Attacking with the mouse

[ASYLUM101]

Originally Posted by Renevent

And if I am not mistaken, other ARPGs have made this the default behavior as well...like Torchlight. It's a much nicer way to play melee IMO, I don't personally see any negative to this and only see smoother controls as a result.

I think you mean, "The only other ARPG to have done this..." because I have never played an ARPG where my character has automatically run from monster to monster simply by my holding the mouse button down.

[Renevent]

I think I have played others...but that's not the point anyways. The experience playing melee is better even in TQ after using that trick.

I think it's a nice improvement to the controls...but that's just me. If you think there are negatives to this you're welcome to share your thoughts.

I would really like to hear from a dev ( ) regarding this...was the way it worked in TQ intentional?

[MageMaster]

I'm all for less clicking!!

[Renevent]

I wish I could add a poll...I'm wondering how many people even knew about this trick in TQ

[Coridan]

I definitely didn't know you could do that in TQ. I'll have to give it a try tonight. I'm definitely curious.

[Renevent]

Added a poll

[medierra]

I can't really remember why we implemented it this way. It was probably even my decision but it was a long time ago and I can't recall.

I tested TQ to refresh my memory and it looks like what happens is that the attacks will just continue firing in whatever direction you're holding because they don't have a designated range since they can be used with multiple weapon types. This doesn't really seem that useful me since your character doesn't intelligently move to the next enemy, they just repeatedly swing their weapon in whatever direction you aim until the reticle is over something. So, I don't think this behavior is really as intelligent as it may seem. If we added this to the left mouse button, you could no longer hold-click to continuously move, your character would just attack over and over while moving forward.

I also played TL just now to see how they do it and I'm not sure I really understand what exactly is going on. It doesn't seem to automatically move-to and attack whatever the cursor is over. If I just held the left mouse button down my character would sometimes attack an adjacent enemy or two but then they'd just stop even if there were more enemies nearby. Sometimes the character didn't do it at all. If I clicked to attack one enemy and held the cursor down and moved it over another enemy, my character didn't do anything. It seems like what is happening is that if you attack an enemy and there is another enemy immediately adjacent to it at the time that you clicked, it will attack the second enemy after the first is dead. It seems like the game is trying to predict that you'd want to do that next.

I'm not sure I really like this as the behavior is not 100% predictable to the player and it takes some control away. Although this seems like a rare situation, it could be undesirable if you had a life-leech skill you wanted to use on the last remaining enemy in a group but your character decided to auto-attack it and killed it. Given how fast you can kill things sometimes, it might be difficult to stop.

We could add new tech so that instead of just repeatedly attacking in a direction, it did more intelligently trying to move-to and attack the enemy nearest the cursor. However, this would make holding down the left mouse button to continuously move unpredictable. Instead of running where you wanted the character might veer off to go attack a nearby enemy or would start attacking enemies you were trying to run through. I guess maybe we could make this an option if we had time.

[Renevent]

You are correct...Torchlight only does it halfway...if they are in the vicinity it continues to attack but after that stops. I'm trying to remember what other game I played that allowed this (Sacred 2?), maybe it was only TQ using the right mouse button trick...who knows I can't remember now lol.

But just to be sure I booted up TQ and made a lvl 2 character with Psionic Touch...in my opinion it's much better.

With regular attack in left mouse button slot obviously it only attacks one enemy until it's dead.

With Psionic Touch in the right mouse button slot, it does a very good job attacking enemies surrounding the player as well as enemies near or approaching. It also will move forward towards enemies far away, however the pathing isn't perfect although I think it works the majority of the time.

I played TQ for about a year or so without knowledge of this trick...but a buddy of mine (r00ster) who was an avid TQ player showed me this and once I tried it I always try use it (if I play melee characters).

*edit*

I've been playing around with it just to refresh my memory (I haven't played TQ in some time)...this method works very well even for far away enemies.

The trick is to keep the icon a "sword" by moving it to the next target before the current target is dead or by keeping it over enemies in general (not over empty space). If you keep this momentum your character will even path to distant target fine and initiate attacks properly. I can even be in a group of enemies, and pickout a ranged/caster enemy further away and the character will break off the current attack and will run around whatever is in it's way and attack that enemy instead. Of course this isn't even necessary for monster around the player...simply holding it down over the monsters will kill everything around you.

You can't of course keep the right button held down the whole game...occasionally you need to use the left button to move around between melee battles.

Originally Posted by Medierra

We could add new tech so that instead of just repeatedly attacking in a direction, it did more intelligently trying to move-to and attack the enemy nearest the cursor. However, this would make holding down the left mouse button to continuously move unpredictable. Instead of running where you wanted the character might veer off to go attack a nearby enemy or would start attacking enemies you were trying to run through. I guess maybe we could make this an option if we had time.

That sounds cool...I think the trick is to only move to attack if you mouse over an enemy and the cursor turn into a sword (or whatever it will be in GD).

[Confuted]

Being able to constantly use a skill without clicking again on another target was very useful. I just hope that GD is more fluid when your character switches between targets.

In order to switch to another target when holding a click, it required the click to be released and re-established on the desired target. On the other hand, if the clicked target died, then your character would auto target any creature in the current line if fire. The only problem I had with auto switching targets is when the target creature died, my character would pause and restart whatever action they were doing (staff or bow attack). It would be nice if my character didn't pause when their current target died. Holding shift helped but it didn't stop the all the pauses between kills.

[Betrayer]

It especially becomes confusing when you're mobbed, and it's not really obvious when your target dies.
You have to watch really closely so you know when to click on the next target and that always bothered me a bit.