There are several reasons why I resist the idea of this toggle so much.
The big ideas for those who tl;dr is this:
-This toggle is not intuitive nor comfortable for the keyboard
-It defeats the vast point most of the point of removing the mouse
-Just because other games have it doesn't mean this one does
Lets start with being comfortable with the mouse:
Someone suggested using either tab or q for top left and e or r for top right. Let's do a group exercise:
-Put your fingers to cover the five potential directions, since in combat you need to move at all 5 rapidly with such intense fighting. put your fingers on tab, a, w, d, and r.
-How does this feel? If your fingers don't cramp inside, they feel cramped rubbing against each other. The hand position is not comfortable, your fingers feel crowded, and in general you couldn't play long before it becomes painful. This simply doesn't work.
-It doesn't work because of how our fingers are made. The pinky and thumb feel most comfortable when they are below the three inner fingers
Let us try another exercise. We put our three fingers on left shift, a, w , d, and space.
-This is about the most comfortable setup I can come up with for the left hand. left shift would be upper left and space would upper right. This is a setup I could work with to allow me to have the 5 directions on my left hand without completely killing my hand.
However, there are several problems.
-The buttons being lower then the wad is counter intuitive, but easily forgotten enough. -The bigger problems is this takes away the valuable spacebar which is needed if the right hand in combat is used to pick spells 1 - 4 through jkl;. Another button can be used for sure, but the action for attacking is best suited for the best space which is the spacebar.
A third option is to use the number pad for the various directions. This is both comfortable and intuitive, but does not allow the character to both run left and aim upper left then veer right easily for you have to move fingers. In addition, I worry the pain this would cause on some laptops whose number pad is not so spacious.
So with these three alternatives, we cannot find the trifecta of being comfortable, intuitive, and able to not cramp out the other hand for everyone.
But it's intuitive on a controller you say? That games have this feature, so it should happen? That leads to my next point.
I remember the reason the mouse was cut off was to avoid the disparity between mouse and keyboard. It was impossible to balance the two.
Having the toggles would put the controller on an very great advantage to the keyboard. The controller can do everything while the keyboard cannot. You can enable the toggle, run, zig and zag, and be very comfortable while doing so.
However, of the player base, there is about 2 to 10% of the player base with controllers of some sort.
So to cut off the mouse, which about 75% of the player base has access to, but to leave the controller with an immense edge of another axis for the less then 10% defeats the whole point of removing the mouse.
Either the keyboard players are gimped in pain or in dexterity while the controller is fine while aerial enemies attack and are balanced with the toggle, or the aerial enemies are defeated without hairpulling by the keyboard players fighting controls but the controller players laugh at the ease.
If arcen is going to let the less then 10% of the players have an edge, just keep the mouse and let 75% at least have the edge. If you are able and willing to plug in a controller, you most certainly can plug in a mouse.
Other games have the toggle you say and they are necessary? Well, the games are made for it.
Even Metroid has gone without the toggle. I played the gameboy version of it from start to finish. Since the game was not designed to shoot diagonally, the bosses and enemies are not expecting you to act that way. There were a few situations were it would have helped, but in the process it would have made 75% of the bosses laughably easy as opposed to being a challenge. Saying super metroid would be hard without the toggle would be like Castlevania SOTN of the night being hard without the slide and double jump. Of course its hard, because the game is designed for the player to use those features!
To compare something closer to apples to apples, I bring up Metal Slug again. The game was designed so you can't shoot sidewides and stand still. Many bosses would be pitifully easy if you could. The same for the gameboy metroid, enemies were designed so you can't stand and shoot diagonally otherwise it would be easy.
Also take into account this: These games are not made for a keyboard. They use a controller of a sort.
If you want to imagine how annoying the toggle is, I invite everyone to try to emulate super metroid on your computer and play with just a keyboard. I can even upload a zip so you can. If you try it, you will see just how badly you are gimped playing the game on a keyboard compared to a controller. This would be fine if you had the attitude that the game was made for the controller, but the whole point losing the mouse on AVWW 2 was to make the game playable on the keyboard!
To recap:
-The hand that uses wad cannot easily accommodate extra axis in a comfortable, intuitive way.
-Taking away the mouse but leaving diagonals would go from a majority of players having full freedom of movement to a small minority of controller players
-Enemies can either be balanced around diagonals or no diagonals, but not both.
---Resulting in a net increase of players either fighting enemies not suited for their controls or the player fighting the controls themselves; both of which fly in the face of the goals of AVWW 2 in the interests of streamlining the game, of making the keyboard fully accessible for everyone instead of fully accessible to the majority have access to a mouse, and of avoiding frustrating in the controls hindering free movement.
