Grim Dawn was one of the first games I played with native Steam Controller support and I was really impressed by its inclusion. Unfortunately, the way it is implemented severely limits what players can do. About a year ago I wrote a post about this, but it never really got any traction. With the new update coming out soon, I thought I’d try again.
One of the great things about the SC is how customizable it is. As Valve has added new capabilities and players refine techniques control schemes become better and better, without devs needing to rework things in their own game. Native support makes this process smoother, but it also locks in certain decisions that players can’t change to take advantage of new features or techniques. In Grim Dawn, three of these decisions cause a great deal of trouble: The way action sets are handled, changes to the UI, and exclusive controls.
Action Set Switching.
In Grim Dawn, action sets switch based on the input the game sees. So, if you use mouse controls it will switch you to the UI Controls action set and if you use a gamepad input it will switch you to the Game Controls set. This closely mirrors one of the ways players can have actions sets switch, but developers have a much better option available.
Developers can tie action sets to game states. Instead of looking for mouse control, the game could switch to the UI set whenever a menu panel or dialog box pops up or when on the main menu screen. This may not seem like a big deal, but it allows players to decide what type of control scheme they want to use and more easily predict what action set will be in use at any given time.
If you only want to fix one problem, fix this one, it is by far the most important. The other two issues revolve around the implementation of gamepad controls, but this issue lets players decide if and when they want to use those controls in the first place.
Changes to the UI
When Grim Dawn detects gamepad input it automatically changes the UI to a more simplified display, removing access to multiple hot bars and replacing the primary and secondary attack slots with a pair of dedicated potion slots. This makes sense for a standard gamepad, but an SC can easily take advantage of the normal UI’s full capabilities and the change to the primary and secondary attacks causes confusion with certain skills that explicitly mention those slots.
A menu option to force the standard UI, regardless of input type, would completely solve this problem and be greatly appreciated. Beyond that, the standard UI allows for a few more actions that could use native binds, though standard keyboard hotkeys or configurator trickery could substitute in a pinch.
Exclusive Controls
Right now, Grim Dawn will only accept input from a single type of control at a time. For example, if you dare to touch the analog stick while using the mouse your cursor will suddenly vanish. This is easy to overlook since you’d almost never want to use KB+M controls with a normal gamepad, but one of the SC’s strongest features is its ability to create hybrid control schemes that take advantage of both. In particular, the SC’s pads are excellent for controlling a mouse and it would be great if you could use that for precise targeting while still using the analog stick for movement.
TL;DR
Having native support for the Steam Controller is great, but a few changes could make it so much better.
- Base action set switching on whether a menu is visible, not what controls are being used.
- Let players use the KB+M UI if they want to, even if they’re using an SC.
- Make the game accept both gamepad and KB+M inputs at the same time.
Thank you for taking the time to read this and I look forward to the upcoming expansion.