Controller or Keyboard?

[Castruccio]

Are more people playing this game with a controller or with a keyboard and mouse? If you've tried both, which do you prefer?  I was thinking about buying a controller for AVWW, but I hope to get some feedback before I do.   

[TerraSleet]

I had no idea you could play with a controller. O.O

[Hyfrydle]

Keyboard and mouse for me and it plays fine. Not keen on controllers.

[Martyn van Buren]

How do you aim spells with a controller?

[BobTheJanitor]

How do you aim spells with a controller?

Use the targeting ability, or play it like a platformer where your attacks only go in a straight line and always get up to the right height before shooting things.

Targeting doesn't quite work well enough that I'd like to use it all the time, as is. It has a tendency to cycle through enemies at random and I find it picking something off the screen behind me rather than the thing right in front of me. I wonder, is there any plans for a 'target nearest' function, perhaps?

[TerraSleet]

Just tried playing with my 360 controller. Not a fan of the aiming system (it doesn't use the right stick but you aim AND move with the left stick) but everything else is cool. I noticed a bug though, placing platforms with the gamepad's aiming system places them very afar away (about a screen away for me).

Since we're on the topic of UI, have the devs considered putting the actual bound hotkeys on the Inventory hotbar rather than simply 1 to 10? E.g. the first spell has LMB under it, the second RMB, if a slot is unbound then keep them as the 1-10 format. Or if you're using a 360 gamepad, X button under spell 1, Y button under spell 2 etc.

[Bluddy]

I play on my laptop and just couldn't adjust to playing with the keyboard and mouse (trackpad). WASD is fine for FPSs, but the need to be aware of my exact position in space while keeping track of the mouse AND being able to access all numbers at will just didn't work. In an FPS, you have a currently selected weapon that's prominently displayed at the bottom of the screen. Numbers are only used in an FPS when you switch weapons, and you can use the mouse wheel for that instead. Even trying to work with 'currently selected weapon' mode didn't work for me with AVWW since I had to look back at the bar to see what was selected.

Chris pointed me to the old fashioned aiming technique, where you shoot in the direction you're facing, and can shoot in diagonals as well. I haven't looked back -- I can now easily access all numbers and the game has become much easier to control. There's really no need for the mouse -- those few extra degrees of aiming don't make much of a difference since you can just reposition your character to achieve the same thing. What's important is that your brain and fingers are handling fewer things at once, so you become much more efficient. I can easily use almost all of the spells in the toolbar now.

BTW I strongly dislike tab-targeting mode. It's like auto-aim in an FPS, and to me it feels like cheating.