Keyboard Skills: Key-binding as an alt option to current control format?

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dopefish wrote:

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BurnThrew wrote:

its just more of a pain to aim [with instant activation instead of switching]

Another nonsensical argument.




Meh, if people necessarily want to stick with their old and outdated habits which have few to no advantages over the new system, let them have that option.

Old habits die way too hard, people hate change, even when it's for the better.

perhaps you should download a first person shooter and make it so 1 2 3 changes to the weapon and fires the gun that way you don't got to deal with the pesky and out dated clicking (it might seem stupid but it's basically the same difference between the two hot keys)

POE style is not better there's no real argument that says it's better nor really to say its worse it comes down to opinion and yours seems to put down others

I have tried both ways I see absolutely no advantage to the POE style other then I don't have to click

the disadvantages I see are
1.Accuracy
2.using potions while casting with keyboard

For anyone arguing speed (Because you have to click more) You're wrong you switch skills during casting/animation and you could just hold down your mouse button so speed is the same

Edit: also with d2 style you could play entirely with your mouse you just have to roll the wheel on your mouse

I prefer the system PoE offers as opposed to the D2 style, and I have played countless hours of D2, and never used the PoE system till now, so thats saying something. Still, its not really a matter of whats better or not, but more preference.

To me, having 3 spamming spells on my mouse, and 5 occasionally activated skills on my keyboard suits me just fine. As to the argument that having 3 skills on the mouse button lends to 'skill bias' where you're just going to spam those skills.... in D2 my sorceress had 12 skills hotkeyed, I only used 3 of them frequently (1 from each element), the rest were cast once or twice every now and then, and was a pain to switch to, then RMB, then switch back, not to mention switching between my spamming spells non stop during combat. Much easier to activate the less commonly used skills with a single press of a button. PoE system > D2 imho.

If they could implement both systems in tandem it will please both sides. Not sure how hard it is to implement, but its clear from this thread that using one system over the other will annoy a large portion of the players.

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turmi110 wrote:

I prefer the system PoE offers as opposed to the D2 style, and I have played countless hours of D2, and never used the PoE system till now, so thats saying something. Still, its not really a matter of whats better or not, but more preference.

To me, having 3 spamming spells on my mouse, and 5 occasionally activated skills on my keyboard suits me just fine. As to the argument that having 3 skills on the mouse button lends to 'skill bias' where you're just going to spam those skills.... in D2 my sorceress had 12 skills hotkeyed, I only used 3 of them frequently (1 from each element), the rest were cast once or twice every now and then, and was a pain to switch to, then RMB, then switch back, not to mention switching between my spamming spells non stop during combat. Much easier to activate the less commonly used skills with a single press of a button. PoE system > D2 imho.

If they could implement both systems in tandem it will please both sides. Not sure how hard it is to implement, but its clear from this thread that using one system over the other will annoy a large portion of the players.

Yeah I played (and still play, whenever the ladder resets) sorceress a lot. Usually it's just 3 or 4 skills (main attack, secondary attack, teleport, maybe telekinesis or static field).

However most other classes you can't do that; for example, a simple summoning necromancer.

You constantly need to use:

2 curses (usually amplified damage, and decrepify), 3 summons (skeleton, clay golem, revive), 1 buff (bone armor), and 1 attack (corpse explosion).

That's 7 skills that get used very frequently and without much bias, depending on the situation (you could be spamming decrepify, clay golem, skeleton, CE, bone armor, revive, etc in various particular situations).

Not to mention if you play hardcore, even MORE utility skills need to be used constantly, like dim vision, skeletal mage, bone wall, life tap, blood golem, etc.

With PoE's system and playing hardcore with a necromancer, you'd die before you reach normal Andariel.


Imagine before Open Beta, suddenly there are 100+ skills to choose from (instead of the current 30), a similar degree of skill fluency will be needed.

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jerg wrote:

With PoE's system and playing hardcore with a necromancer, you'd die before you reach normal Andariel.

I agreed with your entire post, nodding my head as I read it. But then I get to the end...

Your entire post is an example of why the current PoE system is better, not why Diablo 2's system is better. I can't believe you could make that conclusion!

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(you could be spamming decrepify, clay golem, skeleton, CE, bone armor, revive, etc in various particular situations)

So you'd have do the following with Diablo 2's system for one rotation, assuming 5 skeletons and 3 revives, for the sake of argument.:
Q RMB
W RMB
E RMB RMB RMB RMB RMB
R RMB
T RMB RMB RMB


And with Path of Exile's system it would be:

Q
W
E E E E E
R
T T T

Assuming none of these spells are bound to RMB.

Of course aiming would still work exactly the same, you'd move your mouse where you need the spell in any case.

Now, let's say that these spells had to be cast in a less linear order for whatever reason.

Diablo 2's system:

E RMB
T RMB
Q RMB
E RMB
W RMB
E RMB
R RMB
T RMB
E RMB
T RMB
E RMB

Path of Exile's system:

E
T
Q
E
W
E
R
T
E
T
E

Aiming would still be done exactly the same no matter how you activate your skills of course.

The only difference between the two systems is that you have to hit RMB every time you want to use a skill in Diablo 2's system. Path of Exile's system simply skips an unnecessary step.

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dopefish wrote:

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The only difference between the two systems is that you have to hit RMB every time you want to use a skill in Diablo 2's system. Path of Exile's system simply skips an unnecessary step.

No, the only difference between the two systems is that I CAN hit RMB every time I want to use a skill in Diablo 2's system.

Keyword - Can.

Why a lot of us prefer that system is because we want to cast every spell via mouseclick, it just feels more visceral, unified, in-control, spammable, to us.

Like the changed thread title states, it would be great if this is an alternative option offered to us; a lot of people would be happy.

as an aside, I've found the need for dual binds... so I can move a bind key without losing the original placement as well.

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Chris wrote:

Can you suggest a way we can support a hybrid system so that both groups of people can use their preferred controls? Maybe just have a way to bind a key to "change RMB/LMB" rather than "cast now"?

I was thinking this:

http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/3829/assignhotkey.jpg

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Malice wrote:

I was thinking this:

http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/3829/assignhotkey.jpg

This seems to be a pretty good solution.

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Malice wrote:

I was thinking this:

http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/3829/assignhotkey.jpg

That's fantastic; however I can give it a crucial improvement: have three tiny checkmarks on the top of the current key-mapping pop-up, where you decide of that key will be for cast/LMB/RMB, instead of three identical pop-ups.

Edit: Like this (pardon my lame photoshop skills)

http://img638.imageshack.us/img638/5192/assignhotkeyrevised.jpg

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Chris wrote:

Can you suggest a way we can support a hybrid system so that both groups of people can use their preferred controls? Maybe just have a way to bind a key to "change RMB/LMB" rather than "cast now"?

Hi Chris,

With only 5 skill keyboard hotkeys currently (QWERT), doing the method Malice illustrated would still work very well with the current limited number of skills.

However (and this expands to the current PoE control format too) as you guys expand the number of skill choices from ~30 to ~100, this might become too little number of bindable keys relative to the sheer number of skills.

edit:

I re-thought about this, and the best thing I can come up with is to use Malice's illustrated key-mapping (with my improvement I linked above), while simply expand the maximum possible number of displayed icons in the keyboard hotkey bar (maybe up to 8 or 10) - and have a game option where you can tweak the number of displayed hotkeys in UI?

This way those who want to utilize a lot of skills in the future would be satisfied, and those who don't won't have a clustered UI.

It would not interfere with the ability to assign certain attacks to toggle to LMB/RMB either.