Far and away the most awkward controls I've ever seen (unless I'm missing something very simple)

Quizzical

The way the combat works is that you attack in the direction that the camera is facing.  That should be simple enough:  rotate the camera in the direction that you want to attack, and then attack.  Right?

Except that the camera only rotates in 180 degree increments unless you're using a mouse to move it.  I use a mouse a lot at work, so I don't want to use heavy mouse usage at home for gaming.  I can move the mouse pointer with a gamepad, but this doesn't rotate the camera.  If there's an option to change this, I can't find it.

Am I missing something?  Or did Bluehole not bother to make their controls meaningfully configurable?

Sovrath

Originally posted by Quizzical

The way the combat works is that you attack in the direction that the camera is facing.  That should be simple enough:  rotate the camera in the direction that you want to attack, and then attack.  Right?

Except that the camera only rotates in 180 degree increments unless you're using a mouse to move it.  I use a mouse a lot at work, so I don't want to use heavy mouse usage at home for gaming.  I can move the mouse pointer with a gamepad, but this doesn't rotate the camera.  If there's an option to change this, I can't find it.

Am I missing something?  Or did Bluehole not bother to make their controls meaningfully configurable?

It's a mouse based game (or controller). think of it like a little like a shooter. Those are the controls. That is why I've witnessed some players in game become baffled.

They want to play the game like they play other mmo's and it just doesn't work.

 

Quizzical

Originally posted by Sovrath

It's a mouse based game (or controller). 

But the question is about the "or controller" part.  I've got a gamepad.  The problem is that, as best as I can tell, it can only rotate the camera in 180 degree increments.  That makes the game basically unplayable.

I'm not insisting that the controls have to be like other MMORPGs.  A lot of times, I spend quite a bit of effort figuring out how to reconfigure games to work with a gamepad.  Sometimes I end up doing some really convoluted things.  I've used a gamepad to handle the bulk of the controls on everything from Guild Wars 2 to Civilization 4 to a web browser, to say nothing of games more obviously designed to be gamepad-friendly.  But if I can't rotate the camera in smaller increments, I can't play TERA.

stayBlind

I swear that the attack goes in the movement direction you are using as you make the attack. I may be wrong but I thought I would hit and hold D and then make the attack and my guy attacks backwards (towards my camera).

I may be misreading the OP or misremembering how the game works though ... what server are you on btw?

 

EDIT: Oh, I did not see the game pad stuff ... I can not help you there.

MagikarpsGhost

im using a gamepad with no issue, i had to calibrate it and set the button in tera but its fine. as for the direction you attack its where ever your camera is pointing other then a hand full of skills.

Quizzical

Originally posted by jircris
im using a gamepad with no issue, i had to calibrate it and set the button in tera but its fine. as for the direction you attack its where ever your camera is pointing other then a hand full of skills.

How do you do that?  What options or controls do you set to rotate the camera arbitrarily?

Sovrath

Originally posted by Quizzical

Originally posted by Sovrath

It's a mouse based game (or controller). 

But the question is about the "or controller" part.  I've got a gamepad.  The problem is that, as best as I can tell, it can only rotate the camera in 180 degree increments.  That makes the game basically unplayable.

I'm not insisting that the controls have to be like other MMORPGs.  A lot of times, I spend quite a bit of effort figuring out how to reconfigure games to work with a gamepad.  Sometimes I end up doing some really convoluted things.  I've used a gamepad to handle the bulk of the controls on everything from Guild Wars 2 to Civilization 4 to a web browser, to say nothing of games more obviously designed to be gamepad-friendly.  But if I can't rotate the camera in smaller increments, I can't play TERA.

lol, that would explain to me what you were using as, for the life of me, I was just in game and couldn't see which buttons you were using to "move the camera" (using keyboard)

I'll log in now and screw around with a controller.

ok logged in and tried a controller.

 

I was able to move the camera around 360 degrees with the right joystick. I can't really play using a controller but I tried to fight and then rotate the camera and at least holding block I could rotate the camera.

I'm using a generic gamestop controller.

Quizzical

Well, I kind of figured it out, so I might as well explain it for the sake of the next person to come along.  The key option is "Reset cam position".  Pressing that button will rotate the camera to face whatever direction your character is.  That easily allows 45 degree rotation increments, and pressing it again while the camera is rotating can allow in-between angles, too, though it's hard to be precise when doing that.

It still feels awkward, but new games often do.  At least it isn't still trivially unplayable.

Foomerang

You could make a pretty large thread on games with difficult/unintuitive controls. Ever hear of a game called GunValkyrie? Good lord that game was rough hehe

Quizzical

I figured out how to make the controls substantially better.  I'll explain it here for the sake of the next person to come along.  I always hate it when I have some problem, do a Google search for it, find a forum thread of someone else who had exactly the same problem, then several posts later, says that he fixed the problem but doesn't say what the fix was.

