597 replies to this topic

[Chaldon]

Jadel Blade, on 10 December 2012 - 08:21 AM, said:

Lol no. Very very no.

If an F16 had a free floating cursor for a aiming reticule then they would aim it with a mouse or eye tracking or something better. There's no way a stick can control mwo as well as a mouse with the current aiming setup and since they are not going to change the entire implementation it never will.

Negative Jadel. It is known that delicate wrist muscle control (stick) is much more fine tuned than the elbow /forearm (mouse). Mouse wins for twitch. Stick wins for control.

& no I don't think PGI will implement the stick to equal a mouse because it surpasses their ability.
I still have 4fps & mechlab bugs....

[SirLANsalot]

As it was stated many posts by people. MW4 and other games worked well with the stick because arms/torso were just all fired together. In MWO the two are separate, and unless you can toggle it off to NOT do that, I don't see joysticks being used at all. Even then you would need a very expensive one to be able to use fine micro movements to snipe at far away targets.

Quote

By the way PGI, you are missing out on the large group of new players who would easily learn to play MWO with a Joystick and love playing MWO with a Joystick as well as players of previous MechWarrior titles who won't play MWO without a Joystick. Just saying, adding good joystick support will add to the playerbase more than you think it will.

very very wrong. its not a "large" group at all, only a very small select few are going to want to use the joystick solely, and even then they may move to the mouse/kb. As I stated above the older games had no independent movement of the torso/arms, this one DOSE.

[King Hrothgar]

No judgements can be made on the viability of joysticks in MWO until it has proper joystick support. I always played MW4 with a joystick, couldn't really imagine trying to play with mouse and keyboard. The mouse itself is fine for aiming the turret but steering the mech with the keyboard is terribly sloppy. Once analog control is added (don't even have it for throttle), I think joysticks will prove their worth.

All that said, joysticks are far less common than they used to be. They are of course a minimum system requirement for any sort of serious flight sim. But outside of that small catagory I can't think of anything that requires them. Though some stuff is easier with a flightstick, like PS2 with some of the vehicles and planes.

Edited by King Hrothgar, 11 December 2012 - 02:49 AM.

[F lan Ker]

S!

What is strange for me is that joysticks and other peripherals are not exactly new or rare in gaming. I used my first joystick on Commodore 64 back in 1985 Flown online combat flight sims since 1997 up to date etc. So pretty used to the HOTAS setup No exception in MWO either, after a lot of tweaking though.

If PGI would even add proper axis recognition and adjustment, that would take us stick users a long way already. Button support is already there for the most used options and you can program the stick itself further with their software. Sure I can not compete with the twitchy aiming mouse users have but in many situations (from spectating mouse users) I can control my Mech far smoother with HOTAS/Pedal setup and I have all my buttons needed under my fingerttips(read: ergonomic and fast access to all MEch functions), can sit more comfortably due more natural positioning of the throttle and stick + feet resting on pedals etc. I feel more like driving a Mech with HOTAS/pedals. Add to this if we had alsoTrackIR support and the Mech experience would be complete.

People saying stick users are target drones instead of competetive players are either ignorant or just trying to wind stuff up I am not one of the "Pro Gamer" out there but still get a decent K/D and W/L + enjoying playing very much. I can snipe or brawl and even hit intended targets even "hampering" myself with HOTAS. IMHO it is just matter of preference and training and everyone is entitled to what they prefer use, be it HOTAS or Mouse/KB. Would just be good if PGI offered tools for BOTH camps to use to maximize enjoyment and improving game play.

[Votzer]

Why mechwarrior is designed for joysticks?
Of what MechWarrior are you talking about? The old MechWarrior games are better to control with a joystick because of the analog movement and analog torso twist, but MechWarrior Online doesn't support that and that's why it sucks.
How can people play MechWarrior with a mouse/keyboard combo? I mean the mouse is good for the torso twist, but digital control for the legs just sucks.

[Jadel Blade]

Chaldon, on 11 December 2012 - 01:51 AM, said:

Negative Jadel. It is known that delicate wrist muscle control (stick) is much more fine tuned than the elbow /forearm (mouse). Mouse wins for twitch. Stick wins for control.

& no I don't think PGI will implement the stick to equal a mouse because it surpasses their ability.
I still have 4fps & mechlab bugs....

Lol how in the hell are you using your mouse? Forearm and elbow haha. You are doing it wrong.

