Controllers 'unsupported' in Mass Effect 3 PC

BioWare's community manager Chris Priestly has officially put a stake to the heart of hopes that Mass Effect 3 will be the first game in the series to support game controllers on PC.

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If you'll be playing Mass Effect 3 on PC, you'd better be comfortable with a mouse and keyboard. BioWare community manager Chris Priestly responded to requests on the company's forums with a definitive no to official support for game controllers, though he notes they might work anyway.

"The PC version does not support controllers," Priestly said (via Eurogamer). "They may or may not work, but they are unsupported by the game."

On the bright side, if you're planning on playing Mass Effect 3 on the PC, it's probably because you played the first two games on the platform as well. Neither officially supported controllers, so this won't be much of a change for you. If you're a newcomer thinking about jumping into the PC version for the first time, a demo hit Origin yesterday. You can try it out, if your PC has the required juice, to test the M/KB controls yourself.

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From The Chatty
  • reply
    February 15, 2012 2:00 PM

    Steve Watts posted a new article, Controllers 'unsupported' in Mass Effect 3 PC.

    BioWare's community manager Chris Priestly has officially put a stake to the heart of hopes that Mass Effect 3 will be the first game in the series to support game controllers on PC.

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      February 15, 2012 2:27 PM

      I played the demo on the PC before PS3 since I had to wait to get in on the PS3 and I wish I hadn't. cutscenes look like crap on the PS3 in comparison to the PC. If it wasn't for my saved data, I would be jumping ship.

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      February 15, 2012 3:17 PM

      I play with KB/M anyway, but I do not understand this at all. Much smaller cross-platform titles natively support the 360 controller, complete with appropriate UI cues; what is the issue here, that BioWare can't do the same?

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        February 15, 2012 3:29 PM

        The gameplay UI is totally different, not just the cues. There's no radial wheel on PC and there's a hotkey bar and such. I said yesterday I still don't see why they couldn't have included both in any of the games. The 360 one already exists, just enable it when a gamepad is recognized, must be too hard for them to support both?

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          February 15, 2012 3:35 PM

          It's one thing to make a few additions to the PC version, but to have two separate interfaces running in parallel on one platform? Yeah that sounds non-trivial.

          You can also see exactly where there were UI redesigns on the PC and where there were not. Dialog prompts for example are PC scale, main menus are all console 10 foot interface, options menu is for some reason under "extras" and "back" applies changes etc. Bioware wanted to spend some money on the PC UI but not a lot.

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            February 15, 2012 3:56 PM

            They should just leave the code and art in there and let the community do the work and refuse to support it officially. I've seen patches which add gamepad support back into ME1 & ME2. So some code is still in there but they did rip a few things out completely.

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              February 15, 2012 4:00 PM

              I dunno man, maybe the Bethesda solution is the best one. They have the console interface there for the dudes who want to play on their couches then they allow mods and make the community release a genuinely top to bottom PC UI mod and in the end everyone is happy. It still feels like work a developer should do but six months after release an Elder Scrolls or Fallout game is a significantly more complete PC title than an ME game, so. vOv

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                February 15, 2012 4:21 PM

                The only reason Mass Effect has some PC UI stuffs is because Demiurge did what they could to make ME1 not feel like a crappy port when it came out the next year. When Bioware handled the PC version of ME2 thenselves they had no choice but to continue what that other team started for consistencies sake. Could have been a different story if Bioware did a lazy port job themselves at the time.

                These games aren't nearly as moddable as Bethesda's, so I don't think that scenario you mention would have panned out. I think the gamepad "patches" are just .ini edits for the most part, re-enabling what's still there. It's not like they have the sdk and access to everything.

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                  February 15, 2012 4:23 PM

                  Mass Effect is an Unreal engine game, Bioware can open it to modding if it wants just the way Bethesda makes its games available for modding.

                  And yeah Demiurge did a great job, neither ME2 nor ME3 are quite as good as ME1, not for some things at least.

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                    February 15, 2012 4:29 PM

                    I know it's UE, but what was the last licensee that actually put out tools for their game? I can't think of anything.

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                      February 15, 2012 4:36 PM

                      What's particularly moddable about gamebryo? Moddability is a matter of how the developers feel, not so much the tech. The fact of the matter is most UE licenses are console focused and those guys don't give much fuck about the PC modding community.

