WASD Movment and why we do not need to reinvent the wheel

General
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I saw a discussion on Reddit last year as to why WASD movement was such a challenge to implement and even a DEV from EHG had made a comment why, which was linked by a redditor as that one was even earlier.

I do not have a link to that, so please do not hate me for not naming the DEV, as I do not remember. What I do remember are some of the reasons, mainly animation plays a big role.

And I think to myself, WHY? Of course if you take POE2 and their implementation, animation is a big factor, but is it really necessary? Of course EHG has their own goals with doing it or not, but the most crucial part of WASD movement is not the character looking at the mouse all the time, honestly that one looks just bad most of the time, implying the character has ADHD while you move the mouse close to him/her.

The most important thing is just to move West North East and South and their mixes. It is the “same” as if I would click west of my Shaman and afterwards attack east (stutter stepping). Why does there need to be a new animation for it? We already have those parts down, just how the input is made has to be changed. Of course that change is not as easy as flipping a switch obviously. But I do not get why this requires new animations, which are a lot of work.

As a first iteration to give players WASD movement this would be awesome, because I honestly struggle to not move in the wrong direction (I now use a thumbstick keyboard hardware) as soon as instincts kick in, while a heated fight with some campaign bosses (started a new class).

On a side note: PLEASE do not copy D4´s approach where you can´t click clickable objects unless you are in range, but take POE2 where clicking clickable objects temporarily allows mouse movement just for that input, when you someday implement WASD.

Another Side note: If you added “hybrid” support, meaning allowing a full on 360° joystick input for movement (as if used on a gamepad) combined with keyboard keybinds + mouse aiming and the mouse movement on clickables, that would be sick. Again Hardware like Azeron Cyborg or Razer Tartarus are able to utilize these.

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It is. Because unlike what you said here:

What makes it look like ADHD is a “blind” implementation of WASD with the current movement scheme.
The discussion you’re talking about is probably this one:
https://www.reddit.com/r/LastEpoch/comments/1hmr5sm/i_made_a_script_for_wasd_movement_in_last_epoch/

And in here you can actually see that the character is constantly switching animation back and forth. Which looks janky and really bad. And he’s not even going full on strafe attack, just attacking sometimes. If he tried to keep moving and attacking at the same time it would look awful.

And yes, some people that are desperate for WASD would overlook the bad implementation. But most people, even the ones that don’t use WASD, would look at that janky mess and it would detract from their opinion of LE.

Like I said in another thread, it would be like if EHG decided to add an option (also requested often enough) to be able to zoom out further, but it would all get pixelated. It would be there, it would be technically functional, and yet it would detract from the overall product, not add to it.

WASD is like that, aggravated further by the fact that PoE2 raised the bar on what is an acceptable WASD control.

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You kinda ignore the fact, that the same “jankyness” is already present and was never an issue, but if we are talking about WASD suddenly it becomes an issue? All ranged characters I played in ARPG that can not just stand and eat hits from enemies already do this? Why is it suddenly a problem in animation.

No one bats an eye in POE1 for it, or D3, or D4. Literally anywhere. Honestly it gets overcomplicated for no reason, because everyone talking about the animation just ignores this piece and does not really adress it why it is okay while using mouse and suddenly not when using keystrokes.

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There is a difference between your character turning to look in one direction and then another to shoot due to the speed at which you move your mouse. It means that you do this once or twice a second, at most.
With a WASD implemented this way, it will now do this at least 10 times a second, constantly cancelling the previous animation. This is what looks really bad and janky.

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Yes. Or u’ll be shooting arrows from your butt
Atm in LE we don’t have any step backward animations

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The explanation I heard from an EHG dev about why WASD is so tough to implement now, is basically that they would have to animate your legs separate from your body with a connection point at the waist. This would require EHG to allocate all resources, all hands on deck, to work on WASD for months, and completely ignore every other thing they have been working on.

TBH I prefer click-to-move, and controller. But I’m not opposed to WASD. I am opposed to fixing what’s not broken though, and I’d take new content over WASD any day. If you don’t like click to move you could always try controller.

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It’s either going to look like AD, or it’s gonna look like the H part. Also, kind of insensitive to use a disorder as an insult / negative comment.

Except it isn’t.
Because you can’t click on 2 places at the same time.

Clicking back and forth is a lot of commands that break off the previous one.
Keyboard movement gives 2 commands at the same time.
They are not the same, not even mentally. Yet they would give the same feedback. Thus people calling it janky.

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Just checked ingame specifically for you, one can not cancel animation indefinitely. Twice a second already is a stretch. Tested with force movement and NOT turning around. But the test was to see how many animation cancelling was doable in what timeframe.

So your concern is not present the way you described. WASD can (or is?) also forced movement, but with 8 Buttons instead of one that follows the mouse, so the (only) difference would be number of keys to press, to force the character to move for example 0° (straight up), or 135° (south-east) relative to its own position.

Input priority should be the same as it is now and change the same way.

