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General discussionWhy is it so many PC gamers are abandoning Keyboard in favour of CONTROLLERS?(92 posts)(92 posts)
(92 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted October 06, 2020
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Vendor-Lazarus: To those saying that platformers work better on controllers, how and why would they do that?
I've played through Hollow Knight with M&KB and had no problems whatsoever navigating around.
"Works better on" doesn't automatically mean "is unplayable (or at least a hassle to play) if you don't". Platformers work well with KB, too, I just find it more relaxing to use a gamepad, because you only need a few keys anyway, but you use them a lot, and the position of the hands is more comfortable to me on a controller compared to keyboard, the keys are softer and lighter, easier and less noisy to press. I can lean back with the gamepad, too, and don't get cramps from replaying the tougher sections over and over again while being tense. For me as a German with a QWERTZ keyboard, it's also annoying that many platformers use Z and X, when on the German keyboard Y and X would be more convenient., but I guess that's more a problem of not being able to re-bind keys again.


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idbeholdME: Every platformer I've played so far played absolutely fine on M+KB. I see people constantly saying "Controller is a must, unplayable on M+KB, blah blah blah".
Maybe you're talking to the wrong crowd. ;) I think the only game about which I've seen people say this - and I've occasionally done so myself even - is Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons (the game that made me grudgingly buy a gamepad myself). I tried it with M+KB before and I found that getting the elevator up by turning the crank was near impossible via KB controls. And yet I've heard from players who managed it regardless. But the game relies heavily on a certain gamepad function to convey a feeling later on, and you will miss this aspect if you play with KB. It's probably not worth buying a gamepad for, and you won't even notice as a KB player, but it will be somewhat different than what the devs intended and what gamepad users experienced.

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idbeholdME: The truth is, the best device is the one you are the most comfortable with, not what somebody else tells you to use.
I generally agree with this though. Even in the case of the aforementioned game, it's your choice. There are people who enjoyed it with M+KB regardless. There are even those who enjoyed it as a co-op game even though it wasn't intended as such either. In the end it's all about preference, whatever brings you the most fun and comfort.
Posted October 06, 2020
I thought we were going all touchpad on our Windows tablets!
Posted October 06, 2020
Oh, there's one more advantage of controllers when you're gaming: Some notorious letters on your cheap keyboard won't rub off quite as quickly. XD
Posted October 06, 2020
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Leroux: Oh, there's one more advantage of controllers when you're gaming: Some notorious letters on your cheap keyboard won't rub off quite as quickly. XD
You are right my WSAD keys on my old laptop were nearly completely worn out from TF2

Thankfully i am on a desktop now so that's not an issue
Posted October 06, 2020
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GeraltOfRivia_PL: Why is it so many PC gamers are abandoning Keyboard in favour of CONTROLLERS?

I think mouse + keyboard is the optimal way to play games because it has more buttons, which means it offers a lot more freedom. So why is it that so many pc gamers have recently been switching to CONTROLLERS and ABANDONING keyboard + mouse?

Asking as i have seen a THREAD on the main page titled 'i wish devs were better about tagging controller support on their games'
I would never play certain games w/ a KB-mouse - fighting games like Mortal Kombat series, Street Fighter series, and Injustice series; and often many games w/ racing and/or driving elements. Those games just normally are developed around controllers. Especially since you really need to hit Z motions, half-circles, and other motions - which are so weird and off to try to pull off w/ cursor keys or WSAD.

Platformers too. Those normally are easiest for me with KB-mouse. Often, anything w/ angles and fluid circular motions, those are much easier w/ controller.

Tony Hawk games would probably be pretty weird w/ a KB/mouse I'd guess too.

With the PC able to anything pretty much for controllers, such as KB/mouse, controllers, and actually probably numerous other control-styles, why should dev's limit themselves to just KB/mouse?

Same should be said for consoles too - they should also have KB/mouse support. They might get more strategy games and FPS's likely would play much better w/ a KB-mouse, in those instances.

Hey, if somebody wants to play FPS w/ controller - heck, let them. If that's what they like, why not? [shrug] Not my ideal way to play FPS's, but as long as I'm on PC and have KB-mouse support for that: I'm cool.
Post edited October 06, 2020 by MysterD
Posted October 06, 2020
If a developer makes a game for a console then ports to PC (as has been the common dev method for a good decade or longer now) often we get sub-optimal control and UI use on the PC version. It's just the way games are being made.

