Small change for Merulina's controls on KB+M that could make it feel much better to use

[CaylinBreaker]

Merulina honestly feels fine to control when strafing and moving without boosting. There's other issues and I'd like to echo the suggestions posed by some community members of reducing Yareli's size when using Merulina à la Titania, in order to make her style of momentum-based movement work in the cramped spaces of normal missions, but discounting the environment it still feels smooth and natural to move. Then you press shift and suddenly it all changes, hence my suggestion:

 

Change the A and D keys when boosting on Merulina to work the same as they do when not boosting, as "strafe" keys.

 

In practice I understand why it is the way it is now. for Warframes when you press A and D when not sprinting you strafe as you can still aim and shoot, so it would look awkward otherwise. Meanwhile for visual purposes when sprinting, your Warframe will physically turn to face the diagonal or side you sprint to with the A and D keys as you cannot shoot, and sprinting sideways like a crab would look a bit unusual. This makes sense and poses no issue as Warframes can immediately switch their movement direction in an instant which leaves sprint still feeling responsive and this distinction entirely visual.

For Merulina however, it isn't a purely visual decision. Regardless of whether you're moving forward or not, when not boosting on Merulina you are able to strafe side to side with the A and D keys. This is great, it feels incredibly responsive and gives you complete control over your positioning and works exactly how you'd intuitively expect to. When you sprint however, the A and D key turn Merulina which leads to some consequences that I would think are unintended. Pressing the A or D key while sprinting at any point even for an instant totally changes your heading away from your mouse pointer for some time even after letting go of the key, and it's very difficult to predict where you're actually going to end up once it corrects itself. That in and of itself is mildly annoying, but then when you factor in turning with the mouse it just becomes completely uncontrollable.

I feel how it was intended to work was that you could turn corners using the mouse OR the WASD keys, but instead it results in WASD being awkward as you can't see where you're going and even accidentally trying to use both methods in tandem as you would when not boosting (to make a sharper turn by pressing A and moving left or a wider bank by pressing D while turning left, but ultimately ending up in the same space, resulting in more control to the player -  how it works when not boosting) instead you veer off in a totally unpredictable direction upon pressing the key while turning, only to then veer off in another totally unpredictable direction when it attempts to correct after releasing the key. It makes boosting around tight corners, something that should be incredibly fun and exciting, instead frustrating and clunky. You build up muscle memory of using the movement keys when not boosting and it results in massive frustration when you naturally go to press them when boosting.

The immediate precision and responsiveness of camera-based control requires supporting control schemes to match that precision and responsiveness. Please chang A and D while boosting to instead apply sideways movement without physically turning Merulina. This would prevent it shifting her direction drastically and uncontrollably and would allow it to match and mesh with the mouse controls.

[Electropuncher]

On 2021-07-20 at 10:28 AM, CaylinBreaker said:

Merulina honestly feels fine to control when strafing and moving without boosting. There's other issues and I'd like to echo the suggestions posed by some community members of reducing Yareli's size when using Merulina à la Titania, in order to make her style of momentum-based movement work in the cramped spaces of normal missions, but discounting the environment it still feels smooth and natural to move. Then you press shift and suddenly it all changes, hence my suggestion:

 

Change the A and D keys when boosting on Merulina to work the same as they do when not boosting, as "strafe" keys.

 

In practice I understand why it is the way it is now. for Warframes when you press A and D when not sprinting you strafe as you can still aim and shoot, so it would look awkward otherwise. Meanwhile for visual purposes when sprinting, your Warframe will physically turn to face the diagonal or side you sprint to with the A and D keys as you cannot shoot, and sprinting sideways like a crab would look a bit unusual. This makes sense and poses no issue as Warframes can immediately switch their movement direction in an instant which leaves sprint still feeling responsive and this distinction entirely visual.

For Merulina however, it isn't a purely visual decision. Regardless of whether you're moving forward or not, when not boosting on Merulina you are able to strafe side to side with the A and D keys. This is great, it feels incredibly responsive and gives you complete control over your positioning and works exactly how you'd intuitively expect to. When you sprint however, the A and D key turn Merulina which leads to some consequences that I would think are unintended. Pressing the A or D key while sprinting at any point even for an instant totally changes your heading away from your mouse pointer for some time even after letting go of the key, and it's very difficult to predict where you're actually going to end up once it corrects itself. That in and of itself is mildly annoying, but then when you factor in turning with the mouse it just becomes completely uncontrollable.

I feel how it was intended to work was that you could turn corners using the mouse OR the WASD keys, but instead it results in WASD being awkward as you can't see where you're going and even accidentally trying to use both methods in tandem as you would when not boosting (to make a sharper turn by pressing A and moving left or a wider bank by pressing D while turning left, but ultimately ending up in the same space, resulting in more control to the player -  how it works when not boosting) instead you veer off in a totally unpredictable direction upon pressing the key while turning, only to then veer off in another totally unpredictable direction when it attempts to correct after releasing the key. It makes boosting around tight corners, something that should be incredibly fun and exciting, instead frustrating and clunky. You build up muscle memory of using the movement keys when not boosting and it results in massive frustration when you naturally go to press them when boosting.

The immediate precision and responsiveness of camera-based control requires supporting control schemes to match that precision and responsiveness. Please chang A and D while boosting to instead apply sideways movement without physically turning Merulina. This would prevent it shifting her direction drastically and uncontrollably and would allow it to match and mesh with the mouse controls.

It's even worse on a joystick. This is a great change.

[CaylinBreaker]

After playing Yareli some more due to getting a few +300% power strength arbitrations for her, I still thing the boost controls are the biggest issue with how Merulina handles in regular missions, but a second and also incredibly frustrating issue I've noticed is the total lack of air acceleration. If you jump without momentum, you are forced to just a wait a frustratingly long amount of time to land (not that Merulina has an incredibly high jump height) before you are able to do anything else. That alone is annoying but managable, however the real problem is that if you bump into any object, which can be something as minor as a tiny notch in a ceiling or a small block that you hit at the start of the jump (though in this case being able to strafe while sprinting would help avoid such obstacles 😋), you also lose all momentum and cannot do any form of movement and must simply wait to fall to the ground to attempt another jump. This leads to the incredibly frustrating loop of having to make an awkward jump as you lack the precision controls while boosting, hitting something during that jump and ending in a pit where you cannot get out because you don't have space to build up momentum before jumping and you cannot gain it during a jump.

 

I feel this second issue might be a bug due to how insanely unintuitive it is with no real logic or reason I can think of for it to be a deliberate design choice (it's a hover board, it can already gain momentum while floating, why should jumping stop this ability?). Regardless as I cannot be sure, I posted it in feedback instead. Please consider adjusting/fixing this issue aswell as considering my prior suggestion in this thread.

On 2021-07-21 at 10:07 PM, (NSW)Electropuncher said:

It's even worse on a joystick. This is a great change.

Also I'm sad to hear this. I thought the point of its current control scheme was to have it be more effective for gamepad/joystick controls. If it's also a problem on joystick then I can't imagine why it shouldn't be changed.

[Vahenir]

Both of these things are definitely needed. Especially the jumping one. Ive gotten "stuck" far too many times because i couldn't get the board to move after jumping out of a pit somewhere. Ended up being easier to just drop it and bullet jump out before reactivating it. The whole thing is basically a handicap to movement as it stands, apart from on open maps.

[-BellaMuerte-]

On 2021-07-21 at 5:07 PM, (NSW)Electropuncher said:

It's even worse on a joystick. This is a great change.

Can confirm this as well.