WASD is a common control scheme for PC players, anyone coming from World of Warcraft, FFXIV, ESO and a host of other games are very familiar with it. Isometric games like Hades even use WASD!
Diablo Immortal itself also on PC has this controller scheme where you can use WASD to path around which I found extremely intuitive and adapted to within genuinely a minute or two.
Clicking is amazing and is a long term staple of the franchise, I’d never want to see that go away! But what I think would be an amazing option that would DRAMATICALLY increase accessibility for people would be if WASD was an option for movement. Just like in Diablo Immortal.
As someone who DOES have a long history with other click games like League of Legends even I myself personally strongly prefer WASD movement.
I would like if we could get this as much feedback / awareness as possible. I really do believe this would genuinely be for the best for the long term health of Diablo 4.
Why this would be an accessibility feature and why it matters
First of all accessibility to players who may have a difficult time with mouse interfaces. Such as if you have carpal tunnel or arthritis the last thing you probably want to do is do a ton of extremely extremely repetitive clicking movements. But even people who may have slower reflexes will struggle immensely.
Letting them engage and play and have fun in the game is something we should all aspire towards.
Second up is simply put the more people that can get involved with a game the better. There are a ton of players of games such as FFXIV or WoW that would love to be involved in this game but we all know those games depend on WASD movement. This is familiar, this is their comfort zone. And so denying them that ability to interface in a familiar similar way WILL put people off of the game. (I have many people I speak with and have commented on this. They aren’t familiar and aren’t wanting to click a mouse to move. It turns them away.)
Let’s talk about reasons why to not want it:
\1. History of the game, it doesn’t exist before.
First of all Diablo Immortal has it, so this isn’t even true.
Accessibility features and the goal to appeal to wider audiences is something games have been working towards improving over years and years. Diablo 3 was launched a decade ago and ever since then the industry has made many strides and learned a lot as a whole. It’s not unreasonable to hope for more accessibility options for those who say do have carpal tunnel, arthritis or maybe they were born with slower reflexes or something similar.
Allowing all people to come in and enjoy would be amazing.
\2. “That it makes the game too easy”
I find this perspective a bit obtuse because if your idea of making a game harder is if a person can click between mobs to path and then click on the same mob to attack it and click around it to path and click on it to attack 5 clicks a second I don’t find that genuine difficulty-- I find that tedious.
Input controls should not be the barrier to entry. It should be the novel content in the game, not becoming overly familiar with your particular mouse brand. Things like the dungeons, the bosses, their mechanics, learning to play your particular class you chose with your particular build loadout should be what adds character depth and difficulty… NOT your choice of interface to interact with the game!
