Hi, I'm very new to FAF, having only joined 2 days ago. I did however have some experience with SC1 and SC2 before

I have to say I am already considering quitting for one specific reason: Bad UI

The biggest problem I see is with the manual reclaim "feature" - it is absolutely necessary to use manual reclaim to be competitive on a decent level, especially since you get punished by the game for using the attack-move order to reclaim. There's two problems with that:

1. Clicking on rocks and trees is not very interesting
2. This makes the game require much more APM for no good reason. Instead of managing your armies you have to focus on battling the outdated UI.

I've seen the forums and I know it's been argued over to death but I'm fairly certain small things like this scare away new players regularly

I'm very new to FAF but I have some experience with Forged Alliance and SC2. Already I'm considering quitting due to the outdated UI. Which is too bad because I really like the base game and I have a lot of nostalgia for Supreme Commander

Yes Yes, I've seen the online forums. It's been battled over to death; the Area Commands. Especially the Area Reclaim order seems to raise a lot of concern. I'm not going to be re-using the old arguments because I know it won't lead anywhere. I just wanted to make 2 points I haven't seen anyone else make before and try to change some minds

1. I'm sure implementing Area Commands in FAF would do great for retaining new players such as myself. And more new players = longer and healthier lifespan of the game. New players have no chance of matching the high APM of old veterans who got used to the outdated UI - putting them at a tangible disadvantage simply because they aren't fast enough at clicking rocks

2. If Area Commands (including Area Reclaim) lower the skill ceiling and - as others have argued - "dumb down" the game, so too does Area Selection (click&drag). After all Area Selection is an Area Command. So, according to this line of reasoning, using Area Selection should be completely removed because it makes the game require less APM. You should only be able to select multiple units by holding shift and left-clicking on each individual unit. Alternatively, whenever using Area Selection, a 2 second input lag should be implemented - the equivalent of efficiency loss when using attack move instead of spamming manual reclaim

Just my 2 cents

@exselsior Yeah I do realise it's not actually that big a deal, still it leads to a tangible disadvantage and leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. In my opinion it's as if every chess match began with a juggling competition, and the better juggler gets a bonus pawn at the start. It might not be that much at low-to-medium level chess, but I sure as hell am not into juggling. I'd rather be playing some other game where there is no juggling involved

But hey, that's just my opinion!

@exselsior Yeah you know what, I slept on it and I decided I can live with this for now. Still, it's just a small thing that really annoys me. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that I get regularly matched with 1000-1500 elo players and I suspect that not only do they have the experience and the APM advantage, but they might also have a starting advantage due to using manual reclaim. I might want to watch some replays to confirm this, tho.

But besides the reclaim problem there's a bunch of other annoying problems with the UI. For example I find using split-attack very annoying and needlessly APM-consuming as well, but if I just use normal attack then my bombers will overkill the shit out of one unlucky Striker. Using attack-move doesn't solve the problem either because then some of my bombers might target a nearby land factory or some MEX they see on their way instead of carpet bombing the enemy units.

There's a lot of small UI and control issues I can come up with that needlessly consume APM and I don't think most of them will ever be tackled. People here seem not to like SC2 very much, but one thing I really liked about that game is that it trimmed a lot of fat, provided an intuitive UI and removed a lot of the redundant APM-sinks.

@exselsior Yeah you know what, I slept on it and I decided I can live with this for now. Still, it's just a small thing that really annoys me. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that I get regularly matched with 1000-1500 elo players and I suspect that not only do they have the experience and the APM advantage, but they might also have a starting advantage due to using manual reclaim. I might want to watch some replays to confirm this, tho.

But besides the reclaim problem there's a bunch of other annoying problems with the UI. For example I find using split-attack very annoying and needlessly APM-consuming as well, but if I just use normal attack then my bombers will overkill the shit out of one unlucky Striker. Using attack-move doesn't solve the problem either because then some of my bombers might target a nearby land factory or some MEX they see on their way instead of carpet bombing the enemy units.

There's a lot of small UI and control issues I can come up with that needlessly consume APM and I don't think most of them will ever be tackled. People here seem not to like SC2 very much, but one thing I really liked about that game is that it trimmed a lot of fat, provided an intuitive UI and removed a lot of the redundant APM-sinks.

@xayo when you use patrol/attack move the engineer takes breaks after each individual reclaim, but with manual reclaim there's no breaks. The difference can be quite significant from what I've seen. When reclaiming big groups of trees the manual reclaim engineer can be so much more efficient that it allows the player to skip an additional generator or two in their initial build - saving mass, time and energy and allowing for a much faster rush

@exselsior Yeah I do realise it's not actually that big a deal, still it leads to a tangible disadvantage and leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. In my opinion it's as if every chess match began with a juggling competition, and the better juggler gets a bonus pawn at the start. It might not be that much at low-to-medium level chess, but I sure as hell am not into juggling. I'd rather be playing some other game where there is no juggling involved

But hey, that's just my opinion!

I'm very new to FAF but I have some experience with Forged Alliance and SC2. Already I'm considering quitting due to the outdated UI. Which is too bad because I really like the base game and I have a lot of nostalgia for Supreme Commander

Yes Yes, I've seen the online forums. It's been battled over to death; the Area Commands. Especially the Area Reclaim order seems to raise a lot of concern. I'm not going to be re-using the old arguments because I know it won't lead anywhere. I just wanted to make 2 points I haven't seen anyone else make before and try to change some minds

1. I'm sure implementing Area Commands in FAF would do great for retaining new players such as myself. And more new players = longer and healthier lifespan of the game. New players have no chance of matching the high APM of old veterans who got used to the outdated UI - putting them at a tangible disadvantage simply because they aren't fast enough at clicking rocks

2. If Area Commands (including Area Reclaim) lower the skill ceiling and - as others have argued - "dumb down" the game, so too does Area Selection (click&drag). After all Area Selection is an Area Command. So, according to this line of reasoning, using Area Selection should be completely removed because it makes the game require less APM. You should only be able to select multiple units by holding shift and left-clicking on each individual unit. Alternatively, whenever using Area Selection, a 2 second input lag should be implemented - the equivalent of efficiency loss when using attack move instead of spamming manual reclaim

Just my 2 cents

Hi, I'm very new to FAF, having only joined 2 days ago. I did however have some experience with SC1 and SC2 before

I have to say I am already considering quitting for one specific reason: Bad UI

The biggest problem I see is with the manual reclaim "feature" - it is absolutely necessary to use manual reclaim to be competitive on a decent level, especially since you get punished by the game for using the attack-move order to reclaim. There's two problems with that:

1. Clicking on rocks and trees is not very interesting
2. This makes the game require much more APM for no good reason. Instead of managing your armies you have to focus on battling the outdated UI.

I've seen the forums and I know it's been argued over to death but I'm fairly certain small things like this scare away new players regularly