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This game needs better menu & information management Here's a copied & pasted comment form another post i made; it basically says what I want to say:

The instructions are not in the controls menu, the help menu for the horse(don't even know where else to look for this info, and the information for everything is scattered all over the place) nor is there a context message when you're following someone again (why would they not do this? Aside from this, this game has a lot of shortcomings compared to what I read online from people. This game is pissing me off. A lot).

I haven't played GTA 5, but I'm pretty shocked that a game from Rockstar has this many issues with the controls and in-game information. Why are there a million different menus for information? Why does Arthur carry a journal that has SOME of the mission info in it, then there are 2 or 3 other menus with bits of information in it. I can't even remember where everything is, and I have a feeling I'm supposed to check these menus for critical information.

On the journal again, what's the point of this? Is this supposed to be immersive? Because I HAVE to access the start menu for a lot of information plus the in-game map. Also, I don't really want to read from a journal like that; this feels more like the devs getting high on their own supply here. Rather than make an option to read stuff in plain text, just have it convert the text on the pages from handwritten to computer text, if we must do the "IRL" journal thing.

Back to the controls, there are going to have to be context menus up all the time for which actions are available at a given time, with an option to turn them off PROPERLY displayed in the menus (the CONTROLS menu and NOWHERE ELSE). I'm trying to use a controller because of how many different controls there are, and I found with Doom Eternal that games nowadays have so many different things the player can do that there's no choice except using a controller, even though the game is begging me at times to use a keyboard and MOUSE. The issues with controls need to be worked on. I just re-entered gaming after 10-12 years of nearly no gaming at all, and this could be construed as user-hostile.

Update:

I just got a hunting map. Why is the hunting map in my inventory instead of the map menu, and why doesn't it appear to match the map menu's master map? It also has the incredibly irritating to use system that the journal has. This is more so something one would do with VR, not a controller/mouse & keyboard game.

Why doesn't tracking down an animal involve following actual footprints and dung and whatever else? Instead I have to go through several (irritating) menus and button presses to do basic stuff. Why did during this bear hunting mission Arthur randomly go into dead eye mode (is that even what happened??) then I shoot the animal, go into an animation that looks like I'm just going to die (so I set down the controller) then there was QTE to do something, i didn't see the button it wanted me to press, then I died. I didn't even get an option to redo the mission or whatever, and i'm now in a random location, i can't use the map to get back to where I was because of the aforementioned issues. My hat is missing. I don't have any items to refill my core. There's a completely different horse assigned to me now (where in the hell is my normal horse). What. the. hell. is. going. on? Is this a glitch? Why would this ever happen in a game? This game is falling massively short of the praise I saw it getting online. I'm not having fun, the story is kind of interesting, and I don't see any potential here that's going to save this game so far.

Update 2:

Search function. Rockstar, make a search function for your stupid menus. There are probably a thousand options between all of these menus, and the obvious solution is to allow search. I have no idea what is happening in the software industry that search functions for menus hasn't become standard, but it's been slow to catch on, and the idea had a mainstream positioning in 2009. Two. Thousand. Nine. 12 years ago.

Update 3:

I'm noticing the controller menu is flashing the different functions for the buttons (I was wondering why it was changing sh*t while I was reading it) instead of putting slashes between the functions so one can read it properly. There are so many things wrong with this design choice I'm not even going to start listing why it's a bad idea. Rockstar should obviously change this. It's not even done correctly for what they're trying to do either.

I take a 10 year hiatus from gaming and this is what I come back to? Every modern game I've played so far has had ample glitches and game changing bugs as well as poor design choices all over the place. The menu system I'm noticing is a trend, which is really ironic because programming requires knowledge of data structures, and menus are one of the most obvious and oldest examples of a great place to apply knowledge of data structures.

Update 4:

I just noticed that in the start menu "progress" and "story" are poor descriptors for what is in those menus. If those labels were flipped it would make more sense, but still pretty bad. What is going on here? Rockstar has pretty smart people working there. Is this some strange strategy for ?something? or did they really just poorly label and implement the menus... and controls... and portions of the game play.

And while I'm at in now, the movement in this game is irritating as well - toss out the extra animation for changing direction with the character and horse. Also, whatever is going on with the horse picking up speed and slowing down should be changed - just have it stop shortly after the button is let go and have it start walking when the button is pressed. Also, there are a number of buttons that move the horse forward that shouldn't. Fix that and make those buttons do nothing. A guy could fall off a cliff accidentally with that junky implementation.