Try just using windows with a joystick. Its terrible. There's no way you can even do that properly. Let alone hitting a moving target from a moving platform.

[verybad]

Up until this game, which currently has very poor support for joysticks, I always played with a joystick rather than a mouse, and I did better in MP using a joystick than I do now with a mouse.

You can gets some vry good control with a joystick if you're used to it. Don't mistake preference for a certain thing (mouse of the OP) for actual advantage.

I vastly prefer using a joystick in mech games. it just feels more natural, and I can get more control with a joystick (it's irritating using the keyboard for more than 2 firegroups)

[StukaJU87]

I really hope at some point they add in full joystick support so I didn't waste my money. I have no desire to play this with a kb+m. I thought the devs specified that joystick support was a large priority.

[Dock Steward]

I use a Zalman FPS gun mouse. It has its drawbacks, sure, but it gives the feel of a joystick with the precision of a mouse.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

given that theyre seeming to be aiming for the lowest common denominator now I doubt theyre gonna cater to a smaller, select group of people (of whom I am a member) who want to use a certain peripheral

[NonWonderDog]

I seem to remember a Computer Gaming World article from 1998 or thereabouts that quite definitively stated that the ideal control scheme for Mechwarrior 2 was rudder pedals, throttle, and mouse. I though it sounded quite extravagant at the time, but it's hard to really argue with it once you've tried it.

Perhaps track-ir support for head-directed queing of arm weapons would make a joystick useable for torso twist, but extra triggers would be the only benefit. If my desk bounced around like the cockpit of a battlemech I'd obviously need a joystick, but it doesn't, so I don't.

I would like to try track-ir for aiming the guns at least once, though. It would probably be hyper-sensitive and terrible without some kind of head-mounted VR system (it takes just about all the concentration I can muster to align a ring and bead sight with track-ir while flying a virtual plane), but if you're going for "immersion" it's probably the closest you're going to get. Same kind of system is used to aim the gun on Apache gunships today, by the way (the IHADSS system), but with much better tracking than track-ir is capable of and no movement amplification required.

I've actually stumbled upon a in-universe explanation of battlemech controls in a Mechwarrior(?) sourcebook somewhere, but like most terrible battletech writing it was comically dumb. Basically the neurohelmet does jack but help with "balance", controls are HOTAS with the stick for the torso and throttle and pedals for the legs, but... if you twist the throttle and stick in vague and unexplained ways, your Atlas can do headstands!

It might have been the Solaris VII sourcebook, actually.

ETA: If we're going with the twisty throttle shenanigans as canon, I'd play QWOP with guns. (As long as it had better netcode than MWO, of course )

Edited by NonWonderDog, 21 December 2012 - 11:57 PM.

[Durcasaurus Rex]

A joy stick is superior when it comes to the number of axis. A mouse works on a simple X,Y Axis with 2 buttons. A joystick is X,Y but can also rotate allowing the player to have an extra hand. I use one hand for the joystick and the 2nd hand for throtle. Joysticks also have multimple buttons put on the handle. Some (like mine) even have another X,Y axis put on the joystick for smaller tasks like looking left and right without moving your mech.

[Roland]

Harabeck, on 16 July 2012 - 11:34 AM, said:

It was designed for joysticks, but that was in the age where everyone had one. That isn't the case anymore, so you can't design a game around it. And as neat as they are, they really are crap for anything except flight sims.

In other words, the days before multiplayer. Any competitive multiplayer game ever had these things, and MWO is a competitive multiplayer game.

This guy nailed it.

Back in the days of MW4, lots of folks had joysticks. There were actually a bunch of games which focused on a kind of sim-esque gameplay design. Really great games too, like Tie Fighter.

But those games kind of fell off the radar, and with them, joysticks. Generally, if you aren't using a mouse and keyboard as a control input... then you're playing on a console. That's where that market went.

Ultimately, mouse and keyboard are just more precise than any joystick could ever possibly be. If you enter the upper tiers of competitive play, you'll be hard pressed to find folks who use joysticks. That's not to say they don't exist... at least, in mechwarrior 4, some of the best pilots who ever played that game used joysticks. The old sidewinders were a popular model, as they weren't prohibitively expensive (which was important, because they inevitably wore out).

On some level though, you need to accept that if you play with the joystick, you're putting yourself at a competitive disadvantage due to the lack of precision.

