I decided to get a little practice in before Altador Cup VI officially starts on Wednesday, June 1, 2011, and was not happy to find Yooyuball is not at all the same control wise. I loved the mouse control and while I used to be better when I played on my desktop, I still could do great on my laptop. Now you can only use keyboard controls and it is extremely frustrating.
You use the arrow keys to move around and then space to shoot, but now there is a power bar, so you hold and release to shoot or I guess you could also use it to pass. Selecting the player you want to control is not as intuitive as rolling over them was, so the goalie is basically useless.
I really wanted to give it a fair chance, but after three play throughs I just cannot get the hang of using the keyboard. I like simple controls, hence why I like playing on Neopets instead of some complicated RPG or other console games with controllers with a bunch of buttons (i.e. Xbox and PlayStation). Not saying I do not like more complex and involved games, but the ones I do play tend to have very basic controls, as I hate spending time mastering controls, especially with my small hands.
Interestingly, I noticed on the Neopets boards some very legitimate concerns that this not only counts out people like me that want simple controls, but people with disabilities that truly must have easy controls. My brother has CP and rocks at console games and can handle the complex controls, but on the computer he can barely type and mostly only watches anime, Netflix, and surfs the web because it means it mostly just has to use the mouse. Not to mention he is left hand dominant and while his right hand can do things it is not as easy, so using the arrow keys to play a game is definitely not likely to work out unless that is all you need to do. If they at least added the rather standard option to use WASD for arrows that would at least help people that can use their left hand normal. Those that can only do whole hand and do not really have finger dexterity are screwed unless they bring back the mouse controls, though.
There are a lot of complaints about the change and one can hope Neopets comes to their senses and makes it so both mouse and keyboard (it does work better for some, so definitely keep it) controls are options, but I am not going to expect it to happen. I will also not let it stop me from enjoying the Altador Cup. I will just be pretty much exclusively playing side games instead of mainly playing Yooyuball like previous years. I guess that means not likely to get as high a rank, though.
What do you think about the control changes?
