How does the game play with a controller vs mouse and keyboard?
I always found keyboard/mouse play to be lacking in D2. Movement feels clunky, aiming abilities feels off, F1-F8, and loot by click is absolutely annoying as well when there are 100 things on your screen. Honestly, the keyboard/clicking is one of the things that irritates me the most about the game.
Perhaps it’s time to try a controller. I have an xbox 1 controller so that should work? Is it “smoother?”
Thoughts?
Controller support needs to be removed from the game. I’m only half-joking. You’ll probably enjoy it more than keyboard by the sound of it.
Just face your character towards an enemy with left analog, press a skill button, and it auto targets the nearest enemy in front of you to fire. Can’t choose what you want to loot, just spam the A/Cross button on controller to pickup the loot.
This is the only way to stop the advantage difference between the two on PC.
Controller is soooo very much better for most things in this type of game. Mouse clicking and click moving is pretty strenuous on your arms, but controllers just use your thumbs for the most part, so you are going to save yourself a lot of problems later on in life with one. There are some things in which K/M out perform though.
Controller is unparalleled for looting. With a mouse you have to click each loot label, with a controller you can just turbo press A and instantly vacuum up all the loot. If you are playing on keyboard and someone shows up with a controller you will lose that loot.
Don’t just buy any controller, read up on the reviews because there are some that are pure garbage. I recommend MSI gc20, amazon still has some for 18 bucks. It’s a good brand, and it’s what I bought for this game since my gamesir brand broke the left thumbstick, and was never great to begin with. The gc20 is cheap and feels sturdy, and has much more use life than the average ones. Logitech has the F310 for cheap. It has good reviews but it’s hideous looking.
i played with a controller like 10 years ago when i found a script that allows you to convert controll stick and buttons to mouse movements and hotkeys and it was just clunky and awful. even when i played d3 on console because i had no pc at the time, i wish i had a pc to play it on. it’s also giving an unfair advantage for loot and now that it’s a problem that means pc and console players cannot be mixed.
The controls for Diablo 2 wern’t great back in the day, and they’ve aged like milk. This game would massively benefit from (optional) Diablo 3 style controls on keyboard/mouse in addition to the controller support that it’s been given. The looting is its own problem that should be solved in some other way that doesn’t involve removing an entire control scheme.