Why Can't All Video Games Have Fully Customizable Controls?

[fastbilly1]

I think this is the kind of thing that should be implemented at an higher level so that the individual games can forget about it. You should be able to create profiles on your handheld / console / computer that change this with that. Then NOBODY would need to worry about this again.

I don't even blame the devs that much for being lazy because it does not make sense to reinvent the wheel, and placing remapping dedicated to each single game is going to be a waste of effort (at least looking at it on average, when probably the majority of people don't care - provided the default isn't outright horrible in which case the game possibly has bigger issues).

These are good points. Yeah, it all comes down to costing money (development & test work) and the perceived lack of demand for this.

I suggest that people write to Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft to request this.

They have. Ablegamers, Legacy Southpaws, and Alt-Controls, all have done big petitions, but to no avail (atleast to console companies). I believe Legacy Southpaws got a "thats nice that you did all this work but no way in hell" response.

Most of the money it cost could be taken out by having it implemented early in development. From talking to all of my programming friends about this over the past decade and a half, it is literately a couple if statements per control, literally about half a day of work for a programmer and an artist/animator.

Ive talked to several friends who work at game companies and when they have asked if I liked their game, I have plainly told them "No legacy controls in a FPS = No buy." Ive shown them sites like Able Gamers and Alt-Controls, they liked the idea, their bosses however said no.

[alienjesus]

Most of the money it cost could be taken out by having it implemented early in development. From talking to all of my programming friends about this over the past decade and a half, it is literately a couple if statements per control, literally about half a day of work for a programmer and an artist/animator.
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I know this is true. I'm no master coder or anything, but I do know if you set up this alternate control stuff at the beginning of development, it'll take no time at all and then you can practically forget about it by just using the variables you've assigned instead of the button code when you're coding. I made a game in Unity3D at university and figured this out, and like I say, I'm pretty much a complete newb at this sorta stuff. I'm not really sure why no-one would want to do it, it's not like it would add a hefty delay or anything. If anything, it shouldn't take any longer to implement than an alternate control scheme provided you do it early.

[isiolia]

Final Fantasy XII... Exaggerate much?

Final Fantasy XI was a shitty MMO WoW clone and now Final Fantasy XII was effectively unplayable because, of all things, bad camera controls... it really did ruin it for me.

XI was, at the time, more of an EQ clone. It predated WoW, so hard to copy that (though they've been trying to steer the game towards being more "modern" as far as MMO conventions go). There are plenty of things XI players could legitimately gripe about, but it's hard to dismiss as "shitty" considering it's (still) one of the more successful non-WoW MMOs.

The movement/camera in XII is actually very similar to XI. It wouldn't surprise me if they reused some code for it.

[Ivo]

They have. Ablegamers, Legacy Southpaws, and Alt-Controls, all have done big petitions, but to no avail (atleast to console companies). I believe Legacy Southpaws got a "thats nice that you did all this work but no way in hell" response.

That is really sad. I think one of the big three could at least earn very good publicity from saying yes, and revealing that the other 3 basically said no. True that most people really do not care when it doesn't affect them, but if it is high-lighted by the media it suddenly matters - and they would earn some loyal followers from the people that do care about the issue.

It would be extremely simple to implement it from scratch when they develop the next console(s) / handheld(s) and maybe even easy to do it with firmware update. If they don't do it, I believe the iPhone eventually will and make them look bad (if it doesn't already - many of the games only use the tap and don't care about which of your hands is dominant).

Ivo.

[fastbilly1]

Oh and about master controls being implemented in the console OS. This was tried with the 360. They just forgot one MAJOR piece. In the 360s old menu you could choose default control scheme for sticks - standard, legacy, southpaw, southpawlegacy. They forgot to put in the hook that these settings would overwrite settings IN the games. So it became a useless screen, and I believe it was removed on the current version.

I would love to buy major releases on a console instead of the PC. But I have to buy a $100-200 piece of hardware to make it so I can remap my controls to something I like to play with, and then it is wired... I have a growing fear that the WiiUs control schemes will be like the DS's for FPS titles, that or they will be hard mapped (like previous Nintendo titles).

