I’ve had issues with using a dualshock 4 and DS4Windows. Don’t have an xbox controller so can’t comment on ability to be reproduced with an xinput controller.
LE loses the input assignments that I have made upon shut down.
Patch 0.8.2 made playing with a controller quite nice, because picking up items is easy and feels natural now. Depending on the character, playing with a controller can vary between working well and being suboptimal. I will pick on some of the shortcomings now - but even if the remainder of this post focusses on the negatives, don’t think that playing with a controller is a waste of time. The game is quite playable and enjoyable with a controller.
(1) The auto-targeting is mostly really helpful. I can hit enemies far more reliable with my marksman when using a controller compared to using a mouse. However, with movement abilities the auto-targeting becomes an issue. My character rarely shifts/teleports into the direction that I intend to. Usually, I use it defensively, to get away from enemies or AoE effects. And more often than not, I will shift right into the enemies. Or into some crates in a corner when I wanted to shift/teleport/leap straight ahead.
But I think the solution is not just to remove the auto-targeting from movement abilities - because with Leap for example you may want to jump right into pack of enemies. Unfortunately, I can’t think of an easy fix. Even having auto-targeting be toggleable for all skills would not be enough, because whether you want it or not is highly dependent on the situation at hand.
(2) Teleport and similar movement skills have some more issues. Going up ramps/stairs for example does not quite work. It seems as if it checks for obstacles at the height of the character, ignoring the incline of the terrain, and stops at the ramp/staircase, which is considered an obstacle. This is also apparent with small obstacles. When using a mouse, you could easily teleport across a small obstacle, but with a controller, you stop right at the obstacle. Oftentimes, I leap/teleport only a very small distance (if at all) because of this issue.
I would like to propose two changes to how it works: follow the height of the terrain and start from the edge of the screen instead of from the character. Imagine drawing a line from the character to the edge of the screen, using the direction of the input (from the gamepad’s thumb stick). Project this line onto the terrain (which should eliminate the influence of the terrain height). Starting from the edge of the screen, test whether the character could teleport/leap to that point, wandering towards the character until a point is valid. I don’t know whether this approach is feasible, it’s just a rough idea.
(3) I seem to not be able to turn around as promptly as when using a mouse. Maybe the issue is related to the input method - the thumb stick has to be moved to the neutral position and then further, which is why it feels not as responsive. However, when using Dancing Strikes on my Bladedancer, this is much more of an issue and can’t be explained with that alone. My character keeps blade dancing in one direction when the thumb stick is already pulled to the opposite side. The reaction to changes in the movement direction is really sluggish with this skill for some reason.
(4) The option “move to melee attack enemies that are out of range” does not work when using a gamepad. This may be a concious decision by the developers, because moving while attacking is much simpler with a gamepad. But it could also be an oversight. I had a few moments where I expected my character to move into range.
(5) The new way of picking up items is great. I could imagine using a similar technique for all UI interactions. You could show a little icon on everything that can be interacted with (dialogue choices, buttons, items in the inventory, …) and highlight the current choice. Using the d-pad or right thumb stick, we would then select a different element and press A to select it. Right now I often switch to the mouse for these interactions, as it is much faster.
(6) Which brings me to my last point: Switching to the mouse has some issues. For one, the last command of the gamepad stays active. You run into a direction, use the mouse, stop using the gamepad - but the character still keeps running, because the “thumb stick returned to neutral” event was not processed, because the input method already changed to mouse and keyboard. It would be nice if those neutralize-events would be fired artificially as soon as the gamepad input is disabled.
When changing to mouse/keyboard, the tooltips that were shown by the gamepad persist. I need to move away from items on the ground before being able to use the mouse properly, as otherwise parts of the screen will not be usable. The item labels are also sometimes faded out a bit, which would not be the case if using mouse/keyboard only from the very beginning. See the screenshot below: I was using mouse and keyboard for some time (notice the numbers and mouse symbol on the skill bar), changed zones, and even died - yet it still shows the “A” on the item labels and some of them are greyed out, some aren’t.
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I’ve been playing Flurry on a marksman with controller and the autotargeting is just fantastic. The only thing that really annoys me is that movement skills like shift will target to an enemy or destructible environment which makes emergency exiting pretty hard. I can wait for QoL menuing, but that movement thing should be worked on asap 
Thanks for your great work btw the game is evolving and evolving, only in good directions.
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Steam Controller with Windows, overall experience is better than keyboard plus mouse.
