First, I'm one of those guys who is set in his ways as to what keys I like to use while I play a game. Skyrim does let you change any key, but all the GUI does not change to match the changed buttons, so it gets all screwed up when opening chests or doing any inventory stuff at all. Why can't they stop being so lazy with the interface for PC?

Bethesda, please patch this. Oblivion had key binding problems but this is even worse.

Many players are experiencing this bug. Please fix this as soon as possible Bethesda.

My "R" key is useless when I need to drop an item. Walking out of a dungeon to a town in order to sell something just to be unencumbered is ridiculous.

Let me preface my comment by saying YES, this is BAD. Bethesda should patch this, etc. etc.

That said, I am consistently amazed that people insist on using weird key arrangements no matter what. WASD works fine, every game is designed for WASD, so why not just get used to it? I used the numpad way back when too, but when WASD became the standard I switched to save myself hassles. Now, years later, it is still paying off... no hassles for me. If a key is stopping you from playing right, don't rebind it. Why make yourself suffer? I don't get it.

In some cases, refraining from changing your controls may be suffering in itself. Take left-handers for example. It's very uncomfortable to use WASD with the mouse on the left side of the keyboard. Controls are supposed to be rebindable (if such a word exists). The Numpad is a lot better.

I really miss how your character turns with your mouse cursor, now, you walk up to a table, pick something off it- you can't turn around, you have to backwards-forward teleport into the other direction by walking.

If you are left handed it matters quite a bit, can make it almost impossible to play. Also many players use certain hotkeys for specific things, I use C for sneak/duck in every single game I play and F for abilities that I need often and are important to use in dangerous situations. Having to rearrange these is rather annoying and results in mistakes due pressing the wrong key.

WASP is all good.

It's the other keys I care about. Change em like crazy to get more convenient or personally intuitive commands going.

You know what I don't get? Why so many people have a burning desire to *PREVENT* other people from having choices.

It's some kind of bizarre pathology that is just absolutely an epidemic in the gaming world. Just about any gaming forum is filled with people who don't want other people to have choices.

Why do you want other people to be forced to do things they don't want to? It seems kind of sick. I want you to use the keys whatever way you want to, it's no business of mine. The the game was arrow-key-centric and made it hard to switch to WASD, the very last thing I would do would be to come in here and argue that you shouldn't have that choice.

It's like some people aren't happy unless someone else is UNhappy.

I don't understand why they removed the ability to just click on an item to drop it, or be able to physically drag it out of your inventory to the ground. That worked perfectly fine in the past games.

As some have pointed out, WASD simply doesn't work for left-handed players. What if the game forced you to use the Num Pad when you prefer and are used to (and are dextrously inclined to) using the WASD keys? You'd be upset too, especially if you use both mouse and keyboard to play simultaneously. WASD with no other options forces an unnatural game play style on some people. Besides, one could also use your "every game is designed [with]" argument on key binding. They all allow you to set custom keys. Even the older, cheaper quality games let you do this. It's strange how limited this game is in what it allows you to customize, and even stranger that some of what it allows you to do can actually cripple or break the game.

Same here. Every game I play, I use almost the exact same custom key settings because they are familiar to me, and thus it helps me settle into the game faster.

I'd be great if when I map my movement keys to the Arrow keys if the Lockpicking would also change rather than remain as WASD.

Yes, thank you.

It's biggest issue I have with the game right now.

UI is still showing default keymapping in some instances. I spent a lot of time getting the controls just right, only to find out in the middle of a dungeon that I couldn't drop any items.....so I had to revert back to default to become unencumbered.

Please FIX!

(I use ESDF for movement and it's screwing with years of muscle-memory to go back to WASD)

Everyone is saying left-handed is the issue... my best friend is left-handed and uses the mouse with his right hand. Both hands are doing relatively dexterous things, you just have trained yourself to use your left hand for the mouse. I bet if you guys re-trained yourselves you could easily switch.

In any event, like I said, this should be patched and I bet it will be.

Left hander here but I use the mouse righty. I just want to be able to exit menu's without having to sometimes 'click' on the tab box at the bottom of the screen with the mouse. The settings actually change depending on what menu you are in too...sometimes F is 'take all' and sometimes R is 'take all'.
...again, I can't believe this got past QA!!!!

Edit - I already posted this in another thread that's 'now lost' - It's an easy fix Beth. Get rid of the hand-holding. Get rid of the 'Press whatever for whatever' at the bottom of all the screens and give me back working keymappings!

"You bet" we could. It's the same as suddenly asking you to use the mouse with your left hand. You will find that it's annoying and takes quite a long time to master when you're used to the opposite. It's like switching your preferred writing hand in a second and expect equally good results, which is impossible.

