Test Server Feedback

Ok. While we are looking at the whole issue of flight control in EvE...

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1) If I use the key bindings to change the speed of my ship, I have no idea what speed I have set until the ship stabilises out at it's new speed.
I would like an indicator of both current speed AND desired speed in the HUD.
That way I can use the key bindings to change what speed I want and know both that my commands have been accepted AND to know what it is that I have actually commanded.

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2) As it stands, when you try to turn, the ship slows down. This makes sense, while we are using the 'auto pilot' as slowing down tightens the turning circle, and increases the rate of change of direction... But what if I don't want to slow down?

If I am in 'manual pilot mode' I can manually set the speed to whatever I want. could we not have it so that if we instruct a turn we turn the tightest possible while maintaining [say at least 95%] of our current velocity. And if we want to turn tighter we manually reduce speed, rather than have the 'auto-pilot' decide for us?
This could be an 'optional behaviour thing' for the manual flight mode...

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3) Speaking of which [manual flight mode]... It might be a good idea to have a button on the HUD that toggles [and also has a key binding option] "Manual Flight Mode" [MFM] on and off. [With the corollary of Automatic Flight Mode {AFM}]

This way the ship can have two different modes of behaviour.
The fist, AFM, being like it is now, optimised for navigation by mouse click and via the overview/r-click menu.
The second, MFM, Being customisably optimised for manual flight via key bindings.

That way we avoid needing a one-size-fits all approach with all the inherent problems that has, and instead allow control optimisation and customisability for both manual and automatic pilots.

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4) having key bindings only work when space is selected is a nightmare. First there is nothing visibly alerting you to the effect that your commands are not going to have any effect. And second, its all to common and frustrating to need to click on windows between manoeuvres and forget to click back. And overshoot where you wanted to turn because your commands didn't do anything.

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5) We need clear, but pretty, visual indication of where currently invisible collision barriers are, and ideally they need to be made smaller. and more form hugging.

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6) The controls need to be more like joystick commands.
At the moment pressing the key assigned to "up" is not telling my ship [in it's frame of reference] to pull up.
It's telling the ship to turn towards the arbitrarily defined up direction.
Ditto down.

This makes those commands different from the 'left and right' commands which DO act on the ship according to it's current reference frame... As you have no defined LEFT or RIGHT in eve in the same way that you have defined UP and DOWN.

This difference is unnecessary and confusing and unhelpful. In 3d space there is no difference between Up and Down and Left and Right. Our controls should reflect that.

This will allow us to do loops, and any other manoeuvres we want to, and in no way hurts the game or makes it a dogfighter.

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7) We need a follow-cam-view.


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Key-bindings at the moment are "A Nice Idea" but are not currently implemented in a way that really allows us to make use of them to their full potential... Or even, really, make them useful at all.

This could be a great feature, long awaited. Please take and allocate the time needed to make them so.

Newbie thoughts here:

If I was indeed a little surprised by the controls of EVE at the very beginning, it was not a reason for me to not continue playing. So I don't think it will have a big impact on newcomers.

On the other hand, it is true that I'd really like to be able to fly manually cause I often take time to explore an area once it is clear of all threats and flying around bases and asteroids would be easier that way.

I've got another space game called Starpoint Gemini 2 who can be compared to EVE regarding to turrets locking on targets and "skill-bar" in the hud which implement keyboard/mouse control for the flight and it works really well because of one detail:

Turrets mounts have a maximum angle for the line of sight and you have to place your ship out of it to minimize damages taken but it's not the case in EVE (as I've seen yet) and so it reduces greatly the need of manual flight control.

I use a joystick for this game (x55 rhino) and it works only because I've got bazillion buttons on it XD.

So yeah, for me a great optional feature but I completely understand the apprehensions of some of us.

Wait and see...

you can actually do a roll -
you just have to be pointing straight up or straight down atm, and then try to turn left/right.....

Turn left/right needs to become 'yaw left/right' -
in function as well as name.

I fully support the option for roll, and to allow flips,
(I'm always amazed that there is no crossover at 0 and 180 degrees of camera AND movement - it's horribly artificial)

this will help MASSIVELY with setting up insta-undocks for those pesky up/down stations!
though I'd also like the option to 'align N,E,S,W,Up, Down' - but these could be menu sup-options

Having messed around with manual flight for a while, there are only two things I think it needs to really be useful.

1. There needs to be a proper 3rd person flight camera. CCP doesn't need to reinvent the wheel here. There are tons of examples of how to do this from existing flight sims. Without this, manual control is very clumsy and will just frustrate new players by once again not matching their expectations for how flight control should work.


2. The throttle control needs to work differently. It should work like this: while the player holds down the accelerate button, the ship accelerates up to its maximum speed as per the ship stats, but when the player releases the accelerate button the ship should stop accelerating and maintain its current speed. Likewise, the decelerate button should only decelerate while the button is held down, then maintain speed after the button is released. There can be other bindings for "accelerate to maximum speed" and "stop ship" (which I think already exist actually).

Those are really the only things I think the system needs to be something players may actually choose over the current double-click based controls.

I would also recommend that rolling the ship just be eliminated, as it's unnecessarily disorienting. You're in space, in a ship bristling with weapons on all sides, in a capsule where g-force is obviously not an issue. Rolling the ship serves no navigational purpose. It's not a fighter jet in an atmosphere. Pitch, yaw, accelerate, and decelerate are the only movements you actually need. Which happens to be a simpler movement model that fits perfectly in a WASD scheme using shift and spacebar for the throttle.

It's been 5 days since the last dev response... could we have any word on whether this feature is locked, or still being developed?

Sure I can give an update.

We did a mass test last week to test the technical viability of this and we still have a green light for launching with Rhea on December 9.

A lot of the feedback centers around having additional features not specific to keyboard controls, but we are not committing development time to that just yet. However, it is really good to hear that our initial expectations of follow up work align quite closely with the suggestions made in this thread.

A big thanks to everyone who have been reporting defects on Singularity, we will continue tweaking the behavior of the controls this week and fixing up some of the bugs.

Chase camera is pretty much compulsory after this feature addition.

logged into the test server just to try this, and im pretty stoked about getting some controls xD

My only criticism is the acceleration / deceleration.

I was hoping / expecting to do have a control scheme of throttle + steering.

I dont like how the directional controls make u accelerate, and im not quite sure how to describe it but the existing controls for accelerating and decelerating dont feel quite right if that makes sense. like they're not sensitive enough.

I submitted a bug report about these issues this past week because it really doesn't seem ideal:
- The steering controls completely ignore your throttle setting and force it to 100%, which means you can't, say, turn your ship while stationary, or make a turn at half speed. People don't always fly at full throttle!
- The steering controls ignore when other shortcuts are used that add modifier keys to the keystroke. So if I've set WASD to steer my ship, if I hit, say, Alt+S to broadcast for shields, my ship starts moving as if I'd hit S. This is bad.

It's a cute gimmick and I've used it a little bit, but those two issues are causing quite a few headaches. :(

Nullarbor, Would it not be possible to give the ship a really small forward vector so that it appears that your not moving but still allow turning ?