default. It's just too personal to have it be otherwise.

Maybe I am just spoiled playing with my 360 and the PS2 before that and become used to going to a screen inside the game where you can move command shortcuts around if you want to.

In a perfect world ours would be done graphically like that too. However, we have never put such features higher up in priority than necessary. Heck, CMx1 didn't even allow you to customize the input at all With only so many hours in a day, and far more things to get into the game than there is time, we try for functionality first and beauty second. I doubt we'll ever have the luxury to change that approach.

Steve

[Dirtweasle]

Could be Pandur, and at the risk of digressing further, I play mainly sports games on the 360. In that case it really helps to have the buttons be convenient, so I suppose I rationalize it this way; You have to have a really good button layout when it's such a critical part of the game. I really don't own many games, PC or 360, and so don't have a wide variety to compare.

[Battlefront.com]

Dirtweasle,

That and by necessity there aren't that many ways of controlling something. It's usually a few buttons and lots of combinations. For example, in a fighting game you usually have two joysticks and a couple of buttons for attacking and defending special abilities. That's really it. But the combos are quite extensive. Works pretty well, but it takes time to remember that left up + right side + trigger button produces a roundhouse sword strike with a secondary upcut

As stated up in this thread somewhere... unfortunately wargames, by their very nature, are vastly more complex beasts from a UI standpoint. Wargames that attempt to limit the number of ways to control a unit tend to either be dumbed down in general (like 99% of the RTS games) or offer less options than wargamers want. BELIEVE me we would love to have had 9 Commands and call it a day, but it doesn't work that way Even with the plethora we have there are sill calls for more!

Steve