View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0010355 | Valley 2 | Suggestion - General Idea | Jan 12, 2013 11:01 am | Jan 25, 2013 9:08 am | |
| Reporter | Dash275 | Assigned To | Chris_McElligottPark | ||
| Status | closed | Resolution | won't fix | ||
| Summary | 0010355: Simplify controls down to eight buttons | ||||
| Description | Now that angled fire is back and disrupting my gameplay once again, I think the problem is simply that there are only so many buttons on a controller and you at ARCEN aren't exactly sure of how to handle having 20+ functions on gamepads that have 8 or 10 buttons. Yes, 8 buttons. While it's true that many of us are playing with Xbox controllers, it's a mess to be playing a two dimensional adventure game with four trigger buttons and three directional input devices and six face buttons. An FPS needs two directional input devices because you're working in three dimensions. A side scroller doesn't. An FPS has four triggers because you aren't always able to press the face buttons in the heat of combat, and so FPS's usually have the face buttons be things like melee, action, reload, and things you don't use constantly. Every game I've ever played (and has ever been considered good by critics) has pretty much four or six buttons you use during normal gameplay depending on where your hands are. And so this presents the problem of finger gymnastics I thought was being removed. I have an unbelievable four attack buttons, which is not only complicated for gameplay, it imbalances the game down to "oh, which button should I press". In Super Metroid I had to cycle weapons, and this might have been challenging at first, but it made lots of sense, because if I could have four super powerful weapons readied why would I want to be careful which things I had ready? I have two menu buttons, one for the main menu and one for my overview exactly like Dragon Age. I have a jump button and a confirm button, when every side scroller ever puts them on the same button. Same with the deny buttons and attack buttons. Now, my movement buttons (d-pad) is serving both move and aim, when they should be disparate. This game needs simpler controls, and we don't have to look much further than the grandfather of the Metroidvania genre, Super Metroid, to see what can be done. There are gobs and gobs of weapons, but you had to cycle through them to use them. There were aim up and down buttons that I could hold if I wanted to or not. There was one menu, a unified accept / deny button set, and plenty of other features you could pick up and all of it worked seamlessly with eight buttons. I propose aiming for: D-pad centric movement One Fire button (like A or X on the face of the controller) One switch spell button (this was select in Super Metroid) Action button (which I suppose can be Y, since that was what SM used) Single menu (you can get to the Overview from the main menu anyway) Accept automatically bound to jump Deny automatically bound to fire Aim up button (typically right trigger / bumper) Aim down button (typically left trigger / bumper) *EDIT: Context, capitalization, and other error fixes. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Internal Weight | Feature Suggestion | ||||
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you know that you can bind multiple things to a single key? I have all my actions bound to 8 buttons (A B X Y LB RB start select) and the d-pad |
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Strong support, largely because the controls feel mouse-and-keyboard-centric...but there's no mouse input. It still feels like a PC game that accepts a gamepad, rather than feeling like a metroidvania out-of-box. |
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I'm not in favour of this. I find that in AVWW2 I need far more immediate access to my spells than I would my weapons in Metroid. Some spells like Campfire are more like a shield or counter spell for example, which you use in reaction to what the enemy is throwing at you. If I had to cycle through 3 spells first to counter an enemy projectile there would be no way I would be able to react in time. Really with my current setup on a joypad, I have minimal problems with the controls as they are, although the defaults could do with optimisation. I'll think about the idea some more, though. Maybe I'll fire up Metroid. |
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I can understand that, but that can be fixed with allowing players to choose their spells from the pause menu too, or having a circular menu that pops up and pauses gameplay while it is open. It could be accessed by holding the switch button down, so you can tap to cycle or hold to have a circular menu you can highlight your next spell with the D-Pad with. |
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I'm completely against only being able to have one active spell and having to cycle as well. If you want that as another option and it doesn't require messing around with balance, then go for it. But I would hate to be forced to switch active spells if I wanted to use any kind of variety. In those types of setups I always just stick to one ability most of the time or if I try to do something fancy end up picking the wrong spell more often than not. Edit: And having to pause to pick active spell really breaks the flow of the game for me. |
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I think pausing would also be impossible due to multiplayer, anyway, obviously you can't have the game pausing every time someone wants to change spells. The circular menu would have to be real-time, I think. Even though this idea reduces the amount of controller buttons required by two, I don't think it is necessarily simplifying the game very much. Currently you don't have to change spells as they are all immediately available, whereas with this new system you are asking the player to hold the circular menu button then press another direction to select a spell then another button to fire. Seems more complicated to me. If the buttons weren't available then, of course, something like this would need to be done, but the current system fits onto my controller even factoring in the walk button and a separate confirm button. I still have the right trigger spare, too. It's an interesting idea and worth discussing I just don't think it suits the mechanics of this game, especially the caliber system which requires immediately responsive spells. Also you seem to be losing a lot of flexibility for the sake of reducing the amount of buttons by two. |
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Pausing may not even be necessary if there's only four spells per character. The circle could come up without pausing the game if all you have to do is press up, down, left, or right to choose your spell while you're holding the cycle key. |
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We've revised the angled shots heavily since this was originally posted, and I suspect that solves the issue. There are no dedicated angled shot buttons, reducing the need for added buttons. Instead you've got movement on the d-pad or similar, and then the following functions: -jump -interact/ok -cancel -spells 1-4 That's 7 functions plus the d-pad, which fits plenty fine on pretty well any modern game controller. If you take out cancel and use the keyboard for that, you're down to six functions -- that would fit on even a SNES controller! And actually, using the start button for cancel/pause would still leave you with one extra spot (select) in that case. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 12, 2013 11:01 am | Dash275 | New Issue | |
| Jan 12, 2013 11:04 am | Dash275 | Description Updated | |
| Jan 12, 2013 11:08 am | Dash275 | Description Updated | |
| Jan 12, 2013 1:02 pm | theqmann | Note Added: 0029759 | |
| Jan 15, 2013 8:05 pm | Itchykobu | Note Added: 0029797 | |
| Jan 18, 2013 2:57 pm | tigersfan | Internal Weight | => Feature Suggestion |
| Jan 18, 2013 2:57 pm | tigersfan | Status | new => considering |
| Jan 18, 2013 4:11 pm | Pepisolo | Note Added: 0029932 | |
| Jan 18, 2013 4:21 pm | Dash275 | Note Added: 0029933 | |
| Jan 18, 2013 4:25 pm | madcow | Note Added: 0029934 | |
| Jan 18, 2013 5:33 pm | madcow | Note Edited: 0029934 | |
| Jan 18, 2013 6:10 pm | Pepisolo | Note Added: 0029941 | |
| Jan 18, 2013 6:23 pm | Pepisolo | Note Edited: 0029941 | |
| Jan 18, 2013 8:05 pm | Dash275 | Note Added: 0029946 | |
| Jan 25, 2013 9:08 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0030179 | |
| Jan 25, 2013 9:08 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | considering => closed |
| Jan 25, 2013 9:08 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Assigned To | => Chris_McElligottPark |
| Jan 25, 2013 9:08 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Resolution | open => won't fix |
