MisterHero
Super Member
And they call Nintendo fans masochists
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Skyward Sword with an Xbox 360 Controller
- Thread starter IrrelevantNotch
- Start date
Neon_Icarus
Member
I suppose you could play Mario 64 with a D-pad too. Or play Super Mario Bros with a touch screen. The question is, would it make any sense to do so?
Oh well. I guess this is nice for people who really hate motion controls.
Oh well. I guess this is nice for people who really hate motion controls.
Ultimadrago
Member
IrrelevantNotch
Banned
yea dude. I knew half the people in this thread were flat out liars!
You forgot painting the Mona Lisa with a toothbrush
Neon_Icarus
Member
Is there another analogy you'd prefer? How about Bayonetta with a mouse and keyboard? Or Elite Beat Agents with a lightgun?
I just don't see the point in this. Being able to play SS with a 360 controller doesn't automatically mean it plays BETTER, though all the people who hate motion controls seem to assume just that.
Kai Dracon
Writing a dinosaur space opera symphony
Hate for motion controls seems to carry with it a sense of being "offended for the very soul of gaming itself" and other grandiose displays of indignation. Apparently it goes with the territory.
Having said that, here is one thing I will say... and I have been someone who has defended Skyward Sword and Nintendo's decision to make it the one, true (and final) showpiece game for the Wii's primary interface.
Motion controls as they exist on the Wii and within current technology, DO introduce variables that do not exist in (most) other interface technologies.
The reason is because even if the hardware is the same for everyone playing the game, there are software interpretation routines involved that must make educated guesses about what's going on. In order to account for variability in human gestures, the software back end of the Wii and Motion+ technology is not just analog, it's fuzzy. The software is attempting to calculate what the player is doing based on the previous position of the Wiimote, even with M+ installed.
As a result, it IS possible for the software to come to a mistaken conclusion and produce a result in the game that is not what the player intended to do, and may not match what the player is physically doing right now. This can be observed more directly by comparing Wii to PS Move - Move, sadly, is crippled by being forced to perform even more software guesswork and it easily becomes confused about where the Wonder Wand is actually at, especially when the glowing ball is obscured from the camera for even a moment. You can catch Move fucking up far more often than a Wii game.
So yes. It is possible for the controls in certain kinds of Wii interfaces to make a mistake every so often. It doesn't happen when the Wiimote is being used strictly as an IR pointer, as that is a simple, mechanical triangulation system using the two LEDs in the sensor bar on top of the display. One reason why almost nobody complains about pointer-based Wii games. They do work effectively 100% of the time with zero ambiguity.
(They don't on Move, since Move cannot triangulate anything as the single camera lens provides only one point of reference. It's not a stereo system with the pointing device forming the third point in the triangle.)
This all sounds like a damning indictment of Wii's motion technology and the ability to play games like Skyward Sword. But, the truth lies in the middle. A lot of people screw up Wii games by using the Wiimote in ways they don't even consciously realize; by not actually making even or straight gestures when they think they are, etc. Like any interface, using the Wii properly is a learned skill. You have to learn what the device expects of you and develop muscle memory. This is true even of "perfectly reliable" devices, including digital sticks and buttons. Go learn how to play a fighting game using an arcade stick with microswitches - you can't get more digital and reliable than that, but for weeks you'll be making execution errors as your hand isn't really doing what you want it to do. (Yet.)
The sad reality for Wii, is that because it got dumped by most of the industry early on, there is no vast catalog of "hardcore" games on Wii for people to have been playing for the last six years and thus learning how to manipulate the Wii interface well - knowing what it doesn't like, and what you should be doing to avoid execution errors.
Skyward Sword, for all Nintendo's ironic "babby padding" in the area of hand holding, is a surprisingly hardcore game. The sword fighting, and certain motion devices, are not supposed to be simple and brain dead. They're supposed to be a real skill that you get better at as you play the game. So it pushes Wii tech to its limit (and the breaking point).
A ton of people have played SS and had no trouble and 99% accuracy with the controls; but most of those people seem to know what they're doing with the interface and learned how to work with it, rather than against it. Other people have indeed had trouble, and it's a legitimate criticism to say that the technology is not reliable in the same way "simple" digital buttons, or analog joysticks are. (Or a keyboard and mouse is.) The difference is that while the tech has a few inherent limitations in its current form, it's not the unplayable, useless, broken mess that hyperbolic dismissals try to make it out to be. It actually works very well.
