WARBIS as "console/controller" compensation doesn't work (and other controller related issues)

[Shuckster]

I've spent most of my time playing this game with controller despite my better judgement. I've played on PC my whole time I've owned this game but played it during a time where I played it on my couch, and I just kinda stuck with it cause it's comfortable for me now. So... here I am talking about it on the behalf of console players as well cause I share their pains of using a controller.

WARBIS armor as a concept isn't bad, the armor itself is perfectly OK as it is in terms of general equipment. But IDK why Klei devs think that this is good compensation for how simply swapping equipment on the fly is difficult. It's a problem for many reasons:

• The item is only craftable AFTER defeating Celestial Champion and require activating what is essentially hard mode, something that most players in most worlds will never experience so it is not accessable and therefore worthless in that regard. Even if the armor was worth it, the odds are if that if the console/controller player was competent enough to get this gear in the first place, they probably wouldn't need it as a "crutch." They've already gotten good enough at combat to not need it in that regard. 
• It doesn't exactly help them "catch up" with mouse and keyboard, cause it's not an item exclusive to controller or whatever. M&K players can just also use the armor and still do everything that gives them the great mobility/dps during battle all the same. It doesn't help that it is useless in most battles besides bosses specifically, which is probably the goal, but again if they've made it this far to make the armor, they don't "need it" anymore. During day to day skirmishes it's worthless. There are also some battles where the scanning breaks cause you/the boss move away from each other.
• If the WARBIS did functionally work out in making controller players "catch up" with animation canceling/quick swapping, that still would suck because now these players would in theory be forced to use this armor to keep up instead of experimenting with other gear. I assume that this armor will at likely at some point be phased out by other, better equipment too, so this would still be suboptimal.

Quick item swapping during battle is honestly the least of the controller's problems anyway. Yeah, switching to your walking cane is a pain in the ass, and animation canceling is borderline impossible without some weird controls or grip probably. But you can overcome the former and don't "need" the latter. However there are a load of other issues with controllers that need more important attention than this, and no amount of special equipment helps. Here are just some examples of problems with controllers:

• The one that will probably throw you for the loop most frequently is how often doing certain things like interacting with or picking up certain objects can become a nightmare if they're incredibly close together or behind one another. Sometimes you just can't select them and there's no way to "switch targets," so you got to move or remove everything before you can even do something. It's hard to explain how often this makes it difficult to do something that shouldn't be a problem into proper words. Like imagine if you couldn't open or close a door because there was some grass in front of it, like if you had a grass gecko farm.
• Casting certain spells like Starcallers or teleporting only happens in a fixed position in front of you via a little reticle. There is no way to adjust this, so you can't cast or teleport further or closer away from you making teleport-kiting in place impossible, and you not being able to teleport longer distances just makes teleporting less useful in general (especially for Wortox.) Teleporting to the Atrium if it's visible can be impossible just because the reticle used to target might not be able to reach. It does stretch itself sometimes to compensate, but sometimes even that's not enough.
• Target is odd with certain ranged attacks such as magic staffs and the Weather Pain. They'll refuse to target further away things, or will prioritize target things closer to the player (that might be an object), which in many scenarios makes it pointless or a liability. Imagine basically having to be near or on top of the Fuelweaver in order to use the Weather Pain to attack his little shadow roaches he eats. Better off just smaking them yourself at that point and accept that some will get eaten. The Weather Pain in particular is guilty of this. With my friends, I refuse to take on the duty just cause of that.

There is some minor things they do to help controller players, like the lock-on system which can really help in some fights such as Bee Queen tanking, or fighting the Antlion so I don't auto-target the sand structures (although that sometimes means I can get stuck between several and relocking becomes a nightmare.) But these things aren't enough. I want to be able to quick swap between items, and not have to dig through my backpack just to switch between my tools/weapon and a cane. When it comes to solutions, I'm not very "creative" when it comes to controls and direct soulutions so I can't exactly give any precise things like "map it to [this button]," but I can think of a few things that can still help. 

