Double Clicking on Captured Enemy Houses Should Select Your Own Houses

[Gurken Khan]

This is in response to this:

 

I don't see how it is a balancing issue. Since it is in the balancing section I can't answer there which I want to regardless.

So frankly, with all due respect and maybe slightly irritated by the circumstances, I say: bull.

 

Quote

I shouldn't have to remember, after not playing for 2-3 months, that I need to reorient the screen to not select my own housing when deleting enemy housing.

'Captured enemy houses' are your own houses. If you doubleclick on some of your own stuff you select all of that kind. You can't 'delete enemy houses'. If you select all of your houses and delete them, tough luck; better pay attention next time what you're deleting.

Those are very basic principles and I hope everyone has the mental capabilities to remember those for three months or longer.

 

Spoiler

btw I very much welcome the change that doubleclicking selects all buildings of that kind, unlike in earlier versions where for example barracks captured from other civs would not be selected along all other owned barracks.

 

[Dizaka]

On 15/04/2022 at 9:32 AM, Gurken Khan said:

I don't see how it is a balancing issue. Since it is in the balancing section I can't answer there which I want to regardless.

So frankly, with all due respect and maybe slightly irritated by the circumstances, I say: bull.

'Captured enemy houses' are your own houses. If you doubleclick on some of your own stuff you select all of that kind. You can't 'delete enemy houses'. If you select all of your houses and delete them, tough luck; better pay attention next time what you're deleting.

Those are very basic principles and I hope everyone has the mental capabilities to remember those for three months or longer.

I call double bull.  My mental capabilities have more important tasks to do than simply remember to orient the game view.   

It is a balancing issue.  There's expectations of how the user interface should work.  Once those expectations are not met and they force resignations it is a balancing issue.  Going from 200 pop limit to 0 in a matter of seconds with no adversarial action by your enemy forcing a self-inflicted loss is a balancing problem.  It may not be a unit-stats balancing problem but it is a balancing issue.  "Balance" has no definite bounds other than those that give others advantages that shouldn't exist.

Double clicking captured enemy buildings should work differently than double clicking your own buildings.  It shouldn't be that a player who played this game for a while comes back and needs to relearn "map orientation hacks" to make sure that the right buildings are selected.  That's absurd.  I've seen this happen to players such as Isam, Ricsand, DoctorOrgans, Wendy and other good players.  It ruins games.  I do not play to win but to have a challenge.  If another player is handicapped for a UI issue it's a balancing problem because it handicaps them when it shouldn't.

Some ideas:

1. Double click on your own houses should select all houses in view (captured or original).
2. Double clicking on enemy captured houses should select ONLY captured enemy houses in view.
   • CTRL+Double Click could do this too.
   • Triple click could select all, like #1 + #2 above.
3. Double click on your own barracks should select all barracks in view (captured or original).
4. Double click on enemy captured barracks should select ONLY captured enemy barracks.
   • CTRL+Double Click could do this too.
   • Triple click could select all, like #3 + #4 above.

Edited April 16, 2022 by Dizaka

[Gurken Khan]

@Dizaka Those are your expectations, not mine; don't know how widely your view is shared.

 

21 minutes ago, Dizaka said:

forcing a self-inflicted loss

I don't see the 'forcing' if you don't watch what you're doing.

Of course I wouldn't mind extra options for captured buildings as long as it doesn't negatively impact my play style, so good luck with that!

[LetswaveaBook]

16 minutes ago, Dizaka said:

It is a balancing issue.  There's expectations of how the user interface should work.  Once those expectations are not met and they force resignations it is a balancing issue.  Going from 200 pop limit to 0 in a matter of seconds with no adversarial action by your enemy forcing a self-inflicted loss is a balancing problem. 

Unless you use shift-delete, there is a warning before you delete something. You might expect that the warning is just something you need to click away, but actually it should be used as a moment to think if you really want to delete it.

You can´t blame the system for not checking what you were deleting before you deleted it.

