Feedback: New "Interact" Button Placement; Suggestion

The E key is now set for "Interact".

This may be fine for new players, but all of us old players are ingrained to use E to rotate our avatars or deco.

My solution is this:

1. Move "Interact" to F.

2. Move "Social" (currently on F) to H. (for "Hello!")

3. Consolidate "Blocked Players" (currently on H) to the "Social" menu.

This will put the Social menu out of the common movement/interaction area, while adding use to the H key in a way that is helpful.

 

+1

Having keys do less things each will lead to muscle memory working to a gamers advantage. Muscle memory is huge on the computer. When you complicate things by changing it there tends to be frustration. Social panel should all go to 1 key to free up the F key for "function" or use/interact/etc... H for Hello... B for Bags.... oh wait... sorry... too far there I guess...

 

Established industry standards are a wonderful thing. They allow new players to start playing a game and use the controls that they are used to from countless other modern games, without having to relearn them.
Further, they don't have to do awkward mental adjustments when they switch between SotA and Fallout 4, ESO, etc., which all adhere to long established convention.
There is an entire world of other games out there, and over the years certain conventions have emerged. Conventions that people expect.

I know, things were different in the past. Each game had its own unique interface that players had to adjust to when they switched games, and players got used to the idiosyncrasies of their favourite game.

That is why we have key rebinding, so that people can adjust the interface to better suit their personal preferences. The default, however, should conform with long accepted industry practice.

The most basic, widely established conventions are:

WASD controls for motion
SHIFT+W to run (next on the list I hope)
CTRL or C to crouch (ha ha)
SPACE to jump
E to interact
TAB for overall access to immersive in-game information, settings, etc. (Parts of this are usually directly accessible via shortcuts: J for journal, etc.)
ESC for access to other settings (audio, video, control rebinds, etc.)

EDIT:

From this article:

The WASD key combination was introduced into games to replace the usage of the arrow keys. The WASD keys have two advantages over the arrow keys: 1) They are more comfortable to use when controlling a mouse with the right hand and 2) they are closely surrounded by many other keys that can be used for different functions (IE, "use", "reload", "run", "crouch", and "turn on/off flashlight"). These two advantages have made the WASD setup the default control setting for many games.

Surrounding Keys
As additional gameplay elements have been introduced to the different genres, certain keys neighbouring the WASD cluster have become almost as universal as the movement keys themselves. Actions like run/sprint (left shift), jump (spacebar), crouch (Ctrl), use (E), flashlight (F), drop weapon (Q), and chat/talk (T) are almost always the default in both shooters and MMORPGs, although they occasionally trade weapon-focused keys for window hotkeys, and R (reload in FPS) is usually an autorun key.

Due to their proximity, caps lock is sometimes used as a run/walk toggle and tab brings up the score sheet or task list, depending on the single or multiplayer focus of the game in question.

The placement of your hand on WASD also allows easy access to the number keys, which can be used to select weapons in a FPS and preset abilities or skills in a MMORPG.

 

I understand that E is usually the interact key... but this is SotA and Richard has a name to live up to... every key has to mean something other than what it's supposed to and there has to be a reason for it and the whole keyboard has to get used. Wait, I mean... E is already something else! And without a dedicated decoration mode that remaps all the keys I think the recommendation from Jack Knyfe makes the most sense.

 

Q+E are not uniquely used for Interact and Drop weapon (honestly never seen drop weapon on any game). They have been used very frequently for exactly what they were until just recently, rotation. Using the square brackets (or anything other than Q+E) for thi,s will cause a lot of confusion for many players. I've had to bind Q+E manually back to rotation as I use them exclusively for navigating the world map, and frequently navigating in scenes.
IMO, if you have time to interact with an object, you have time and concentration to move your finger further from the movement home keys; while moving having to use the other side of the keyboard is practically useless, you can't move forward and rotate.

 

I was trying out combat in QA a while ago, and it was an absolute pleasure to be able to approach an object with one finger pressing W and start harvesting/loot it/take all with the adjacent finger pressing E. It is much faster and more convenient than having to drag the mouse cursor across and double click.

 

The keyboard bindable "interact" function is a wonderful addition. However I would not worry too much about the "perfect" binding in the WASD base configuration, as there probably isn't any.

You see, the main problem with the "standard" WASD key configuration is that it is not very suitable for games with lots of keyboard bindings.

