Hey everybody! Remember my BGMC 22 entry, Ecclesia?
Well, the camera was set up the way it was, for the sake of motion controls. When you have motion controls in a game, you can’t have the camera controlled by the same motion of the mouse (or joystick).
I designed the 3rd person camera setup after The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, which perhaps has the best ever implementation of motion controls.
So my question is should I keep on track with the motion controls like in Skyward Sword, or move to an older Zelda style with a controllable camera?
If you only have motion control, it needs to be perfect - so best not to include it if you can’t do that. As soon as there is a discrepancy between what I do in real life and what happens in game, I get frustrated (I’m sure others do as well).
So either include both types of control or just button presses.
The issue with doing both is that motion controls encourage a type of gameplay; one that encourages you to move your weapons/body in a really specific way (like in Skyward Sword with enemies that would block in specific patterns). So doing both kind of defeats the purpose of motion controls.
tl;dr: Don’t do motion controls unless you can get it perfect, otherwise stick to button presses.
This question isn’t really phrased in an objective way - nobody can tell you if you should or shouldn’t add motion controls to your game. It’s like asking, “Should I make an RPG or a racing game?” Nobody can really tell you yay or nay. I would say that, objectively, if the gameplay warranted motion controls but didn’t have them, it could suffer from that, and vice-versa.
I’ll also say that it is probable that relatively few people have motion-sensitive PC control devices, so be aware of that going in. Especially so if you aren’t doing anything extra to ensure compatible controllers work (i.e. doing whatever to add flawless Wiimote pairing, or playing with PS3 / 4 gyro controls, or whatever).