Re: Diagonal Analog Input is Too Weak

I totally agree @richdyer2000, considering the steep learning curve for the game, those who aren’t able to work out why they’re dying over and over and over again will get frustrated and stop playing which is in nobody’s interests!  I want people to play and love this game as much as I do so that they either add more maps and content down the line, or are encouraged to make more games like this.

With the game currently as it is I can’t play it.  All of my friends who bought the game on launch can’t play it either.  Until there’s an update it’s just going to sit there doing nothing which is an absolute shame as a fall in player numbers could be misconstrued as a lack of enthusiasm for the game rather than people not relearning control configurations they’ve been using for 20 years.

It would be good to get a response from anyone at EA on this @Straatford87 @EA_Zoe @EA_Guy 

@richdyer2000  Very good points.

After a little playing around & feeling something wasn't right, I actually then wasted a fair amount of time troubleshooting what I assumed was an issue somewhere in my HOTAS / calibration / driver / sensitivity settings / etc.

Of course, during my initial setup I had immediately mapped the more traditional pitch+roll to my HOTAS stick. So I hadn't seen the "normal"/default controls behaviour, otherwise I may have realised sooner. But eventually I did try keyboard controls (& also the default pitch+yaw on stick), and noticed how much better the manoeuvrability should be when pitch+roll don't share a stick.

I’ve requested a refund from Microsoft explaining what the issue is with the controls through the Xbox website.  Hopefully the refund will be approved and I can spend my money somewhere else.  

It’s such a shame, I love this game hugely but with a game that’s PvP oriented the controls need to work.  

The apathy however from @EA_Guy @EA_Zoe @Straatford87 in not responding, and the lack of a timetable from the developer is pretty poor form and has spoiled the game I’ve been waiting years for.  Everyone makes mistakes, and no product is perfect, but it’s how the problems are rectified that show whether the company cares.  It doesn’t seem to.

Maybe a refund or two based on legitimately poor feedback will motivate all concerned to improve.

@Straatford87 As a heads up, I tagged everyone I could with an EA name as there was no response from you or anyone at EA.  Not even a “we’ve got your money and don’t care”.  Nothing frustrates customers more than being ignored, and it’s frustrating when other issues that were flagged after this one are being answered by other members of your team.  

There’s a patch coming tomorrow.  Will this fix be on it or should I carry on with the refund process with Microsoft? 

@SD13_CAGEI have a feeling they won't know how to fix it. Fixing the issue would involve opening up the full X and Y combined input range, sounds easy right? However, in doing so this will mess with the feel of the 'looking/aiming' control scheme that the first person shooter people like where the right stick acts as a crosshair that moves in a big circle with limited diagonal reach. They must have had those type of players in mind or it wouldn't be messed up the way it is currently.

 Not to mention they made the 'look around' instead of 'fly around' control scheme the default. This favoritism towards first person shooter players would also explain why the yaw moves as fast as the pitch, whereas in traditional flight sim games the yaw is slow, requiring you to roll over and pitch for a quick change of direction while yaw is limited to minute corrections. Basically someone had to be sacrificed, either the flight sim people, or the first person shooter people. And us flight sim people are not the biggest pool, if we were this bug would've gotten more widespread attention right away.

The only way to fix it without messing anyone up, would be to either have an extra option toggle for 'full' or 'limited' range in the controls settings, or to hardcode in the limited range for the fps style controls and hardcode in the full range for the flightsim style controls.

So because of this conundrum, I don't imagine they'll have this problem solved any time soon. They're probably scratching their heads right now wondering what to do. Not saying they can't fix it in a way that makes everyone happy, but I just don't want to get my hopes up. Especially since it's only been flagged and is "being investigated" but hasn't made it to the official list of known issues yet.

I have a feeling they won't know how to fix it. Fixing the issue would involve opening up the full X and Y combined input range, sounds easy right? However, in doing so this will mess with the feel of the 'looking/aiming' control scheme that the first person shooter people like where the right stick acts as a crosshair that moves in a big circle with limited diagonal reach. They must have had those type of players in mind or it wouldn't be messed up the way it is currently.

