Activating Powers on Console Controllers

[(PSN)AnaLoGMunKy]

Hellooo good people of Planet Earth and to you guys at DE

I am writing this in the hopes I can bring to the attention of the DE Console Team something I have considered for some time now, in fact ever since Warframes PS4 release and I first came across from PC with my Loki (when the account transfer was available). I was immediately struck by how much more comfortable and playable this game was on a Pad (for me, that is). But...

Some powers are not suited to be on certain buttons. Some powers need to be activated quickly and the last thing I need is to remove my fingers to cast a Warframes dot powers on an enemy or use an aggressive power that I need on tap. Currently the only way to alleviate this is to change my controls for the entire game. For someone with many Frames and who likes to switch between them many times a session, this is mind numbingly tedious, so much so that I cant bring myself to do it just to pull a frame out the box for an hour or so.

What I propose for the good people at DE working on the console side of things is this:

 

Can we change the "slot" the powers work in as part of a loadout. I dont mean change power order etc, but allow me to swap powers without remapping my entire pad to suit one style of play with a particular frame. Just to be clear, I do not propose changing the actual order of powers in any way on the frame itself, but to allow me to put powers into a "slot" on a loadout.

 

For instance, I have "power A" set to my right thumbstick, known to us peasants as R3. This is great for many of the various frames first powers but for others its entirely counter productive. Great for Frosts Ice Cube, great for Lokis Decoy, but not great if I want to use an Ice Wave Frost or have Loki Switch Tele on call (dont judge me). So if I want to try Frosts Ice Wave on my R3 I need to currently go in and change my controls around. But with the new system I would put Loki Switch in my loadouts slot for "Power A" while decoy would move to "power C"

Again, I need to stress, I DO NOT propose changing the actual order of powers on a warframe.

Thanks

[(PSN)Nek_Food]

Not sure what you want to do, but as a player of console version and want to easy cast some abilities (different for each warframe) found the following quite helpful. I am casting with the touchpad but all the rest recasts of the same ability are done by the right button on the D pad (the cross like buttons). In my control scheme I have changed the binding from Inspect (I think its the default for viewing other player's profiles) to Use Selected Power. If you are using (or spamming) the same power over and over again this will help you a lot. If you are using more abilities than one then perhaps you need to find another way. Personally, with most of the warframes, this suits my needs, but generally that touchpad way of casting the main 4 abilities are an very easy and fast one for me.

 

An other proposal is to change all the buttons in the D pad to match your needs if there are quite useless items there (I have, sephalon scanner:up, waypoint: left, gear: down, recast: right).

 

Also easy is the already built in scheme of (if I remember right) pressing the L1 (hold) and one of the buttons (Δ, O, X, Sq) to activate the desired ability.

Edited March 21, 2017 by (PS4)Nek_Food

[(PSN)AnaLoGMunKy]

I want to be able to change the slot the power is in i.e. Powers A, B C and D. I do not want to have to change my controls every time to suit my play with a different frame.

Thanks for the advice and Im sure this will work for some but I have already tried the things you suggested and it doesnt work for me.

[(PSN)AnaLoGMunKy]

I just want to give a great example of why this would help people using controllers.

I have power A on R3 and Power B on Left D-pad. 

With Frost this is great because I dont use Ice Wave but I do use Freeze lots, so it makes sense to be able to fire off Freeze whenever, especially as its a one handed ability, meaning I can fire while reloading which works great for using my beloved Sanci Tigris.

With Equinox I would like to swap Power A and B around on the controller. Power A would then dot enemies with Rest or Rage and Power B would be Metamorphosis, which we dont aim with.

This is a total hassle to do right now, meaning I would have to change controls every time I want to swap between these two. There are many more situations like this and its something PC players with M+KB dont have to even consider since powers are on the number keys and are accessible with barely a finger stretch.

Please DE console team, please consider this game changing QoL system.

[(XBOX)CannyJack]

Hm. I never would have thought to have powers assigned to different buttons - for me, all powers are Right Thumbstick click; I select the power to activate using the D-Pad.

If I'm understanding you right, though, you're really looking to find a way to assigned aimed powers as a group, and unaimed powers as a group. So you could basically say that "For Frost, Freeze is Power A, but for Equinox, Rest or Rage is Power A." Something you'd maybe configure in the Arsenal, rather than having to go to the controller config. 

Edited April 4, 2017 by (XB1)CannyJack

[(PSN)AnaLoGMunKy]

5 hours ago, (Xbox One)CannyJack said:

"For Frost, Freeze is Power A, but for Equinox, Rest or Rage is Power A." Something you'd maybe configure in the Arsenal, rather than having to go to the controller config. 

Pretty much :)

I wouldnt expect it to change with specific warframes, but it could easily change with the loadouts.

[(PSN)Ariies]

Just letting you know, be careful setting certain things to your thumbstick. it can wear it down much quicker.

[(XBOX)Gigab0mb]

If you ps4 players think you have it rough, the only xb option for quick casting is to hit RB/R1 and hit a face button. This makes precisely aiming powers right before activation impossible in addition to giving the powers a built in casting delay that varies depending on the persons dexterity. You can slap RB again to recast what you just cast, but the D-pad still occupies prime space. The d-pad left and right to switch between powers shouldn't even be an option: it's clunky.

The option to put the powers on the D-pad would be great as well as being able to assign the powers to any button after holding RB.

Edited May 29, 2017 by (XB1)Gigab0mb

[(XBOX)Tucker D Dawg]

The absolute worst is the overlap of Transference and Focus abilites on the Xbox One default control scheme of either holding down both bumpers or quickly tapping the simultaneously.

If we could just assign transference to the D-Pad the way we can gear wheel items...

[(XBOX)dude1286]

I have played Warframe on both consoles, and I prefer the Xbox way of handling the abilities. Can cycle through the abilities with left and right on the D-Pad and quickly pressing RB to use the ability, or using RB + A/B/X/Y/LB to use the specified ability. When I played on PS, the second option above and the track pad were the only options, which could be clunky at best.

[(PSN)THE_HUNTER96929]

On 29/05/2017 at 11:44 PM, (Xbox One)Gigab0mb said:

If you ps4 players think you have it rough, the only xb option for quick casting is to hit RB/R1 and hit a face button. This makes precisely aiming powers right before activation impossible in addition to giving the powers a built in casting delay that varies depending on the persons dexterity. You can slap RB again to recast what you just cast, but the D-pad still occupies prime space. The d-pad left and right to switch between powers shouldn't even be an option: it's clunky.

The option to put the powers on the D-pad would be great as well as being able to assign the powers to any button after holding RB.

Im guessing that you are talking about having less buttons than a ps4 controller, otherwise you should have no problems