Thus, "Skyward Sword with a gamepad saves the game from teh ebil motion controls yay!" is pure hyperbole. Yet it's also true that a hack to play it with motion controls might make the game much more palatable to people who don't care to (or literally hate) playing it with motion controls.
Hot Coldman
Banned
I imagine playing the game this way would be ridiculously unsatisfying.
jetsetfluken
Member
Now that I watch the video, what's the point of the video if there's no second mini-window showing the Xbox 360 controller being played on as Skyward Sword is played? All the video seems to be is a vidcap of SS running on Dolphin to the naked eye.
MuddyDonut
Member
Did someone say "Haters gonna Hate" yet? That kind of shitposting always pops up when someone has legitimate criticisms for a game. I assume it must be in here somewhere.
QueenOfThorns
Member
Because it's much prettier on the PC.
It's pretty much implied by the posts here. It's assumed that people speak about problems that they had with the motion controls because they just hate them (Not because those problems could ever be real or legitimate. That's impossible. /sarcasm) and for no other reason. It's also assumed that they didn't even play the game first, and if they did play it, they didn't play it all the way through.
...not like I ever beat the game twice and once on hero mode or anything. No, I just hate motion controls sooooooo much!
RPG Wizard
Member
...wow. This was an incredibly well-reasoned and excellently stated post. (And in this thread, I don't expect to see this sort of thing) (Originally had a remark here about your nature, now I think I'm confusing you for someone else.)
I take my hat off to you.
I for one have to say that I'm disappointed that the Wii M+ control schemes are being given short shrift for a new control input with the Wii U. This was one of the first truly intensive uses of motion controls on the Wii, and it feels like it will also be the last.
I feel that some of it worked better than the rest, but it was an interesting experience. Mapping it to a controller will allow others to play it, but I think that they'll be missing out on the aforementioned experience. If this is what they desire though, go for it.
Damn there are some dumb people making very bad assumptions about motion controls universally working for people.
Ask two different people to swing the wiimote to the left, you'll notice a few things unless these people are clones of each other. Their swings will have a large amount of variance if motion, acceleration, speed, and overall distance traveled before they finish. Hell even the length of each persons forearm, their hand size, and how much they move their wrists will have a big impact on the overall motion they make with the wiimote.
Not everyone makes the same motion for every action. This is why complex motion controls are unreliable (why they will work for some and not for others). This is basic gesture recognition 101. The software has to normalize the gesture and compare it against acceptable input ranges to determine if the gesture was properly executed, this becomes increasingly problematic in 3D when you're not dealing with simple unnatural motions, but asking people to execute something they've been doing their entire life making it extremely difficult to retrain the user to do 'proper' motions accepted by the software.
Even professional athletes have difficulty retraining the basic motions they've been making their entire lives, and they have months of practice and training to do it between each season. This is why you hear that quarterbacks with bad throwing mechanics are going to have issues, you can't simply practice those mechanics away.
The issue isn't with the user, but with the software. If it cannot do what it is trying to do effectively it is bad at it, you cannot argue that people are doing it wrong. The entire point of Wii motion controls was to simplify input by removing the abstract connection of pushing a button leading to some software determined action and instead replace it with natural and obvious motions. You swing the wiimote, you swing the sword how you just moved the wiimote.
This would require exact 1:1 tracking at all times, but the technology of the Wiimote (and overall design of most games) don't allow for it. Even Skyward Sword just uses quick gestures to execute determined actions instead of pure 1:1 tracking for combat.
Ask two different people to swing the wiimote to the left, you'll notice a few things unless these people are clones of each other. Their swings will have a large amount of variance if motion, acceleration, speed, and overall distance traveled before they finish. Hell even the length of each persons forearm, their hand size, and how much they move their wrists will have a big impact on the overall motion they make with the wiimote.