• Allow some form of "quck swap" button that allows us to switch quicker between 2 (or more?) things in our inventory.
• Give us a way to "quickly swap" between hightlighted things or locked targets so that we're not forced to exclusively interact with the closet object unless we lock on.
• Allow us to move the casting/teleporting reticle with any accessible area on screen, including near and on top of us. Even if we can only adjust distance but still have to face that direction I'd still be happy with that.
• Give us some way to target further away objects with things such as weather pains. I guess this would included in swapping highlighted/locked targets.
• Give us access to that additional mythical "I'm holding an item on your mouse" slot lmao.

I thought that since the WARBIS was brought up as way to help controllers, I thought I might as well use it as a springboard to talk about my other problems with controllers as well. While one could argue that "PC is their main concern" or "the game isn't designed for controller, why should us or Klei care?" then if they weren't going to put time into it like these strawmen say, then why bother even doing it at all? There are plenty of console players out there, and plenty of players like me who use controller despite being on PC. I don't think that these games controls are the worst or anything. I've played for this long, I'm not gonna stop now lol. But I do think there's room for improvement, and I wish to start a discussion about it. So I want to hear some opinions.

[Brago-sama]

I can attest to the weather pain being annoying. Gotta be touching whatever you want to cast it on. So many unnesesary deaths on crab king. I just cheese him at this point with bees.

[Baark0]

Also aren't pc players able to still item swap while using this armor? Wouldn't that just lead to pc players having an even greater advantage over console players?

I stg if item swapping gets nerfed in any way I will not be happy.

[Shuckster]

3 minutes ago, Baark0 said:

Also aren't pc players able to still item swap while using this armor? Wouldn't that just lead to pc players having an even greater advantage over console players?

I stg if item swapping gets nerfed in any way I will not be happy.

I should have mentioned this, but yeah. Anything equipment-related you add that helps controllers unless it's unusable to m&k, will just result in the same issue as this armor is meant to compensate. And making it arbitrarily unusable to m&k would be confusing, and feel especially bad going in blind and crafting something so expensive to then not be able to use it. Even if they make it console-exclusive, it'll only help them and not PC controller players. Just... don't make bandages to cover an open wound. 

And yeah, I was contemplating adding "nerf PC to controller limits" to the list of solutions just to be thorough. But I was going to stress that would be a terrible decision. Make controller better instead of PC worse, and I'll stress again to NOT do this to mouse and keyboard Klei. That would be geniunely terrible. I omitted it for a reason lol.

[Mike23Ua]

I don’t understand why Klei doesn’t use some of the concepts they’ve ALREADY came up with.. such as: Abigail, Abigail is an absolutely excellent example… When you scroll through your inventory and onto Abigail’s flower, while your little cursor thingy is highlighted ON the flower additional button prompts pop up- Such as Sooth/Rile/DeSummon.

Soooo… Why doesn’t Klei just let us Key Bind certain Button presses to Certain Inventory slots?

As you can see in the image below, each inventory slot has a Quick Equip Button.

So While we have our Cursor over the Hand Slot/Back Pack Slot/ Helmet Slot- Additional Quick Equip Prompts can show up Like it does for AI commands for Abigail’s Flower.

(You can bind Spear/PickAxe/Walking Cane/Lantern to Left, Right, Down, Up Quick presses on D-pad) 

This ONLY works when hovering over the Hand Slot..

When hovering over the Backpack/Chest Slot you can Bind Backpack, Piggy Back, Marble Armor, Bearger Vest to those same D-pad presses that ONLY function while hovering over the Backpack/chest slot.

Same idea with Head slot items.

Make them all function like Abigail’s Flower, less time fumbling through your inventory to try to quickly equip things.

[Shuckster]

17 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

I don’t understand why Klei doesn’t use some of the concepts they’ve ALREADY came up with.. such as: Abigail, Abigail is an absolutely excellent example… When you scroll through your inventory and onto Abigail’s flower, while your little cursor thingy is highlighted ON the flower additional button prompts pop up- Such as Sooth/Rile/DeSummon.

