Just don't bring WASD to Path of Exile

WASD will require changes to an extend where Path of Exile will drop out from being Single Unit Real Time Strategy game like ie. Dota, League of Legends and Diablo.

The character controlled instead with WASD stops being an unit and instead becomes an avatar, that is not what Path of Exile is about.
Just like PoE2 the WASD focused design have made the game SMITE with fucked up camera angle.

Simply put:

WASD makes the character “you.” Click makes the character “yours.”

And I would say that people hate PoE2 because it is designed to make the character "you" and not "yours". Even how you implement new bosses and mechanics it won't change that because they are designed based on that perversion of Path of Exile.

Thank you.

I think the fact that camera always follows your character already makes it not like an RTS. You can't just detach the camera to look at mobs in front of you to plan RTS stuff. Even if you click to move. I definitely prefer poe1, but WASD in poe2 is not bad. In poe1 it would work only at the beginning, because later on with 200%+ movement speed it would be hard to go through doors or narrow spaces.

To me poe1 movement is still closer to poe2 than MOBAs. And I don't understand why you consider poe1 and diablo to be RTS.

I mean, you would still be able to choose mouse movement just like in PoE 2 so I wouldn't really care if they added it in. Nobody would be forcing you to use wasd, you could just keep using click-to-move.


And there would be no difference anyway, all that happens when you left click right now is that your character walks X amount of units inside the game engine's space. Holding down W for a certain amount of seconds would do literally the exact same thing, it would just feel more fluid. But its essentially the same as clicking, just a different button.

WASD in PoE2 isn't bad, because it is made for it. And reason why Path of Exile players don't like it is because you are the character and not the commander.

RTS doesn't mean that the game needs to have free camera. And there is no reason to have free camera if you have only 1 unit to follow while allocation is restricted to range of screen from the unit.

You might think of RTS as Warcraft, Starcraft or Company of Heroes, which they are, but they aren't RTS because you can control multiple units. They are RTS because you are a commander and not an avatar, that is what Strategy stands for and the 'Real Time' stands for that it is not turn based.

Same is with Diablo and MOBA games they are RTS games with singular unit.
Dota has implemented multiple unit control but that comes from being Warcraft mod.

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Toforto#2372 wrote:

I mean, you would still be able to choose mouse movement just like in PoE 2 so I wouldn't really care if they added it in. Nobody would be forcing you to use wasd, you could just keep using click-to-move.

Everyone knows that if they add it, just like console support, they won't just leave it to that. There are development issues on new ideas because it doesn't fit to be played with controller and same happens with WASD.

If you add WASD the most likely what will happen is removal of movement lock while casting and then the monsters are designed to be faster.

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Toforto#2372 wrote:

And there would be no difference anyway,...

Not same as clicking. On click the character gets a calculated path to its destination which is given to the player's client to replicate.
They would need to slow down Path of Exile to an extend that netcode is optimized to not desync like crazy in situations where there are moving monsters blocking the ways.

There are definitely arguments to be made against bringing in WASD, but this is absolutely not one of them.