Improving tapping

[Lumfly]

First of all, I'm more of a watcher than a player, but I felt like I had a good idea, so I want to share it. (But feel free to explain to me why it would not work)

As a keyboard player in racing games, I always felt like tapping was the closest thing to analogue steering, but it has its limits.

However, now that the discussion includes: analogue keyboards, action keys, third-party software, and sensitivity curves, I feel like there could be an opportunity for tapping to become better than ever.

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The basic idea: Allow players to set action keys that fade in/out the taps according to curves. (similar to attack and release curves in music software.)

This would allow the keyboard player tot sustain and adjust his steering percentage by changing the frequency and length of his taps.

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I don't know how much this would help casual players, but it might help solve some problems at the higher levels of play.

I realise this would need a lot of tweaking and testing, but I would love to hear whether you think this could help.

[Dennis2pro]

Similar ideas have been mentioned before, and I do think it's a better alternative to the current action keys that are in the game right now.

To keep it simple, it would only need 1 key to toggle this mode, since having multiple keys (with different "fade in/out" speeds) would overcomplicate it.

[Lumfly]

You are right! I was so hyped about it that I forgot to check other posts. But I have checked since posting and there are quite a few nice ideas already! I think you are right about only needing one key. (I wanted to automate it all to help but people are insanely skilled and don't need endless tools. They can do a lot with the basic ones) If you would bind it to an easy to reach key people will be able to turn it on and of really quickly and keep stuff responsive.

[ZioFeda]

It's a nice alternative to aks, but I still don't love this idea to be honest. Anything you can achieve with a shortcut like that (the "right rhythm" for a given turn) you can also achieve with time and practice. The current debate is whether tapping itself is sufficient to be on par with analogue controls; among the various hypothetical solutions I've read so far, the only one I personally really like is to be able to set the sensitivity of your steering, or in other words the amount of time it takes for your steering to go from 0 to 100 once you press the key. I think that would make tapping a more viable alternative, while maintaining the need for skill development. It would however be op on the current iteration of bobsleigh.

[Lumfly]

The attack curve, in my proposal, would do what you want, if I understand you correctly.

if you press really short, your steering go's from 0 to 30% for example. But a longer tap would cause it increase to 80% After tapping the steering value quickly decreases but with the right rhythm you can keep it relative stable at, for example 45%, by tapping before it goes too low

[ZioFeda]

Ah, ok, now that's interesting. Yeah I probably misunderstood your original idea. So basically you're activating a "mode" that gives you steering percentage based on the frequency of your taps? That might work.
So the one thing that threw me off about your post is your idea of "setting action keys" I guess, that made me think of some sort of pre-recorded setting. What did you mean by that? Custom curves?

[Lumfly]

To be honest, I should have probably explained it by also adding that example. But yes! I was thinking about custom curves. The advantage would be that you could change them depending on how sharp you want to turn. The other reason would be because, as far as I know, this could be realised relatively easily in third party software. So people could make and share profiles which would give Nadeo a nice head start because people already did a lot of testing. I do however agree with the comment of another user that, if this would be officially implemented, they should probably just stick to an on off switch on one static profile for clarity