[gtmtnbiker]

They have. Ablegamers, Legacy Southpaws, and Alt-Controls, all have done big petitions, but to no avail (atleast to console companies). I believe Legacy Southpaws got a "thats nice that you did all this work but no way in hell" response.

Most of the money it cost could be taken out by having it implemented early in development. From talking to all of my programming friends about this over the past decade and a half, it is literately a couple if statements per control, literally about half a day of work for a programmer and an artist/animator.

Ive talked to several friends who work at game companies and when they have asked if I liked their game, I have plainly told them "No legacy controls in a FPS = No buy." Ive shown them sites like Able Gamers and Alt-Controls, they liked the idea, their bosses however said no.

First off, I don't believe petitions work. If there has been 10,000 letters/emails, that would have a bigger impact than a 10,000 signature petition.

You also left out the testing aspect. Someone have to spend time executing a test plan to verify that legacy controls work. There's also impact on documentation/help screens. It cost some amount of money (no, it's not just a half day work for 1 programmer/animator).

Companies have to weigh the cost/benefit of this feature against all other requested features in terms of revenue impact/profits/development budget.

[fastbilly1]

They have. Ablegamers, Legacy Southpaws, and Alt-Controls, all have done big petitions, but to no avail (atleast to console companies). I believe Legacy Southpaws got a "thats nice that you did all this work but no way in hell" response.

Most of the money it cost could be taken out by having it implemented early in development. From talking to all of my programming friends about this over the past decade and a half, it is literately a couple if statements per control, literally about half a day of work for a programmer and an artist/animator.

Ive talked to several friends who work at game companies and when they have asked if I liked their game, I have plainly told them "No legacy controls in a FPS = No buy." Ive shown them sites like Able Gamers and Alt-Controls, they liked the idea, their bosses however said no.

First off, I don't believe petitions work. If there has been 10,000 letters/emails, that would have a bigger impact than a 10,000 signature petition.

You also left out the testing aspect. Someone have to spend time executing a test plan to verify that legacy controls work. There's also impact on documentation/help screens. It cost some amount of money (no, it's not just a half day work for 1 programmer/animator).

Companies have to weigh the cost/benefit of this feature against all other requested features in terms of revenue impact/profits/development budget.

Fair enough gtmtnbiker, I did leave out testing, but the amount of testing needed for this is miniscule in the long run (in the testing world). It is something they can have figured out in alpha or even beta testing if they had to. Could they not have this built into the engine? As for the help screens, many of the games that allow you to remap right now do not change the screens. The games that do it right do, but many do not. The best example I can give you is Bioshock 2 on the PC. It allows you to remap the key for picking up the little sisters to any key you want it to be. But when you try to pick them up, it always says E. As for cost/benefit, I agree that it is a bit of an unknown, but if you look at the biggest multiplayer console shooters, Call of Duty and Halo, both offer multiple control schemes and some variety of remapping.

In regards to the groups, they did petitions in both forms. They did online petitions, which I agree do not work, but they also sent mail to the companies. Probably not in droves like they need to, but they did. I do not remember if they got anything back, apart from the letter to Legacy Southpaw. I apologize for not stating that in the original comment.

[Inazuma]

I agree that all games should have fully customizable controls and that it is nothing short of ridiculous that many games don't do it.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

you press left on the right analogue stick to swing the camera right. This is fine in flight-sim games sure

I can assure you, no flight game I've played, or plane I've flown has ever worked that way.

Only the Y axis is "inverted".

Otherwise I agree with you. Especially when it comes to PC games. I've noticed a lot of developers are sticking their XBLA and 360 games on the PC with no remapable controls, and even worse, all the button prompts still call for the 360's buttons. I find the control issue a less of a problem on consoles, though I certainly like it when I have the option to swap the buttons around.

It annoys the hell out of me when I can't bind jump to my scroll wheel for example. (An old habit from CSS).

[TEKTORO]

I think FPS do benefit from fully customized controls and on the other hand I like when some games make you play with their control layout when it makes sense.Then some games controls just blow.