Feedback on PS4 controls

[Whiptails]

I have not played this game alot on console yet, and at first glance the button-mapping is done well regarding the lack of options/buttons and things is starting to feel natural only after a few hours. During my gameplay I still encountered some rather anoying "features" and hope they will be solved in a patch. Here is a few suggestions to actually improve the controls:

Tap vs Hold buttons
-If you preform a L1 + hold <something>, the command should execute once it is held long enough. Currently it seems like it is a hold time window. So you have to hold the buttons between 2 and 4 second. Hold it too long and it will not preform the action.

Camera view in VAB/SPH
-The axis for viewing should be possible to invert. I belive the solution which is done here is not how most games are made. In 80% of the cases when I use the camera I tilt the camera the wrong way first! And I believe it is like that because of habits from other games.

Swapping targets in map view
-Currently you swap focus on bodies by tapping L1 and R1, which is not a bad idea. But EVERYTIME I do a quick zoom(L1 + L3-forward), it also swaps focus since it register the L1 tap at the same time. And when you swap back with R1, you get a zoomed out view of the planet leaving you to zoom in again if you did preform this from a craft.

EVA controls
-I did not want this to be an issue, but the EVA controls are lacking. The kerbals have a fixed orientation in EVA space with the head ALWAYS pointing north and feets pointing south. So you can only spin around one axis. Normally in EVA operations you might want to face south-east and preform a forward thrust. But as far as I can see, this is not possible in the current game. This killed Jeb as everytime he tried to grab the ladder from EVA while not being correctly oriented, he were just thrown away from the ship at every try. I was on a suborbital flight and got thrown away from the ship 7-8 times when grabbing the ladder.

 

I have also encountered minor bugs, but for me it is more important to explain my issues with the controls.

[RexusNL]

Especially the camera target swapping and the EVA controls have been quite a pain in the butt to me. You can reset the camer through L1+L2+R3 to refocus on the craft but it still happens often enough to be a nuisance.

In EVA the game also seems to only register forward or sideways movement and you can therefore not move diagonal in the XY plane. When latching on to a ladder the camera sometimes spins and sends the kerbal flying. Though I always had enough monopropolent left to fly back it hasn't killed any kerbals yet.

I bought the game on the day of release here in europe through an US account. Otherwise the Controls are pretty fine to me, it was my biggest concern when switching from PC.

Now if only my 20+ hour save game didn't get corrupted I'd still be playing it. For now I'll just wait for the next patch

Edited August 4, 2016 by RexusNL

[danowat]

One thing to note about EVA movement is that the D pad is used to orient the Kerbal.