My roommate got some new plates so I took all the old plates we were both using and put them in my cabinet. After a week I'm still reaching for the "common" cabinet to grab plates and bowls, forgetting that I need to go into my own cabinet (but not for glasses & cups, which are still in the common cabinet). When we got a new fridge, it took me several weeks to get used to the freezer being on the bottom and not behind the left door and the shelves having a different arragement. Also, I drove a stick shift for over a decade before I got my first automatic (a '96 Buick POS), and I routinely kept reaching for the stick and the clutch pedal out of habit for the longest time after I got that car (interestingly, its transmission died; I'm now finally, and thankfully, back to using a stick shift vehicle). And that's just ordinary household things with far less complexity than using Forge.

If you spend years getting used to doing things a certain way it just becomes reflexive. But when you're suddenly having to do the same activity in an entirely different way, it throws you off. You have to unlearn everything you've spent years learning, and even actively thinking about how to do things the new way doesn't help. Mind and body are not in accord. It's a similar situation to if someone changed the controls to inverted and you couldn't switch them back. I would know up is now down and vice versa, but it's kind of hard to unlearn "up is up, down is down." Hell, I have a hard enough time going between Halo 1/2 default and Halo 3 default/Halo 4 & 5 Recon. The simple act of moving action/reload from X to RB is enough to throw me off.

Meanwhile, while 343i is overhauling the entire control scheme of Forge after it having remained the same for five years and three iterations (maybe longer; I never really used Halo 3 Forge so I can't say), the rest of the industry has sort of landed on a common default control scheme for FPSs inspired by COD's default, so going between any remotely COD-like game is an easy task.

Regardless of whether Forge's old controls are sub-optimal, they are what they are. Imagine if Huffy or Schwinn suddenly made all their bikes have inverted controls. Actually, we don't have to imagine that one:

They'd probably lose a lot of business. "Damn You Muscle Memory," indeed.

At the very least, 343i should have had an option for the old-style controls, that way those of us who don't want to spend weeks getting used to the new controls wouldn't have to. If I was ten years younger I might have tried getting used to the new controls, but I have neither the time nor the inclination to completely re-learn how to use Forge. I spend an hour trying to remake an old map only to have like 7 or 8 pieces and some spawn points laid down. Simply placing two floors connected by a foot bridge shouldn't feel like I'm trying to do brain surgery.