The only real problem I’ve noticed is that using Warpath on a Sentinel build, character movement occasionally starts to stutter, and character movement rate drops to ~10% of normal. I haven’t seen this happen when using the mouse.
Just bought the game yesterday and wanted to share my thoghts briefly. I’ve only played a few hours. But so far, playing with controller (xbox) has been good. Movement is fluid and the auto targetting has been working great so far with my Necromancer. However, the right stick controlling a cursor is far from optimal, it feels really clunky and awkward to use.
My suggestion would be to have the right stick controll manual aiming and direction my
character is facing. For instance if the character is standing still, the character should turn/rotate with the right stick. Having the mob in “line of sight” should highlight them, and clicking the right stick could lock on to a target, and then by flicking right/left/up/down on the stick would change target accordingly. Ideally the only time (when using controller) there should be a mouse cursor on screen would be in menus.
See this:
Coming very soon
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I would really love to see better (any?) controller support for:
- Dialog interaction
- Waypoint map
As far as I can tell, there is no controller support for either of these things, outside of using the right stick to move the cursor and press A to “click”.
Feedback for the Controller Support Improvements introduced with patch 0.8.3:
There is no UI specific to controller showing that the;
- X button will
- move the highlighted item to the open stash tab (if stash is open) or from the stash to your inventory
- drop the item on the ground if only the inventory is open
- sell the item if the merchant or gambler is open
- Y button will quick-equip/unequip the highlighted item
- A selects the item and you can move it using the D-pad
- B closes all menu’s (panels)
Other Issues:
- Y button will quick-unequip Idols but it will not quick-equip Idols
- Trying to quick-equip a second ring into the open ring slot isn’t possible
- Default controller keybinds for skills/potion were changed this patch – unsure if this was intended or a mistake
Suggestions:
- Having to hold L3 and/or R3 down is very cumbersome and challenging to do at times. I’d prefer if there was an option to toggle these functions so that pressing either button once would keep their functionality working until it was pressed again. I’d also prefer if this is remembered from item to item so that I wouldn’t need to press it repeatedly.
- D-pad movement in the stash and inventory could be faster by default, or have an option to increase it.
- You can move an item between tabs within that category, but it would also be nice to be able to move that item into a tab within a different category.
Positives:
- UI shows what LB, RB, LT, RT, L3, & R3 buttons do
- The new functionality works most of the time – still some bugs I’m trying to reproduce and report.
- Overall, the new controller improvements are a step in the right direction for all menu’s (panels) in the game.
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Going to chime in real fast, though I submitted a bug report on this:
You can no longer re-map the overlay map from the left plunger to something else. Its greyed out and will not allow you to change it. You cannot even re-map the left plunger to some other function just to get it off the map overlay. Its honestly unplayable for me because I often accidentally hit the plunger while moving around in the heat of battle. That’s why before this patch I had mapped it to the right plunger. REALLY hope they fix this because this has sort of taken the steam out of my desire to really dig into this new patch.
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Interesting, yeah, I was thinking about changing that as well as I also accidently hit it in combat. Mine is pretty sensitive in general on my controller.
A semi work around is to turn down opacity all the way to the left and it isn’t as much of a distraction when it happens.
I think I figured out how to reduce the sensitivity of the plunger button. Now I have to REALLY mash it down for the map to pop up. Not my favorite solution, but at least its playable.
What controller are you using. How did you reduce sensitivity? Mine has magnetized joy sticks so you can swap them out for different sizes and what not, and for whatever reason it clicks in really easily. Not sure how I’d be able to adjust anything. Using the xbox elite 2.
There is a calibration setting within the game. I calibrated the left plunger. Don’t remember what settings I used, but it now takes significantly more effort to push down on it to register a button click. Works for me at least.
Using Xbox 360 controllers and a few Xbox One controllers.
Hi guys, want to chime in on controller support.
The latest update improved the usability by quite a lot when interacting with the stash. It is quite a nice QOL improvement.
It is great that the game natively supports dualshock controller, so the buttons on the actionbar show up as Square, Triangle, Circle, Cross which is wonderful. But this detail is not reproduced in the interaction prompt for interactables, which still shows icon for Button A instead of Cross.
Odd behavior when switching between the mouse cursor and the digital cursor, the positions from each of them is saved seperately, so the mouse reappears in a different location than where it currently is with the other mode.
Using the L3 and R3 buttons to change the display of loot is not effective, and just slightly moving the right or left stick causes the item to no longer be highlighted. Then its a pain to get back to the item to try again. As suggested, a toggle would be very convenient to keep the tier display and range automatically. This could even be a general setting to always show the tier ranges, similar to how you can always compare items.