There are currently over 90 functions in SotA that are bindable to keys and/or mouse buttons. Of these, depending on one's playstyle, around 8-36 functions are "time-critical" in combat, i.e. they need to be always available without any delay, either via keyboard or mouse buttons, without looking at the keyboard. The WASD configuration provides "quick" access to 9 additional keys, i.e. keys that are within one key distance from the movement keys, this can be multiplied with the modifier keys (CTRL and Shift). Additionally there are 8 keys that can be reasonably be regarded as reachable using just muscle memory. This is not necessarily enough for those who want to use their keyboard for glyph manipulation.

One additional (in my opinion a huge) issue with WASD is that it goes completely against the muscle memory of touch typists that are used to typing without looking at the keyboard.

For these reasons, I think it is extremely unfortunate that the WASD configuration has become the de facto "industry standard" in PC gaming, instead of the ESDF configuration, which is superior in almost all aspects (supports touch typist muscle memory, compatible with WASD muscle-memory-wise, provides immediate access to 12 additional "quick" keys and 10 "reasonably reachable" keys, provides a "bump" in the "F" key for easy tactile confirmation of correct hand placement on the keyboard).

That said, I do support WASD as the default SotA layout, if only because it is still the de facto "standard". Those who want something different can (and will) cook up their own bindings. However I would very much prefer to have the keyboard/mouse bindings to be exportable, importable and shareable via a simple configuration file...you really start to wish for such a thing after reconfiguring your keybindings in the QA server the seventh time, each time changing about 40 bindings...

I currently use the highly useful "Interact" bound to key "2", which is one of the quickest of the "reasonably reachable" keys in the ESDF configuration (the 12 "quick" keys immediately around ESDF are reserved for 10 glyph hotkeys, the glyph combine hotkey, and the cursor mode key). Works beautifully.

 

@helm I believe Voice Attack (even if you ignore the voice part) allows you to remap keys, define key macros, etc. and save those configurations to a file.

 

Thanks @Womby. Yes, it's certainly possible with external tools (Voice Attack seems to be Windows only but there are quite a few tools for Linux and probably Mac as well).

However I was mostly thinking about this in the context of the possibility for exporting and sharing one's configuration easily (in fan sites, even in forums). This is because folks have come up with many workable keybinding schemes, optimized for different playstyles, but many of them require comprehensive changes. A separate, exportable+shareable+importable configuration file (for example in human-readable XML format) would help a lot in trying out different schemes.

I fully agree that standards and established conventions can be very useful. However the complexity of SotA keybindings is almost an order of magnitude higher than in most FPS games, therefore standards can only go so far. I have personally spent quite a few hours trying to optimize the usability of the SotA bindings, and the search goes on!

 

http://gaming.logitech.com/en-us/product/rgb-gaming-keyboard-g910

I got this for my recently built rig... basically got it specifically thinking about SotA and it's been wonderful. The G keys wrap around the left hand now instead of being 2 or 3 rows on the left. It's exceptionally nice to type on and has a really neat RGB editor with it. I can't wait for the ability to customize it for colors to meet types of spells in the game... LUA here we come!

Anyway, back to the topic on hand...
default keybind for use just fits better with F. and B is for Bags... our inventory goes in the bags.... we're not looking into our inventory we're looking into our backpack/bags. B. remapped accordingly and all you young people need to stop putting complaints against B for Bags ... I is for ... well... I can't say it because it's not virtue based. Let's just say it's not smart to use I ...

F for focus or function or fix or find or any other word that the interaction could be used for...

There's a door... let's E for elbow it open......... or we can can F for FORCE it open!
There's a person... let's E for egg it.......... or we can F for Fellowship with them...
There's a dog.... let's E for Extract a response..... or we can F for Facilitate a Follower and Friend...
There's a cat... let's E for kill the thing that cannot be killed because it's got some sort of magical protection that no one understands, not even Lord British, that needs to be removed quickly.... or we can F for ... well I can't say... again with that virtue thing... "stinking" kill the cats!
There's a corpse... let's E for Explore it.... or we can F for Find what's in it's pockets

I can make up lame alliterations all day but I'm on board with the function key being F... okay one more: Finally, facilitate functional fixes fearlessly for fun fortunate fame forever. (I think it should happen because I just wrote ten 'F' words in a row and it made some sort of twisted sense without saying that cat word... )