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Towards better character controls

Discussion in 'Release 46 Feedback Forum' started by Vislais, Oct 8, 2017.

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SotA's responsiveness and Chacater control ...

  1. is perfect

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  2. is good enough

    9.1%
  3. is okay

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  4. needs some love

    63.6%
  5. requires a rework

    27.3%
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  1. Vislais

    Vislais Avatar

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    Hi there,

    I'm not a native english speaker and I'm writing very harsh most of the time, please forgive me beforehand or stop reading now. I'm sorry bout that. Even if this reads like a rant in the first place, I hope you can use my feedback to improve SotA. I really do like tons of stuff about it, it's just needless to list them up. To SotA, I'm an early access player, played it some hours last night and I really believe this game has tons of potential.

    Backgrund: I sunk tons of my lifetime playing games like quake2-3, cs1.6, ultima online, DAOC, Dota, LoL, Dota2, WoW, Diablo2-3 and many more. Additionally, I tried like 35+ other MMOs and stopped playing all of them almost immediatly for the reasons I'm about to mention.

    If you want to get successful with this game, you really got to fix player controls. Think about it for a second. It's by far the most important thing and it is way harder to get right than you might think. It's way more important than content, graphics, crafting, housing or whatever else you focus on right now because if the feeling is bad, no one will play it for long. Smooth control is one of the main reasons those games listed above are so successful: They provide extremely smooth character control. For SotA, you should really embrace those World of Warcraft offers. At least try to copy the camera/mouse/keyboard model. Believe me, in this regard, the guys from Blizzard did and always do their homework exceptionally well.

    Why am I pointing this out? For me, the character control in SotA is somewhat a showstopper. It's unresponsive and I am really uncomfortable playing the game because it feels like I have to fight against the controls. It just feels wrong and it does not emphasise the most important things. This has nothing to do with me being biased towards WoW, their controls (from 2006) are just lightyears ahead. Just some basics that will improve SotA alot, no rocket science needed:
    1. toggle autorun turns off if you strafe left/right and there is really no reason for that. You can't even turn it on while running (W pressed), so you have to stop running, turn it on, and then can't use WASD anymore - at all. It's better to think of moving forward/backward being 1-dimensional, ignoring sideward movements. Stopping should only occur iff (if and only if)
      • you press the autorun toggle again
      • you press/hold S
      • you press/hold W (but this should not make you stop walking, not even for a millisecond)
    2. A and D should rotate/turn the characeter, unless you hold the right mouse button which should make you strafe then. This enables you to move onehanded - with either hand: WASD for the left hand OR autorun+RMB for the right hand. That's pretty intuitive and less handstressing, giving you more control about everything. I usually have the autorun toggle bound to my mouse so I can relax while travelling, chosing which hand to use.
    3. mouse wheel scrolling for the camera distance should be faster and it sometimes felt like not working at all.
    4. You can turn/rotate while jumping. To me, this makes the game physically unrealistic. This should be easy to fix and should not have any side effects (beside some pvp maybe?).
    5. Please allow more than one key binding per action

    Aside the controls, there's tons of unneeded things eating up playertime for no real/acceptable reason.
    1. picking up stuff/looting items from corpses costs alot more time than needed. Please remove/fasten the animation and allow a mechanic to loot everything instantly (for example shifh-click).
    2. looting should be instant - I can only urge you: please remove all time eating things like these. Life is short and one shouldn't spend time on those things.
    3. mark corpses that are empty or that you have looked at already. not really important tho...
    4. same with mining: no need to auto-move the character to a "perfect" position to start mining. Only test wether the player looks at the mineral and is nearby. This also feels like losing control over my character.
    5. Animations like laying down on a bed should be abortable instantly by moving. Right now, you have to wait for the whole animation to finish.
    6. most of the time, when you have to doubleclick, one click would be easier, better and sufficient.

    One last thing: I rarely take the time to write in forums at all, so believe me if I say that I embrace tons of your ideas around SotA. I'll continue to play it now, let's see what else is great about it ;) In the absence of the original article my post relies on (can't find it anymore), so I'll quote some random WoW-Players from their forums.

    "I dont care how good a game looks. If the interface and movement look or feel off to me I wont play it."