The default layout of keys is now confusing, and I feel it might be better arranged like so:
Ability 1: L1
Ability 2: R1
Ability 3: Triangle (Y)
Ability 4: Circle (B)
Ability 5: R2
Minion Attack: L2
Potion: Square (X)
This is a very comfortable setup which allows more use of the face keys for the primary functions.
The way to open the inventory is far too cumbersome and requires its own keybind. I would much prefer to have my inventory open when I use the left DPAD button.
While on the topic of bindings, it would be nice to bind a button combination such as Select + Cross to quickly open the inventory, or similarly Skill, passive, and map to a button combination.
The combination button can even be displayed on the radial menu to help guide people to using them.
I just often find myself selecting the wrong menu item and having to do it multiple times.
I’m actually crying tears of joy after trying controller for the first time. I normally get such bad wrist pain from playing ARPGs for more than an hour at a time, and things like Marksman would really just not be possible with how much snapping I’d have to do. Controller works perfectly and does everything I could ask for to do. Thank you 
For changes you could make though - seconding on being allowed to rebind controller inputs, and if nothing else adding a hotkey for opening inventory. Also, is there a hotkey for drop item when you’re in the inventory with the DPad controls? I can’t find one.
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Can’t pick up the Lance of Heorot with controller - I keep talking to the frozen guy instead, who responds with a cheery “Hello.”
I really miss having Y as my minimap button. The L3 often gets clicked during frantic battles, obscuring my screen with the minimap.
L3 and R3 are also difficult for me to click and hold in order to view item properties because moving the sticks slightly causes my character to move around or deselect the item.
Hey there. Recently picked the game up in early access to see how progress is coming. Looks pretty nice so far, good job. I am however, very interested in improving controller support. I’ve been playing Arpgs for literally decades now on mouse and keyboard but for reasons I won’t get into here, I now insist upon using a controller for these types of games. I’m glad to see some effort going into this for your game, but as I’m sure you’re aware, it’s still lacking a little.
I was unable to change controller inputs through the options. Little things like the standard pressing “B” to exit a menu should be implemented. Also, was unable to navigate the menu using D-pad and holding “A” on the scroll bar while scrolling with right analog stick requires too much finger gymnastics as they are both on the right side of the controller. I’ve been playing the definitive edition of Grim Dawn recently and their controller support is handled flawlessly. I’d love to see support implemented to the extent that crate has done it. More recently I had an opportunity to try the Diablo II resurrected beta, and even there the controller support was adequate.
I know many people are firmly against controller support in these games for some bewildering reason, but I hope you are able to bring this aspect of the game up to date soon. I know there are many others like myself who want to sit on the couch and play on their bigscreens or whatever else the case may be. It seems like this would be a standardized priority in 2021.
Thanks and good luck.
8.3d, Steam Controller, Windows 10
I’m still seeing a weird movement stutter issue on some terrains while using warpath. It looks like some other signal is blocking input from the left joystick every .1 second or so. Using the mouse to move usually resolves the issue.
The boarded area in the middle of the lakeside arena is a repeated problem. I religiously make sure my cursor is in the center of the screen in case menus might be causing interference, but that seems not to be helping.
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1: When a monster dies and respawns you can no longer target it with a controler (you dont get the red outline)
2: It is now very common for the controler to not be able to pick up loot, Move between areas & Talk to NPCs. Once you have clicked stuff with your mouse a cupple of times it starts working again.
3: Not a bug but frustrating mechanic: You cant rotate in place with a controler and this makes it very frustrating fighting the mobs that teleport behind you as a ranged character because when you try to turn around to taget them you instead run straight through them and they are behind you again. Instead you first have to run away from them and then turn around to target them wich often leads to them instantly teleporting behind you again before you have time to shoot them. Often i have to use a movement skill to dash away from them and then turn around to target them and shoot them.
(This can be fixed by autotargeting monsters that hit you in melee or have a hotkey that turns you around in place)
4: Not a bug but frustrating mechanics: Autotargeting breakable objects often ruins your intentions, espessially with movement skills but also with attacks sometimes where your character turns around to shoot a box instead of the monster that was right infront of you. Movement skills are the worst though… You try to use them to get distance from a monster or move quicker through a map and instead the character B-Lines straigt to the right to hug a crate or something.
(Fix: Give us a checkable option where we can uncheck “Auto target breakable objects” or give us an options menue for every skill slot where we can turn off auto target all together for controler buttons “X” and “Y” for example)
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