Movement Options

I'd like to request an option to use WASD to move instead of click-to-move, and allow us to rebind skills, etc. to other keys and/or mouse buttons as we prefer.

Some players really dislike click-to-move (its why my friends and I don't play League of Legends), and adding the option to use custom WASD movement will attract more players/customers.

Note that this would be 100% optional and players who like click-to-move would not need to change anything; this is simply for all the *other* players who much prefer WASD and find click-to-move uncomfortable, awkward, etc.

There are a number of top down Isometric games very similar to PoE that do this well (Bloodline Champions for example), and WASD movement is a popular request in both LoL and D3 forums.

this subject has came up before and I'm pretty sure they won't do it. WASD controls changes they game too much.

WASD is much more laggy compared to point and click, plus it is also generally much less effective overall (very limited movement vectors). It can suit some games, because it does offer potentially different gameplay, but it's not the way to go with this style of game.

WASD also occupies the hand so that it's mostly just doing movement, which generally results in less overall actions possible to do while moving.

The issue I have is that so far I haven't read any reason to not include the *option* for keyboard movement.

Tossing and Xapti both give some reasons why *some* players might prefer click-to-move, but there are many players that still prefer to have the option for keyboard movement, as can be seen on this forum and on all other forums for major top-down iso games, such as LoL and D3 that I mentioned previously.

The key thing to remember is that we are not suggesting a change to the current setup for players that prefer it, it would remain 100% the same. We would just like the option to use WASD for all the players who prefer that style for their own reasons.

Come on, there's already 16-page thread on this in the suggestions section. There's no need to bring up the same arguments again.

"Please post bug reports, feedback and suggestions for improvement to these forums rather than the public ones - otherwise we'll miss them and other Beta testers won't be able to add their views." - From the Devs in the e-mail they sent to all beta testers (why I posted here).

Also, as this topic is the #1 most popular thread in the entire suggestion forum from what I can see, I think it is important to make sure the devs see that for many players, this is a very important issue.

However, if any PoE staff have already commented on this topic, perhaps someone could direct us there? I'm somewhat new but I want PoE to be the most successful game that it can be!

The problem with WASD movement is that it doesn't really work with a fixed perspective. If you can rotate the camera around your character it gives you full freedom of movement, but when you can't it just moves you 4, or maybe 8 directions and no other way. The only ARPG I've played that had WASD control options was Mythos and that didn't have a fixed perspective so it made some sense.

Also, what happens with WASD controls when you use a skill on an enemy that is out of range? I'd assume your character would automatically move close enough then attack, so whats the point in having WASD movement controls since it works the same way as it does now.

To the people saying: "What's the problem with having more options?" The answer is: Nothing... IF you have unlimited time & budget to develop the game, but that's never the case.

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gcaliber wrote:

To the people saying: "What's the problem with having more options?" The answer is: Nothing... IF you have unlimited time & budget to develop the game, but that's never the case.

I agree with this; they certainly can't add in every little option that every player requests, its just not practical.

However, they should certainly add in some options, with focus on the most popular requests, right? And as I noted, the thread requesting/discussing keyboard movement options is/was the most popular thread in that forum!

Now, at this point no one has any hard data on the number of potential players that would like keyboard movement, we'd all just be 100% speculating. But I think forum activity on the subject is enough to merit, for example, an official poll about it, so that the devs can get some real info on user interest and see whether or not its worth their time to add.

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orioxthetree wrote:

However, they should certainly add in some options, with focus on the most popular requests, right? And as I noted, the thread requesting/discussing keyboard movement options is/was the most popular thread in that forum!

More than half the posts in that thread are against wasd movement.

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WhiteBoy88 wrote:

More than half the posts in that thread are against wasd movement.

This is simply false. I didn't count all 151 replies and tally up for/neutral/against, and I'm sure you didn't either, but its clear that "over half" are not in the "against" camp, rather there are many players who want it, many who don't care either way, and many who don't.

The only way to get a good idea of the true desire among players for this option that I can think of would be an official beta member poll, which I think is merited given the overall popularity of this topic.

On a side note, for anyone wondering how well this might work, try Bloodline Champions with fixed camera enabled. It has extremely fluid keyboard movement. I don't know know how hard it would be to program that kind of high-quality system in (only a developer for PoE could comment on that), but it shows without any question that the system could work just fine.