Why Blizzard Won’t Add Controller Support to PC Diablo III

I’m sure there are quite a few people who would like to see controller support added to the PC version of Diablo III, but when Eurogamer presented that idea to senior level designer Matthew Berger, he pretty much knocked down any hope for such a patched-in feature. The reasons:

“The rhythm on PC is tactactactactactac – you’re clicking the mouse, you’re telling your character where to go,” Berger said. “On console, the rhythm is very different. It flows more, because you’re constantly repositioning your character with the thumbstick; you’re really never stationary on console, whereas on PC you’re a lot more stationary… When you’re playing on the PC, you’re not really looking at your character as much, you’re kind of focusing on the cursor. Whereas on console it’s the exact opposite, you’re drawn in.

“Adding the evade… means that you’re once again, even more repositioning yourself. It’s added a new dimension to the game – the game is more dynamic. And it feels in some ways it’s faster – in no small part because the camera’s in closer. Your character’s bigger on screen, the enemies are bigger on screen, when you’re surrounded by enemies the threat level feels higher. So it has translated really, really nicely to console, there’s a wonderful sort of rejuvenation of the game in that environment.

“The evade was kind of a levelling off factor with the fact that when you’re on PC, you can click somewhere when you’re surrounded by enemies, and the game will find out how to get to that location. On console, you have to find that path yourself. So the evade gives you that brief window of opportunity to distance yourself from the enemy and reposition yourself a little bit faster, and that helped out a lot. We’ve also lowered a little bit the number of enemies who attack you at once. You still have just as many on screen… it’s so you don’t get overwhelmed.”

All this means that console and PC Diablo – or rather, controller and mouse-and-keyboard Diablo – are two quite different games, however similar they might look. Patching controller support into the PC game would effectively split its audience.

“It’s a bigger issue than just allowing players to use the controller on the PC. Because if I let you use the controller on the PC, then I have to let you use the user interface that goes with it, and if I give you the roll and I haven’t throttled the number of enemies attacking you because the mouse-and-keyboard players can handle all those enemies, but with a controller you have too many guys… The games have really been structured to take advantage of their environment and their ecosystem, so in the same way it would not be a good fit to put a mouse and keyboard on the console. It wouldn’t work.”