Not everyone makes the same motion for every action. This is why complex motion controls are unreliable (why they will work for some and not for others). This is basic gesture recognition 101. The software has to normalize the gesture and compare it against acceptable input ranges to determine if the gesture was properly executed, this becomes increasingly problematic in 3D when you're not dealing with simple unnatural motions, but asking people to execute something they've been doing their entire life making it extremely difficult to retrain the user to do 'proper' motions accepted by the software.
Even professional athletes have difficulty retraining the basic motions they've been making their entire lives, and they have months of practice and training to do it between each season. This is why you hear that quarterbacks with bad throwing mechanics are going to have issues, you can't simply practice those mechanics away.
The issue isn't with the user, but with the software. If it cannot do what it is trying to do effectively it is bad at it, you cannot argue that people are doing it wrong. The entire point of Wii motion controls was to simplify input by removing the abstract connection of pushing a button leading to some software determined action and instead replace it with natural and obvious motions. You swing the wiimote, you swing the sword how you just moved the wiimote.
This would require exact 1:1 tracking at all times, but the technology of the Wiimote (and overall design of most games) don't allow for it. Even Skyward Sword just uses quick gestures to execute determined actions instead of pure 1:1 tracking for combat.
Keith Stack
Banned
Hey everyone! Everyone!
Did I tell you my opinion of motion controls in Skyward Sword yet?
I'm going to tell you my opinion of motion controls in Skyward Sword!
This is my opinion of motion controls in Skyward Sword!
Why are there people with opinions different than mine here?
It's almost as if different people have different preferences when it comes to control schemes!
If only people could mod games to add additional control schemes to suit their preferences! Then nobody would pursue pointless arguments about it!
Nobody!
Did I tell you my opinion of motion controls in Skyward Sword yet?
I'm going to tell you my opinion of motion controls in Skyward Sword!
This is my opinion of motion controls in Skyward Sword!
Why are there people with opinions different than mine here?
It's almost as if different people have different preferences when it comes to control schemes!
If only people could mod games to add additional control schemes to suit their preferences! Then nobody would pursue pointless arguments about it!
Nobody!
What does that mean? I played from the opening cut scene to the credits. How is that "not much time"?
Ghost_Protocol
Member
You don't have to really hate motion controls to like having your inputs register the first time you send them, in a direct and unambiguous manner. I don't want to have to question/troubleshoot the functionality of my controller, or the fundamental way in which it is designed every time I can't make something happen on screen. If the user is the answer to every problem with a device, then there's something wrong with the device.
schwabdizzle
Banned
I like the Wii controls for that game, except for when I had to fight the last boss. People are just lazy and only want to move their thumbs.
Fighting Ghirahim, stalfos and the final bosses were pretty amazing with motion controls, the experience of swordplay became much more fun.
I had a lot of trouble in the beginning, but it took less than a couple of minutes for my skill to grow. Now I'm a master at them. They're really fun when they work well, which for me was most of the time. I'm having trouble understanding how people's motions didn't get registered, but whatever. They're the least of the problems anyway.
I had a lot of trouble in the beginning, but it took less than a couple of minutes for my skill to grow. Now I'm a master at them. They're really fun when they work well, which for me was most of the time. I'm having trouble understanding how people's motions didn't get registered, but whatever. They're the least of the problems anyway.
People are really lazy and only want to post without reading the thread. It's not like people have legitimate complaints behind the hyperbole or anything...
The only problems I had with the motion control in this game was the rope swinging. Everything else worked fine and it's entirely possible I did something incorrectly swinging from ropes as well. Swordplay in particular works excellently, and is impossible to replicate with a standard controller since it's just as much about positioning the sword correctly as it is about striking in the correct direction.
The game is quite lenient in my experience so anyone with decent muscle control should be able to learn how to properly trigger the desired action.Alchemy said:
The controls were bad and I like motion controls! The bomb rolling was a pain because you have to recenter and it's not accurate. Plus Link would swing the sword when I barely moved my hand. I'd rather do proper sword swings than little gestures. I did have problems with the calibration at first which made the experience worse. The controls weren't so bad but they definitely weren't perfect either.
I didn't like the game for a few reasons. Mainly Fi, the stamima bar, didn't like how they set the world up. It felt small, I like exploring! I loved Wind Waker for that reason. The game wasn't perfect but I loved sailing around. It could of done with more islands and no fetch quest though. Oh and cel shading is perfect for Zelda.
