TotalBiscuit explains AVWW in one sentence.

[KDR_11k]

I'd love an actual example of where I've blamed a game for my own ineptitude because I go out of my way NOT to do that.

Well, there's Terraria with Jesse Cox but that probably doesn't count .

[zebramatt]

@nanstrike: I think "ineptitude" is an emotive enough judgement to make anyone defensive! I'd say Biscuit's pretty damn ept! The man does his homework. I've always seen his own statements to the contrary - "I've no idea what that's all about." - as steeped in rhetoric, to be honest.

But as long as we both enjoy his stuff, we're just agreeing violently! 

[MouldyK]

...where you have no clue what's going on or what you're supposed to do because you read nothing from any documentation that came with the game or ignored/didn't understand a tutorial.  It happens frequently...

The thing is, that actually makes reviews more real as few gamers read up on manuals and things anymore, sadly.

[tigersfan]

...where you have no clue what's going on or what you're supposed to do because you read nothing from any documentation that came with the game or ignored/didn't understand a tutorial.  It happens frequently...

The thing is, that actually makes reviews more real as few gamers read up on manuals and things anymore, sadly.

Anymore? I'm not sure they ever did. I've been gaming since the 80s, and manual reading has never been something I did a lot of.

[bvchaosinc]

Yep, I am fairly sure the last manual I really read was the one for Falcon 3.0.

[Volatar]

The thing is, that actually makes reviews more real as few gamers read up on manuals and things anymore, sadly.

Anymore? I'm not sure they ever did. I've been gaming since the 80s, and manual reading has never been something I did a lot of.

Man am I weird. I have read the manual to every single game that I have played more than a small amount of time. The paper manuals for my favorite games actually show wear I have read them so much.

[Volatar]

Haha, somehow I doubt that. But, like we've said, it's not for everyone, and YouTube for some reason gives people an open canvas to complain about things in the most petty ways. I find it hilarious when people say things like "it makes me want to break something" because... let's be honest... is there really any music that would entice a normal human being to start breaking furniture? It's pretty ridiculous. I'm moved by music daily, and I've never felt the urge to break my love seat hahaha!

I for one don't like the AVWW music.

So I...  TURN IT OFF and play Pandora instead. Such a foreign concept to some people. 

If you want the mouse wheel to reassign your left and right mouse click you can already do that.  However, it's not bound by default because most people like to use middle-mouse button as a third spell and having that bound to the mouse wheel makes that incredibly fiddly.

Gonna have to poke your baloon here for a moment: "most people like to use middle-mouse button as a third spell". Really? Where did you get this info?

I for one find the default scheme clunky and am very happy that there is now the other, genre standard method. When you find your game compared to Terraria and Minecraft (which, I will note, both use the exact same control scheme) you really need to consider the differences in controls.

[x4000]

If you want the mouse wheel to reassign your left and right mouse click you can already do that.  However, it's not bound by default because most people like to use middle-mouse button as a third spell and having that bound to the mouse wheel makes that incredibly fiddly.

Gonna have to poke your baloon here for a moment: "most people like to use middle-mouse button as a third spell". Really? Where did you get this info?

Two places:
1. Watching hundreds of players at PAX East do that without our telling them to.
2. Getting dozens of bug reports from people accidentally moving the mouse wheel when we made the mouse wheel bound to the switching of the LMB binding during very late beta, with most people confused as to why this was happening given that they were using the middle mouse button to use some spell or other.

Am I usually just making wild baseless claims on what large numbers of people do or don't think?

I for one find the default scheme clunky and am very happy that there is now the other, genre standard method. When you find your game compared to Terraria and Minecraft (which, I will note, both use the exact same control scheme) you really need to consider the differences in controls.

Again, you're basing that on a population of one so far as I can tell.  We have a lot more data on it.  Many more people play WoW than Minecraft or Terraria, and so the more WoW-like controls seem to be a more natural fit for the default.  This is just based on showing it off at Minecon and PAX East and also having six months of beta.

That doesn't mean the defaults will work for everyone -- clearly not.  But that's the whole point of why we go out of our way to make our stuff configurable.  Bluddy will come on here soon and tell you that nothing other than keyboard-directed aiming is a playable or fun way to play.  There are others here for whom anything that doesn't involve a gamepad is just terrible.  Etc.

I also can't speak much for Terraria, not having played it.  But with Minecraft the whole thing with needing only one active item/weapon at a time is pretty logical.  It's construction-oriented, and when it comes to combat there are like two options.  That's not a slam -- I adore Minecraft.  But its goals and AVWW's goals put them in pretty different genres, I think.  Terraria is somewhere in the middle, but my read is that it trends more toward Minecraft than AVWW.

[Volatar]

Hey, no need to get defensive. I said poking not popping.

[x4000]

Mea culpa.  My frustration quotient is a little hair-trigger this week.

[Scorcher24]

If you want the mouse wheel to reassign your left and right mouse click you can already do that.  However, it's not bound by default because most people like to use middle-mouse button as a third spell and having that bound to the mouse wheel makes that incredibly fiddly.

Gonna have to poke your baloon here for a moment: "most people like to use middle-mouse button as a third spell". Really? Where did you get this info?