 Not to mention they made the 'look around' instead of 'fly around' control scheme the default. This favoritism towards first person shooter players would also explain why the yaw moves as fast as the pitch, whereas in traditional flight sim games the yaw is slow, requiring you to roll over and pitch for a quick change of direction while yaw is limited to minute corrections. Basically someone had to be sacrificed, either the flight sim people, or the first person shooter people. And us flight sim people are not the biggest pool, if we were this bug would've gotten more widespread attention right away.

The only way to fix it without messing anyone up, would be to either have an extra option toggle for 'full' or 'limited' range in the controls settings, or to hardcode in the limited range for the arcadey fps style controls and hardcode in the full range for the realistic flightsim style controls.

So because of this conundrum, I don't imagine they'll have this problem solved any time soon. They're probably scratching their heads right now wondering what to do. Not saying they can't fix it in a way that makes everyone happy, but I just don't want to get my hopes up. Especially since it's only been flagged and is "being investigated" but hasn't made it to the official list of known issues yet. But I'm just hoping to be pleasantly surprised. When EA came out with Battlefront II, the diagonals were slow at launch, but then after some time passed - they fixed it perfectly. So this isn't the first time they've had an issue with diagonals, let's hope they fix it just as good as they did before.

good stuff - may the force be with you.

@Revive_medicThat’s a great reply, thank you.

I’ll struggle to understand the logic of the choice if they did choose to sacrifice the flight sim people based on the other choices made in the game. I loved that this was pitched as being the ultimate space combat Star Wars game, and with the first person perspective being the only option it’s going to appeal to those who play flight sims (and Ace Combat too!).

I wouldn’t mind if I was doing something weird with the custom mapping and causing an issue, but I’m choosing one of the two preset options that they have given me, and they gave it because there are people who are used to playing sims/flight games.

If they’re going to fix it fine, tell us a rough timeframe and communicate about it. Even if it’s a “this is going to take a while and I would expect it to take about six weeks” I’d be happy as I’d know that they are going to fix it. Equally, if they just turned around and said “get good noob, we’re not changing it” I could make a decision what to do.

It just doesn’t seem to have been play tested, and apart from Ian who responded to that person on Twitter there has been a reluctance from EA to communicate at all, and when the response was there it was as vague as could possibly be.

After BFV I said I wouldn’t buy another EA game because of the myriad of issues that it had, but Squadrons looked like the game I’d been hoping for since X-Wing vs TIE. I wasn’t expecting it to be perfect (and it isn’t); I can live with the ranking system being almost random, and somehow that ISD won’t die in the Fleet Battles tutorial, but I took it for granted that I would be able to fly the bloody thing.

As I said previously, I’ve requested a refund from Microsoft, and I suspect there will be a few more of my friends who will probably do the same. We’re all of an age where we’ve had too long playing flight games to unlearn a couple of decades worth of muscle memory, but more importantly for EA we’re all of an age to have disposable income and spend that income on our hobbies.  

Maybe we’ll look back at this and use it as an example of how not to handle customer relations, maybe we’ll look back and go “wow, that SD13 bloke sure needed to chill out”, but either way it’s pretty average for something that shouldn’t have made it past beta.

Ditto on pc xbox controller

@Revive_medicDude, every flight sim ever has solved this problem, please don't make apologies for this megacorp making megabux and not getting this well solved control problem right first time.

Hello @Straatford87

"This post is marked as "solved" so it's easier to find and read for everyone."

This makes no sense to me but I might be missing some information. Why flagging it as "solved" makes it easier to find and read for everyone?
If this thread is a duplicate, could you redirect us to the main thread?

Thanks a lot 

Dont know if it's relevant but the yaw is slower on mine than the pitch like it should be. I havnt changed the default axis bindings though, x and y for yaw/pitch then the twist axis is roll. 

Do get all the deadzone issues though

Using some cheapo 60 quid plastic thrustmaster.

I’ve just downloaded the patch and given it a go. The bug is not fixed.

Dang. That sucks. I was really hoping to play this game. I'm just gonna go ahead and uninstall it now. They got my money with the marketing tactic of appealing to flight simmers. If only I had known that it was going to be Call of Duty controls with a throttle instead of legs I would've spent that $40 on groceries.