I have a strong feeling these issues are going to grow and grow the more i play. I'm kind of interested at this point in logging these issues for posterity as I've done with other games that are highly praised.

continued in the comments https://poal.co/s/Gaming/289056/906d2f33-fe54-47e5-a900-8f75a83e9aa4#cmnts

This game needs better menu & information management Here's a copied & pasted comment form another post i made; it basically says what I want to say: The instructions are not in the controls menu, the help menu for the horse(don't even know where else to look for this info, and the information for everything is scattered all over the place) nor is there a context message when you're following someone again (why would they not do this? Aside from this, this game has a lot of shortcomings compared to what I read online from people. This game is pissing me off. A lot). I haven't played GTA 5, but I'm pretty shocked that a game from Rockstar has this many issues with the controls and in-game information. Why are there a million different menus for information? Why does Arthur carry a journal that has SOME of the mission info in it, then there are 2 or 3 other menus with bits of information in it. I can't even remember where everything is, and I have a feeling I'm supposed to check these menus for critical information. On the journal again, what's the point of this? Is this supposed to be immersive? Because I HAVE to access the start menu for a lot of information plus the in-game map. Also, I don't really want to read from a journal like that; this feels more like the devs getting high on their own supply here. Rather than make an option to read stuff in plain text, just have it convert the text on the pages from handwritten to computer text, if we must do the "IRL" journal thing. Back to the controls, there are going to have to be context menus up all the time for which actions are available at a given time, with an option to turn them off PROPERLY displayed in the menus (the CONTROLS menu and NOWHERE ELSE). I'm trying to use a controller because of how many different controls there are, and I found with Doom Eternal that games nowadays have so many different things the player can do that there's no choice except using a controller, even though the game is begging me at times to use a keyboard and MOUSE. The issues with controls need to be worked on. I just re-entered gaming after 10-12 years of nearly no gaming at all, and this could be construed as user-hostile. Update: I just got a hunting map. Why is the hunting map in my inventory instead of the map menu, and why doesn't it appear to match the map menu's master map? It also has the incredibly irritating to use system that the journal has. This is more so something one would do with VR, not a controller/mouse & keyboard game. Why doesn't tracking down an animal involve following actual footprints and dung and whatever else? Instead I have to go through several (irritating) menus and button presses to do basic stuff. Why did during this bear hunting mission Arthur randomly go into dead eye mode (is that even what happened??) then I shoot the animal, go into an animation that looks like I'm just going to die (so I set down the controller) then there was QTE to do something, i didn't see the button it wanted me to press, then I died. I didn't even get an option to redo the mission or whatever, and i'm now in a random location, i can't use the map to get back to where I was because of the aforementioned issues. My hat is missing. I don't have any items to refill my core. There's a completely different horse assigned to me now (where in the hell is my normal horse). What. the. hell. is. going. on? Is this a glitch? Why would this ever happen in a game? This game is falling massively short of the praise I saw it getting online. I'm not having fun, the story is kind of interesting, and I don't see any potential here that's going to save this game so far. Update 2: Search function. Rockstar, make a search function for your stupid menus. There are probably a thousand options between all of these menus, and the obvious solution is to allow search. I have no idea what is happening in the software industry that search functions for menus hasn't become standard, but it's been slow to catch on, and the idea had a mainstream positioning in 2009. Two. Thousand. Nine. 12 years ago. Update 3: I'm noticing the controller menu is flashing the different functions for the buttons (I was wondering why it was changing sh*t while I was reading it) instead of putting slashes between the functions so one can read it properly. There are so many things wrong with this design choice I'm not even going to start listing why it's a bad idea. Rockstar should obviously change this. It's not even done correctly for what they're trying to do either. I take a 10 year hiatus from gaming and this is what I come back to? Every modern game I've played so far has had ample glitches and game changing bugs as well as poor design choices all over the place. The menu system I'm noticing is a trend, which is really ironic because programming requires knowledge of data structures, and menus are one of the most obvious and oldest examples of a great place to apply knowledge of data structures. Update 4: I just noticed that in the start menu "progress" and "story" are poor descriptors for what is in those menus. If those labels were flipped it would make more sense, but still pretty bad. What is going on here? Rockstar has pretty smart people working there. Is this some strange strategy for ?something? or did they really just poorly label and implement the menus... and controls... and portions of the game play. And while I'm at in now, the movement in this game is irritating as well - toss out the extra animation for changing direction with the character and horse. Also, whatever is going on with the horse picking up speed and slowing down should be changed - just have it stop shortly after the button is let go and have it start walking when the button is pressed. Also, there are a number of buttons that move the horse forward that shouldn't. Fix that and make those buttons do nothing. A guy could fall off a cliff accidentally with that junky implementation. I have a strong feeling these issues are going to grow and grow the more i play. I'm kind of interested at this point in logging these issues for posterity as I've done with other games that are highly praised. continued in the comments https://poal.co/s/Gaming/289056/906d2f33-fe54-47e5-a900-8f75a83e9aa4#cmnts

(post is archived)

[–] • 0 pt

It's boring as fuck too. I have been playing games less and less since the PS4/XB1 generation. So many games are overhyped, filled with bugs, half-finished, loaded with microtransactions, and praised by normies and reviewers simultaneously. I just watch walkthroughs of games now and, if they're worth replaying, I'll actually buy them for the experience.

