I had issues setting up my gamepad for this game. I use a Logitech F310, which is a very common entry-level controller for the PC.
Gamepad Setup should be a clickable button. The current way of doing is to easy to miss. When I first started the game, I pressed the two buttons, but I didn’t hold them long enough for the setup menu to come up. Lhis resulted in men navigating through the other clickable menus, and even starting up a game to see how to get my controller working. I almost gave up on it. This kind of new user experience is unacceptable.
Most games are able to detect my controller right away, and I can configure the buttons to my liking. In this game, the buttons did nothing. I can chalk this up to the game being in pre alpha, but it should be able to use the most common controllers without any setup whatsoever.
This is further compunded by the fact that when I went to the “Controls” screen, If I select a control, and press a button on my controller(before setting it up with the “hold 2 buttons” menu), a sound plays, but other than that, there’s no apparent effect. If a player comes to this screen before setting up their controller from the other controller setup screen, this screen should work.
This brings me to another, smaller complaint. Not everyone plays the playstation, and not everyone intuitively knows where X Square Triangle, and Circle are. Not every controller(including the F310), has X, Square, Triangle and Circle printed on it’s buttons. I ususally feel like it’s a better experience when I can see an image of a controller where the selected button is highlighted, so that I can see which button it is. This isn’t as severe as the previous issue, but i thought It was worth bringing up.