You can probably work around this on PC by remapping axis (using something like vJoy). When I use my RC transmitter (recognized as a "flight stick"), it works perfectly with throttle + yaw on the left stick, and pitch + roll on the right stick. Really a dream to fly, I just can´t use it because it is lacking buttons. It is not a problem of having it on the same stick, just which axis are being mapped, it seems.

But really, this is a huge disadvantage for all the console players as well (if they swap yaw and roll), they can´t really do anything about it. Since I have no desire to do the remap fiddling, I´m mostly using yaw to compensate which still is a major disadvantage in multiplayer.

Please fix, I find this far more important than the VR / >60 FPS stuttering which I can tolerate for a while, not being able to fly properly on the other hand is gimping my performance and fun.

@Straatford87 Hi Tom. Hope you're all doing well, I'm sure things are crazy right now. I'm not sure I get the whole reason behind marking this as solved, I think that will lead to underestimating the amount of people that can't play due to the issue. Anyway I'm just providing an update. Despite addressing joystick issues, the last patch didn't really correct the bug, and it doesn't seem to be in the known issues. You might know this already, but just in case. A lot of us still can't play. Anyway, take care!

@goonShoeCouldn't have said it better myself. I've uninstalled the game until further notice regarding this issue. I'll keep checking back everyday, but I'm not gonna hold my breath.

 What we really need are some software experts that can figure out the game code or some talented dudes who can understand how to manipulate the game settings files in order to fix it. The game designers don't care enough to be obsessed with fixing it asap. The community is going to have to figure out their own workaround on this one. Or pay some independent party to do the job.

 It reminds me of that time Alien Isolation came out, and the devs couldn't be bothered to get the VR working and gave up on it, but then some random dude did it himself and uploaded the patch to the internet and it's now considered the only way to play that game. Only this would be a much easier labor of love, just gotta figure out how to keep x and y from cancelling each other out - simple.

Thanks @pbobbert for the tip.

I wanted to try it this morning before starting work but then I read: "Setup time: about an hour."

And immediately I go: "Oh, come on! ". I'll have to try this later. 

What baffles me is that the gaming press is not picking up on this. That is a glaring issue impacting all platforms.

I've been watching several influencer videos yesterday (sponsored by EA, which is normal/fine) and you actually see they have so much trouble controlling their ship! Thing is, most of them play FPS games and didn't even notice the controls might be why they're so bad at it.

This game's commercial success (I think it is) is yet another proof after Star Citzen and Elite Dangerous that people craving for flight sims and dogfighting games.

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@pbobbert wrote:
This workaround worked for me on PC. Just wanted to share it here.

https://new.reddit.com/r/StarWarsSquadrons/comments/j7rqtr/pitch_roll_workaround_for_xbox_controller/

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@Straatford87  Do you see how much work the customers are willing to go through to try and fix the Aviator control scheme themselves in their spare time - for free? Perhaps EA should hire this guy. Imagine what he could do if he had access to your code and workstations with all the proper knowledge of the game design at hand? He could probably fix it in an hour. Hire this man :D

Has anyone tried today's patch?- it claims it has "Adjusted the default input curves for Flight Sticks, which should make controls feel more responsive"

Good News: My initial impression is that it's a big improvement.

Bad News: I have the feeling they are now amplifying the pitch response when mixed with roll and vice versa. However, the max response still seems to trace a circle instead of a square. Applying a mix of pitch and roll, you hit the max rate well before reaching the physical stops.

Very Bad News: I *still* suck at this game

@Straatford87 - can you confirm that? Is this just a quick fix which will be properly corrected at some point? 

@richdyer2000The 1.1 patch did nothing for the controller side of the issue. It seems some of the HOTAS issues have been sorted but us pad users are still stuck.

I saw the same person who asked on Twitter if the bug was known has asked Cronus if the Zen will be able to solve it. I guess they’re reckoning if the response area of the stick can be changed that it would fix the issue.

If it does it might help sort the issue assuming a patch doesn’t arrive.

@Straatford87, would a Cronus being used in this manner (with no scripts for anything else) be in contravention of any anti-cheat/user agreements?