[–] • 0 pt

I always wait until a month after a game is released to check in to see if people are still hyping a game, and it almost never happens. RDR2 is still getting praise, but i don't know why. GTA V is clearly the better game, and it's older (how tf does that happen?)

Borderlands 3 was hyped to shit, and ONE DAY after its release I never heard of it again.

[–] • 0 pt

It doesnt get any better.

Trust no Game Company.

From what I can best guess, all talented game designers/engineers/programmers have left the industry for easier more lucrative jobs in other industries.

[–] • 0 pt

This was only a sample of the issues I've seen with the game. How in the hell did anyone play through this?

I have a feeling the people playing through games like this are completely outside of the gaming demographic from the 90s and early 00s because the only thing to obsess over here are graphics... and maybe SJW BS in the story.

This game is trash and I don't see myself ever playing it again.

[–] • -1 pt (edited )

There is also a trainer for this game that allows you to fast forward the game speed and give infinite cores for you and your horse. This will eliminate much of the time wasting in this game. If you're new to this game, just get the trainer right away or you're gonna have a bad time.

Upon initial impression this game is the definition of "fizzled potential", for a "AAA" western. Read on.

Also, the writing needs to be overhauled. Everything I'm hearing in the game, especially with relation to , is being portrayed through a year 2020 (I should say 2018 lens, but the meaning is the same) lens. This game is said to take place in 1899.... the story and interpersonal relationships are unrealistic, and completely destroy the immersion this game otherwise has.

The immersion doesn't save this game though. To be up front, I give this game a below 5/10 rating. I am never excited to fire this game up, and the only reason I keep playing is out of curiosity of how bad it all gets, and I want ammo for my arsenal when I debate this with people. This game is not worth the steam asking price of $40, and it's not worth the $20 I paid on black friday. The only reason I'm not going to return it is because this is the type of bad video game I like to play now and then, and I get a good laugh that a supposed "AAA" company pumped out this.

Back to the critique, the game clearly poorly stitches together the missions and story elements, and being that I'm 20% into the game, there is nothing that could save it now. Assuming the game gets better, every time I go to replay this game I will remember "oh, I have to go through the first 20% of this (slow) game before I get to the good stuff". I don't even know what the plot of the game is right now other than that we are outlaws that set up camp somewhere. I have barely gotten dialog from Dutch since we set up camp, I have no idea which missions are pushing along the main story line. There are missions that seem like side missions that (I think) advanced the plot.

I don't even know what to scrape at to "give props" to this game for doing something well. The environment? But it looks procedurally generated with people going in afterwards touching it up??? Does anyone care???

The hunting stuff is obviously rigged to have dangerous animals attack you to show off these (unwanted) scenes where the game :D :D :D smoothly transitions :D :D :D (yay for smooth transitions!!!!) into the player being attacked. The animals (even herbivores) always jump out from rocks where they clearly spawned. It's all too forced and pretentious on behalf of the devs, and i can hear them from their office chairs screaming "YOU LIKE THIS! SAY I DID A GOOD JOB!" Anyways, I tried repeating what happened for the bear mission you go on with Hosea and i got hit with every irritating barrier you can imagine. I died in the mission because of that lame and scripted attack transition (and it's not clear whether this is a cinematic thing or game play - stop doing this devs it's purely irritating. nothing more, nothing less. it's not artsy if that's the pretentious angle here, either), then i was dumped somewhere on the map that appeared disconnected from everything else on the map, I had a horse that was a different color and everything than what I had before, I thought the game glitched out. It took me over an hour of research online and wandering around to stumble upon the fact that I could go into the menu (the menu system is so bad I cannot even recall which menu it is to explain it here or whether it's in the start menu or in-game menus. it's 2020 guys, games in the 80s didn't have these issues.). When I went to retry the mission I think it's scripted that you can't kill the bear, so I went to lay the damn bait again and I don't recall if I had it in my inventory still or if I tried third time and stumbled upon the berries as I was leaving because I was giving up. ANyways, I went to lay the frigging bait and i get a notification that i have to WAIT to hunt the damn thing again!!!! wtf???? how long? is this in game time only? I didn't realize I can rest anywhere and camp at the time because of the horrendous controls, and on top of that when i DID try experimenting with camping/resting anyways before i was on a patch of ground that didn't allow it, and i thought i forgot the correct control to do it or i was doing it wrong!!!! anyways, when I went to lay the bait the next day (real time days, not in-game) the bear never came, then as I said forget it and I was leaving I got attacked by the bear from a nearby rock (of course this oh-so-realistic game would have the bear "slip in" undetected right next to me). Everything about this was irritating and not fun, and I wasn't wowed by these mechanics or whatever the hell the deal was here that these things all happened. Other games have done hunting, and they did it better.