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                        February 15, 2012 4:39 PM

                        When I said they weren't as moddable, I wasn't talking about the tech itself, I was commenting on the fact there hasn't been any tools.

                        That doesn't mean there haven't been texture replacement mods and such, but the community is extremely limited in what they can do.

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                          February 15, 2012 4:55 PM

                          I agree with that. This conversation started with me comparing the way Bethesda and Bioware do things and wondering which is better.

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                    February 15, 2012 4:37 PM

                    EA would never, ever let them regardless of if they wanted to.

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                      February 15, 2012 4:39 PM

                      Why did they let them for Dragon Age Origins?

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                        February 16, 2012 5:08 AM

                        Becasue origins was far enough along (with public mod support pledged) when EA brought Bioware and ruined the company.

                        Play DA2 recently.... ? Thats a EA/Bioware product for you!

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                          February 16, 2012 6:06 AM

                          I don't like EA. EA is an avowed faggot. But.

                          Bioware wanted to get bought out man. They got bought out by Elevation Partners because the good doctors couldn't be fucked to run their own company, much like the heads of other PC studios. They wanted to make these kinds of games too. They want to make popular mainstream games that show up on the covers of game informer magazine and get talked about in the same circles where Call of Duty is a masterpiece.

                          Have you considered that it is Bioware who are the faggots - that they were the faggots ALL ALONG?

                          DUN DUN DUN

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                            February 16, 2012 6:28 AM

                            ha I've considered that people change... and therefore so do companies so who knows!

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            February 16, 2012 5:06 AM

            Its done by many a game, Deus Ex being the most fitting recent example

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          February 15, 2012 3:46 PM

          From GAF: http://i.imgur.com/bB7qq.png

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            February 15, 2012 4:11 PM

            So their excuse is that they're not good enough at game development to have accomplished this, great.

            Well I'm not good enough at game purchasing to buy ME3. It's definitely not that I don't give a damn, but there are purchasing realities, sadly.

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              February 15, 2012 5:26 PM

              Remember back when developers said they were stretched too thin to fit in co-op?

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        February 15, 2012 3:56 PM

        As a developer, I wouldn't support a control method that hardly anyone used. It's possible that they've discovered that there aren't enough people using control pads for ME games to warrant the costs of supporting them.

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          February 16, 2012 5:09 AM

          Hardly anyone? You honestly dont think there are many people with a high powered PC near a HDTV and sofa? Youre not correct my friend.

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      February 15, 2012 3:26 PM

      [deleted]

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        February 15, 2012 3:29 PM

        What, Bioware doing something stupid? Par for the course, my friend.

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      February 15, 2012 4:19 PM

      FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU : rudds

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      February 15, 2012 5:00 PM

      If Rocksteady can make their Batman games seamlessly switch between input devices (on the fly no less) then Bioware doesn't have an excuse. A big game like Mass Effect 3 should have native support for gamepads especially since the Xbox 360 version is probably the lead SKU. I would think that Bioware is a competent enough developer to be able to carry that work over and essentially drop it in at this point.

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        February 15, 2012 8:11 PM

        Lots of games do this, but A. ME is a very different game in terms of the demands put on the player's input and B. ME actually gets a custom UI and lots of hard work put in to make it *NOT* just look like they dropped it onto PC from the console version, something a large part of the PC community demands.

        I'm not saying they couldn't do it, but it's kinda shitty that we bitch when companies just give us the console UI with keys instead of buttons, and now we're bitching about them not doing that.

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          February 16, 2012 5:05 AM

          so what, other games do too and they already have the 360 UI to add in.

          Your excuses are not really doing it for me!

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      February 15, 2012 5:34 PM

      It's weird that they're not doing this, but I would never use a controller anyways. I vastly prefer mouse + kb.

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      February 15, 2012 6:26 PM

      Man this is so stupid seriously, i played the first mass effect on pc using my 360 controller and it was perfect.
      Anyway you dont need to have a different menu layout for the controller, just let me use the right joystick as the mouse and everything's good.
      I played a couple of rpgs (witcher, risen, divinity 2) with my gamepad that didn't support game controller and it never was difficult to navigate the menus with the joystick.

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        February 16, 2012 6:26 AM

        er no you didnt, not without a user generated mod anyway

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      February 15, 2012 6:40 PM

      I've gotten to the point that I prefer gamepad for anything that isn't strategy or FPS. I'm not sure I'm going to get ME3 for awhile anyways.

