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ESC no longer closes some windows?
Archived Post
Posts: 1,156,071 Arc User
Not a huge problem, but an annoyance nonetheless.
I've noticed that hitting escape no longer closes bags or NPC interaction windows, and possibly others I haven't come across. Not sure if it's me, or a change in the UI, but it does kinda suck. With a finger so close to ESC it sucks to have to use the mouse or the interaction button since it usually means more steps.
Also, I noticed that you can no longer tab from the Name field to the Description field in the mail composition screen. Again, not a huge problem, but the mail system is already cumbersome and this just made it less user-friendly.
Not sure if these are unique to me, or others have experienced this. I'm guessing it has to do with 360 controller implementation, but whatever the case, would be nice to have those functions returned to their previous state if possible.
I've noticed that hitting escape no longer closes bags or NPC interaction windows, and possibly others I haven't come across. Not sure if it's me, or a change in the UI, but it does kinda suck. With a finger so close to ESC it sucks to have to use the mouse or the interaction button since it usually means more steps.
Also, I noticed that you can no longer tab from the Name field to the Description field in the mail composition screen. Again, not a huge problem, but the mail system is already cumbersome and this just made it less user-friendly.
Not sure if these are unique to me, or others have experienced this. I'm guessing it has to do with 360 controller implementation, but whatever the case, would be nice to have those functions returned to their previous state if possible.
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Not being able to close windows with Esc is terrible. This is the type of functionality you DON'T take away from customers. Please give it back to us.
Before, window focus followed the same guidelines Windows itself uses: when the top (focused) window is closed, the next highest window (now the top) gains focus. This is the expected behaviour for anyone using Windows*, which is currently all CO players.
Now, when a window is closed in CO, the focus returns to the game area, no matter how many other windows are open and covering it. The "desktop" of the game gets focus back after a window closes, even when there are other windows still obscuring it. This seems wrong because it is. The game area is the bottom, the base. It shouldn't have focus while being under everything else. Either bring it to the top (close other windows) when it gains focus, or switch focus to a new window on top of the game area so that it can be closed easily.
The greatest problem the UI has right now is a lack of consistency. Some examples:
There is a reason things such as Windows, OS X, KDE, and GNOME have human interface guidelines: consistency. Consistency is very important in UI design, and we're actually losing what consistency we had in Champions Online. The UI is improving in some ways, but it's all wasted if there is no consistent behaviour.
* I verified this behaviour in both Windows 7 and Windows XP. This has been standard for many years.
That is, previously, I have my inventory window open. I open up the map to see where I'm at. I find and encounter the enemies I was looking for. I press ESC to close the map window and press TAB to select an enemy. Didn't work since the inventory window got fucus when I closed the map window. But, you could ESC a second time to close the inventory window. Now, it works as I expected.
I'm not sure there is a compatible solution to meet both expectations.
Strange how Champions is the only game where things that work perfectly end messing up.
It's like the clickable objectives on the map, that isn't working properly anymore, and no one ever cared to repair it...
i for one would like it back
and YES, this is annoying.
So, you're saying that, because you think tab targeting should work despite having 75% of your game area obscured by windows, that justifies having the escape key not able to close windows?
I fail to see the logic to this.
It's irritating as heck to be able to use shortcut keys for everything in e.g. getting a quest from a quest giver EXCEPT closing the window.
Please change it back.
I think equally annoying is the fact that not only does it not close any windows, but it puts the UI into a lock that prevents anything but selecting options from the ESC menu.
I'm an old fogey and have been playing computer games since the orignal releases of Ultima and Wizardry. I used the original version of Windows and nearly 20 years of Windows-inspired GUIs. Unlearning a 20 year-old habit for the sake of a game is not working.
I will probably hit esc to close my bag 50000 more times before my brain is broken a habit I've had for half my life.
Prior to this I never had any problems. None. So basically you unfixed (again) something that was fine and left unfixed those things that could use some serious attention, like sloppy UI response.
The whole 360 controller implementation is giving me a really crap taste in my mouth regarding multi-platform games. Not because of the concept, but because you seemingly keep sacrificing PC user functionality for 360 user benefit.
You can't keep robbing Peter to pay Paul. Figure out a better way than continually removing functionality, please.
Feels fix, and if so, much thanks and respect to the team for fixing this one. I esc-closed my bag and tabbed out for a sec and then my brain caught up and I tested it again. Looks like ESC has called off the strike and is back to work again!
Instead of fixing the offending window, or streamlining the functionality, they just rendered bog-standard user interface functionality, dare I say internationally accepted user interface conventions, for the sake of a few folks who like to play with their bags open. I appreciate the plight of those players, but COME ON.
MARVIN TIKVAH SAYS COME ONNNNNNNNNN, SHELLY!
So if I'm following the trail correctly here, there appears to be a thread indicating that Tab Targeting is not responding properly when an inventory slot is open. Apparently players were indicating that they had to tab 3 times until an enemy target is selected.
After giving it all of 30 seconds thought, I can't think of any need for a tab function for the bag slots. Unless it was intended that tabbing would scroll along the list of bags once you had one open.
Anyway, it seems that the fix that was implemented was to force the UI to make the play area the mouse focus. That means any follow up key presses from the mouse or keyboard, or 360 controller, I assume, will land on the play area. That means tab will 'default' to selecting enemies.
This has inevitably lead to the ESC button not closing windows. As Ilazki deduced, it's not ESC that's off, it's the way that the UI is prioritizing window selection (or whatever the technical operation is) which is quite possibly one of the most redneck jury-rig jobs I've come across in the game.
