Controller support ideas

Iv been speaking with alot of players who seem to be under the impression that controller support for ashes wouldn't be a good idea. The main reason seems to the number of buttons and the effort to make the controller usable. However if I'm not mistaken, ue5 has built in controller support which I imagine would streamline the process. The number of buttons shouldn't be an issue since games like final fantasy online proved with button combinations it's possible. Lastly I hear alot of people saying it would take away from other areas of the game. I personally don't believe it should take too long if theyr using a model like ff online as a template. A decent number of my friends who are console only probably won't play it if it doesent have controller support. Assuming allowing controller support would increase their player base enough then I believe it's definitely worth implementing.

Can I have yall thoughts on the subject?
(I believe Alpha 1 had controller support as a side note.)

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George_Black

Ff14 is hardly a worthy example of mmo combat. Any "success" there for provided for the casual playerbase shouldnt be used as a model for future mmos designing around controller support.

Some products a good just because they focus on their target audience.
Studios can get creedy if they want, and try to get more noney in their pokets, but their product wont be of quality.

IS says they are passionate about AOC. I hope they will focus on the quality gameplay of it instead for reaching for more customers.

Settite

George_Black wrote: »

Ff14 is hardly a worthy example of mmo combat. Any "success" there for provided for the casual playerbase shouldnt be used as a model for future mmos designing around controller support.

Some products a good just because they focus on their target audience.
Studios can get creedy if they want, and try to get more noney in their pokets, but their product wont be of quality.

IS says they are passionate about AOC. I hope they will focus on the quality gameplay of it instead for reaching for more customers.

I only reference it in regards to the fact that controllers can clearly be used for a good that makes use of 20+ abilities. Not in regards to the quality. Why do you believe adding controller support would reduce the quality of the game? Ultimately it doesn't matter how good a product is if there aren't enough buyers to keep the lights on so if there isn't a genuine reason like having to alter the vision of the game then I see no reason not to pull in more players if all it would take is adding support for the main other tool people use to play games.

George_Black

20+ slow abilities in a game where hardly anything moves?
The combat is static. It's easy to use combo keys.
You cant do that in a more dynamic and quick paced game with pvp on top of it.

Ff14 is too slow. Ofc you can use combination keys.

George_Black

Mouse and keyboard players will rigjtly have an advantage over controller players.

This is the reason why eso and new world have such a tiny number of abilities that you can actively enjoy during combat. Concession for controller gameplay.

Now look at age of empires 4. They added controller support without making changes to the game.
Every time a controller goes against mouse and keyboard it loses.

Mmos have to make the game easier or more restricted to accomodate for controllers. And ff14 is a bad example to use due to its lack of competitiveness and slow/easy combat.

Controller player should accept that as a fact. Only then IS could include with without sacrificing AOCs quality.

Settite

So you'd b ok with controller support as long as IS doesent dum down the game for controller players?

George_Black

Yes. Mmos should not design combat for, or makes changes to combat for controllers. Let those that make the controllers figure it out.

Settite

We agree then. I don't want any changes to the game systems to accommodate controller. Under those conditions, I believe adding controller support will only help the game.

Azherae

Settite wrote: »

(I believe Alpha 1 had controller support as a side note.)

Just in case someone less familiar sees this, it did not.

It wasn't very difficult to configure it using the various ways to do that, but all of those have the potential for setting up macros and stuff too, so it might not be okay to do that or it might get your account flagged (particularly for healing, the Alpha-1 implementation meant that you had to do some fairly sus things to emulate the equivalent of 'press F5 to target fifth party member').

patrick68794

George_Black wrote: »

20+ slow abilities in a game where hardly anything moves?
The combat is static. It's easy to use combo keys.
You cant do that in a more dynamic and quick paced game with pvp on top of it.

Ff14 is too slow. Ofc you can use combination keys.

If it works in actual fast paced action oriented games with a lot of controls it'd work in this game lol Star Citizen has three modifier buttons for controls on controller and it works just fine... What they've shown for AoC isn't really any more complicated or "faster" than FFXIV or WoW either.

Otr

Developers who chose to support controllers usually adjust the UI and way of controlling the game for the keyboard and mouse players too.
One can feel how there are compromises made.
There might be exceptions where developers chose to have different solutions but that is double work for them and they have to deal with solving bugs on both solutions. I cannot say if that double work is significant or if they just try to optimize their work but the two systems end up influencing each-other, and getting worse for the keyboard & mouse players.

Settite wrote: »

Ultimately it doesn't matter how good a product is if there aren't enough buyers to keep the lights on

So you say the game might be very good but controller players are the ones typically keeping the lights on?
Did keyboard & mouse players lost the battle?

