[Feedback] Controller Support Suggestions!

General Discussion
1

I couldn’t find an existing thread about controller support that provides decent feedback and suggestions so here’s my attempt to give my feedback and provide a possible thread for other’s feedback.

I would just like to say first of all that I am impressed with the controller support right out of the gate. When I read in the beta FAQ that there was going to be “some” controller support, I was expecting much worse. However, I do believe there are some improvements that can be made. I do plan to play this game through hell when it comes out with my siblings and we will all entirely use controllers for one reason or another.

Here is what I love about the controller support:

  1. I love the movement with the Left Stick, it feels nice and smooth
  2. The Hotbar of potions auto-fills (Slots 1 and 2, more on this later)
  3. When sprint is depleted, it will force you to walk until it is refilled and keep going again, without having to do anything manually
  4. There are buttons to do what I need to do (sell, use a skill, equip)
  5. I love the lock-on system for ranged characters (one improvement down below)
  6. Walking over an item or when an item drops keeps it displayed for a duration so I can see what items are dropping easily
  7. The D-pad goes through the grid one cell at a time
  8. I can switch from controller to MKB and back easily. (There is a big delay when that happens, which I’m not sure if it’s a bug or unavoidable loading)

After playing a bowazon for a while I started writing down some notes on what could be improved. Most of these can be relatively easy fixes:

  1. When browsing Multiplayer lobbies, double press A should join a lobby.

  2. Selling and equipping items by pressing and holding buttons feels awkwardly placed. If someone is shopping, we can assume the main thing they want to do is buy and sell. Therefore, 1 press X should be sell and holding X should be drop. The same thing goes for inventory equipping. 1 press X should be equip and hold X to drop. X is usually the universal use button in most RPGs in inventories. Therefore, X should also be used to “Use” items like a scroll or potion.

  3. There is currently a delay in seeing stats for items when you hover over an item with your cursor in your inventory. I understand this might help to see other items in your inventory, but I do believe this said delay should be reduced or a toggle to switch off in the menu

  4. There should be a separate menu under “Settings” called “Controls”. The controls section is currently under gameplay.

  5. When trying to attack enemies with ranged attacks, the lock-on system works mostly when I try to attack monsters directly east, west, north, and sometimes south of me (I have a 1920x1080 screen with 100% zoom). However, when the monsters are in the corners of the screen, they don’t get locked on. I believe the reason for this is some radius around the character for the lock-on feature. I believe this radius should increase by a factor of 15% or so, or at least change the shape to be a rectangle and increase the area of the rectangle. One idea would be to have the game remember when a monster is locked on once. Then the player can strafe and shoot when needed. This isn’t much of a problem now in Normal Act 1, but imagine facing Hell Act 3 Bone Fetishes that sprint across the screen and decimate the player.

  6. The belt auto-fills slots 1 and 2 with hp and mp pots respectively. This is great for controller users! I believe slots 3 and 4 can act the same way, except that it fills with the “last potion used”. EG. if I put a rejuv potion in slot 3 and I use it, I expect another rejuv pot to appear there. This sort of feature could also be implemented in slots 1 and 2.

  7. Auto-sort should fill belt slots with potions. Constantly having to move 4-12 potions to a belt with a controller would be tedious for no good reason.

  8. Upgrading skills/stats needs a button combination to input +10 and/or +25. It’s not so bad now when I need to put in only 5 points, but when we go to respec, we will have to put in 400+ points. Maybe holding the A button should put in 10 at a time for stats and 5 at a time for skills. Pressing the A button once should put in 1 point.

  9. A user has reported that they can use auto-sort on inventory and stash, but not shared inventory

  10. The last item I wanted to talk about would be a major control scheme change. If needed this can be a separate control scheme that the player can switch to under a new “Controls” menu. The main purpose of this would be to use the right stick to aim. Right now, the directions on the RS are not used. In this new control scheme, the RS could be used similar to how the mouse and keyboard would function if you were to hold Left Shift and aim (stand still and aim). Now the current control scheme would be difficult to use for this (besides you claw grippers out there) because the skills would be on the right side of the controller. To accommodate for this, you could put the skills on LT, RT, LB, RB, extra skills on X and Y; the thumb would be able to be used for aiming on the RS while the triggers are for inputting the skills comfortably with your other fingers at the same time. Show item names and toggle second page of skills could be on A and B. That way you’re not accidentally using a skill when you are trying to interact with something like the Cairn Stones or the Tree of Infus.

Sorry for the long post, but I believe these items would greatly improve the controller experience to be near perfect and up to par to MKB.

Here are some reddit posts with more/similar suggestions:

3 Likes
2

The potion management is what is really killing controller for me on my sorceress. The left stick makes avoiding mechanics way more comfortable than using mouse though, so staying alive more easily is a huge win for me. I too hate the item tooltip lag when hovering over items. I would like to to hold LB and use the D-pad to cycle up and down on items on the ground. I’m surprised how well the game plays with controller, but I really do hope they can smooth out the experience a little more. Oh teleport is way to damn short on controller… like the game is still in 4:3.

3

I cant get a controller to be recognized…8bitdo bluetooth or old wired controller…what am i missing?

4

I wonder if TP must be part of the auto-targeting system? That would make sense why it would be so short!

5

Indeed controller implementation is excellent and helps modernize gameplay in comparison to mouse and keyboard only.

I’d like to see all the belt slots remember the last potion/item used, not health in first slot and mana in second slot. Perhaps it can also remember scrolls of town portal etc. (its great that we can manually assign these to one of the 12 standard controls)

As the op mentioned, there could be a way to add 5 stats and all stats at once, perhaps with one of the L2/R2 modifiers (right now I just switch to mouse and keyboard for assigning multiple points.

I would appreciate more freedom in assigning controls as well to allow changing the function of the buttons around (e.g. the capacity to change L1 to an ability instead of showing items on the ground etc.).

1 Like
7

I can’t even fathom using a controller for this game.

Sincerly,
an old person

8

I with you. I tried it because I wanted to see how it would feel. Moving around is fine, but navigating menus and managing inventory and vendors is horribly implemented.