Basically, you have to download a separate program that will tell TERA that you have a controller.  You can get it here:

https://code.google.com/p/x360ce/downloads/list

As of this writing, the precise things that you need are:

x360ce.App-2.1.2.191.zip

x360ce_lib32_r848_VS2010.zip

Unzip the files and put the contents into the TERA/Client/Binaries folder.  This will involve overwiting the xinput1_3.dll file already there, so you might want to back it up first.

Then you run the x360ce.exe program once, and let it auto-detect stuff.  (Or at least auto-detect worked for me; your mileage may vary.)  After that, you can close it, run TERA, and it will believe you have a controller.  That enables the "Set skill direction" option.  It does bring up an error message when I launch TERA, but I click through it and it still works.

The option didn't quite do what I expected.  If you set it to attack in the direction that your character is facing, some skills will attack in that direction, but some will still go in the direction that the camera is facing.  I'm pretty new to the game (two characters, both level 11), so I couldn't test it thoroughly, but I think it may be a short-range versus long-range skill issue, with long range skills still going in the direction of the camera.

In case someone worries that it's a cheat program of some sort, basically what the program does for TERA is equivalent to buying an Xbox 360 controller and plugging it in--and then not actually using the Xbox 360 controller.  It allows one to skip the cost of buying an unwanted controller and potentially running short on available USB ports.

But I find it completely baffling that some programmer thought it was a good idea to make this all necessary.  Why not let players tell TERA that you have a controller and have the option to use the controller commands if that's what you want?  That's what every single other game I've seen that claimed to have controller support has done.  Even if someone is really using keyboard keys or mouse buttons to use the "controller" controls, so what?  Why not at least leave that as an option for players?

DamonVile

I don't really get how you could play with a controller. TERA is one of those mmos that have a lot of skills at max level and most of them are useful. Don't you run into a shortage of buttons at some point ?

DamonVile

So can we call this a bad PC port then ?

I play with a g13 and a mouse and find even that is a handful, unless playing the slayer which is just a lot of spacebar mashing :P The button switching on the controller doesn't sound very......effective.

Quizzical

I use the Logitech Profiler software, which Logitech made to work with their own controllers and distributes for free (for obvious reasons).  It lets you assign arbitrary keys to arbitrary buttons, which is the main functionality.  It offers some others, though, such as letting you assign a combination or sequence of keys to a button, or letting a button cycle through various keys, such as typing an "a" the first time you press it, a "b" the second, "a" the third, and so forth.

Another very important option is letting you assign a button to "SHIFT" (not to be confused with the shift key on your keyboard).  The rest of the buttons can be one key (or combination of keys or whatever) when the SHIFT button is not held, and a completely independent key when the SHIFT button is held.  You can also assign buttons to the keyboard Shift, Alt, or Ctrl keys, and then, for example, have 1 be one skill and Shift+1 a different skill.

RemyVorender

Different strokes for different folks. IMHO, TERA has the best and most fluid controls of any MMO ever made. I use mouse+keyboard.

Vunak23

Note. If you are using a controller. There are two different settings options to be tweaked.

type "/controller" in the chat window minus the quotations obviously and it will bring up the controller UI. You can set camera speeds, the way your character attacks (Way your character is facing or the way your crosshair is facing) and other useful settings. 

Quizzical

Originally posted by Torvaldr

I can't use the Logitech profiler. I'm on Win 8.1 and it's broken on this OS. I also can't use the default Logitech driver. I have to use the Xbox 360 controller driver.

I have used the Logitech profiler before though and it worked pretty good. The software I linked above also worked okay, but I preferred to use manufacturer software.

http://www.logitech.com/en-us/support/gaming-software?section=downloads&bit=64&osid=14&softwareFile=on&selectedFile=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.logitech.com%2Fpub%2Ftechsupport%2Fgaming%2FLGS_8.53.154_x64_Logitech.exe

Logitech apparently offers separate versions for Windows 7 and Windows 8, and they're both just over a month old.  Does the Windows 8 version not work with Windows 8.1?  That strikes me as plausible, but hopefully they'll fix it.

Quizzical

Originally posted by Vunak23

Note. If you are using a controller. There are two different settings options to be tweaked.

type "/controller" in the chat window minus the quotations obviously and it will bring up the controller UI. You can set camera speeds, the way your character attacks (Way your character is facing or the way your crosshair is facing) and other useful settings. 

That only works if TERA recognizes your controller.  The game's controller detection is broken, so for some controllers, that requires installing external software that overwrites one of the game's .dll files.  As explained above, that's possible, but it's baffling that some programmer thought it was a good idea to require doing this to make the game playable.