If my conclusion regarding the series of events is correct then the devs inconvenienced anyone who doesn't play with their inventory open, for the sake of a few who do. I can see the concern with tab-targeting no working for those players, but the solution effectively turned nothing into a whole lot of bad for players who weren't having any problems.
If I'm wrong, I would still like to see a better solution implemented. As of this morning it feels that the game is sticking with the last window opened, then dropping back to the play area after that. It still leaves me hitting escape to close other open windows, only to end up at the ESC menu and with my screen locked momentarily.
Please can we get some response, and some attention? This feels like a knee-jerk fix for a few that ended up negatively affecting far more than it helped.
It would be nice if they made ESC close the last window / pop-up in order of which I opened them (newest always getting closed first).
Of course, maybe part of the problem is you can have so many windows open layered one on top of each other in CO, so trying to figure out which window and which area to "prioritize" for the person becomes a random guess.
Not sure, but it would be nice to have this sorted out.
Right now it seems it's set to function such that this list is limited to 2 entries. Item 1 is the most recently used window, item 2 is the play area. Since the play area is coded to open the options menu when you hit escape, it follows logically that a window can have separate functions for the same input.
If the inventory window is active window, esc is coded to close the window. If the play area is the active window esc is coded to open the options menu.
Taking that a step further, it would seem that you could code the tab key in the same way. If the play area is the active window, then hitting tab switches between enemies. If the active window is is the inventory window, then tab would need to continue to use functionality from the play area.
I can definitely see the complexity of the issue. The conflict of interest of the tab button. It needs to be linked to some windows for standard use, but it needs to make target selection it's primary function, so the trick is figuring out how to make this happen.
Standard tab functionality is to move the cursor from one field to another inside a window. Since most of the game windows don't have blank fields, removing this function from those would resolve a large number of issues. No matter what, anytime those particular windows were open, tabbing would select enemies.
That would leave some windows like the Build Screen, for example, still suffering the same problem. Since there's a field for Build Name, tab would theoretically go straight to that field, then maybe the play area, or nowhere else at all, since tabbing won't proceed to fields on other windows.
The solution so far appears to have been removing the tab function from doing anything but targeting enemies. This means no tabbing through fields in ANY window, for any reason. Another denigration of a standard windows convention that has existed for something around 20 years.
And on top of this, there was the business of changing the order in which the UI prioritizes the open windows.
Ugh, if anyone can help, I'm just trying to figure out what happened and maybe help stimulate dialogue that will bring about an elegant solution.
I'm sure the devs won't divulge what they've done, but I will say this makes helping in anyway very difficult and inefficient. But trust me, I find this more than annoying enough to want to help fix it.
On to the meat of the post:
I think escape only works on it because it still has focus after you open it. I haven't been able to play in a few days because of internet problems, so I can't test, but I believe I recall clicking the gameplay area and breaking escape for the inventory, as well. The game area is, basically, a window that is below all other windows, and can never be raised above them. Click it and you take away focus elsewhere. It's very odd now.
On the subject of solutions, I think the best one that could be implemented would be to restore the original functionality and add a UITAB bind, along the same lines as the half-broken UIOK they added in the last patch. That way, you could keep the original window focus rules (which could be used to make escape behave in a rational, sane way), remove all other keypress response from the UI bits, and still have a keyboard/pad controlled way of moving about the UI dialogs: UIOK and UITAB.
Sane behaviour, no double binds unless wanted, and customiseable keys for people that don't like the defaults. Is there anything I missed with this?
The ESC that fails(ed) to close windows bug was targeted by the devs, and as of 11-20-2009 it has been 99% fixed.
It's on PTS now, come check it out.
M.
Ooh, good to hear. If my connection ever stops being rubbish I'll try to check. I tried logging in a few minutes ago and couldn't even get past the "updating launcher" bit. It's not the game's fault, just internet problems locally, but it really sucks.
I clicked on the game window, believing it would bring the inventory window "below" the game window. I assumed that if esc was still not acting properly it would open the Options Menu again. However, it closed the inventory window, just as one would want.
What I can't understand, nor replicate, is how I made the UI open the Options Menu before it closed the inventory window. The secret appears to be that no windows were focused.
A simple click on the game window seemed to link everything back together and caused the esc button to fuction properly.
Things definitely seem better, just posting this observation in case it's relevant to any lingering issues.
One last note, some windows, specifically mission information windows, possibly others that share this template still won't close with the esc button, and that's a problem for the same reasons as above.
Case in point: The mission information window that pops whenever you enter a Help A Citizen mission instance will not respond to the esc button. It doesn't immediately seem like a problem, but here was my experience.
I entered a room in one of the missions and accidentally aggroed an extra double villain pack. After a split-second panic I figured the best thing was to get back through the last door I entered, break line of sight, toss up a shield and a heal. All of this with 3 villains and 3 henchmen on me. So I limp back through the door and turn around and BAM, there's the mission info window.
I immediately hit esc. If you had timed it, I probably would have managed an impressive response time.
Years of using escape to fend off unwanted pop-ups has sharpened my reflexes to a keen point.
All I got for my pro game skills was an Options Menu and a locked game window, which prevented me from popping the MR on myself. The one that might have been the difference between life and death.
Now, the more frustrating thing is that getting bitten by esc, in the heat of combat is annoying, but the immediate psychological response is to not hit esc again (because me and Pavlov's dog just learned a negative response from hitting it.) Sadly, hitting it is the appropriate behavior.
So I'm feeling bitten by the button not acting properly, and then bitten by the fact that I'm bitten.
The only cure is more cowbell, and you guys keep breaking the cowbell. Be kind to the cowbell?