Soooo… Why doesn’t Klei just let us Key Bind certain Button presses to Certain Inventory slots?

As you can see in the image below, each inventory slot has a Quick Equip Button.

So While we have our Cursor over the Hand Slot/Back Pack Slot/ Helmet Slot- Additional Quick Equip Prompts can show up Like it does for AI commands for Abigail’s Flower.

(You can bind Spear/PickAxe/Walking Cane/Lantern to Left, Right, Down, Up Quick presses on D-pad) 

This ONLY works when hovering over the Hand Slot..

When hovering over the Backpack/Chest Slot you can Bind Backpack, Piggy Back, Marble Armor, Bearger Vest to those same D-pad presses that ONLY function while hovering over the Backpack/chest slot.

Same idea with Head slot items.

Make them all function like Abigail’s Flower, less time fumbling through your inventory to try to quickly equip things.

This isn't a bad idea. I'd also settle for something like some sort of wheel similar to the Gesture Wheel mod where you can select which items you wanna switch to or use, and the last one you had equip could be quickly swapped to with a press of a button or something. Honestly, I'll take almost anything just to test it out lol.

[Pebrot]

another problem with controller is that makes wortox very annoying to play, not just by the rank of teleport, but trying to use circle to other than to teleport( i.e. harvest leafy meat) is a nightmare, u keep teleporting by accident

[Shuckster]

On 10/10/2023 at 1:46 AM, Pebrot said:

another problem with controller is that makes wortox very annoying to play, not just by the rank of teleport, but trying to use circle to other than to teleport( i.e. harvest leafy meat) is a nightmare, u keep teleporting by accident

Oh God. I've experienced this so hard before. I was hoeing the ground, and there was a small area that was being really difficult to find the till prompt for. I wasted so many souls just trying to fill the final area. It was funny, but terrible. Wortox is so scuffed for controller.

[00petar00]

On 10/9/2023 at 8:38 AM, Baark0 said:

Also aren't pc players able to still item swap while using this armor? Wouldn't that just lead to pc players having an even greater advantage over console players?

I stg if item swapping gets nerfed in any way I will not be happy.

Why does it matter? You are not competing vs PC players and this is not a PVP game.

On 10/9/2023 at 8:49 AM, Shuckster said:

And yeah, I was contemplating adding "nerf PC to controller limits" to the list of solutions just to be thorough. But I was going to stress that would be a terrible decision. Make controller better instead of PC worse, and I'll stress again to NOT do this to mouse and keyboard Klei. That would be geniunely terrible. I omitted it for a reason lol.

I don't get it, even just thinking about that is terrible and you also understand why as you reconsidered doing this.

This just screams salty console/controller player that wants everyone to suffer if they have to.

It is quite understandable that console has many issues that you want to see klei solve and it is obviously in their best interest to do so if it is possible but not every problem will have a solution because there are technical limitations.

I can't speak about console issues in this post as I have never played with a controller but I wanted to reply that nerfing PC players or making controls worse isn't the way to go and there is no chance of it ever happening.

[Shuckster]

3 hours ago, 00petar00 said:

I don't get it, even just thinking about that is terrible and you also understand why as you reconsidered doing this.

This just screams salty console/controller player that wants everyone to suffer if they have to.

I'm not reconsidering it. I probably forgot to reference the fact in the reply to Barkko that what I said about "nerfing PC" was in reference to the original draft of the main post I made. I left it out there because it would have been stupid and reductionist to add it, and I would only added it to be "thorough" with the theoretical ways in which to deal with it and I don't believe in it, so it would also just cause confusion on my stance. I only mentioned it in the replies cause he reminded me that I was going to add something dumb like that but didn't. Kind of weird that you made all these assumptions about me being salty and wanting everyone else to suffer tho, especially since I even said in the reply that it would be terrible. It's on me for not being clear enough however, so I'm sorry about that. 

