Having 2 classes (and a unique name for every single combination) was what got me hooked. There are so many cool builds that I could replay the game over and over! I also love the small lore details i.e. telling the guy in DC about Elsa makes him show up as a dead body somewhere, and the demon in a sealed cave pretending to be a little girl who’d kill the entire village if you fall to her scam!
As for my problem, I’m an ex-competitive fps player, with chronic wrist and thumb pain. Got it from overtraining. Could be RSI or carpal tunnel syndrome or both. It flares up whenever I overly exert with the mouse.
I’m pretty much in love with the game. But with my current ranged/hybrid Primal Strike Druid build where I click and kite, the pain keeps coming back. It’s gotten so bad to a point where going back to my main melee char (soldier with blitz and cadence) still hurt just from moving with the mouse.
Is there a way to move with WASD? I know controllers exist but it’s not for me. I’ve been reading a bit and it seems like implementation of WASD has become a debated topic.
My humble opinion is that I can already kite well with the mouse (as aim training had been my regimen for years), it’s just that it frickin hurts. Kiting with WASD would be a lot more ergonomic, at least for me.
I’ve been planning to buy the Ash of Malmouth dlc for more endgame content, and possibly the Forgotten Gods mainly for the Korvan Storm Halberd and other cool items. But as much as I really love the game, I just can’t play it anymore. It just hurts. I really hope there’s a way to use WASD to move.
Controller use would be your only other option because WASD will not be added to GD. From a recent Steam thread in December, Zantai had this to say:
"We love that there is ongoing enthusiasm in Grim Dawn and interest in bringing it in line with 2024 titles, but we are now talking about a fundamental rewiring of the game that would require significant rebalancing and no small amount of technical hurdles to resolve.
There is a reason these sorts of things are not patched in retroactively. You don’t see WASD movement added to D3 or PoE1. You saw it introduced in new titles that had the control scheme from day 1.
The D2R team apparently tried and disabled it before the season started because of all the issues they ran into, with no timeline for when it would return. Not exactly the endorsement you would be hoping for, and we’re talking about a AAA studio with way more resources than us struggling with it.
It is simply not going to happen in Grim Dawn. Period. Ask again in Grim Dawn 2."
Can you help me understand why adding WASD to the game would warrant an entire redesigning? I’ve just Googled around a bit and I’m sorry I still can’t understand. I hope someone could explain to me in laymen terms, perhaps?
From what I’ve understood so far, stick movement has already been implemented for controllers (which sadly I cant use as controller hurts my thumb too). Mapping the same movement to WASD should work, no? I still don’t get the balance debate as kiting just with mouse is viable no matter what, just that it’s non ergonomic and hurts for those with conditions like mine. How would adding a WASD movement option similar to controller warrant a redesign? Please explain nicely I genuinely don’t understand and would love to.
As for what the norms in those other games are, I frankly couldn’t care less. Grim Dawn is probably the last RPG game I’ll play and I just want to play it pain free.
Thanks for taking the time to read and reply.
Cheers.
I’ve been reading the dev announcements you mentioned (as well as googling a bit more) to try to understand the situation a little better.
Sadly I still haven’t seen a simple explanation as to why it would be too hard to implement. Probably something about code. Perhaps the stick movement they made for controllers is not as straightforward as it looked, and the same couldn’t be applied for mouse and key?
Whatever the case, I would really love to understand. And if there’s a way to play pain free with mouse and key without ditching my range kiting character, please please let me know.
Friend, they don’t need to give you any further explanations, they will simply not add it and that’s it. In your case, I think it would be better for you to seek treatment to improve the pain in your hands before continuing to damage them with games.
I would say that adding WASD itself isn’t hard, it’s almost like using a controller.
There also probably is a WASD mod for Grim Dawn already.
There could be some difficulties with how the mouse is used with WASD.
Perfecting the controls would also take time and resources away from other things that they are doing.
It would also change the game feel forever. It feels more like playing an MMO or some other game with a third person camera. Now we just need the ability to jump and swim.
I really liked WASD in PoE2, but now that I have taken some time to get back to Grim Dawn I can’t say that I really miss it. It’s really nice to have and it makes the game feel different, so it’s fun to have the option available.
WASD in APRGs to me is almost like the Evade skill. Evade is more useful, but WASD is a feature we will probaly keep seeing in future ARPGs.
i would highly recommend looking into the programs out there that allow things like this. also on steam you might be able to do it through there control settings layer. i haven’t really looked into that sort of stuff. i have series nausea if i use anything but a controller. and some games i just can’t find a way to mitigate the issue in any way. so most my research has gone into playing everything with a controller and removing stuff like view bobbing and such
I was wondering about something like this. Back when I played old FPS, I used to use a Panther XL stick. Later upgraded to a flight stick and trackball mouse. Stick comes with a remapper app so you could play games like Doom 3 which don’t have in game controller support. So it seems to me a keyboard remapper should be easy for someone.
But the thing is, ‘‘viable’’ comes in degrees, and if suddenly one way of doing something becomes much easier than it previously was, everyone will switch to it. Everyone wants their character to be more powerful, so everyone will start using WASD because it is easier to kite and shoot that way than with a mouse. So, if the devs don’t change anything else, it will become much, much easier for ranged builds to kill mobs.
And changing the speed, health and damage of mobs (or the attacks speed and damage of ranged weapons) to account for the shift to WASD would basically ruin the entire game balance completely.
Not to mention that this change would likely affect caster builds, too. And what you’re gonna do with melee builds then? All around a giant problem.
It’s debated because it upsets the balance of the game, since it’s designed around the player being relatively immobile. Which is how you can screw with the enemy target AI if you run Eye of Reckoning and go in circles around an enemy. So if WASD was built in, it would result in a lot of balance headaches and trivialising of harder content.
Case in point, Path of Exile 2 is built around the player moving, which is why it seems most players now use WASD rather than mouse move. As you often need to move around enemy projectiles/attacks.
Anyhow, fortunately there’s 3rd party options, which is great for people like you with hand pain or disabilities. And having had fun with wrist pain (accident/work triggered), I get why you need it entirely. Because chronic pain fucking sucks. Especially when it interferers with something you love doing.
In my opinion, the WSAD direction in GD is unnecessary, the game is good as it is. I would not demand so much from a game that has been on the market for almost a decade. I, for one, am glad they gave us a bounce and that’s totally enough. In GD II your wish will probably come true.
I still didn’t have the time to test it properly, but DPYes has recently implemented WASD controls for GD. Might be worth a try if that’s what you feel is missing from the game.
I’ve used X-Mouse Button Control to ease my wrist pain during long GD sessions - moving the mouse was fine - it was just the prolonged intense clicking that was killing me - so I mapped my thumb button to switching autoclicking every 50 ms on/off. Worked like a charm Downside: It basically prevents using right mouse button during fights - but with 10 slots for keyboard shortcuts it’s not really a problem IMHO. Here’s the settings I’m using.
Downside: It basically prevents using right mouse button during fights - but with 10 slots for keyboard shortcuts it’s not really a problem IMHO. Here’s the settings I’m using.