some of the issues that came with or before On Alert

demalion0

I thought several issues introduced (AFAIK) with On Alert would be addressed eventually, but they were still problematic last I checked, so I thought I would finally mention some, and a few older issues also came to mind to mention while I'm at it:

• Only the left Control key works as the mouseclick qualifier for the various Modification inventory item usages, where both Control keys should.
  This had me thinking the tooltip was wrong or just broken for me for a while, and I remember several other people expressing similar impressions when On Alert was launched too...sane keybinding recognition is someplace Cryptic usually excels in contrast to some other game makers, and this issue stands out due to that.
  This also lends itself to the potential confusion of performing right-click actions by accident if you have a misplaced confidence in what the tooltip says.
  
  
• Right mouse clicking is fundamentally worse (usability-wise) in general. Specifically, I think there needs to be some filtration by context. Such as having keybinds involving the RMB and mouselook dragging "eat up" right mouse clicks so that pop up menus don't appear for characters on screen when not desired and potential selections from menus doesn't happen in combat, etc.
  
  Is there an option that got turned off by the change that I forgot about to help with this?
  
  
• What it the intended point of the Lock button in the Powers window? Is it just me, or does the game behave as if it is always "locked" for everybody else too? I can't ever drag powers around with the Powers window closed.
  
  Anyways, I personally think the context for that is a bit skewed, and the Lock icon should be accessible from the Power Tray, not the Power window, perhaps with a little "menu arrow"/gear icon to the top right of the power tray that shows it with a fixed (see above) RMB click, but that's separate from it not doing anything AFAICS.
  
  
• The Power Window always opens up the Specialization window, both by keypress and icon press. Seems a bit redundant and excessively space consuming when you just want to access the Power window.
  
  Is this related to there not being a unique keybind for Specialization and its attachment to the Power window being a leftover from before they had separate icons on the Power Tray? If all other avenues on deciding on a default fail, may I recommend "Shift+P" or "Ctrl+P" as the default and adding such a keybind, and no longer automatically opening it up with the Power Window?
  
  
• This perhaps should have been its own thread long ago, but perhaps I can cover this (relatively) briefly here...
  
  The only basic functional separation I want is "Full Screen" and "Windowed", with further functional separations making sense with one or the other and some seeming they should be separate selections that work with both.
  
  There are window gadgets that appear when your mouse is in the top right that only makes sense if you want to control it like a window. I think this is what the "Windows Maximized" option is meant to encompass as distinct from Fullscreen, at least functionally instead of "technically", but AFAICS these gadgets always appear for both that and Fullscreen, to my annoyance.
  
  
  I think there might be some possible troubleshooting or technical differences between maximized window and fullscreen depending on implementation, but outside of a troubleshooting or possible memory management savings option to offer both a "Fullscreen (window maximized)" and "Fullscreen (exclusive viewport/or-more-accurate-descriptor)", I think the game should:
  • Offer Windowed and Fullscreen only
  • Fullscreen should be "Window Maximized" by implementation for better window cycling and Alt-Tabbing behaviors, unless that troubleshooting option is selected (if this is a significant concern with some graphics configuration, perhaps with limited video memory, the current options could just remain instead of being turned on by a troubleshooting option).
  • There should be checkbox options "Window Controls" and "Mouse Boundary", the first letting the player not have finicky gadgets that appear to interfere with mini-map icon usage if they don't want them, the second preventing the mouse leaving the window in windowed mode, and the associated monitor in any fullscreen type mode.
  
  
• EDIT: Just checked this...I expected this to be fixed after all the merging stuff was done, but "remember login name" still continues to only remember my old Cryptic login name and not my PWE login name, and fills it in, making the feature completely broken for me as makes things worse than not remembering, requiring me to delete a login name that cannot work at all anymore before typing in the correct one.
  
  I do wonder if there is some fragility or oddities with how reservations were done that might be locking the old login name in, as my in-game name is still demalion as it was under it, but since I created a PWE account separately before merging, I think that's why I was blocked from using it as a forum name.

On a positive note, I noticed after On Alert launched that the "Toggle, non-combat cancels" selection for energy builders finally worked for me, so that it doesn't prevent activating the energy builder out of combat...but I'm not sure how long this has been fixed, and whether it was even a universal issue or just for the power/character for which I was using the option.

chuckthestar

demalion0 wrote: »

The only basic functional separation I want is "Full Screen" and "Windowed", with further functional separations making sense with one or the other and some seeming they should be separate selections that work with both.

It's more complicated than this.
fullscreen window alt-tabs faster because the rest of your OS is still loaded.
Fullscreen is considerably better from a performance standpoint, but slower to 'alt-tab'.

I'm not even sure why you see this is an issue. One too many options, in the options panel?

EDIT: Just checked this...I expected this to be fixed after all the merging stuff was done, but "remember login name" still continues to only remember my old Cryptic login name and not my PWE login name, and fills it in, making the feature completely broken for me as makes things worse than not remembering, requiring me to delete a login name that cannot work at all anymore before typing in the correct one.

Yeah. This makes my blood boil. They are showing a horrible lack of due diligence.

Why railroad a hundred thousand people into a perfect world login WHEN IT DOESN'T EVEN WORK PROPERLY?

And to be honest, given that no one is able to use their champions login within perfect world that I know of - not even those with really odd names - I suspect they imported the entire champions username base first, AND THEN let us create usernames with no means of accessing that imported base. Forcing all of us to lose the names we'd been using for years.

The incompetence and lack of planning and forethought displayed during the handoff is legendary.

somebob

I despise how the Journal key now brings up the Alert front end instead of just showing you your quest log.

That said, I know there's a /command somewhere to fix that...

There we go:

/bind J "missionsactive"

That'll restore that functionality at the very least.