WASD Games. How the hell do you see where you're going?

[Risha]

All right, I tried a few games.  I have The Elder Scrolls and Shroud of Avatar (alpha running this weekend), that I actually paid for.  I am having terrible trouble seeing where I'm going.  In Shroud I set the control keys to the arrows, and back makes my toon actually run towards me!  I have come to dreary conclusion that if the movement isn't a fixed camera slightly over the head of my toon, like CoX, I can't do it.  Is there a way to fix a camera in general?  Or am I just out of luck and supposed to LIKE having my toon run to the right and not being able to see where I'm going?

Many thanks for any help,
Robin

[eabrace]

It's been a few updates since I have had time to jump into SotA (first multi-player build), but I thought my camera was set up pretty similar to how it was in CoH. Guess I should jump in some time this weekend and see how it looks to refresh my memory.

[FlyingCarcass]

Are you looking around with the mouse? Generally that's how one looks around in games with WASD/arrow key movement.

[Castegyre]

I move my feet with one hand (WASD) and my eyes with the other (mouse) is how I do it. It might seem wonky, but over a decade and a half of practice and it sort of becomes second nature. The same way I moved in CoH. Some games let you change how your camera follows you and that might help ease things a bit.

[Noyjitat]

Hey I haven't played the game you're referring to but you should try looking for an option like playstyle or control scheme. Those usually have examples like: control like a first person shooter, control like a fantasy game... etc.

I frankly don't see how anyone plays anything without using both the mouse and the wasd keys. You're ability to act in a dangerous situation and see things around is so much more efficient than using arrow keys and um... page down and page up right? I used all the number keys below the f1 - f12 for my first hotbar and the number pad keys for my second hotbar and / * - for things like rest, portable work bench etc.. Then ofcourse wasd for walking forward / backward and strafing. I can't even play shooters on controllers that well, I gotta have my keyboard and mouse for most games except for console games ofcourse.

I had a friend playing cox for many years who was using the arrow keys and clicking his powers and he would always fall behind or get overwhelmed easily. Until I showed him one day how I had my controls setup and he ended up liking it and doing much better after that.

[Felderburg]

I saw your post about this in another thread, and I was confused... the default for CoH was to use WASD for movement and use the mouse to control viewing direction, wasn't it? It sounds to me like whatever camera options you have set are weird, if the camera isn't following your character. I know that's an annoyance for me in Dragon Age: Origins in combat - exploration is normal, using WASD and mouse, but then you zoom out and suddenly the camera is fixed and your character can run off screen.

Also, isn't back supposed to make your character run towards you? If forward makes your character move forwards, "away" from you on screen, I would assume back does the opposite. I guess I should actually play the games you mention before talking about this, but every MMO I've played uses WASD and mouse.

[eabrace]

I hopped into Shroud this weekend to tool around for a bit.  A lot of things have changed (I can actually swim in the water, now), but the controls for movement were still pretty much what I'm used to in every other game.  I use the arrow keys to move forward, back, strafe left, and strafe right and use the mouse to control my viewpoint and sling the camera around.

The only thing I can think of is that maybe you were expecting right/left to actually turn you instead of strafing.  Most games will allow you to change that in the keymapping options, but it doesn't look like they have a "rotate right" or "rotate left" mapping in the keybind options yet.  They'll probably add that eventually, but it doesn't appear that they've gotten around to that one yet.

[Risha]

Thanks, all, yes I expected the WASD keys to turn me, like the mouse does in COH, because that's how I played with it.  I've never gotten into the WASD keys.  The thing is (and I've dropped Elder Scrolls), on one of the games, Elder or Shroud of the Avatar, they use the mouse for combat, and so if you're moving with the mouse, trying to catch up with the combat on the mouse is tough.

Thanks, again.  I subscribed a fair amount to Shroud, so I'll continue to give it a shot, and I really sank dough into COT, so if it doesn't move like COH, I'll be pretty peeved.  In any event, I can't wait to get our city back, since I've found NOTHING I like better...   oh, I do know that Secret World moved like COH, but that whole place was depressing, and some of the events needed faster reflexes than I have, so I stopped when I couldn't move on.

Robin