That's very useful tips and very well written too! You know your stuff and I think it's brilliant how you described it. What also helps in the UI is the naming and placing of menu's. It has to feel intuitive. You don't want to be searching all over the place for some option or menu. I tried playing the witcher 2 with a controller but I just couldn't get to grips with it. Even though I've been a console gamer for years up to the ps2. I find the UI in Final Fantasy games intuitive but when I would try the Witcher 2 with a controller, I found it pretty hard. Then again I just had an old cheap controller laying around.
This reminded me of an MMO I've played for 8 years. Maplestory. If any game has a shit load of key bindings that you have to choose where to put what, it's maplestory. Most people use the home, end, insert, etc keys. However, you control your characters with the arrow keys. This means that if you were to use those 6 buttons, your hands would somewhat get in the way of each other. So I put them from 1 to =. Placing the important attacks at 1 and ` and placing my potions at =, - and 0. It worked out well for me for that game but others don't understand why I did that.
This reminded me of an MMO I've played for 8 years. Maplestory. If any game has a shit load of key bindings that you have to choose where to put what, it's maplestory. Most people use the home, end, insert, etc keys. However, you control your characters with the arrow keys. This means that if you were to use those 6 buttons, your hands would somewhat get in the way of each other. So I put them from 1 to =. Placing the important attacks at 1 and ` and placing my potions at =, - and 0. It worked out well for me for that game but others don't understand why I did that.