I didn't like the game for a few reasons. Mainly Fi, the stamima bar, didn't like how they set the world up. It felt small, I like exploring! I loved Wind Waker for that reason. The game wasn't perfect but I loved sailing around. It could of done with more islands and no fetch quest though. Oh and cel shading is perfect for Zelda.
Davey Cakes
Member
The problem is that opinions on Skyward Sword are so ridiculously scattered that it's tough to know which opinion to trust.
Some people say "the controls flat-out DON'T WORK."
Some people say "the controls WORK WONDERFULLY."
I fall more in line with the latter, though I had a few issues with SS. During the tadtones part, my Wiimote fell out of sync a lot. And a couple of times when I tried to get away with quick-flicks to throw bombs and whatnot, it didn't work exactly as I'd wanted it. Admittedly, bombs work just fine when you do the elaborate motion required, but sometimes the body and mind want to take shortcuts to test the boundaries.
But overall, I don't really understand how people can be so different and unique in their "style of gesturing" that Skyward Sword's controls become questionable. I mean, it's pretty obvious what kinds of input the game requires once you learn what you're supposed to do. I'll agree that there's a degree of error to it all, but I played the game for 60 hours and understood the control scheme fully, to the point of using it effectively in battle and with items, within the first couple of hours. To people like me, it's just really odd to hear when someone else had the complete and polar opposite experience, saying that "the controls flat-out didn't work." Because they sure as hell worked for me, at least most of the time. Whenever I had a perception of "doing it wrong" when I made mistakes, I corrected it, learned the correction, and continued on successfully. If some players, even after hours of play, weren't trained into utilizing the control scheme effectively, that's just weird. Even for those who just can't get it right, "wrong input that has the correct outcome" can be learned, after all.
Skyward Sword will forever be an anomaly.
Some people say "the controls flat-out DON'T WORK."
Some people say "the controls WORK WONDERFULLY."
I fall more in line with the latter, though I had a few issues with SS. During the tadtones part, my Wiimote fell out of sync a lot. And a couple of times when I tried to get away with quick-flicks to throw bombs and whatnot, it didn't work exactly as I'd wanted it. Admittedly, bombs work just fine when you do the elaborate motion required, but sometimes the body and mind want to take shortcuts to test the boundaries.
But overall, I don't really understand how people can be so different and unique in their "style of gesturing" that Skyward Sword's controls become questionable. I mean, it's pretty obvious what kinds of input the game requires once you learn what you're supposed to do. I'll agree that there's a degree of error to it all, but I played the game for 60 hours and understood the control scheme fully, to the point of using it effectively in battle and with items, within the first couple of hours. To people like me, it's just really odd to hear when someone else had the complete and polar opposite experience, saying that "the controls flat-out didn't work." Because they sure as hell worked for me, at least most of the time. Whenever I had a perception of "doing it wrong" when I made mistakes, I corrected it, learned the correction, and continued on successfully. If some players, even after hours of play, weren't trained into utilizing the control scheme effectively, that's just weird. Even for those who just can't get it right, "wrong input that has the correct outcome" can be learned, after all.
Skyward Sword will forever be an anomaly.
PairOfFilthySocks
Member
I've tried it out. The sword strikes being assigned to the right stick work really well, but pretty much all other motion control related controls are really messy. Pity, I might've continued my playthrough if this worked.
Yeah, those little bastards who subjectively preferred open-world sailing to the boring corridor worlds in SS almost certainly define madness and insanity, they're definitely the exclusive cause of these endless debates as opposed to the equal gazillion+ amount of fans that whined to the contrary about "tedious sea travelling in my precious Zelda"
divided opinions, what could they be?!
HylianScribe
Member
The controls are honestly the least of this game's issues in my opinion, but as for addressing concerns over the controls, I guess the problem is maybe that some people wanted a different control setup. Yes, we've gone around in circles over the past 5 months regarding this debate (i.e., the motion controls allow you to do something impossible on a controller, using a regular controller would be less intuitive and more difficult than people realize, etc), but the fact will always remain when you radically change a control setup, people don't like change.