I definitely prefer more content over a change, but I still strongly believe the change does not have to be so labor intensive, as it is seen now.

Animating upper and lower body separate is indeed a time consuming task. BUT it is only necessary if you really plan to utilize that and with that I am implying to essentially copy how POE2 operates, as it allows to move and use skills. And if you do that you have to fully rework every skill. So it is not an exclusive problem with animating and honestly might be too much considering the work the game requires as is.

Is that enough reason to postpone such a great addition as WASD? I guess you know my answer to that.

Oh an controller makes you lose out on proper selective loot pickup and aiming of skills. Yes even with the more than great lootfilter I do not want to pick up everything that comes my way. Still may try controller the coming week.

Where does WASD give two commands at the same time? Using force move and using a skill does the same right now and you can not just nilly willy cancel all animations. As I wrote in another comment already:

How about not trying to be part of the problem and rather of a solution, or at least some good ideas how it could work with less resources instead of waiting 2+ years to get this great tech into a very nice game.

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So you did not pay attention at all …

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Which would be a worse off controller in terms of visuals.

Problem with this is. How skills are coded to fire off in the direction the character is facing.

Without tying the character to face the curse with wasd movemen. U will have the character snapping a 180 everytime u do an attack.

Thats the bad jank DJ imo is getting at. Now imagine spamming exploding trap speces to blastrain. Hold down S and firing behind u. That 180 snapping will be constant.

With no new animations in place thats what it will look like with what ur talking about. It will look really bad

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That is what the char is already doing right now (unless you screen clear all the time), so why only make it a problem now? It does look the same now, as you are imitating the thing everyone is suddenly pointing out already, like always.

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You keep deflecting what everyone says by saying it already works like that. It doesn’t. You don’t have as much speed with your mouse to do this. On the link I posted you can already see a bunch of times where the animation looks bad because of this.
The only reason it doesn’t look worse is because it’s a low level character. Get to endgame, and spam a fast skill with high attack/cast rate and it will look a lot worse than you can ever achieve with a mouse.

If this is already how it works on controller, then I hope that when they implement a proper WASD, they also fix that on the controller.

You just want a janky WASD and don’t care if it looks like crap. Instead of trying to deflect what everyone is telling you, just own it.
Luckily, you already have your solution. Since it doesn’t matter to you and “it’s already the same as in the game”, just use the script in that link. There you go, WASD fixed for you.

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Using keyboard input at the same time you cast a spell means you’re giving 2 commands with different targets. The same actually goes for mouse movement while you hold down a melee ability, as it’ll auto-target around you.

The latter you can test in game right now and it looks janky af.
Compare that to a game that has WASD/keyboard movement: WH40k - Inquisitor.

There it looks good because a) your character will try to turn their face towards your cursor the entire time, and b) if you use an ability towards the opposite direction, your character will spend actual time turning before firing. This is irrelevant of whether you use mouse or keyboard to move.

It’s especially that last part that matters.

Right now, the game is made around the constraint that players need to maximize mouse movement on screen to both move and fire ranged abilities in the opposite direction. WASD/keyboard movement removes that restraint.

Inquisitor was built to instead have a character turning restraint, PoE 2 seems to have been designed with just less mouse movement on screen in mind and I would argue that skills are balanced around that, but that requires the assumption skills are balanced at all over there. :smiley:

I actually want keyboard movement in the game. But I don’t want it just because it makes a ranged build more powerful, or when it makes the character look so bad, I’ld rather just have a still image in the middle of my screen. I want to enjoy moving with my keyboard because it’s a preference style and it looks just as good, and I want for other players to enjoy playing their preferred way as well. I don’t want it to feel mandatory way to play with a (new) specific way or to make the game look worse.

It’s actually the opposite issue of what games like WoW or the entire shooter genre from the 90s onward have: There, turning with keyboard is possible, just vastly inferior to mouse turning. It doesn’t matter if those games have keyboard turning, because the game is not designed around you using it and almost nobody does so without feeling bad about it.

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Correct. No one is denying that.

It wont tho. Wwhat ur talking about will be far worse than what happens now with point and click.

Whats being pointed out is how jank that will look. Especially for ranged characters as i pointed out. Now imagin wasd in this way with high bow attack speed.

This 180 snapping will be very bad looking

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Its not ov tested it.

Controller works like point and click. U aim where ur facing same as point and click.

Hence whh i said wasd as they speak of is worse off controller

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To what? D key for dungeons, A for minions, constant 1234 over W instead of Right hand to move and left for skills? Yeah, so ignorant, only animation to argue🙄

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What makes you think it’s so easy? It seems like you are making wild assumptions … I’ll take EHG’s word for it that it’s a gargantuan task. Why would they say that if it wasn’t true?

You’re also assuming that POE2 doesn’t animate the upper body separate from the lower body …

FYI, in April we are getting a controller overhaul that will address targeting.

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As someone who’s put about 20 hours into the game on Steam Deck, the controller is actually really good in LE and they keep making improvements.

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