With 1.2 rearing its head, what are your all's thoughts on the hotkey system? I was thinking we could share our hotkey setups and help one another out with creating even more efficient methods. For now I'm still running default until I have the time to mess around with them. Anyone found a system they like better, and if so, which race do you play?
I'll take the liberty of putting in my 2 cents because of the thread title, even though it's not a response to your post. I can see how custom hotkeys can be very convenient. However, once you've reached competitive level (which, seeing as how long ago the release was, should already have happened) it's completely unnecessary as you've already learnt the default keys and because of this it'd be hard to learn a new layout. Moreover, the arrangement of the keys following the positions of the icons in structures is only helpful if you take the time to learn where each icon is or you look each time you want to press something. I have quite a few games under my belt and I still don't know most of that, and needless to say if you look at where the icons are you have a lot to learn in terms of game fluency, etc. So my opinion is that the feature will be heavily underused and it would've got far bigger fame and use if it came with release. But I'm interested in the number of responses here to sort of deduct how many people use the feature. I could well be wrong.
I agree completely with your assessment. Pro's aren't going to be using this, nor am I, and nor (as you hypothesized) will the majority of these forum users. The energy spent on this could probably have been better focused into a clan system or other things. I could see how a new player might not like hitting "s" to make and SCV and liked the convenience of "r" better. (4-r is better for me than 4-s). This is the only way I seeing it be used.
I disagree here... If you decide you can create a more effective hotkey setup that will, if learned properly, make it more smooth to play with and unlock additional capabilities, like moving around building bindings and group them in a more effective way to make way for more unit control groups for better control, then if you are a competitive player you will spend time thinking which key setup works best and then practice your brain-muscle to learn it perfectly. Then your gameplay will improve and that's what matters the most... This is true for most games, take world of warcraft for example. Top arena players try to find better ways to map their skills on the keyboard to be more efficient, close to where the hand stands and easy to use, and then spend lots of hours training to get used to them till it becomes second nature-again-... This improves reaction time, keypress time and allows for a more comfortable and smooth gameplay, and that for a competitive gamer is really a lot. Where it's not gonna be used much is for us non-competitive players... I'd rather play a couple more games and work on improving my basics instead of working on learning better keybinds which will not improve my strategy, or multitasking or decision making or whatever else. That's where it's not much use. On a sidenote, I'll also change Immortal from I to R since I usually have my Robos at 4
I agree that changing them can improve one skills (there were ways to change them before also.... with a little tweaking). Getting usefull hotkeys closer help reaction times and distance travel between keys. It is also true that you ill need time to re-master again the ability and to memo the position, but once done you will be faster. I.E, I put main evolutions from units and building in E-volution. So banelings, are in E. Overlord in e, lair, etc ... so I just have to remember E when I want the next step for a unit/building. Units I use too few are far from left side and my hand standard position, where I have unussed keys... now i have done some changes in infestor ie to put habilities in q-w-e but I'm so used to I for infested terran than most time I find myself in middle of battle doing nothing with them aside to die haha (cause I still press " I ")...
No wonder they're dying, infested are T. I like your idea of using E for evolution. But in the heat of battle I can't see myself remembering that instead of v. L stands for lair... I don't know, most of the keys have grown on me and as I don't play all that much I would rather spend my time improving than memorising. Something I forgot to mention in my first post in the thread is that if you learn the default keys it'll be easier to play for example at a friend's place. I'm just not a fan of huge customisation in general. My Windows is default and I rarely use application skins, etc.