That said, of course it will be patched. So we won't have to have this discussion anymore.

No. No, we could not.

How would you feel if I demanded you, as a right-hander, have to use my "mouse on the left, primary keys reassigned to the numberpad" set-up?

I'm betting you'd hate it. I'm also betting you couldn't just "easily" re-train yourself.

I'm happy your friend uses his mouse/keyboard the way he prefers, but guess what? I like using my set up the way it is, too. Nearly every other game I own or have ever played lets me configure my keybindings in a way that's comfortable for me--hell, even The Binding of Isaac has an option specifically to swap up the game's controls for left-handed users. And that's an indie game done by two people using Flash. Why can't Skyrim offer even that?

The problem here is that Skyrim's restricting our keybindings so severely at all, IMHO. This is the first game I've come across that offers key configurations yet, at the same time, will go "lol you can't do that" or "lol, you changed your left-right movement to these keys, but you're still going to have to use WASD to lockpick!" at me. That's what's not acceptable.

This. This is a huge issue in my opinion, thank you for voicing it so well. The character not being able to turn with the mouse can cause serious problems if the player is suddenly attacked.


The WASD is no issue for me at all.

The only changes I made were to make the spacebar the activator (as it is much easier to access than the "tab" key) - The exit for these things is still the tab key, which I may change because the tab key is also the inventory/journal key, and trying to exit a chest always opens that screen up as soon as it closes the container.

I also changed the Jump function to "E" instead of on the spacebar where it didnt' make sense to be (for me). I can easily press the W & E together, why have to stretch my hand across the keyboard to run and jump?

Also, the "M1" and "M2" for equipping weapons/spells to R or L hands - I don't have either of those keys on my Laptop, and have tried every possible key or combination of keys to access the left hand for spells so I could carry my weapon in my right hand at all times. The lower left of the screen that gives you these key functions can't be clicked on, so I have been unable to access my left hand at all for combat. Can anyone tell me what we are supposed to click on to equip our left hand?

In addition to the "M1 & 2" not being a clickable function, the "favorites" is the same way. It indicates to press the "F" key. For some reason (on my laptop), that does nothing - so I have not been able to hotkey any weapons, spells, potions. That is pretty inconvenient in battle.


*

Doc. here long time gamer that happens to be left handed so I join the cause . PLS fix

why are there people here telling the left handers to live with it ? spent 2hrs trying and its way to annoying.

pls don't let this become a waste of money ,will wait for a patch.

I'll echo this one too.
My rig can easily run Crysis on max settings, yet here I sit with a mouse that at times wont respond for a couple of seconds when trying to face an enemy.

bump

Don't bump the thread needlessly. There are plenty of people having this problem, so there's no need to inflate the post count.

The problem is that single keys control different actions depending on what level of the menu system you're in. For example, the manual lists the default key for Ready/Sheathe Weapon to be 'R.' What they don't tell you is that the same key also allows you to Drop things, Store items in containers, Give or Take items to/from companions, etc. This normally wouldn't be a problem because of the "button help" graphics that appear in the lower left corner of the UI - except these graphics don't change if you remap your keys. So, if you changed your Ready/Sheathe Weapon key from the default 'R' to 'F,' and you wanted to drop something, the UI will still show the button help graphic indicating that you should push R to drop something, when in fact you need to push F. Once you remap a couple of keys, the UI becomes unusable.

In a thread that seems to have been lost/removed, socrates200X (a Bethesda developer or tester) explained that this was a decision they consciously made before shipping the game - because allowing the button help graphic to change if you remapped a key would cause the UI to have to load all possible graphics for all available keys that could be mapped, causing the UI to lag/delay and VRAM usage to increase needlessly. How they ever thought this was an acceptable solution is beyond me. It seems simple enough to have the UI pull from a list of graphics instead of loading them all needlessly, or at the very least use TEXT instead of graphics. Surely that would be better than showing a graphic that indicates the WRONG KEY.

I suspect this is being worked, or has already been fixed by Bethesda but won't be available until the next update can be pushed out to Steam. As it is the weekend, and Bethesda seems to be off drinking mead instead of supporting their game, I wouldn't expect to hear anything until Monday at least.

That is possibly one of the most idiotic excuses I have ever heard. Games have had this thing called "alternate key binding" for years. People who can figure out how to rebind a key can probably get by without a constant reminder that they did it. I don't care if the UI says "Press E" when I know I need to press M4 -or- E.

Like you, I don't know how they figured releasing an only partially functional game would be an acceptable solution to the issue. It isn't like this is an issue that only causes problems with a specific hardware setup or something, this is a platform wide issue that they have chosen to ignore. (I assume they chose to ignore it rather than were so moronic as to totally miss it)

In Soviet Bethesda, controls configure you!