Settite

Otr wrote: »

Developers who chose to support controllers usually adjust the UI and way of controlling the game for the keyboard and mouse players too.
One can feel how there are compromises made.
There might be exceptions where developers chose to have different solutions but that is double work for them and they have to deal with solving bugs on both solutions. I cannot say if that double work is significant or if they just try to optimize their work but the two systems end up influencing each-other, and getting worse for the keyboard & mouse players.

Settite wrote: »

Ultimately it doesn't matter how good a product is if there aren't enough buyers to keep the lights on

So you say the game might be very good but controller players are the ones typically keeping the lights on?
Did keyboard & mouse players lost the battle?

Lol no no. I wouldn't try to say controller players are the majority by any stretch, however I believe having more players is typically better as long as it doesn't come at the cost of quality.

Azherae wrote: »

Settite wrote: »

(I believe Alpha 1 had controller support as a side note.)

Just in case someone less familiar sees this, it did not.

It wasn't very difficult to configure it using the various ways to do that, but all of those have the potential for setting up macros and stuff too, so it might not be okay to do that or it might get your account flagged (particularly for healing, the Alpha-1 implementation meant that you had to do some fairly sus things to emulate the equivalent of 'press F5 to target fifth party member').

Thank you for bringing this to light.

Jwscoot

Controllers are essential. You want millions of players in launch? You want to redefine the genre? You want casuals to ever play your game?

Mouse and keyboard is viewed as a chore by a large portion of the MMO player base. Even old school MMO players have grown accustomed to having the option. If I need to grind 3000 wood to help my guild build a ship I would prefer to sit back and relax on the controller.

Many players that might be tempted to try the genre for the first time wouldn't even have the keyboard map committed to memory and would have to look down before pressing each button.

The selfishness on display by the purists on this subject is very frustrating to see. I hope intrepid does no view this as insignificant just because a vocal minority is afraid to move their thumbs.

George_Black

Jwscoot wrote: »

Controllers are essential. You want millions of players in launch? You want to redefine the genre? You want casuals to ever play your game

-this game is not for everyone
-bring back true mmo
-work with others to progress

Elitism? It's about the quality of the gameplay. Stop being a victim.

Muppet2703

Jwscoot wrote: »

Controllers are essential. You want millions of players in launch? You want to redefine the genre? You want casuals to ever play your game?

Lets put aside all the other arguments you made and lets just consider if a controller would even be able to properly interface with the games control/ability systems, because unless the game is built with controller support in mind from the start it's never going to work well.

Azherae

Muppet2703 wrote: »

Jwscoot wrote: »

Controllers are essential. You want millions of players in launch? You want to redefine the genre? You want casuals to ever play your game?

Lets put aside all the other arguments you made and lets just consider if a controller would even be able to properly interface with the games control/ability systems, because unless the game is built with controller support in mind from the start it's never going to work well.

It works fine.

UE5 will handle the camera controls which are the only thing really needed. Beyond that, everything is a matter of extreme flexibility in keybinds.

Obviously for those who are not used to controllers, it should absolutely be a proper keyboard/mouse setup that lets them press their MMO Mouse Buttons, but controller players would not have any meaningful problem.

The issue would come if they tried to port Ashes to Console, which is a very different proposition. Having controller as your default is a big difference from adding the support for it, even for UI navigation.

Jwscoot

Holy shirt,

I did not realize how bad this was. This is not a small problem. Of coarse the handful of players that are hardcore enough to be posting on a forum for a game that is years away from release are going to be primarily old school mouse and keyboard players. That's just not where most gamers are anymore.

Please think hard about what you are doing. This is the kind of stupid decision that gets featured in a Josh Strife Hayes video. This is a subscription based game. Why would you willingly kiss off such a large portion of your potential player base?

Chicago

stick to keyboards :P

Disasterous

Controller support is always a good idea, I personally only played MMO's that used KBM but would'nt mind seeing people using controller pads in AOC.

Cadveun

They just need to add a MODIFIER button. Essentially, when you press the modifier button with any other button it becomes a new button. For instance, most games that I play that has this function, I make the left trigger the modifier button. Say that your skills slots are labeled 1-10, if you press the left bumper then that is skill slot 1, right bumper is skill slot 2, x is skill slot 3, etc. If you press Modifier with right bumper then it is a new button, you could map it to say skill slot 6. If you modifier with X button then that could be skill slot 7. You could map your d pad to four skill slots and then modifier plus those same d pad would be a total of 8 button mappings with the dpad alone. I would use right thumbstick press to tab/target enemies and left thumbstick tab would cycle through them. Controller/keyboard hybrid is superior to mouse in keyboard in MMOs if implemented correctly due to the tab to target. FPS, yes a mouse is superior to aiming. This is not what is occurring in MMOs.

Mongeaux

I'd like to see some sort of controller support simply because I am an older player and have hand issues that extended keyboard use can aggravate.

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