I was trying to take out a boss who spawned adds, on veteran difficulty, using a gamepad and Francis’s Gun. The difficulty of keeping focused on the boss made me think about how we could improve upon targeting while using a gamepad.
Currently, targeting is done with the same input as movement, and you can use “hold position” to help with that, but it will always target the nearest enemy in the direction you are facing.
The main trouble is when there are many enemies, it becomes hard/impossible to keep a lock on the target you want to attack. Because of this, I wonder if a “focus target” mechanic, similar to WoW, would improve the way the the game plays when using a controller.
There are many ways this could be done, but with such limited availability of gamepad buttons, how can we add these bindings while keeping things simple?
Brainstorming here, what if there was a new binding I could press called “focus target”. While held, the Right Joystick changes functions, so that instead of controlling the camera, it becomes a cursor acting as a mouse region that is centered upon the player. In other words, the cursor can move in a circle around the player, based on the right sticks analog tilt values.
The cursor could then place a target marker by clicking the right stick, either targeting an enemy or simply the ground if no enemy is under the cursor.
Once this marker is placed, anytime you use an ability while holding the focus target binding, you will turn and aim at the focus target reticule that has been placed.
Lastly, to clear the focus target marker, simply hold the focus target binding and click the right stick without tilting it beyond a specific deadzone threshold.
That’s all I’ve got for now! My brain constantly returns to subjects like this to ponder, so I may add more later. Thanks for reading and envisioning with me!