[Dizaka]

18 minutes ago, LetswaveaBook said:

Unless you use shift-delete, there is a warning before you delete something. You might expect that the warning is just something you need to click away, but actually it should be used as a moment to think if you really want to delete it.

You can´t blame the system for not checking what you were deleting before you deleted it.

I'm not sure about you.  However, when my army is fighting I'm going to click away as quickly as possible to return to the fighting.  Additionally, as far as I remember msg said only 2 buildings.  No more.

That msg shouldn't exist and expected results should be given through keyboard / mouse commands.  If the results are unexpected in an edge case and they result in losses/resignations it's something that should be re-thought.  It's a balancing issue.

Additionally, I'm not blaming anyone / anything.  I don't care about wins/loses, etc.  I have no problem resigning and starting a new game.  However, resignations shouldn't happen because of UI issues.  What I'm saying there's an issue and other players have experienced it.  There's a clear difference if you play to win and care about this enough to rage versus playing by randomly dropping in to see how you fare and finding out an UI edge case forced a resignation.

Edited April 15, 2022 by Dizaka

[Gurken Khan]

9 minutes ago, Dizaka said:

when my army is fighting I'm going to click away as quickly as possible to return to the fighting.

I accidentally deleted units, it taught me to pay attention to those actions. If you know about the risks and still refuse to double check I can't really relate to that.

 

14 minutes ago, Dizaka said:

Additionally, as far as I remember msg said only 2 buildings.  No more.

You didn't read the message, just clicked it away blindly. (But there are other hints.)

Spoiler

 

17 minutes ago, Dizaka said:

That msg shouldn't exist and expected results should be given through keyboard / mouse commands.  If the results are unexpected in an edge case and they result in losses/resignations it's something that should be re-thought.

Shouldn't exist? Kb/mouse?

There have been discussions about extra warnings, for example when there are a lot of units to be deleted, but they have led to nothing. I suspect it wouldn't help ppl who want to blindly click away anything as quickly as possible anyway.

[Dizaka]

27 minutes ago, Gurken Khan said:

I accidentally deleted units, it taught me to pay attention to those actions. If you know about the risks and still refuse to double check I can't really relate to that.

Can you accidentally select your own units by selecting captured enemy units?  You can try making as many similar comparisons, but in the end, buildings != units.  They function totally differently.

  

27 minutes ago, Gurken Khan said:

You didn't read the message, just clicked it away blindly. (But there are other hints.)

I read the msg.  Saw 2.  If reading quickly in combat is blind clicking/reading then there's a lot of that happening in 0ad.  It's a "fast paced" game when played online.

Considering the game can be "fast paced" resulting in a lot of "blind reading" shouldn't it be more accommodating to the "fast paced" portion rather than imposing more warning messages to users?

  

27 minutes ago, Gurken Khan said:

There have been discussions about extra warnings, for example when there are a lot of units to be deleted, but they have led to nothing. I suspect it wouldn't help ppl who want to blindly click away anything as quickly as possible anyway.

You can give extra warnings.  It won't change the fact that there's a UI issue that impacts balance and can ruin games.  Extra warnings are just that - extra warnings that do not fix the underlying issue.

I don't want games to end b/c someone deleted all their houses.  That ruins my time and the other player's time.  That's not a win.  That's a re-do game.  When this happens 40 minutes into a game it can quickly turn return players away.

 

 

Edited April 15, 2022 by Dizaka

[sarcoma]

This used to be a problem only when you were flank and your next door enemy had the same civ. Tough luck. The current behavior was introduced in a24 I think (what was the rationale?) and does more harm than good. It's customary to quickly double click and destroy captured buildings to hinder the enemy from rebuilding. And some people play with a default zoom of 300-500 to have more control of his base/units.

[Freagarach]

13 hours ago, Gurken Khan said:

widely your view is

Obiously too wide. ^^

It seems like a nice option to add to be able to switch behaviours.