Controller Support Feedback

[domueller]

Hi all,

I didn’t read all of the comments so my apologies in advance if I mention something that has been discussed ad nauseam. I am really enjoying the game but sometimes the controller controls which I prefer in any game are almost a bit game breaking I think or at least make me roll my eyes. lol.

I saw many ppl mention the mobility skills, and that has been mentioned ages ago and there seems to be no improvement. I played as a druid mainly so far and in wear bear form, the skills where you charge forward, I don’t know what its called makes me charge into some object more often than not instead of away(incase I am hurt) or into a group of enemies. In a brief dabble in the rouge class I ran into the exact same problem with dash, its super annoying.
My biggest issue however and I am unsure if it is something that can be changed in the settings is that any attack skill always needs a target. If I press the button I want my toon to do it. It leads to two issues I ran into quite frequently.
The first is that I stand right in front of an enemy which is wailing on me and my guy is just not attacking unless I reposition. I am at the right distance to hit but it ain’t working.
And the second one is that say as a wearbear I do my standard attack, which always puts me a specific distance away from an enemy by default and I hit that enemy all good. But then I use Maul and that distance is just a bit to close to actually connect so I hit behind the enemy. Its a bit frustrating.
Anyway I hope it will be improved in the future or I am missing a setting.

Cheers

[jonahbek]

I made some notes tonight on Controller use and issues I have run into with it.

Inventory: when comparing an item to an equipped one by holding down left stick button, if the stick moves off center it breaks the compare windows and you have to close and reopen inventory to look at them.
Shops are similar, I think when in one of the shop or inventory menus the character movement should be locked until the windows are closed I think.

Free cursor is not great on a controller. Really should be more lock targeted since no one wants to spend time getting the cursor from one end of the screen to the other and try to target something with it. Especially things like the small button to put crafting shards in the crafting bank (can that be automatic?)

Passive menu should allow you to escape out with B like the skill menu.
I am having a better time with the Sorcerer than the Rogue that I initially started. Targeting seems to be a little easier with the spells. Sometimes though you end up shooting away from the mob you were just shooting.

[Evernote]

Just wanted to add to the discussion and share some of my feedback playing with both a controller on PC as well as on my Steam Deck.

I appreciate that controller support is very much a work-in-progress and I’m hoping it’ll eventually receive the love I feel it deserves.

Menu & Navigation
There’s a lot of work to be done here, coming from games like Diablo III on console, Diablo IV on PC as well as Wolcen, Shadows Awakening and various others I have found Last Epoch’s implementation to be rather lacklustre.

One of the things I’d like to see is controller detection that essentially overhauls the user interface.

I think Blizzard has done this the best but looking at the current direction of LE it seems to be going a different direction.

The current radial menu leaves much to be desired as it’s very bare bone and sometimes it appears to activate the wrong option.

Starting with inventory, I’ve lost count of the number of times that I’ve accidentally closed the screen by moving my analog sticks.

At the moment you need to ‘focus’ on the inventory with RT but it doesn’t lock to that screen and it’s really easy to close it by accident.

It would be great if the game could stay focused on the inventory allowing the user to move around their inventory with the left stick while using something like L3 or R3 to trigger a compare items, X to equip and Y to drop an item. From what I’ve seen it’s not even possible to equip an item without using the right stick to drag and drop something into a slot, this is a really poor user experience.

Navigation in the skills & passive screens is extremely tedious as well and why isn’t there an option to use LB/RB to navigate from one to the other? This would make navigation so much better.

In its current form I’m having to use my right stick or Steam Deck trackpad to select stuff in the skills and passive screen while this could all be done with the left stick.

Please have a look at your competitors, there’s so much room to improve navigation for both controllers and MKB users.

Combat and movement
Movement feels great in Last Epoch while using a controller, running around feels responsive and is generally a great experience.

Unfortunately the same cannot be said for combat and using skills thanks to the aggressive auto targeting system which seems to have a preference for crates and other destructibles.
Take the sentinel’s spin2win ability, when I’m running around the map the auto targeting system will lock on to crates and my character will start to endlessly spin until I manually cancel the ability or run out of mana.

The system should try to prioritize enemies over objects and should also respect the direction the character is facing. If my character is facing away from an object of mob the auto targeting system shouldn’t focus on them but rather focus on whatever is in front of my character.

The current system is so frustrating that I’ve given up on trying to play with a controller.

Next up are mobility skills like teleport and transplant, these are hard to get right but it might be worth setting a maximum distance for the abilities while using the direction that the character is facing as the target for the ability.