I'm going to add more info as I get it, and i've been reading other forums explaining issues with the game, and I'll post that here as well.

More problems with menus

When I'm in camp near the donation box, I see three little icon in the upper right, one iwth a chicken leg, another with a bullet, and another with a plus sign. I take it the ones in red are bad. What are these? What do I do to change them, and why in the hell is there no way to interact with them to get information? This game CONSTANTLY tries getting the player to pay attention to things that there's no obvious way to do anything about. This is the first game I've played, not only to have these issues, but have a chronic case of doing it... I'm assuming this is on purpose due to how often it happens, but what is the purpose? because all i'm getting out of it is irritation.

Remake/remaster this game and iron out all these issues. There is quite a bit more to do here than ironing out issues though. Do the FF7 thing where you just re-write the story in order to stitch this together properly. take out all the pretentious, forced mechanics like attack transitions like with the bear and cutscenes that turn into game play. speaking of this what IS the fighting system for melee? It just looks like the game is turning on baby mode, whilst making me take tons of damage, and auto winning fights while I mash buttons like my little brother playing a game with a disconnected controller. Take out the wait times for hunting and whatever other tedium you put in this game that I haven't seen yet. I don't even mind all the horse riding, but you guys messed up in many other ways that draw peoples' attention to the horseback riding. Fix the writing and make it match 1899, not 2020 (I should say 2018, but the meaning is the same).

I'll post back with examples and other overarching complaints (because given what I'm seeing now, I know there are more).

take out Weapons durability from the game. This has never worked for a game mechanic. It's just irritating (irritation is really a theme in this game).

I'm not sure what happened here but I got in a horseback fight and after i killed everyone the corpses all disappeared by the time i looted 2 of them. why? wtf? if this is supposed to happen in this game change it so it doesn't happen. why would this be a thing?? IRRITATING.

I would turn on a trainer at this point, but I'm curious how bad this game gets, and I want to experience the real deal. Honestly, it's getting kind of funny at this point that I can make such observations about a huge friggin' game company's derps. These are derpy screw ups to put it mildly.

Do I have to use items one by one or can I use multiple at once? I have to go through that pie menu and cycle through items just to restore an empty core? How was this not taken care of in development? Someone let me know if I'm missing something here because this is.... all my wat

Is there a dialog log in this game? I'm trying to go over something someone said, and I can't find it. This game seems to love dropping the player off at dead end roads. I don't think this was intentional. It seems like this game wasn't finished.

I'm on a bounty mission and the game just told me that a hog tied passenger will drown if i go through deep water on my horse, then the guided path says to go through deep water....

The game needs to have better checkpoint save functionality. I don't mind the horseback riding but when I'm trying to redo crap I don't want to wait through the ride again, this is just wasting the player's time. This is what dark souls does and i think that's why people call that game "hard". The only difficult part about dark souls is not getting so bored that you just turn 360 degrees and walk away from playing it.

Quick time events... there are quick time events in this game... and during cut scenes.... this was the only criticism I had for RE4, an otherwise perfect game. RDR2 is now on the cusp of an anti-game or something... how does anyone think this game is above average? Where are the points above a 4.5/10 coming from?

I have to press and hold the button each time I want to discard an item... I have dozens of items I need to throw away right now... god. what is wrong with this game??

put an option in the menu to skip all of these pointless repeated cut scenes for skinning animals and everything else. and why aren't some cut scenes skippable until they get well into the damn thing? I have to keep mashing the button to find out if it's eventually skippable... how did any of this get past quality control at rockstar?? what is going on at that company? politics in the work place??? i bet that's exactly what happened.

I can't lasso an animal i killed and drag it behind me to camp. fizzled potential.

why hasn't this game been updated? It's been out for 2 years and they never came back to update this junkyass product? There's a lot of room for improvement.

Why do i have to stand at a particular angle from an object on the ground before the option to pick it up is given? ... how is this a problem in a video game in the year 2020? I don't think i've seen this problem in a game before. ...i mean, maybe but I can't recall it.

I couldn't tell what the game was doing with that item and weapon wheel but I just confirmed the 2 weapon load out video game trope again. Can we not do this? I want all my guns on my person in the game. Always. For every game. 40+ guns. one guy's jeans pocket. just do it.