I’d like to discuss the decision to disable the Back button, and to make suggestions for its reintroduction by highlighting a few use cases:
[ol][li]User accidentally taps the icon while browsing apps.[/li]
[li]User allows the game to load, then decides to play a different game.[/li]
[li]User wants to check something in the LengendEx and/or Rankings. This user has very large fingers.[/li]
[li]User holds their device with the V-stick precariously close to their back button.[/li]
[li]User often checks their inventory.[/li][/ol]
My suggestions for each:
Use Case 1:
App-etiquette would dictate that if an application has a loading screen, that enough cpu cycles are left free to respond immediately to a Back button press, exactly to cover this use case. The problem is much worse for someone using the device who doesn’t actually play the game. After attempting to press the Back button a dozen or so times, they are likely to open the Task Manager, and terminate it from there, believing it to be “Not Responding”.
I don’t do any Andriod development, but I suspect there’s a mechanism in place to allow a process to forfeit its allotted processor time to DoEvents() or the like.
Use Case 2:
This probably doesn’t happen very often, but Use Case 1 may cross over into this one, depending on how long it takes the user to realize their mistake. Rather then being able to exit by pressing Back, the user is required to Tap to Start, specifically tap the Quit button, and then confirm that they’d like to quit.
Use Case 3:
The tiny Xs in the corner of these dialogs are rather difficult to press, especially when using one’s thumbs, as a gamer might be apt to do. The Back button should close the current item, and navigate backwards to the previous - I believe this is the expected and intuitive behavior. Additionally, from the second Main screen, it should navigate back to the first, and from the first it should act as if the user had pressed Quit.
Use Case 4:
The Back button should be disabled while dungeon crawling. This, in my opinion, is the only circumstance that disabling the Back button is more likely to be a benefit to the user, than a hinderance.
Use Case 5:
The Back button should close the User menu, exactly as if the user had clicked Resume.