For example in NMS if you were a PC keyboard&mouse user you had no way for years to look around the cockpit of your spaceship (a mod/utility could be used to do it, if a bit cumbersome to use). You had to use a controller to be able to do that. There are many games these days designed for consoles first with the PC version lacking in these kind of area's.

So less a gamer driven thing than a dev driven thing, that then forces gamer habits.

I use a controller on one PC game (FlatOut2) and all the rest (including NMS since launch) i prefer keyboard&mouse.
Posted October 06, 2020
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StingingVelvet: I do slightly worry that if controllers build to a sizable percentage then mouse and keyboard controls will get worse as they are given less attention, but so far that's not happening.
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AB2012: There are quite a lot of games where left-handed keyboard & mouse players have virtually had to beg developers to add rebindable keys due to hardcoded WASD-only or worse stupid defaults (like Obduction's L/R arrow keys turn instead of strafe, so you end up with with two ways of turning (one in each hand) but can't strafe in either)... And where the reply is something like "Hi, we designed around console controllers and only play-tested around that but we will consider adding your suggestion in a future patch. Possibly. Maybe.". Early builds of Unreal 4's Engine even defaulted to this as other UE4 games like QUBE2 had the same issue prior to patching, so even engine developers are not play-testing K&M that well.

Really we've had consolization for a while now (looks back to early 2000 games like Deus Ex 2 and Thief 3). There are a lot of design tricks used to try and hide that. Eg, the pace of FPS's has slowed, and even the new Doom games there's definitely fewer simultaneous enemies than the older ones (to reduce multiple successive fast turns), and things like "glory kills" are used as "micro-cutscenes" as alternative padding (or fewer but more bullet spongy enemies). Same goes for weapon selection wheels that have to slow down time on a controller vs direct selection (1-0 or F1-F10) keyboard shortcuts that don't. Even the move to replace quicksave / load with checkpoint only saves was in part due to lack of buttons on a controller. Some genre's have almost disappeared entirely (eg, 'point & click' centric Age of Empires style RTS's have had to be dumbed down into MOBA's).

I own a controller mostly for platformers and racing games so I'm not against them but there's definitely been a ton of design changes over the past 20 years stemming from "controller first" consolization, some devs are just better at hiding their lack of K&M play-testing than others.

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dtgreene: You can't assume that disabled players will want to all use the same control scheme. For example, I saw a few videos of someone playing Celeste one handed, and they actually used the keyboard (specifically, the left side IIRC) for the controls.
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AB2012: Indeed. I know someone with arthritis who enjoys FPS's. WASD is too cramped whilst controllers are too awkward to hold due to limited "claw tightening" mobility (the shape of your hand whilst gripping them vs the more "open palm" of resting on a K&M). EAGC however gives more spacing between movement controls that would otherwise be unplayable. Hence why I'm a firm advocate of rebindable keys.
You might be interested in this talk from GAConf 2020, which describes how controller rebinding was added to Destiny 2 post-release.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1PDqhD22BA&list=PLVEo4bPIUOski1CTTTAbpPW9w1v10UuZe&index=3

You can find the playlist of all of GAConf 2020 at:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVEo4bPIUOski1CTTTAbpPW9w1v10UuZe

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AB2012:
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Leroux: While you make valid points, I think the example of unbindable keys doesn't have as much to do with people enjoying controllers as with lazy, ignorant or arrogant developers. Back in the days there were lots of games that didn't allow you to rebind keys either, and it's an option that I would like as well, even as an occasional gamepad user - and sometimes even for the gamepad controls. I have lots of pet peeves like that in other regards, too (e.g. designers pre-setting the game language based on your OS and not implementing any option to manually change it, or designers not offering much of any options to configure the game at all).
You might also be interested in this talk, as it will give you an illustration of how much work key rebinding (or, rather, controller button rebinding) actually is,

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toxicTom: Some games only show a description of what they want you to press - "Press "jump" to jump"...
Like Final Fantasy 7 PC? (That becomes a problem when the game includes mandatory minigames, each of which has different controls.)
Post edited October 06, 2020 by dtgreene
Posted October 06, 2020
Now I get it, it's all about that Keyless Access!!11!

Controller! Control! DRM!!1!eleven

Open your eyes to the truth!
Posted October 06, 2020
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Vendor-Lazarus: To those saying that platformers work better on controllers, how and why would they do that?
I've played through Hollow Knight with M&KB and had no problems whatsoever navigating around.
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idbeholdME: This. Every platformer I've played so far played absolutely fine on M+KB. I see people constantly saying "Controller is a must, unplayable on M+KB, blah blah blah".

