To click or not to click, that's the pressing question

As many of you might have noticed the EVE shortcut system had a major facelift not so long ago. Although the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, there have been some issues that keep surfacing on the forums. What you are reading is a micro dev blog attempting to clear up the confusion and collect some feedback on how we might be able to meet your button bashing needs even further in future expansions.

Combat shortcuts are a new concept based on an old invention, the basic inspiration being: "holding down CTRL and clicking stuff is by far the fastest and most intuitive way of targeting stuff. I want to be able to do more fast and intuitive things to stuff". If any of you out there are half as lazy as I am, you'll curse every time software forces you to move your right hand from the warmth of your keyboard, over to the plastic rodent living next to it (yes, I'm a programmer). To save you all that unwanted exercise during spaceship command we figured it might be a good idea to allow people to use those same combat shortcuts, but without clicking. We even added a couple of shortcuts, such as target switching, to make this a feasible alternative to mouse pushing.

As a result, there are two ways of using the same combat shortcut.

In the case of approaching an item in space, either of the following WILL WORK:

1.            Hold down W and click the item.

2.            Set focus to the overview, select the target (by using the up/down arrow keys) and press W.

And this WILL NOT WORK:

X.            Click the item in space, or its locked target icon, and THEN press W.

Combat shortcuts without clicking were designed to be used with the overview and therefore require focus to be set to the window. This is very much by design, as the alternative of applying the combat command to the currently selected target, regardless of overview focus, would undoubtedly have led to a lot of accidental commands being executed.

Once explained, this is all really rather simple and the combat commands become a powerful tool to execute actions faster than previously possible, but the problem remains that this new pattern is far from self-explanatory. Making it self-explanatory is definitely on our TODO list, and any ideas on how this would be best pursued are very welcome. Speaking of welcome, we would love to hear if the new shortcuts have at all affected, improved or decreased the quality of life in New Eden during the first couple of weeks they've been out in the wild.