[Ryan the Lion]

I have always wondered why they even have joysticks at all since you are connected to the mech with a Nero-helmet and you just have to think to pilot it. It's like an extension of your own body in a way.

[Conure]

Here's a stick I'd like to control the mech with:

http://2.bp.blogspot...ic+Joystick.jpg

[TruePoindexter]

Thontor, on 26 December 2012 - 03:07 PM, said:

the neurohelmet doesn't control the mech, it's not that advanced. It's man function is to use your sense of balance to supplement the mech's gryo in keeping the mech balanced and upright.

This. And I suppose to keep your head safe as your mech gets knocked around

Roland, on 26 December 2012 - 02:44 PM, said:

This guy nailed it.

Back in the days of MW4, lots of folks had joysticks. There were actually a bunch of games which focused on a kind of sim-esque gameplay design. Really great games too, like Tie Fighter.

But those games kind of fell off the radar, and with them, joysticks. Generally, if you aren't using a mouse and keyboard as a control input... then you're playing on a console. That's where that market went.

Ultimately, mouse and keyboard are just more precise than any joystick could ever possibly be. If you enter the upper tiers of competitive play, you'll be hard pressed to find folks who use joysticks. That's not to say they don't exist... at least, in mechwarrior 4, some of the best pilots who ever played that game used joysticks. The old sidewinders were a popular model, as they weren't prohibitively expensive (which was important, because they inevitably wore out).

On some level though, you need to accept that if you play with the joystick, you're putting yourself at a competitive disadvantage due to the lack of precision.

This as well. As much as I enjoyed my Sidewinder Precision 2 back in the day the reality is that a mouse is much more precise.

Edited by TruePoindexter, 26 December 2012 - 03:22 PM.

[Dirkdaring]

Ever die early and switch around in a PuG to see who on your team is using a joystick? It's hilarious to watch when you find one.

[Lightfoot]

It's just that Consoles haven't been Joystick enabled for the most part. Everybody who plays computer games is Joystick literate, I guess you would say because as soon as you play any Flight sim or Spaceflight sim you use your Joystick.

As far as MechWarrior Online goes, it's because I win games with my Joystick. True the Mouse is more accurate, but you only need to be so accurate and everything else the Joystick does better when piloting a 'mech. My last game I had 4 kills and 3 assists using a Joystick in a mech with ballistics and energy.

Seriously, once they add analog turning to the Joystick support you are going to see MechWarrior Online take off. The player base will skyrocket. just because of how much more fun MWO will be. It's all about FUN, right?

Dirkdaring, on 26 December 2012 - 03:29 PM, said:

Ever die early and switch around in a PuG to see who on your team is using a joystick? It's hilarious to watch when you find one.

How do you tell? In wins I am getting 2-4 kills and 2-4 assists, usually rank in the top three players. If you saw that would you know I was using a joystick? Maybe if you used a joystick you would spend less time watching.

Edited by Lightfoot, 26 December 2012 - 03:45 PM.

[Tempered]

Riffleman, on 16 July 2012 - 11:30 AM, said:

What happened to playing a game for fun over the last 10 years?

When did playing a game as a fun simulator become an everything rides on your performance stress fest.

When they stopped making single player games.

You see, when there was a single player and multiplayer option in the same game, the vast majority of people played the single player and only occasionally ventured into the multiplayer. They soon got fed up with being forced to play the game by other people's standards and went back to single player. But there was a large vocal minority of knuckle draggers that prefered online only games. This fell right into the wishes of the developers as they could monetize a multi player only game much more than a single player game. It also meant that they could more or less skip the AI programming which they sucked at any how.

[TruePoindexter]

Tempered, on 26 December 2012 - 03:49 PM, said:

When they stopped making single player games.

You see, when there was a single player and multiplayer option in the same game, the vast majority of people played the single player and only occasionally ventured into the multiplayer. They soon got fed up with being forced to play the game by other people's standards and went back to single player. But there was a large vocal minority of knuckle draggers that prefered online only games. This fell right into the wishes of the developers as they could monetize a multi player only game much more than a single player game. It also meant that they could more or less skip the AI programming which they sucked at any how.

I personally equate the difficulties of network coding on par easily with those of AI behavior - perhaps even more difficult as at least with AI's you control their world. The world of the internet is... unpredictable

Edited by TruePoindexter, 26 December 2012 - 03:56 PM.