    "Why IS World of Warcraft so popular?" --> "Wow is by far the most responsive game. The team that tunes the user interface interaction with the servers is doing an amazing job. In all the other games there is a feeling of detachment from the action."

    After all, World of Warcraft is what you try to compete with, wether you want or not. In every aspect. Choose your destiny.

    Sidenote: If you want a bad yet funny example, still a somewhat great game: Try to play Hidden and Dangerous 1. For the time it came out, it was a really impressive and a well-tought experience, tons of good ideas, nice missions and stuff... but it was kinda uncontrollable. The game plays/feels so awkward, you can't stand playing it more than a few hours. I still played it through.
     
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  2. Tiina Onir

    Tiina Onir Avatar

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    You missed the most egregious example, the "turning on a lantern/torch animation." That one is just awful.
     
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  3. GrayFog

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    I don't agree with the controls suggested in the OP, atleast not with all of them.

    But about "character control":
    I always just spam click because such things really piss me off.
    Quite often, it really does feel like i don't have control of my character.

    - turning on/off lanterns etc. (extremly annoying)
    - gathering just any node, sometimes watching how my toon walks in circles arround the node (ultra annoying!)
    - waiting for an combat animation to finish (like whirlwind or double slash, blades) so i finally can click on the node or whatever again (omg i so hate it!)
    - looting in general takes ages (i am falling asleep...)
    - spawning after zoning keeps me stunned for way too long (omfg!)
    [...]

    Add to this performance issues and expecially the "stutter" issues and the game really is far far away from having/getting a feeling that everything is "smooth".
     
    Last edited: Oct 13, 2017
  4. Vislais

    Vislais Avatar

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    to be fair: if you bind turn instead of strafe to A and D, it works like WoW and I was wrong about the button bindings: you can actually bind two buttons to one action, that's nice.
     
  5. GrayFog

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    Yes but not everyone wants to play like WoW.
    But you can change things in the options anyway.
     
  6. Vislais

    Vislais Avatar

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    Yeah I know, just wanted to clarify that its absolutely possible and that it kinda works for me.
    Never intended to convince or force anyone to use them ;-)

    The WoW comparsion was primarily targetting the smoothness, or at least was meant to.
     
  7. mike11

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    I agree with the control suggestions, which imply some very familiar game control features. I think Sota can adapt and still develop it's own personal unique style.
    Particularly the Run/Rotate. Jumping is still good the way it is, I think clicking is fine as well.

    What Sota needs along with that is more fundamental game features hammered out and finished, and then controls in place for those.
    I'm talking about the extra controls that almost all games out there have. The players special weapon, or examine, map etc etc.
    I find games need to really nail those controls which go along with the typical 'wasd' setups and usually add space/l-ctrl/l-shift/f/t/r ...

    Most of those controls are usually for first person games, however sota has also the perspective issues which need to be hammered out better. Targeting.. Targeting control have improved but could use lots more ... Rework for this IMHO. Current Tab function is frustrating to say the least. Sota isn't a first person game so there is the need and purpose for more game-tailored controls.

    Glyph's controls as well. Sota glyphs are somewhat similar to regular 1-0 type combat abilities but the abilities have a different configuration/randomness. This is pretty bad, too. So much user control is needed to stack and the concept itself needs Rework as well. Just watch any good player - they won't bother stacking because in Combat there is no time to look away, stop running and stack all those glyphs. Why can't Sota adapt some features to make the glyphs more easily stack (I have personally written dozens of threads on this, btw).

    I checked off 'need some love' as I think it's partly there for general control, but not for extended controls and glyphs.

    cheers
     
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  8. Gix

    Gix Avatar

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    For the first time as a gamer, I had to go with "it's good enough"... it pains me to admit it because I'm a firm believer that controls and a good UI are things that a dev needs to get right for any sort of video game; not just MMOs or RPGs.

    I only say "it's good enough" because it is serviceable for what the game is trying to do. 'Tank controls' defined a entire horror genre. SotA needs a stronger presentation of narrative and I would argue that the "tighter" your controls are, the easier it is for player skills to overshadow the character's skills.

    Do I want a better control feel? For sure! Is it needed? Ehumm >.>
    I think SotA's controls are the least of our worries right about now...

    Jumping, however... they definitely need to fix jumping. It's sticky.
     
  9. Barugon

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