My thing is...why is there so many keys to learn when you can use a generic 'u'se key for a lot of them. Or, maybe even a 'e'quip key for all equipment. I know there is probably more to that under the hood, but I'm not a programmer. This is about the only thing that bugs me.
I'm split on this one. On the one hand, there's no reason why the command for putting on your gloves needs to be different from the one for putting on say, a ring. With that said, in some cases it can be better for keeping the number of key presses needed for any given action down, or for avoiding presenting the player with an inconveniently large number of options when they only need to choose from a few specific things.
As an example of the latter, I support using 'r'ead for scrolls and 'q'uaff or 'd'rink for potions. They're mechanically similar, sometimes even identical, but they're also items that the player tends to carry a lot of. If they weren't separate, then every time you'd press 'u'se you'd get 50 options of every potion, scroll, wand, staff, etc in your inventory, and you lose more time finding and picking out the one you need from the large list than you'd lose from just learning separate commands. For things like wands and staves where the player generally only carries a few though, I think it's dumb to use separate commands.
I'll use my own project as an example of limiting key presses. In my game I'm working on, there are separate buttons for using 's'kills and 'm'agic, even though they're mechanically almost identical (the main difference being only that skills use stamina and magic uses your magic energy).
Despite being almost the same thing, I'm separating them, because I'm shooting for about 26 of each - one for each letter key on your keyboard. If they were unified under one key, I would either need to have the player cycle through two pages to see everything, adding an unnecessary key press to the action, or I would have to expand which keys are used for skills to number keys and beyond - making it far more complicated to memorize everything than just remembering 's' for skills and 'm' for magic would be. With the way I have it, you only need to press two keys to use any non-directional ability, or three for ones that need to be targeted. Some commonly used abilities will have their own specific key, so you only need one or two key presses to use them.
I really don't like the way, say, ToME handles it, where you press 'm' for magic, then you have to choose whether to cast a spell or store a spell or whatever, and then you have to choose a book, then a spell within that book, and then finally you have to press a key for what you want the spell to be cast on. That's five key presses for an action that takes a single turn, and it's something you'll need to do all the time. I consider mages to be unplayable in that game unless you learn how to make spell macros for that reason, and of course, learning to do that means that you have to spend even more time figuring out the controls and how it's all done.