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      February 15, 2012 7:56 PM

      youre noobs and losers if youre trying to play most games with a control pad

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      February 15, 2012 8:14 PM

      It's a bummer like what happened to BioShock 2.

      At least they support multimonitors properly now.

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      February 15, 2012 11:35 PM

      Implementing Xbox 360 controller support shouldn't be difficult for BioWare. The code already exists in the Xbox 360 version.

      Dunno bout UE3, but in XNA it's very easy to implement gamepad support.

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      February 16, 2012 12:03 AM

      Is the UI different on the PC compared to consoles? If so, I can totally see where this is coming from.

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        February 16, 2012 12:20 AM

        Menus no, but in the actual game you get a totally different HUD, which is kind of the central element of the user experience, so they're basically asking people to run two UIs in tandem and switch between them on the fly.

        Is that asking too much? Well, kinda yeah.

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        February 16, 2012 5:26 AM

        I found with ME 1 & 2 that anything except for the regular soldier to be really hard to control via mouse and keyboard. The other classes are a snap on the game pad.

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      February 16, 2012 12:13 AM

      Anyone played the demo know what the FOV is like? And mouse code?

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        February 16, 2012 12:20 AM

        Fov? Same as the other games. The mousecode is UE3 mousecode, which means quite fine if you're staying above 60 fps.

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        February 16, 2012 12:36 AM

        Negative accel by default like ME2, but you can disable it by turning off mouse dampening in the options rather than haivng to edit the ini. Funny that the description says the opposite of what it does.

        Can't tell if smoothing is on and haven't found a config yet to verify.

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      February 16, 2012 5:04 AM

      So lazy from the designers, games with a 10th of the budget and no assets from a different sku still manage to do a controller UI for their games.

      Very poor and symptomatic of Bioware’s attitude to the PC and its games recently.

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      February 16, 2012 5:28 AM

      Imagine the outcry if they decided to only support gamepads instead.

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      February 16, 2012 5:31 AM

      Why is this such a terrible decision? It's a PC, right? I'd hope it works great on K/M...??

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        February 16, 2012 5:39 AM

        Modst of the time, anything ported from consoles is just better with a gamepad. I don't begrudge anyone saying they want M&K as well but I just want the best experience possible.

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          February 16, 2012 6:09 AM

          why do you people not just buy your games on consoles? You know your dainty eyes are not likely to notice the 720p un AA'd rendering from 10 feet away, even on a 50" plasma.

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            February 16, 2012 6:42 AM

            I see your point. I have a 360, ps3 and a dust collector (Wii). I will break down and play exclusives on a console. I just rather play everything on the pc that I can. I'm fine using a gamepad with the computer, especially when its a port.

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              February 16, 2012 7:19 AM

              In the past, the PC ports for Mass Effect were done pretty well. Maybe they prefer making it a true PC game.

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            February 16, 2012 9:44 AM

            The difference between PC and consoles is bigger than that. I can't fucking stand load times on console games these days, I put a lot of weight in that one.

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            February 22, 2012 3:21 PM

            Well, texture resolution, depth of field, draw distance, and AA is very noticible between 1080p and 720p - not to mention 30FPS with minum of 5 vs. 45-60 with VSYNC.

            At 70" and 8 feet away (THX like experience) it makes all the difference

            Again, why all the HATE for PC players? Why can't we play how we like - an open and amazing platform that will rival for $1000 today what the 2013/4 XBXO720 can do.

            I love having a choice of Kb/M or Flight Stick or GamePad.

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      February 22, 2012 7:31 AM

      Good. Take that you controller-using traitors.

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        February 22, 2012 1:38 PM

        YOu know, some of us really enjoy our slick PC's/HTPC high end gaming hooked to our TV, HDMI, 7.1 sound, and Enourmous TV. While I agree battlefield works best with mouse and keyboard (and other twitch games) some RPG like Skyrim or ME1/2/3 works great with controller relaxing in couch.

        PC is about flexibility. PC today for $1000 gives you an experience (look at BF3) that may be unmatched even by next console generation.

        Give us the choice (ala Skyrim, Deus Ex, Batman, Bioshock 2, Bastion, etc) which we want..... let us decide.

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