I just used MMO as an example, but we could talk about Vampire Survivor clones, for instance, I think it would be a better comparison.
They all tend to use WASD as primary controlling system, but some of them also allow point-and-click movement (heck, even WoW allow point-and-click movement lol), which some people prefer, even though is way less efficient in aiming and dodging all the bullets. Some use auto-aim + auto-fire, some let you customize it and have auto-fire + controlled aim with the mouse, or the other way around, or no auto-anything, simply aim and fire with the mouse while moving with WASD.
But at the end of the day, all top performing gamers of the genre are most likely playing WASD if they can choose, simply because itâs better. And it will probably be the case with PoE clones too, if they keep pushing and upgrading the system.
The thing I dislike the most about WASD in diablo-clones is that you have a lot more keys to press. Usually you have QWERT, along with some of the number keys for potions (some reverse this and skills are in the number keys and pots in the qwert row). You usually have a key like A that does some stuff but is close to the others and you have the ctrl/alt/shift keys that can also do stuff but, again, theyâre close by and makes using one hand for all of that easy.
With WASD, though, you now have to move keybinds around and have a higher spread to use with one hand.
Some people might get around this by using a mouse with lots of keys, but not everyone has one of those.
Piano builds are already annoying to me as is. With WASD they would be doubly so.
That being said, Iâm not against WASD. Just against a bad WASD.
PoE2 did WASD right, in that they improved the mouse controls. I know that using mouse to move in PoE2 is an inferior control choice, but I donât feel like Iâm losing as much due to how that was implemented.
I certainly donât lose as much DPS as I would if LE only implemented WASD without changing mouse to let us keep moving while firing, the way PoE2 does.
I have 8 buttons I think? But one is inconvenient to reach so I never use it and two are a flip switch (up and down), so I just bound Down to be middle click as well since clicking a mouse wheel can cause accidental scrolling.
I tend to bind M4 and M5 to in-game actions though. Especially in MMOs where I have three 12 skill hotbars lol
Yeah seriously lol. Back when I used to play WoW, I had Dominos addon which let me set up 5 separate 12 button hotbars, which I had almost all slots filled with all the skills, macros, consumables and mounts.
I had first 1-12 bar, followed by the key-modified bars: âshiftâ, then âctrlâ, âaltâ and âctrl+altâ all added to the 1-12 keys.
So these 12 side button mouses actually got me to be a much better MMO player ever since I started using them, for Iâm not really good at moving with WASD + using 1-6 keys (and most games, really⌠even tho I donât use all 12 buttons in all games, just being able to use all 6 items with your thumb in a Moba, or swap weapons in an FPS, is already a big advantage for me).
Oh what a waste lol⌠Havenât you ever tried using them for actual gaming? Even a standard 2 side buttons mouse can make wonders in most games, imo, especially in games that allow multi-key modifiers for bindings.
No, not really. I started gaming in the 80s when mouses werenât even a thing yet, so Iâve always grown used to using a keyboard. I canât even get used to using the middle mouse in PoE, so I always leave that slot empty.
Basically, it feels weird to me to be moving my hand around on the mouse. I lose precision in moving it. When I try to click buttons on the left side of the mouse while in the middle of combat, often Iâll slide it right as well.
Itâs all a matter of getting used to it, but Iâve never felt the need for it, so far.
The only concession I ever made for extra mouse buttons was bind a macro to use all 1-5 for PoE potions. And that is because I have a button right at the end of the thumb, so I donât have to shift my hand to use it.
I had 3 combat hotbars in FFXIV, and then I had one hotbars in a 4x3 configuration for my combat job gearsets (so I could swap classes with a mouse click), another 3x4 bar with my gathering/crafting jobs. So I also had 5 on screen hotbars, even if only three had actual key kinds lol
My keybinds were â1, 2, 3, 4, Q, E, Z, X, V, M4, M5, M3â with Alt+ and Ctrl+ for modifiers on my 2nd and 3rd combat bars.
I like ESDF much more, it allows to have plenty of buttons without even moving any finger from ESDF. You can press QAZ with pinky, CVBN with thumb, Space, Tab, Shift, Caps lock, plus all your mouse buttons of course. Itâs already 11 + mouse, like 16 keys. And few keys are easily accessible with one of your moving finger â WRGX34, but since you need to move one of your ESDF fingers, you canât move in any of 8 directions while pressing those, so they are good for stuff like menus, inventory, etc.
I am using Caps Lock instead of Escape, for pause/menu (itâs not only for games, but always. Esc is just so much more needed than Caps Lock, so it makes sense to switch these two on the system level).
At first i wanted to make a displeased response to this thread and to tell how bad I feel about WASD in an isometric H&S game and how PoE2 shows how OP WASD is and how stupidly it can be implemented.
Then I changed my mind. LE is all over the place the balancing is ass, the game isnt looking that good that bad animations will make it far worse and LE is in a constant transition period for whatever reason. It would absolutely fit in considering the history of strange descisions that were made in the past. Keeping in mind that even GGG isnât able to implement WASD as an input OPTION and not the superior way to play the game and transforming isometric H&S games into twin stick shooters. Who cares? LE is in a constent state of early to late beta so a half assed WASD input mehtod will only be a drop in an ocean so they can throw it out tomorrow and it would only a tiny amount of mess into the big pile of mess we have already.
