Similarity towards other games

[Gilanguar]

Just a point I wanted to bring up on the UX side is that keeping standardised aspects of the genre in your game is pretty important.
One example is Scoreboard in the original UT was F1 and most other FPS games the standard is Tab which can be confusing for new players. Whilst you can change it to whatever you like in the ini, ideally you want the player experience to be as smooth as possible when they first load up a game. I don't want have to spend hours configuring software just to make it comfortable in order to use the software.

You can create the most theoretically aesthetically pleasing HUD that has ever been designed but if it's drastically different from the standard people are used to in terms of layout it will most likely be rejected. All the web browsers have almost identical layouts for a reason.

[MonsOlympus]

Its really not that easy to hold F1 whilst playing unlike Tab so I agree here, ideally UT would use the cloud to store the keybinds.

[_Lynx]

Keyboard bindings set-up is a normal process for any new game and it doesn't take much time. Also those games that I know use Tab as "display while hold". However F1 in most of the shooter games toggles the display of the scoreboard just like UT does.

However I'd like to point out that by default, Tab was always binded to "type" - a command that opens a pretty much a single line console, when the full-fledged console was always binded to a key right above it. So we have unnecessary duplication here. UT3 had it the worst as you could not unbind tab at all with editing ini file, and if you accidentally open console during a fast paced game, you'll be dead and ******. So what I mean is - people who use console commands are very likely to go for full console window, but Tab key can be used for something else, like scoreboard.

[Gilanguar]

Game setup just to make the experience enjoyable beyond the obvious resolution settings should be as minimal as possible. With free to play games these days I have no attachment to playing them, if the controls feel off i'll just uninstall immediately and find something worth my time. I hope the idea of this UT is to appeal to new players rather than turn them away. Bearing in mind the game will be free and many people won't under 18-20 probably have never played an arena shooter.

Customization options should be as diverse as possible for people who have interest in the title. But if you can't capture the interest of a new player immediately with default settings they're never going to stick around long enough to make the game work for them. It's not like UT is the only arena shooter in development and it's certainly not the only FPS game thats going to be coming out in the next 12 months.

[DDRRE]

+1 on Tab = show scoreboard (not toggle).

[TrickyVein]

I don't want have to spend hours configuring software just to make it comfortable in order to use the software.

Keyboard bindings set-up is a normal process for any new game and it doesn't take much time.

It really doesn't. We're not talking about console players here. One of the first things any PC user does with any software or game is look at configuration options and key bindings. I don't see how they can really be brought up as a negative when it comes to impacting user experience.

You can create the most theoretically aesthetically pleasing HUD that has ever been designed but if it's drastically different from the standard people are used to in terms of layout it will most likely be rejected. All the web browsers have almost identical layouts for a reason.

It turns out that many browsers share the same layout precisely because it's functional and aesthetically pleasing. Copying the HUD design of another game (which game or games???) just 'cause it's what's out there seems like poor practice. How do you define what's standard for a F2P FPS? You don't, not objectively.