Stinkfinger75

Drew still had the best explainer I heard about how Vettel/Red Bull were using KERS to reverse engineer traction control on the RB9 last year. Pretty excited for this!

@oldschool2112 said:

Ground targetting is really the only hitch as it just so much faster being able to cast right at your mouse curser, vs left trigger/move curser/fire weapskill.

You can go into GW2's options and enable quick casting which will cast a spell/skill at the cursor location with a single button press. I like the idea of it, but you need to know the exact ranges of your skills (which you just might) for this to work well. What Anet needs to implement is some sort of feedback on the skill bar's numbers. For example, if quick casting is turned on then the numbers under the skills should light up green if a skill is castable at the cursor's location, otherwise the number should be greyed out.

@oldschool2112 said:

Nice touch! I use Xpadder also (cuz its free) but will look into Pinnacle. The only other issue I;ve had in the past is the speed of mouse cursor movement - trying to find a compromise betweeen speed and accuracy while moving the curser with the dpad or joistick can be a futhermucker.

If you want, say, a faster camera rotation speed, but want the cursor to move a bit slower when ground targeting Pinnacle has a "sniper assist" function which will dial back mouse sensitivity when a button is pressed. In this case it could be assigned to the left trigger so that ground targeting could be more manageable.

@kishinfoulux said:

I've only used Xpadder. How does this work? Same idea I assume? So in that thread is the control scheme you used and I can just download that and use it or something? I apologize for the ignorance.

The file in the thread is the just the profile (the keybinds, macros, etc...) that you import into Pinnacle Game Profiler. Google it. I have used Xpadder also, but Pinnacle is much much more robust and allows for things that Xpadder does not. It comes with a 30 day trial and I feel is an excellent purchase.

@SamStrife said:

How do I quickly and accurately select where I want to cast my skills whilst still maintaining mobility?

Here's how it works.

The right stick is used for camera control, just like a third person game, but when you pull the left trigger it frees the mouse cursor. So for ground casting you press which ever button on the controller corresponds to a ground targeted spell, the spell target appears on the ground, pull and hold the left trigger, use the right stick to aim it, and press the key again to cast it. Pretty quick, simple and intuitive. If you have quick casting enabled it's easier yet. Additionally, when you pull the left trigger, or release the right stick, the profile is set up to warp the mouse cursor to directly in front of your character so there is no "cursor hunt" and at the angle I like to keep the camera, the area where the cursor warps to is usually right in the sweet spot for where I would want the spell cast.

@shinboy630 said

See I don't see how movement is easier. I pretty much live with the right mouse button held, so I can move it any direction at any time while constantly moving the camera. I feel like trying to do that while also dodging and using skills would be a total nightmare, especially in situations that require more advanced play, like dungeons and PvP.

Allow me to explain. At best with a kb/m you are using only one key to move. But chances are that's not during combat, during combat you are doing many things at once, moving in probably more than one direction (back and to the left perhaps), using weapon, class, and profession abilities, targeting, and dodging. Lets illustrate a scenario (based on the default key mappings), you are in a fight, moving away and to the left and want to dodge, there's three fingers needed (maybe one less if double tapping dodging is enabled) on your keyboard for movement plus your mouse hand manipulating the camera, then you want to target another enemy, that's a finger stretch to the T key, then you want to fire off weapon skill 1, that means probably moving one of your movement fingers over to the 1 key, by this point you've taken a beating and want to heal, then you have to stretch a finger over to the 6 key. I don't think that's an unrealistic situation, requires a lot of finger gymnastics, and all happen in very quick succession. That means five (maybe six) very fast finger movements using six keys in a very very short time frame, plus you are still using your right hand to control your camera. To me that seems like there is a lot of room for error in a pretty standard situation. On a controller using my profile I can do all that on two sticks and two buttons, all conveniently within very close proximity of one another on a device designed to play games with. To me that seems like far less room for error and thereby results in better game playing. Over on the Pinnacle site there are some notes about how I came up with my "controller theory" for how the buttons are mapped, once you grasp the simple concept I think playing with a controller is a completely viable option for GW2.

@shinboy630 said:

...the only advantage that a controller has over M/KB in this game is analog movement...

It has many advantages, but the ease of movement alone makes it worthwhile. Go try it, you'll be surprised.

The underwater areas are fantastic and realized very well, but it is entirely too easy to lose track of your enemy and some wonky movement. Since they went the extra mile to create these areas with such care they should have offered a slightly altered combat control scheme for underwater battles. Maybe something like the Metroid Prime games where you could lock on to a character and "orbit" them while you attack.

@Shirogane said:

...but having to put down the controller when you want to type stuff to other people is probably going to be a problem. So i'm not really sure about this.

True, it was never meant to replace the keyboard and mouse completely, some things are still better suited for kb/m, inventory management for example. But for minute to minute game play you can use the controller and nothing else.

@shinboy630 said:

Is there true analog movement? If there isn't, and you are just using the stick for forward, back, left, and right, that defeats the whole purpose of using a stick over WASD anyway.

No analog movement, but then again you don't get analog movement from a keyboard either. I do feel that moving your character using the controller is far simpler and offers better mobility than a keyboard just because it is all handled on one stick as opposed to four keys, plus jump, plus evade (if you turned off "double tap to evade").