How does New World work when using a gamepad as a control input? Well, you can either wait for the Season of the Guardian to find out, you can leap into the PTR to test it, or you can read this developer blog all about it. Either way, you’ve got options.
“Options” is easily the throughline for adding the feature, as Amazon reasons that controller support brings some new combat strategies for regular players and offers up more accessibility for those who perhaps can’t handle the complexity of keyboard and mouse button presses. The difficulty of making all those keybinds translate to a controller is also detailed in the blog; ultimately, Amazon solved the problem by adding radial menus and shift button modifiers to access abilities.
The post additionally lists all of the functions controllers will get when the season launches, including target friction that reduces reticle speed when over a target, enemy target locking, and an aim assist function. However, aim assist will work only on PvE targets and will be disengaged in PvP in the interest of balance; Amazon promises to reassess this decision and iterate on it in future updates.
