II play TSW2 a lot, but what annoys me every day is the start sequence: - A video - A completely useless news screen (I never read anything there) - The the mastery screen So you need 3-4 times press a key before you arrive at the main menu. I do not start the game to do all this, it costs me about 10-15 seconds of my precious life to go through a useless procedure. My suggestion: - May the intro video optional, or make a video section in the main menu and play this one only once. - There is no need at all to force me to skip the mastery screen. This is accessible if I need it from the menu - Skip the news, there is an articles page. Put news into articles, we can watch it there. Even better: allow me to choose which screen I want to start, e.g. a route screen, main screen, livery designer screen and so on. . You may even make a run switch for the exe that allows me to jump straight into a specific route.
I love this bit of your post. It sometimes takes a lot longer than that if it’s not working correctly too.
If you open the game and then scroll your mouse wheel while it's on that initial first screen, it will skip straight to the mastery page, then hit the escape key and you're at the main menu. Takes the 10 seconds down to 1 or 2 seconds
You can just skip the video , which takes about 2 seconds . The rest are really quick as well . Not much to complain about
It takes a couple minutes to get through on a base PS4. On console rotate right stick gets through to the mastery screen nice and quick. This is where the console’s power save mode can be a game changer (if like me you play nothing else!) just keep the game suspended until you need it.
I think we can agree that If you continuously press a button (Esc on PC), you will get to main menu in like 3 seconds It's still not a good design to have all that repeating clutter, most of which isn't relevant most of the time, presented as screens before you can reach the menu
It's pretty standard in gaming though - quite a few games have unskippable Publisher -> Developer -> Overlong and often out of place GPU sponsor -> Copyright blurb and disclaimers etc One Need For Speed had an unskippable 30 second video about don't attempt on the road and wear a helmet. I think TS gets away quite lucky there
But the difference in TSW2 is the screens are about mastery, news/articles, etc, so if publisher/developer screens were not considered necessary, these could be removed too.
Try playing forza horizon, I actually timed it the other week and it is 4 minutes 56 seconds from launch of the game until you can actually drive a car.
Yes if I want to play I do not want to keep pressing buttons, I want to dive into play right away. I am bloody serious on this topic. 10 seconds each time makes about 300+10=3000 seconds in a year. That is about 40 minutes playtime lost.
Takes me a trip to the kettle, a trip to the fridge, and more often than not a trip to the throne before I start a journey so I avoid any loading times....
No not big issue but you do it a lot of times. it is not just about this key press, but it is about good UI design. For me it is annoying to do pointless button pressing and being forced to see screens I do not need or want to see. In good UI design, the designer thinks this trough and makes sure not te require users to do more than necessary. It is not about this sole button. TSW has more places where it feels like clumsy and inconsistent UI. I am aware that UI design is a skill and there always will be bugs, but it deserves attention and by improving it, users feel a bit happy because it works just a little more natural.
At the moment the start sequence is designed around the idea of a marketing window. But most of us who play the game get that information through other channels. The marketing aspect is more important for the more occasional player maybe, but It could be achieved more elegantly and with less frustration to the rest of us by having it appear on the main menu screen in a clickable call out box that periodically changes instead. GT Sport has made a good stab at this and I think it works well at creating a sense of an online community without hindering the need to just get into the game.
