The controller improvements relating to combat in Season 2 are great. Everything feels more responsive and targeting with skills is way better (especially movement skills).
There are some things I’ve wanted since 1.0 launch though which I haven’t seen mentioned or requested before after a cursory glance at the forums, so here it goes.
Please remove the delay when hovering items in controller mode. Waiting in place for a second each time an item drops to view it is extremely aggravating and easily the single biggest complaint I’ve had with controller input since 1.0 launched. It’s especially egregious in combat when it seems to prioritize the one white mob on the screen as a threat and takes even longer for it to pop up. This is, by far, the biggest complaint I have with controller right now, I’m actually making a forum post about it, after all! To be extremely specific, I am referring to the delay when the item is still on the ground and you want to view it. You can immediately pick up the item and view it that way but that leads to more inventory management.
Here are some other suggestions as well, in rough order of most wanted to less important:
- Item cursor should always prioritize shards on the ground so they can all be removed quickly and you can cursor over the actual objects more seamlessly. Ideally, they would be auto vacuumed like gold is to alleviate wonky controller navigation, though I understand this may be a point of contention if M+K input doesn’t also get this functionality. Picking up any item with shards nearby should also pick up the shards as well.
- Remove the character zoom binding on dpad. It is easy to press accidentally since it shares a keybind with scrolling through items on the ground, and if done in combat leads to a frustrating few seconds of running around like a headless chicken trying to dodge projectiles you can’t see off screen. There is an option for zoom in the controls but it appears unbound by default yet still works with dpad. If there is a way to disable this keybind already in game, please let me know. Though I still maintain the stance this shouldn’t be a default bind. In general, every controller button should be fully remappable.
- Inventory navigation improvements: dpad should skip over any empty inventory slots when not holding an item. This feature was added in POE2 and is in my opinion the single biggest improvement to the controller UI they added from POE1. I would love to see it here as well. A way to snap cursor to the leftmost or rightmost position in an inventory would also be nice.
- On PC, add an option to disable the pop up keyboard when using any text box. I get why this is there for the eventual console port, but I have a keyboard and I’d like to use it when typing. The pop up keyboard generally just gets in the way.
There, that was my ted talk. Hope it helps.
As a post note, I absolutely love all the new shrines that’ve been added. A shrine that auto shattered item drops into shards would be very cool. It can be a node on the weaver tree so it only shows up in monoliths, with subsequent nodes around it increasing the rarity of items it will shatter: magic → rare → exalted. Would also love the set shattering box to be usable as a ui to mass shatter regular items in our little hideout zone. I just like shattering items.