3 hours ago, 00petar00 said:

Why does it matter? You are not competing vs PC players and this is not a PVP game.

Whlie I agree with this for the most part, there are still some fights in the game that need speed in order to avoid them, and switching equipment in these scenarios can make the difference between getting hit or not. Speed in general is a very useful tool in fights and moving between points of interest when doing chores, and being able to switch between like a tool and walking cane when mining or chopping or something would be preferable.

[maradyne]

...looking at it, there doesn't seem to be an equivalent to a cursor on console?

I wonder if several of the problems with console would be solved by using one of the sticks for moving a reticle around the ground centered on the player's position (and snapping back to it), and having a pair of the bumpers act as the new buttons for cycling through inventory slots.
I've never put myself through the horrors of controller play, and obviously a change like that would take some getting used to, but...it's been a consistent enough complaint to consider disruptive options.

[chirsg]

can ps4 and xbox players not use keyboard and mouse?

[Brago-sama]

13 minutes ago, chirsg said:

can ps4 and xbox players not use keyboard and mouse?

For dst ps4/5 (no idea on xbox) we can use keyboard for chat and thats it. Shame because i know other games have full keyboard and mouse support on console.

[Shuckster]

1 hour ago, maradyne said:

...looking at it, there doesn't seem to be an equivalent to a cursor on console?

I wonder if several of the problems with console would be solved by using one of the sticks for moving a reticle around the ground centered on the player's position (and snapping back to it), and having a pair of the bumpers act as the new buttons for cycling through inventory slots.
I've never put myself through the horrors of controller play, and obviously a change like that would take some getting used to, but...it's been a consistent enough complaint to consider disruptive options.

I wouldn't mind experimenting with a concept like that. 

1 hour ago, Brago-sama said:

For dst ps4/5 (no idea on xbox) we can use keyboard for chat and thats it. Shame because i know other games have full keyboard and mouse support on console.

On PC at least you can use keyboard shortcuts for some reason for certain things. But you can't use your mouse during the game when your controller is plugged in? Anyways, yeah that should def be a standard thing. But it doesn't exactly fix controller issues lol. Like, yeah having the option should be there. But there should def be something to improve the controller experience and shouldn't be "necessary" to go m&k especially if they're on console.

[TheTrueStickman]

6 hours ago, maradyne said:

...looking at it, there doesn't seem to be an equivalent to a cursor on console?

I wonder if several of the problems with console would be solved by using one of the sticks for moving a reticle around the ground centered on the player's position (and snapping back to it), and having a pair of the bumpers act as the new buttons for cycling through inventory slots.
I've never put myself through the horrors of controller play, and obviously a change like that would take some getting used to, but...it's been a consistent enough complaint to consider disruptive options.

Bumpers are already taken up by screen rotating though, so you'd have to move those somewhere else too, and it just becomes a game of "how do i fit this into a limited number of buttons".
Not to mention that using the bumpers would severely bog down the speed and freedom at which you can even select items in the inventory, since you now only have left and right instead of full range of motion.

[Shuckster]

7 hours ago, TheTrueStickman said:

Bumpers are already taken up by screen rotating though, so you'd have to move those somewhere else too, and it just becomes a game of "how do i fit this into a limited number of buttons".
Not to mention that using the bumpers would severely bog down the speed and freedom at which you can even select items in the inventory, since you now only have left and right instead of full range of motion.

I forget off the top of my head, does pressing down on the sticks do anything in this game? Maybe something could be mapped there if not. What that something is IDK.

[Mike23Ua]

14 hours ago, chirsg said:

can ps4 and xbox players not use keyboard and mouse?

I’m assuming that you have next to no idea how console gaming works so I’ll tell you- You can’t just go buy any Keyboard or Mouse and connect it to your console, Xbox has its own BRAND of Microsoft licensed things like this (headsets, controllers, HardDrive expansions, etc..) and sure you can use an Off-Brand, but doing so clearly voids your consoles warranty.

