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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Controller support ideas
Settite
Member
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.)
Can I have yall thoughts on the subject?
(I believe Alpha 1 had controller support as a side note.)
2
Comments
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.
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.
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.
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').
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.
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.
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.
Thank you for bringing this to light.
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.
-bring back true mmo
-work with others to progress
Elitism? It's about the quality of the gameplay. Stop being a victim.
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.
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?
Yeah you are still going to need a mouse out of combat but cant see the problem.