Control… interrupted.

Been evaluating a game recently and it really makes you realise how important the little things are. Also makes you realise that it is almost impossible to think of everything in one go – don't think the first draft of a design doc is going to be the one, you'll be adding/updating minor things for months.
The “little thing” in question was a combat control. While playing you fire with the mouse buttons (most characters have two weapons, one assigned to each mouse button) but you also have context sensitive actions. Think along the lines of Shenmue's Quick Time Events, and Resident Evil 4's actions, but in first person. In this case, one action is a melee attack when an enemy comes right up into your face. It was discovered that you can't trigger the melee attack while still holding down the weapon fire button.
“So stop firing!” you cry. Yes, but if you do that there is a slight delay. Actually there are two: one is the 'end firing' animation time and the second is the 'start melee animation' time up until you actually smack the enemy. Both only add up to 1 second at most, but when you stop firing it gives the enemy time to attack you – and these enemies are pretty vicious close up with several chained slashing attacks.
Solution? Well there are several:
1. Allow the context-sensitive 'melee attack' button press to interrupt weeapon firing if you hit it while the “trigger” is still held down. This would make sense as this mirrors closely what the player intends to do anyway – give a quick punch/pistol-whip to make the enemy back off slightly, then immediately resume firing.
2. Reduce the 'end firing' and 'start melee animation' times so that the player has less chance of taking damage when they stop firing and before they do the melee.
3. Increase the enemy 'recover from being hit with bullets' time – to reduce their window of opportunity to attack you. Careful though – this will affect distant enemies too and could make ranged combat easier than intended.
4. Reduce enemy melee attack strength/frequency/speed to counter this. Big global change because of one control issue though, and could consequently make melee combat too easy.
5. Remove the 'melee attack' context-sensitive option. Does it do the job it's intended for? Is it any fun? If in doubt, chop it out!
And all because a single button press doesn't stop another action from happening. Always the little things 🙂