If I’m going to pay 600$ for an Xbox and then on top of that a 25$ monthly fee just to play Online features, I sure as heck don’t want to also have to go buy a 300$ Microsoft Officially Licensed Xbox Series X/S Keyboard & Mouse just to play DST because Klei optimizes the game for KB & Mouse first with controllers being an after thought.

[CuteC]

1 hour ago, Mike23Ua said:

I’m assuming that you have next to no idea how console gaming works so I’ll tell you- You can’t just go buy any Keyboard or Mouse and connect it to your console

Don't wanna do an akthually right here but I have actually played minecraft like that before on my xbox, though I will give you that not every console game is compatible with mouse and keyboard.

[Brago-sama]

1 hour ago, Shuckster said:

I forget off the top of my head, does pressing down on the sticks do anything in this game?

L3 is for locking on and R3 brings up a wheel of a few comands, main ones being chat and gestures

[Shuckster]

2 hours ago, Brago-sama said:

L3 is for locking on and R3 brings up a wheel of a few comands, main ones being chat and gestures

Damn, the entire controller really is taken all up. I wonder if there was a way to make the Inspect button do something else, and tie inspecting to another buton only like the Dpad? I guess that wouldn't work either. Or maybe if you hold the shoulder buttons you can get alternate prompts instead of turning around the camera? 

[CuteC]

21 minutes ago, Shuckster said:

Damn, the entire controller really is taken all up. I wonder if there was a way to make the Inspect button do something else, and tie inspecting to another buton only like the Dpad? I guess that wouldn't work either. Or maybe if you hold the shoulder buttons you can get alternate prompts instead of turning around the camera? 

You can't even zoom in or out, console dst is quite frustrating, I do not understand how anyone can play like that and without combined status.

[maradyne]

14 hours ago, TheTrueStickman said:

Bumpers are already taken up by screen rotating though

I was under the impression that both sets of bumpers do screen rotating, leaving 2 of them redundant...

14 hours ago, TheTrueStickman said:

Not to mention that using the bumpers would severely bog down the speed and freedom at which you can even select items in the inventory, since you now only have left and right instead of full range of motion.

But that's a good point.

 

21 hours ago, Brago-sama said:

For dst ps4/5 (no idea on xbox) we can use keyboard for chat and thats it. Shame because i know other games have full keyboard and mouse support on console.

I'm not going to say that just using K&M is the answer since not everyone can, but...
If other games have it at all, it should be reasonable to support that option. If it doesn't work by default, I assume it's a difference in either what information is passed to the game, or how the key id data itself is passed/interpreted.

Maybe someone more familiar could give input. Or...maybe it's one of those things locked behind having access to console dev stuff, idk.

[Brago-sama]

5 hours ago, Shuckster said:

Damn, the entire controller really is taken all up. I wonder if there was a way to make the Inspect button do something else, and tie inspecting to another buton only like the Dpad? I guess that wouldn't work either. Or maybe if you hold the shoulder buttons you can get alternate prompts instead of turning around the camera? 

Nah theres dedinetly more space for inputs. I hate to say this but.... ive played other games (heretical I know) that had controllers jampacked with inputs

Im no game dev but ive played long enough to brainstorm some suggestions that i dont think would completly destroy the game lol

Spoiler

Holding O (on playstation) while holding objects like starcallers, lazy explorer, seedshells and ocean rod to be able to move the reticle that appears for them around with left analog (the stick thats used for walking). Releasing casts the action as usual

  For items that dont currently have a reticle but still lock on such as weather pain, holding O should bring up a reticle again controlled by left analog that locks on to targets near it to allow you to latch on to far away objects such as trees for weather pain. Releasing O casts

maybe have a settings option to turn on/off target latching for both. Im fully aware using left analog for reticle movment means no walking during. Fair trade off for not having to use right analog. Thatd be clunky

Also, unlocking on to a target should be changed to a different button, because currently it's O, the same button used to cast for weather pain or ice staff

 personally, these changes alone would be amazing. Quite a few keybaord and mouse only options would become usable Not a game dev tho so im probably missing some nuance here