HOW DO I CHANGE THE OPEN MENU KEY TO ESC AND WHY ISNT IT ESC BY DEFAULT ANYWAY?

[Poop King]

Single most annoying thing about this game, I cant find the rebind option for the menu key anywhere.

[talgaby]

It is hard-coded, so unless you can rewire your keyboard, you are stuck with F10.
And because it uses the same setup as SoE1 did, and that game was still made in an era where function keys were relatively commonplace for menus, something inherited from the DOS era.

[NIKFS]

my guess would be that esc (escape) used to be used to exit something (thus escape ;P) and as such back then people didnt use it for such things, i mean even if many games nowadays block alt+f4 i havent seen a game yet to use that key combination for anything, for the same reason ;)

[Cats. Just Cats.]

It's a pretty stupid question to begin with. I don't mean to be overly rude, but I can't stand it if people ask without thinking. Escape has important uses in an RTS game:
- When choosing the placement of a new building, you can abort the whole thing with Esc
- Cancel the text msg you're writing
- Cancel one unit from the queue of a building

Rebinding is surely a comfortable function, but you can't expect every key to be newly set.

[Poop King]

Originally posted by Cats. Just Cats.:

It's a pretty stupid question to begin with. I don't mean to be overly rude, but I can't stand it if people ask without thinking. Escape has important uses in an RTS game:
- When choosing the placement of a new building, you can abort the whole thing with Esc
- Cancel the text msg you're writing
- Cancel one unit from the queue of a building

Rebinding is surely a comfortable function, but you can't expect every key to be newly set.

The idea would be that ESC should open the menu after any of its other commands are cleared.

[Cats. Just Cats.]

Originally posted by Console derps suck:

Originally posted by Cats. Just Cats.:

It's a pretty stupid question to begin with. I don't mean to be overly rude, but I can't stand it if people ask without thinking. Escape has important uses in an RTS game:
- When choosing the placement of a new building, you can abort the whole thing with Esc
- Cancel the text msg you're writing
- Cancel one unit from the queue of a building

Rebinding is surely a comfortable function, but you can't expect every key to be newly set.

The idea would be that ESC should open the menu after any of its other commands are cleared.

Still, that's not really intuitive. Example: You have a queue with 5 units. You hit Esc five times to cancel all the units, and a sixth time to open the menu. That's just awkward. Why would you want to use Esc in multiple ways like this? And how often would you cancel units by accident, when you just want to open the menu?

F10 has always been the menu key since DOS times. I understand that Esc works well for the menu in FPS games, but it's weird in RTS games.

[Poop King]

Originally posted by Cats. Just Cats.:

Originally posted by Console derps suck:

The idea would be that ESC should open the menu after any of its other commands are cleared.

Still, that's not really intuitive. Example: You have a queue with 5 units. You hit Esc five times to cancel all the units, and a sixth time to open the menu. That's just awkward. Why would you want to use Esc in multiple ways like this? And how often would you cancel units by accident, when you just want to open the menu?

F10 has always been the menu key since DOS times. I understand that Esc works well for the menu in FPS games, but it's weird in RTS games.

Why would each clear units in a queue, unless off course you have the building open?

I don't get why you think this is an FPS feature, it's standard in just about every game including other RTS.

[Cats. Just Cats.]

If you want to do a quick save or load - and thereby have to open the menu - you don't really want to check each time whether you have a building selected beforehand, and go through the trouble of un-selecting it before you're allowed to open the menu.

That would be the most awkward menu key ever invented.

[Jdogrey]

Originally posted by Cats. Just Cats.:

It's a pretty stupid question to begin with. I don't mean to be overly rude, but I can't stand it if people ask without thinking. Escape has important uses in an RTS game:
- When choosing the placement of a new building, you can abort the whole thing with Esc
- Cancel the text msg you're writing
- Cancel one unit from the queue of a building

Rebinding is surely a comfortable function, but you can't expect every key to be newly set.

The ESC key was the main way to open the original game's menu, and I have been playing for years, all the way from the original, through HD and now to DE and never had an issue. All of a sudden it is broken in DE, and I can no longer open the menu quickly. It is awful. So no, this question is not asked without thinking and you are just wrong.

[Poop King]

Since this was bought up again, I'm not even sure of one single other RTS or TBS game where ESC is not the menu key.

This one being the only one as such is frustrating beyond belief, along with not offering the option to remap the ESC key.

I never even use it for a single one of any of its other functions.