At the moment it’s quite easy to glitch into objects using these abilities with a controller and it feels a bit random at times.

I’m not sure if there was a controller and UI rework on the roadmap but I really hope it’ll generally just get more love for those that enjoy playing with a controller or play on a Steam Deck.

[isBlue]

On the combat & Movement & sentinal’s spin2win, I noticed it’s like you said where it’s based on where the character is facing that’s causing the issue with abilities casting into the abyss. If you watch your mini map / map while you’re spinning, you can turn / change direction instantly but the character itself on the map spins around veeeeery slowly. Because of this, you’re often trying to cast an ability on an enemy right in front of you but your character is facing a different direction and apparently your character can’t cast too far behind where they’re facing so it goes off into nowhere instead.

[Shervik]

tbh, I agree with almost all of these feedbacks, but my biggest gripe with both controller support and controls overall is that you can’t map buttons to all the actions, especially in menus. I want the start button to open my inventory for example. from there it would also be nice to be able to switch from inventory to skills and other menus using rb/lb, a bit like they do in Diablo 2 Resurrected.

on another note I would also love to use something else than the mouse for movement. I don’t know why ARPGs has to have mouse movement instead of WASD, or at least let you choose.

[Celesia]

I understand I’m probably a very strange case, but please allow for controller input and mouse and keyboard input to both simultaneously be active. I vastly prefer to play this type of game holding the controller in my left hand, using the stick for movement, and right hand on my mouse to aim and use abilities. When I attempted this in this game movement worked until I moved the mouse. While moving the cursor with the mouse, the controller input becomes locked and holds the last input until the mouse stops moving. This results in my character running in a straight line in the direction the stick was held when the mouse starts moving until I completely stop moving the mouse for the game to decide that the controller input I’ve been trying to use the whole time is now the active input method for the game.

I know catering to a very niche input method is low priority compared to all the other things people want from controller support, but I feel like this would be a relatively simple change to just allow them simultaneously. If the current implementation is to keep accidental inputs from other input methods from messing people only using mkb or only using controller, a simple setting to allow for both at once would make the game so much more enjoyable for me.

[seshFriend]

Not sure if this has been reported but I’m having an issue where, once i switch from controller to M&K and back to controller, I no longer have the ability to pickup loot using the controller buttons. Also I can’t cycle through loot using the D-Pad either.

[heavyharmonies]

Sadly, LE is completely unplayable using a PS5 controller. Cannot map or remap most buttons. Inventory management is completely nonfunctional. Clicking L3 to compare items doesn’t work, as you have to hold down L3 for some reason, which immediately starts the char moving. While in inventory, the movement stick should NOT be functional. It’s too bad that as of right now this is strictly a mouse & keyboard game.

[Him_Who_Eats_Time]

I have experienced a bug with the controller where the item swaps when I didn’t intend it to swap. This typically results in my selling the item accidentally. A small thing, but something I have to look out for recently.

[Sockeye1]

Pretty much this.

I came here searching for a solution, but it looks like the one I want is not available quite yet. Anyways, I just wanted to reiterate how much being able to turn off the autotargeting with movement skills would improve gameplay for controller and my style of play (currently a tanky Shield Rush/Rive paladin build).

Don’t have much experience with other playstyles or builds, really, but it’s probably safe to say that I’ll be sticking to those that work better with the PS5 controller I’ve grown fond of using with Last Epoch. (Keyboard and mouse just doesn’t feel as enjoyable to use now, and this coming from someone who was exclusively a PC/MMORPG gamer for over a decade.)

Really enjoying the game so far and seeing where it will go next. Thanks!

[fknflo]

I found a maybe solution to not being able to cycle thru loot, hit left on the d pad to hide loot, then hit it again. Every time this bug happens to me, this seems to fix it. Before I figured this out (out of pure luck), I had to close the game and restart. Hope this helps othes.

[agmcleod]

Hi devs. I’m using flurry (non channeled) as an attack skill, and find the targeting hard to rely on, or switch. It sometimes targets an enemy far away, so when im standing next to an enemy i then wont attack while holding down the trigger.

[Yonq]

I missed this thread and will delete my individual post. Being able to target off Auto-target though would be an immense QOL enhancement for several builds. It greatly impacts shadow daggers blademaster, as both of the main abilities involve movement and are ripe for a sharp-angled auto target correction. I’ve missed bosses due to a small creature at my 60* right, and turning aggressively towards that instead of my intended direction (in front of me).

