Western RPG control schemes: Are they usually this unintuitive?

So, a while back, I played Baldur's Gate 1 and...well, it was decent, I guess. Going around on the map was a chore, though, what with constantly having to click somewhere ahead of your character. (Why couldn't they just have made your character smaller and show a bigger map, a la Age Of Empires?)

But in that first town, where this one guy conjures up several illusions for you to use in a practice battle, I felt overwhelmed. I'd barely learned how to click stuff to attack stuff (left click? right click? what keys?)...and then suddenly, this? Worst of all, I tried to back out with a mental note for redoing it later, but...no, they don't let you! This is supposed to be your intro to the combat system! ......

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So I started playing Elder Scrolls I: Arena. Yay official freeware game and DOS Box.

Okay. I read up this manual thoroughly before starting. Chose my character's origin and appearance, allocated my extra stat points,...okay! Here we go!

Dark dungeon. I'm supposed to use my mouse to move, right? And my left hand takes care of keyboard commands, like A to toggle whether my weapon is out. Got it.

Okay, moving by mouse is very inconvenient. Wait, I can use the arrow keys to move! I'll put my right hand there. Wait, I still need the mouse to pick up the key in the first room. So how will I deal with having three input clusters—mouse, arrow keys, and letter keys?

Well, I'll figure this out later. At least, we've got this dungeon door unlocked, and now there's a pile of stuff. Let's pick it up! Yay, stuff! Hmm, there's a broadsword there.

...wait, how do I equipped broadsword? ...wait, how do I accessed inventory? ......It took my going onto IRC, asking someone in the know, to find out:

You have to press F1 to get to the character sheet. Then click next page to get to the inventory.

WTF? F1 should be a nice page for telling me what the commands are for playing this freakin' game! F1 is the help key, right?

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Summary question: Is it just these two games, or do WRPGs often have problems with unintuitive controls?

edited 9th Nov '10 2:41:03 PM by GlennMagusHarvey

You are picking older games. Dragon Age made sense, at least on PC. Not so much on 360. I think that WRP Gs are trying to put in as many options as possible, so they can get cramped fast.

In that same vein, I have trouble using the more advanced commands in Command And Conquer like "Force Move," "Select all across map," "Select all across screen," "Select matching across map," and "Select matching across screen" because I can never remember the keys.

I have "Force Fire" and "Set Control Group X" down, but not the ones that are actually helpful.

"Hipsters: the most dangerous gang in the US." - Pacific Mackerel

Learn2customecontrols

Every game I buy now I reassign practically half the control keys.

edited 9th Nov '10 2:51:07 PM by CommandoDude

My other signature is a Gundam.

This is why despite my love for Rougelikes, I can't play most of them because they all feel the need to assign a button to every possible action, I wanted to play Elona but apparently I need a keypad to do so, hence why my favorite rougelike is Shiren because it actually simplifies this crap down.

So I was playing Doom the other day and bugged that I couldn't look up or down. Then I played Quake, and encountered the same problem.

Is it just these two, or do all First Person Shooters restrict your freedom like that?

^Go to the Console in Quake and type something like "mlook 1" without the quotemarks.

For Doom, look for an appropriate Source Port.

edited 9th Nov '10 3:04:59 PM by RocketDude

"Hipsters: the most dangerous gang in the US." - Pacific Mackerel

I think Lizard Bite was making a rhetorical point about trying two very old games in a genre and then asking "Are they all like that?" The genre has changed some since.

A brighter future for a darker age.

They still are a lot harder to get down then JRP Gs, though that might be simply because JRP Gs generally don't punish you for taking a few seconds to think about what to do next, or are just really simple anyway.

Well, if this is just a problem with older games, then fair enough.

@ WORLD Tree: I actually like those control schemes, assuming they're not too farfetched, because everything's quickly accessible from the keyboard, and those are turn-based games, not real-time games. And generally speaking, the letter they use for a command is related to its function.

So you basically have one control cluster, the letter keyboard. It's two-handed, sure, but it's still just one area that's your interface.

I feel it worth noting that D&D-derived crpgs (a dominant brand in the industry) in particular almost always have at least semi-obtuse control schemes. This is because the game engine is struggling to translate every action a character can perform in a 'real' campaign over to a computer format.

If you consider action rpgs to be clones, then Diablo and its clones all have extremely intuitive control schemes. So does the Fallout series, and everything by Spiderweb Software. I'd also consider the Wizardry series easily grasped if you bother to read the button tooltips, although that one is more open to argument. And if you want to go really oldschool, Magic Candle's controls are very intuitive, albeit obnoxious by modern standards (the menu-based command control method it uses has more in common stylistically with JRPGs and roguelikes).

edited 9th Nov '10 5:51:55 PM by Karkadinn

Furthermore, I think Guantanamo must be destroyed.

@Rocket Dude: DOOM with Mouselook? Now that's just cheating.

^Fine. Auto aim off.

"Hipsters: the most dangerous gang in the US." - Pacific Mackerel

Dunno why you're having problems with Baldur's Gate. It's basically just point and click.

As for Arena, both that and Daggerfall have lousy default controls.

BG was more tedious than overwhelming, except when I have more than one character to take care of at one time.

Hence, my first post had a much smaller section about BG.

What? Must be an artifact of early shooters, since I don't recall even one shooter I have ever played not allowing you to look up or down, and I've played a lot. How else would you shoot at enemies above or below you?

Not sure about WRPG controls since the ones I play(ed) are also shooters.

edited 9th Nov '10 11:13:07 PM by Exploder

Whoosh!

Also, young'un, poor deprived child, whippersnapper, git off mah lawn, etc etc.

edited 9th Nov '10 11:16:57 PM by evilneko

...To be more descriptive, Doom and Quake are among the earliest FPS games and come from an era where looking up and down weren't really needed.

I'm kinda wondering how old evilneko is though.

Helpful Scripts and Stylesheets here.

@ Op... personally I thought both those games had pretty intuitive control schemes (though Arena does take some getting used to)

Also, in Area you don't have to use the mouse to move. IIRC you can also use the arrow keys or WASD

Quake does allow you to look up and down. Doom didn't, but you didn't need to (the game would auto-aim vertically).

Quake does allow you to look up and down. The person who said it doesn't should check his key configurations.

The game is pretty much impossible to beat if you can't look up and down.

edited 9th Nov '10 11:26:42 PM by Edmond_Dantes

The Kagami topic has now reached 201 posts! (Nov 5)

Heheheheh.

I'm gonna go with seventeen.

Cynics are optimists that have become used to disappointment.

I said they came from an era it wasn't really needed. I think Quake and Decent where one of the few games of the era that had vertical aiming.

Helpful Scripts and Stylesheets here.

Eh... vertical aiming in FP Ses actually came pretty early. Heretic, Hexen, Rise of the Triad and Duke Nukem 3D all had it.

For that matter, Ultima Underworld I and II, System Shock and even a few games based on the Wolfenstein 3D engine had it, so I wonder what the deal with Doom was.

The Kagami topic has now reached 201 posts! (Nov 5)

...FPS games never were my favourite genre anyway. I liked Descent but was more into Might And Magic and stuff.

Helpful Scripts and Stylesheets here.

Goddamn it, now I'm feeling the urge to guess how old evilneko is!

There are too many toasters in my chimney!