The truth is, the best device is the one you are the most comfortable with, not what somebody else tells you to use.
Have you tried Guacamelee! with this sort of control setup?
Posted October 06, 2020
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dtgreene: Like Final Fantasy 7 PC? (That becomes a problem when the game includes mandatory minigames, each of which has different controls.)
FF7 was especially bad... but the same with a gamepad.

But I've seen stuff like "Press Jump key to jump here", "Press Use key to open the door"...
Posted October 06, 2020
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dtgreene: You might be interested in this talk from GAConf 2020, which describes how controller rebinding was added to Destiny 2 post-release.
Thanks. It's certainly interesting from an "under the hood" perspective, and I can see the work involved for proprietary engines like Bungie's, but for many games using one of the big mainstream engines such work is already built-in (eg, Unreal Engine stores both keyboard & controller bindings together usually in some easily editable input.ini with entries like):-

m_PCBindings=(Name="W",Command="GBA_MoveForward")

BaseBindings=(Name="XboxTypeS_LeftY",Command="Axis aBaseY Speed=1.0 DeadZone=0.3 OuterDeadZone=0.1")

... going all the back to UE1, whilst Unity Engine games often have that mini start-up launcher pop-up with the quality presets named like "Good, Fantastic, Beautiful", etc, on one tab and the ability to rebind keys (possibly controllers) on the other. Despite it literally being pre-made for them by the engine creators, many games devs are still too lazy to add them which for those engines has to be as easy as selecting the pre-made option / template in the related engine toolkit. And even more absurdly, some devs may then spend more time post-launch on support forums replying to requests talking about why they didn't add it in, than the time it would have taken to add it in...
Posted October 06, 2020
Trackerball or death!
Posted October 06, 2020
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GeraltOfRivia_PL: ...
It's not abandoning but more using the "best" (subjective) tool for the job.

For FPS I always uses mouse and keyboard, but for third person "platformer" I nearly always uses the controller, and sometime if it's a platformer that requires "precise" shooting I can even use both.
Posted October 06, 2020
I tend to prefer mouse and / or keyboard for the overwhelming majority of my games (except fighting games). The reason i play games with a controller more often than i would like is because many games are deliberately designed around being played with a controller which leads not only to the controls being optimized around that, but also means mouse and keyboard are barely even properly supported at all with a lot of games. Many games show button prompts for Xbox controllers even if you're using a keyboard. The original Darksiders won't even allow you to use a keyboard and mouse at all if you have a controller plugged into your PC.
Posted October 06, 2020
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InSaintMonoxide: I tend to prefer mouse and / or keyboard for the overwhelming majority of my games (except fighting games).
Thinking about it i'm probably the opposite. I'd prefer controller 80% of the time, unless the complexity or response time is high enough where keyboard/mouse is more important.

Most games don't need that much complexity though. When Firefall was still around i wrote a script to convert my PS2 controls to keyboard/mouse and... it worked fine. Except in one mission where too many enemies were spawning and i had to switch. :P


On the other hand i did go the console route because i didn't want to have to upgrade my computer every 6 months and i didn't have the money. Then come 2010's things flipped a bit, with hardware being high enough even older games needing expensive equipment came pretty much everything you needed on a built-in board on a Barebone system anymore, at least for the majority of games. And the CPU speed was high enough emulation was also viable for quite a bit.

So after 2010's i switched to PC, still went barebones, then got a graphics card which even older brand did phenomenal for everything i wanted. (Though it was really chugging on Ori & the blind forest). Though it probably didn't matter that i wasn't going HD and only sub-HD on most things so it didn't require too much... Often playing games from here.

Then thinking about it, Controller is one of the only easy ways to make a game co-op or multi-player (same computer), though many more go the route of online multiplayer.. which is fine...

I don't know.


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InSaintMonoxide: but also means mouse and keyboard are barely even properly supported at all with a lot of games
Then they really should polish the keyboard/mouse interface, or even ask for fixes from players who make changes and fixes and then incorporate it into the official release on the next patch.

Though by the time they put the game down to stop making it, they really don't want to touch it again probably.
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionWhy is it so many PC gamers are abandoning Keyboard in favour of CONTROLLERS?(92 posts)(92 posts)
(92 posts)