Including all the animation problems, the balancing problems and all the other problems because LE was obviously never originaly intended with a WASD contol scheme.
Iâm 100% sure the first time I use it I will laugh my ass of and then shake my head and ask myself why development ressources were wasted on it. Non the less I think throwing out WASD right now or in a year will not make that big of change.
Make it 2-4 years until the resources are free given how much of a mess the game is in currently, as you state yourself.
Iâd rather have them fix their messes then introduce more of them simply because itâs already a mess and it wouldnât effect the current overall situation majorly more. It would definitely make the clean-up which is direly needed that much much harder though.
So, someone on the Chronicon Steam Forum was asking the dev to remove the animation lock that prevents you from moving while attacking. You can still turn and aim, but as long as youâre in the middle of an attack/cast, youâre locked in place. It got me thinking how that is probably the only way to keep WASD w/ mouse aim from being vastly superior to mouse-control. You can spin in place while attacking but youâre not able to kite that much better than mouse as youâre locked in place while attacking. Itâd be easier to kite than with a mouse but not as egregiously as PoE2.
While this is a good idea in theory we canât tell ho attack speed an movement speed is interfering with this in LE. Imagine you have 3 attacks/sec and 60% MS and stutterstep your way through the game. It would look very⌠special. Then we canât tell if there is some kind of offset for animation canceling so worst case moving will shorten the animations even more.
All content of the game isnât created with WASD in mind so things will most likely even more unbalanced. Itâs just another construction site for a game covered in construction sites. Weâ'll see if they throw it at people because they thought itâs a good thing to implement WASD into the game because some people cryed about it or if the devs stick to their plans they once had and even try to fullfill the roadmap they once pointed out before wasting time on other stuff.
Absolutely agree. I was speaking more of a âwasd balance in generalâ rather than âhow we could incorporate wasd into LE.â
Itâs already been established that LE wasnât designed with WASD in mind and any attempts to hamfist it in will be awful and/or horribly unbalanced (for or against WASD). Iâm still of the opinion it needs to stay out of ARPGs that werenât designed with it in mind (coughdiablo4cough)
I just donât want H&S games to degenerate into twinstick shooters. While PoE2 is a lot of fun Iâm already fed up with it because I donât like playing H&S games with WASD. In PoE2 you see how much better WASD is compared to M/K and if you donât use it you gimp yourself. Itâs sad.
Itâs funny, but I feel the opposite. That is, not that WASD is better, that is undisputable. But using mouse controls in PoE2 feels much less punishing related to WASD than a game like Undecember, for example (and I assume D4 as well).
In Undecember, mouse controls is a huge DPS drop compared to WASD. Because itâs the same as the solution proposed in this thread.
But in PoE2 that difference is abated by the changes they made for mouse controls. The fact that you can click the left corner of the screen and then shoot right and your character will keep walking (as opposed to immediately stopping like in Undecember) makes it so that mouse controls are more efficient in PoE2 than they are in other games.
Itâs still not as good as WASD, but the difference between both is smaller in PoE2 than in other games of the genre that adopted WASD before it. Thatâs how I feel about it, anyway.
In Undecember you can buy power (at least when I tested it on release) so comparing this game with any other H&S games is kind of mood from my point of view. On top of it the balnce and design of Undecember⌠come on even D4 is lightyears ahead. On the other hand Undecember as a good example how not to do things to a far bigger extend.
WASD is far more effective in every H&S game and the developers are to untalented, care to little or are simply clobbering systems into a game because some people cry them a river. EHG canât win here. Either they (most likely) deliver a bad WASD system to shut up the people who want it and get backlash from people who call out the BS or they keep WASD as a low level on the priority list and have the same people still cry for it but keep the people who think that there are more pressing matters to attend to on their side.
Eiterh way there will be some mimi but there is still the tiny chance that EHG is coming up with a WASD game mechanic that isnt superior and on the same level as M&K.
Since wasd makes gameplay a bit more complex, I wouldnât call it degeneration, itâs the opposite actually. Click-to-move scheme pushes you to just stand still and attack or move in direction of monster you are attacking and attack, while wasd allows to move more actively during the fight, which makes fights slightly more tactical and dynamic. Itâs not necessarily a good thing, many people want just cookie-clicker games, but term âdegenerateâ isnât relevant here.
Itâs an emotional term that denotes that he doesnât like twinstick shooter type gameplay just like from your point of view, you do. As you say so yourself, the change in gameplay this allows isnât necessarily a good thing.
I thought so too first, but then I released, that it canât really be used without having in mind some form of simplification. Maybe he imagined that in such games there is no depth beside gameplay itself, but more complex gameplay doesnât have to lead to simplification in other areas such as character progression, they can perfectly fit together.
I cannot live without mine anymore⌠been using those with 12 numeral keys on the side for over 15 years now lol