Edit: By turning off auto-aim, I do not mean it aim at the mouse cursor, I mean ability actuates wherever your left stick is aiming (or if at neutral - where you are currently facing)

[flAked]

I’ve played 90 hours with a controller and would like to give some feedback on UI controls, I’m using a Switch Pro Controller via Steam Input.

Currently, there are still no indicators, on which controller buttons do which action on the map, monolith map and vendor screens.

Inventory management is extremely frustrating in my view, after a couple of monoliths, I would just switch to the mouse and then get back into the action with the controller. I did the same thing in Grim Dawn and thankfully, this kind of fluent input switching is at least working great in Last Epoch, compared to PoE for example.
However, playing in the D4 betas, I realized, that I never needed the mouse in D4 even for inventory management. The biggest difference is navigating the inventory with the thumb sticks, which feels so much better. Having the right thumb stick as a free cursor feels like a stop gap solution, much like in Grim Dawn. Currently the left thumb stick moves the character, which I find super frustrating. I think the tile based navigation on the DPAD is great, but it should be on the left thumb stick to navigate around the inventory. Navigating with the DPAD never felt natural to me.
Much like D4 you should be able to navigate to your equipped items in a similar way (without the right stick mouse emulation). Quickly switching between left and right inventory screen with the triggers is great, though.
It would be great to have a dedicated controller button for sending the affix shards away.

Having the inventory navigation bound to DPAD is especially frustrating, if you remapped some of the buttons via Steam. For example, I have UP bound to overlay map toggle, but then I can’t actually use the DPAD for inventory management.
It would be great if we could have at least an option to either use dpad or left thumb stick for it.

Additionally, there are some weird cases where you can move your character with menus open, this happens with the mouse as well. Any movement input to the character should simply be blocked if I’m in the skill window, the map, or other UI elements. I know there are some speed racers in PoE that do inventory management while traversing the game (in mouse mode). But for controller input this should not hinder the useability of UI interaction by retaining movement with the left stick. I simply should be in a safe spot to assign points / manage inventory or quickly close the screen if enemies approach.

Having the character move if I click in the skill window feels super unpolished.

[Bolegor]

Hi EHG!
Can we please get an option to turn off auto-targeting on movement skills. It is absolutely essential not only for easier traversal but also tactical combat. With auto-targeting off, we would no longer be slowed down / frustrated by teleporting into some random barrels off to the side, and we could actually dodge attacks and AOE mechanics, which would make travelling through Eterra much more enjoyable. Thanks!

[galentio]

Hello there!

There’s an improvement also to be made on skill uses with controller, some skills that shouldn’t require a clear enemy like melee attacks or summon of minions like totems or balistas sometimes doesn’t work if the targeting system can’t identify something as an enemy.

This happens more in monolith spires and some bigger bosses but makes it impossible to attack those targets. The skills should activate regardless.

Regards.

[Kaotic_Ouch]

Have not played in a couple months… did they stop controller support ? can not set key bindings. using ps5 controller.

also did they wipe the game clean i have non of my saved char from befor? I use to play from DL on site, now it makes me go to steam for DL. just checking

[AndrewTilley]

Make sure your controller is properly configured in the Steam settings and active.

There was no wipe. However, if you wish to play Online then you’ll be required to start all new characters.

If you were using the standalone client previously then your characters should show up in the Offline (mode) tab of the character select screen. If not, then check to make sure they’re still on your computer in the following location:

C:\Users\YOUR_USER_NAME\AppData\LocalLow\Eleventh Hour Games\Last Epoch\Saves

If they are there then they should automatically appear in that Offline tab. If you’re having problems beyond this then reach out to support here.

[iterette]

After over sixty hours, I am very happy with the game!

Please, please disable auto-targeting on movement skills so I don’t run into barrels and fences every time I shift on controller. I know there’s a lot of complaints regarding controller support, but I am personally very happy with the hybrid mouse/keyboard and controller gameplay with this singular exception. I don’t feel we need a total controller overhaul, but (I imagine) it would be so easy to simply remove auto-targeting from a handful of movement skills. Movement skills working fluently does lend a lot of professionalism to an aRPG!

Thank you

[TaNesh82]

Hii there,
Since a week i have the Issue with my controller suddenly stops working in the midist of the game. I tried differend controllers and differend usb ports, but it was allways the same. I had to replug it in to make it funktion again. Hope you can help me there. Using win 11…

Thanks in advance