Nintendo also had previously either allowed for multiple controller options (Twilight Princess GCN, Mario Kart Wii, Super Smash Bros Brawl) or at least minimized the intricacy of the motion controls to appease those who lean towards a traditional controller setup (Super Mario Galaxy, Metroid: Other M, Donkey Kong Country Returns). Skyward Sword was none of these, and therefore it was going to alienate more people because the developers decided to go with one control style that heavily favored motion controls.
It would be too easy to say "they should have just included Classic Pro or GCN controller support", but that (as others have already pointed out in the past) doesn't account for the fact the entire game was built around motion controls, and catering to another control type would have required major reworkings and realistically would have compromised the vision the developers had for this game. I personally, despite everything said to date, do not believe Zelda for Wii U will feature motion controls as prominently as Skyward Sword did. I think like The Wind Waker's visuals before it, Nintendo sees how polarizing their decision was and will heed the response to the game - it fell well below sales expectations and ranks in the lower tier of console Zelda games in terms of worldwide sales.
This is misconstruing what a lot people in favor of traditional controls are getting at and is exactly why this keeps going around in circles. It isn't about some ambiguous generalizations like "not liking change" or "hating motion controls" in absolute. It's about preferring response from traditional controls over what ever perceived benefit that other people get from motion controls. Is it so hard to grasp that some people prefer function over flare?
I like to equate it to DDR with a joypad. It might *work*, but it's missing the point somewhat.
One thing I'd love to see is video of someone who has difficulty with the controls using the training room where you chop logs along the grooves (along with video of themselves), because that seemed a perfectly-pitched tutorial for me; allowed me to get comfortable with the precise movements needed in all instances to the extent that I could pull them off on demand.
Or was the tutorial fine and the issue was reproducing those movements in the heat of battle?
Davey Cakes
Member
And people who prefer that responsiveness will always be perceived as having a stick up their ass. They've been playing games for years and the industry is grand enough that there are hundreds of other games among several other consoles that can feed the desire to play traditionally. One Zelda game comes along and doesn't offer the option of tradition (because it's designed heavily around motion, and served as the swan song of Motion+) and people throw a fit about it because they can't just throw out their preference one little time for something that's a bit different.
I know there's a legitimate concern behind the sacrifices made to input precision with motion controls, but a lot of the time the anti-motion people just sound like babies. That's why it's hard to believe them and why pro-motion people want them to just fuck off.
As for "function over flair" while it's true that motion controls add an element of "flair" to games, the negative connotations that come along with this "flair" have shed a negative light over the Wii from the very beginning, affecting peoples perceptions well before Skyward Sword. Thus, when Skyward Sword's control scheme ends up being very functional and one of the best showcases of reliable motion controls (when you eliminate confounding variables) in more traditional games, those with pre-conceived notions of the badness of motion as input fall into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
For anyone else, it just seems like they can't adjust, since again Skyward Sword feels fully functional, barring the occasional issues with syncing. The anti-motion people had a better gripe with Twilight Princess because that game was literally a traditional game with tacked on waggle controls. SS is not the same by any stretch of the imagination.
WrenchNinja
Member
Swimming, flight and diving are tacked on. There's absolutely no reason those were tied to motion rather than the stick when the entirety of the game has you moving Link with the stick.
Davey Cakes
Member
I don't think flight was tacked on. It probably felt like it because you had to waggle to flap. But tilt controls have been in Wii games since the beginning, and I'd say the flight was more "integrated" than tacked on. Felt pretty good once you learned how to do it, too, though the game made you do too much of it.
Swimming didn't feel great, but at least diving was fun to control. These were definitely unnecessary though, so I'll agree there.
Otherwise, I'd say combat, bombs, the beetle, and the use of motion as a pointer in general all felt entirely integrated and natural. The benefit of using motion for pointing instead of IR was obvious to me after a while; it's more efficient since you can control it from any spot in space and don't have to point directly at the screen every time.
Swimming didn't feel great, but at least diving was fun to control. These were definitely unnecessary though, so I'll agree there.
Otherwise, I'd say combat, bombs, the beetle, and the use of motion as a pointer in general all felt entirely integrated and natural. The benefit of using motion for pointing instead of IR was obvious to me after a while; it's more efficient since you can control it from any spot in space and don't have to point directly at the screen every time.
