Great game, but annoying wrapper

And no, I'm not talking about the announcer. I'm talking mostly about the matchmaking and some choices made with timers. It's a culmination of many small things mostly.

When playing an game, particularly action games, I want to get into the action as quickly as possible. When the action is done, I want to get BACK into the action as quickly as possible. So some things that bug me:

1 - The 60 second countdown timer in crossfire. I don't mind this so much if a game isn't full as it gives more time for additional players to join. But once a game is full can't it drop down to 10 seconds? Also if you have 8 players, and then one drops, the timer completely resets once more people join, even if the game fills up. There should be no reason to have to wait 60 second with a full roster of players, and with fewer there should be some type of "ready" system so that if everyone wants to start with less than a full roster they can.

2 - If you get dumped back to the title screen because of host disconnection and you've got two local players, the second player has to rejoin every time. It should just remember that there's a second player and leave them joined until they decide to leave.

3 - Countdown after single player blitz games. I see no need for a countdown when it's only one player. Just let them hit A to continue, and they can spend as long (or short) of a time looking at the stats as they want. It also wouldn't hurt to let players hit a ready button after a match, and if everyone does it continues regardless of what the countdown is on (but still keep the countdown in case someone isn't paying attention).

4 - If you get dumped due to host disconnecting you go back to the title screen. Why back to the title screen? Can't it dump you back to the crossfire or whatever mode you're already playing screen?

5 - Choosing blitz mode. You have to do it. Don't get me wrong, I understand that you need to choose one if you're going to play it, but there's no way to cancel selection. The intuition of most gamers is "B to cancel" in menues, but here if you accidentally selected blitz you can't hit B to back out, you're forced to choose a mode. Not a big deal at all, just counterintuitive.

6 - In the post game report if you're migrated to a new host (which takes 30 seconds to a minute) you're brought right back to.... yep, the post game stats screen! I don't think anyone will be TOO bent out of shape if they can't see their stats, or at least don't bother with all the game state data copying. All you need at this point are the stats, and it shouldn't take long to migrate that.

Basically these are all minor gripes. The gameplay is great and that's the important thing. It just bothers me sometimes that it can take so long to get the action going, and little menu inconsistencies and inconveniences add up. I don't think the menus are bad, but it does feel as though these type of things weren't given nearly as much thought/testing/polish as the rest of the game.

pretty sure number 3 is there so you can set up turrets between rounds.

nvm, pretty sure your talking about the end of the game

I thought the timer reset, but I noticed last night that the timer came back at the same time it had when it switched to "waiting for other players". I don't know if there is a threshold or not, but I think the timer doesn't reset.

I fully agree. It always takes me a few seconds to figure out why B isn't bringing me back to the main menu.

I agree with most of these points, but this thread should be in feedback and issues.

I agree on a lot of these points as well. A break between matches in fine, but all of the other little things that slow things down can get annoying.

You're right Neff, the timer doesn't reset. I guess I had just lost many players shortly after a match and it when we were no longer waiting for players it was nearly full, so that's where I got that misconception.

I also figured out why the choosing blitz thing is so annoying, at least for me. If you get dropped from a game you go back to the main menu and blitz is the defualt selected, as opposed to whatever mode you were last playing. I think the natural assumption is that the last mode you were playing would be selected, so you clear the "you have been disconnected from the host" message and then hit A again to go back into crossfire, but you end up in blitz instead. Then you can't back out until you choose a mode.