Two places:
1. Watching hundreds of players at PAX East do that without our telling them to.
2. Getting dozens of bug reports from people accidentally moving the mouse wheel when we made the mouse wheel bound to the switching of the LMB binding during very late beta, with most people confused as to why this was happening given that they were using the middle mouse button to use some spell or other.

Am I usually just making wild baseless claims on what large numbers of people do or don't think?

I for one find the default scheme clunky and am very happy that there is now the other, genre standard method. When you find your game compared to Terraria and Minecraft (which, I will note, both use the exact same control scheme) you really need to consider the differences in controls.

Again, you're basing that on a population of one so far as I can tell.  We have a lot more data on it.  Many more people play WoW than Minecraft or Terraria, and so the more WoW-like controls seem to be a more natural fit for the default.  This is just based on showing it off at Minecon and PAX East and also having six months of beta.

That doesn't mean the defaults will work for everyone -- clearly not.  But that's the whole point of why we go out of our way to make our stuff configurable.  Bluddy will come on here soon and tell you that nothing other than keyboard-directed aiming is a playable or fun way to play.  There are others here for whom anything that doesn't involve a gamepad is just terrible.  Etc.

I also can't speak much for Terraria, not having played it.  But with Minecraft the whole thing with needing only one active item/weapon at a time is pretty logical.  It's construction-oriented, and when it comes to combat there are like two options.  That's not a slam -- I adore Minecraft.  But its goals and AVWW's goals put them in pretty different genres, I think.  Terraria is somewhere in the middle, but my read is that it trends more toward Minecraft than AVWW.

Well, normally I don't use my middle mouse button to do things. Has various reasons.
One is, of couse, most games not using it and the other is that I rather scroll than press.

[TotalBiscuit]

Overly defensive much?  I think you completely mistook my post.

The standard response when somebody gets called out while running their mouth. If I had a dollar for every time I've seen that... I'd have a few dollars.

I understood alright.  You turned off the UI before even seeing what the UI looked like, then didn't like it.  Yeah, the icons are a bit off, but if you'd played with the UI on first and seen that, you would've known and been prepared.  As for your own ineptitude, it usually comes up in the form of "I don't know what I'm bloody doing!", where you have no clue what's going on or what you're supposed to do because you read nothing from any documentation that came with the game or ignored/didn't understand a tutorial.  It happens frequently.

You've given no specific examples what-so-ever. Sadly this is fairly common of those that criticize without too much thought to consequences. I saw exactly what the UI looked like, it looks exactly like what's in the 2 pictures where it shows you exactly what the UI looks like. You can't possibly have missed it, I spent a good minute on that screen talking about it. So what exactly what you going on about? It was an entirely legit piece of criticism leveled at the game which both broke immersion and made it awkward to play, forcing you to then make a choice between "click until you find where they put the interaction box which more often than not won't be where it should logically be" and "be given too much information by the UI which damages the decision making process and is borderline spoilerish".

"It happens frequently" is a nice way of saying "I have no specific examples so I'll wave my hands around in generalisation. What can I say, I dislike it when people misrepresent my work, I prefer constructive criticism which is useful

[Bluddy]

I think people who don't use the middle button for scrolling do that because the interface doesn't suggest it. Usually, when you have the option to scroll through stuff, you have a very clear indication of what the current selection is and what the choices are. Look at a screenshot of Terraria: http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/terraria/screenshots/gameShotId,528226/. I've never played the game myself, but it's clear that you have a selected weapon, and it seems like scrolling the wheel will switch your selected weapon.

The UI hints in AVWW are relatively vague (and were added later than PAX I think). Also, the UI doesn't scale, making the hints really small if you play at a high resolution. Finally, people aren't really used to having both the left and right mouse bindings shift together -- it's a little confusing.

Bluddy will come on here soon and tell you that nothing other than keyboard-directed aiming is a playable or fun way to play.

Actually I think a Terraria method of input is probably best, because it can form a common baseline almost everyone can use. As much as I think the restrictions & advantages of keyboard/gamepad controls enhance the combat and make more spells accessible at once, I'm willing to sacrifice that for a more unified control scheme. I think WoW-style controls don't really suit this game unless you have a huge mouse, which most people don't. Forcing WoW-style controls into the game makes it hard for people to adjust to the controls, which then causes some people to dislike the combat and in general leads to the extreme fracturing of control schemes we've experienced. And I think it's important for a platforming game to have as uniform a control scheme as possible.

[madcow]

On the topic of controls. I tend to use the arrow keys to move, and then the hotkey buttons for my spells. I don't use my mouse at all (except for placing platforms, because you pretty much need them for that). If I really need accuracy I use tab targetting though.

Main reason being, I play on a laptop, and hate using the trackpad for extended periods if I can get around it, and don't always have a mouse to plug in.

Also, since this is a thread about totalbiscuit. I'm kind of curious how big a bump in sales you guys got after the video

[Tobias]

My favourite part of this was when he used a rock throw spell with a set arc/weight physics thing and complained about it not? hitting where he had his cursor pointed and said the spells were inaccurate.

Maybe if I try really hard I can one day grow up to be as good at the video games as tortleboscuit.