Game Controllers

shadoewrayth

I know that there is currently no support on PC for controllers, but Xbox/PS4 use them. I played on PC, then left for Xbox for some years, and am now back on PC. There are people who say controller works great, except for needing a mouse for navigating things that require a mouse. I have also seen a great deal of people asking for controller, who play on PC. The reason that a mouse is required on PC, but not on console, is the different UI.

My question is why we cannot implement a drop-box in the options that would allow for player choice of UI? Default would be the typical PC UI, but could be swapped to the console UI that would allow for complete controller support, and would function exactly as per the console UI.

nitocris83

My guess is that implementing the Console UI into the PC build is not a simple thing/has the potential to be a risky undertaking.

shadoewrayth

But, it would be a major QoL improvement for a lot of players. I know I have problems using KB/Mouse with games, always have, but none of my friends on Xbox play anymore, while my brother plays on PC, as well as some other friends. My decision to come back is so that I can still enjoy playing, and since being back, have heard a ton of players saying the game would play much better with a controller. Since the Xbox uses similar enough programming to what would work on Windows 10 (not exact, but really easy to transfer), and they already have the UI on Xbox, would really be an easy thing to implement (compared with other undertakings they are working on) and could most likely be implemented before the next expansion to the game (under 3 months)

mystar

I agree some sort of game pad support would be nice. It would be way better to have something built in than to have to go to 3rd party software. I tried setting up a profile and using other people's profiles but never could find a sweet spot setting. from what i could tell sometimes the response time from the controller software to the game and a delay or pause...aside from the usual lag.
I think the best way to approach this is to just give the options to assign actions to the game pad controls like the 3rd party software does, but in a more neverwinter type configuration. Let the players figure out what configurations work best for them and then let them save and share profiles with other players.
If developers from outside the game can code software for multiple games, then it shouldn't be too difficult to integrate it into the game with either your own code or code bought from some 3rd party developers. Most game pads are more durable than key pads and the mouse buttons. Even the expensive gaming mice buttons aren't very durable.
As far as support...I'm not really sure how much would be reasonable or necessary, but having options to at least try would be a great thing to have in game.

shadoewrayth

Yeah, DDO has that. Could go into options/keybinds and when asked to hit any button or key to program, could press any key, or any button on any device your PC recognizes. They’ve had that since 2006 at launch. FFXIV has a toggle between KB/Mouse & Gamepad setting that swaps between styles as well, because they are on console & PC. They also have keybind reprogramming on top of that (can program KB keys for the gamepad setting, or gamepad buttons for the KB setting.

So, really don’t see how it should or would be that difficult for PWE to implement the same.

miasmat

While I agree that it'd be sweet to have the console UI on PC (I was heavily involved in the console UI design, and I find it superior in many respects) it isn't quite as easy as we'd all like. I was part of the team that did the ports of NW and STO to both consoles, so I'm speaking with that experience when I give these challenges that will have to be overcome:

When we did the console port of NW, we assumed that "has a controller" was the same as "is on a non-PC console" in a lot of places. It'll be quite a task to detangle those two definitions, so you're not offered to look at someone's "Xbox profile" or buy Zen from the Sony store overlay.

The console UI is designed for 1920x1080 and doesn't handle resizing at all, so you'd be forced to play at exactly 1920x1080 (but it could probably be scaled to other resolutions as long as the aspect ratio is 16:9, with readability suffering).

PC gamepads are USUALLY (but not always) Xbox or PS4 layout. The power tray is designed to mimic the button layout of those controllers. It wouldn't be the end of the world if your alternative controller's unique layout didn't match the UI.

And this brings up the inevitable request to rebind the keys on console... it's doable, but all the UI buttons assume a certain relationship between the buttons and the commands they execute. Like, the thing that appears in the lower position of the right-hand section of the tray knows what to draw by looking for "the power that would trigger from /+PowerTrayExec 3" (or whatever the real command is, I don't remember). So if you rebind "D-Pad Up" to "/+PowerTrayExec 3", you'll still see that power in the lower-right position, instead of in D-Pad Up where you'd expect it. (That was kinda hand-wavy, but suffice it to say we assumed a lot of stuff and making it customizable will break things.)

shadoewrayth

I understand the difficulties that might be present in making this change, but too many other games have this capability, some of them are in the top 5 MMO's every time. It probably would not take much alteration to existing programming to implement.
As you have pointed out, some UI elements have imagery or text that would need changed, but the number of large scale things is at a minimum. What you have described is more of a 'hunt and peck' issue of just proofreading and editing, not actual issues like some of the glitches and bugs currently present in the game (like the companions getting stuck in zone when the player leaves?).

Instead, this is something that given what they already have, could be put into place within 2-3 months if they only had a single person working on it, and a test server to try it out. Nothing you have described sounds all that difficult for a professional programmer, based on what they already have in the game.