The flight and swimming overall worked very well, imo. They didn't feel tacked-on, and they worked with the game. They felt natural. The swimming was also leagues better than in TP.
Wait, what? No.
I didn't have a problem with them after the first three seconds. It was really smooth, albeit awkward and disorienting at first.
Not sure if someone mentioned this before (as I did not read the entire 8 pages), but doing something like this is actually pretty easy.
I have a wired 360 controller and played Mario Galaxy on Dolphin using it.
Edit:
Not to discredit the original controls. Playing Mario Galaxy with the WiiMote was 100x better IMO. Also, Skyward Sword controls are excellent. Borderline perfection. Everything about them was so fluid and natural.
I have a wired 360 controller and played Mario Galaxy on Dolphin using it.
Edit:
Not to discredit the original controls. Playing Mario Galaxy with the WiiMote was 100x better IMO. Also, Skyward Sword controls are excellent. Borderline perfection. Everything about them was so fluid and natural.
darkpaladinmfc
Member
Mario Galaxy doesn't use Wii Motioon Plus.
HylianScribe
Member
I was making a general statement when I said people fear change, please don't read anymore into it than that. I think I wasn't clear enough in my post, though, and I assumed everyone knew my personal stance on this issue. I am not a supporter of motion controls in the slightest. In fact, I have always been very vocal in my opposition to there inclusion in many games, especially Zelda games. I was just trying to take a step back and explain, from what I understand, the bigger picture and the opposing side's viewpoints. I would have loved to for Skyward Sword to support a more traditional controller like the Classic Pro or GCN, but I am ultimately saying Skyward Sword as it is today wouldn't have likely been possible if it had to support a traditional controller.
I can say all I want that re-mapping everything to a controller, like this supposed Xbox 360 controller support thing does, will solve the problem and feel fine, but I can't honestly say definitely without any doubt that I know it will accomplish that without actually trying it out. Since I haven't, I'm not going to be presumptuous. That's all.
I got into this pretty late, but to my knowledge it seems like some portion of the "traditionalists" have actually tried the motion controls to some extent. I don't think it's unreasonable for them (myself included) to see this thread about mapping motion to a 360 controller and say "Hey, that sounds nice." I wouldn't say I've got a stick up my ass or that I'm throwing a fit for voicing that sort of interest. In fact I did put aside my preference twice long enough to complete the game, but I still found that the lack of control response diminished my enjoyment of it to some notable degree. It also isn't really fair to just say that I should just go play something else, because as a series there aren't too many games out there that offer what Zelda does and do it just as well -- current control issues considered. Which is frustrating BTW because I do think there are ways the formula can be changed for the better, but that's another topic entirely.
I do see that some folks came right out of the gate with "motion bashing" comments and not caring or not realizing that their experience with it is completely subjective. Though I do have a list of real problems with the tech, I would prefer not to be lumped in as a basher, but it seem like the "preconceptions" go both ways. What makes it worse though is that even the people trying to appear rational about it still get it wrong.
For the most part, it seem like we may be cutting through here
Then I don't understand why you would use such a generalization on your own side of the issue. I just don't follow the logic there, but whatever...
Now that I can get behind. The tentative stance is always best for an unknown subject.
Barrow Roll
Member
So is there an actual video off screen where I can see how the 360 controls work?
PataHikari
Banned
So basically people without bluetooth can struggle through this game with inferior controls it wasn't designed for?
Edit: And of course the thread is filled with people who never played the game or were bad it at calling a fantastic game terrible
Double Edit:
"Making a world" is retarded and the worst thing any game can be.
It not feeling like a "real" world is good.
If you're more concerned with "making a world." Then you're going to make a terrible game.
Zelda should be more gamey. Make all games gamey. Let "making a REAL LIFE WORLD" die like the retarded fad and failure of game design it is.
Edit: And of course the thread is filled with people who never played the game or were bad it at calling a fantastic game terrible
Double Edit:
"Making a world" is retarded and the worst thing any game can be.
It not feeling like a "real" world is good.
If you're more concerned with "making a world." Then you're going to make a terrible game.
Zelda should be more gamey. Make all games gamey. Let "making a REAL LIFE WORLD" die like the retarded fad and failure of game design it is.