For me:
D-Pad is way better - I prefer D-Pad to the stick in at least 75% of what I’m doing with a controller, and the One D-Pad is WAY better.
It is (or maybe just feels, because of how the grip is set up) slightly less way-too-huge for my hands - I’ve got pretty average sized male hands, and the 360 controller is uncomfortably large. The One controller fits a bit better, though it’s still not great.
Analog sticks feel more precise - if I’ve got to use them I want them to be good, and the One sticks feel a bit better.
Now that said, I don’t have a ton of experience with either compared to someone who has been using them as a primary controller, since I’ve only used them at friends’ places (albeit for a couple dozen hours each). I also basically never play anything that relies heavily on trigger buttons. So my use case is probably not the same as yours!
Wii U Pro controller and PS4 controller are both pretty great, but they both require additional work to use on PC. Plug and play has value. I’m also at least curious to see what the trackpads on the Steam controller might be able to add to the experience; being able to play another big batch of games comfortably with a controller would be pretty cool.
The only thing I don’t like about the Pro controller is that the triggers are digital rather than analog. For the vast majority of games it doesn’t matter, but it feels kinda “weird” to me to have a button instead of a loose spring there.
I’ll post up some vids of my playing games with it. Wasteland 2 is contender number one, as the director’s cut included gamepad support, but man, it’s not anywhere near as good as keyboard and mouse. This will hopefully bridge the gap.
Some complain that in analog jostick mode for the right haptic pad it’s hard to know where your thumb is in relation to the center - but there is a mode where that doesn’t matter. Anywhere you tap the pad becomes the center, and you can move form there.
I can imagine though that simulating joysticks is not an ideal thing. I’m not sure why so many hands on impressions are coming from a place of “This has to replace my mouse and keyboard AND my Xbone gamepad or it’s no good!”
This thing doesn’t set to do either of those things. It is a complement to existing input methods, and allows a greater scope of game sot be played form the couch or a laid back position.
Meh, not for me. Using literally anything besides a keyboard and mouse would require a least some form of relearning muscle memory, and that’s a non-starter when it comes to high-end CS:GO play and the like.
I could see it filling a void for casual play and/or the need to play on your TV, I guess.
That’s exactly what it’s for. It was never going to replace mouse and keyboard for competitive CS:GO, anymore than a traditional game pad ever could. And yet a traditional gamepad has it’s place too.
I guess. Most PC gamers I know wouldn’t be caught dead using a gamepad of any sort, but I guess that stems from most of them having no desire to play on their TV screen to begin with.
So was the thread title an intentional pun? I mean, at some point I will probably pick one up at least to look at, even if I don’t decide to buy…
I think a lot of PC gamers would love to be on their living room recliner with the big screen TV, it’s just that the logistics made it impractical. If the link + controller works as advertised, I don’t see any reason it won’t be successful.
Word is that the new Xbox One wireless adapter is going to work on the Steam Link. That’s pretty cool. Might be better to go for the more refined Nvidia Shield though, since impressions on the Steam controller are kind of mixed.
Haven’t had much time with it, but I was able to comfortably play Civ V on my TV. Also played some Portal 2, since that has a native profile and it felt really good. Some of the other games required some modification in sensitivity before I was enjoying myself.
gonna keep on using today and report back with some more comments. Also Haptic feed back and dual stage riggers are cool
Man, Valve keep son iterating on this thing. We’re getting updates daily now.
The two new features are a touchpad menu system, you can see it in play here:
Let's you map a large number of menu options to the touch pad, perfect for commands that are not often used, but handy to have around.
The other is the new mouse joystick configuration for the touch-pads. Previously you had gamepad + mouse controls, this let you use the analog left stick in game, but the right pad was a full mouse/trackball. For games that allowed you to do this, it was a perfect marriage of the two control systems. Felt really good, specially if you then tossed in gyro control on touching the right pad, for finer movements (or changed sensitivity on soft pulling the trigger).
But some games didn’t support this at all or well. There might have been a delay between switching from x-input to mouse and keyboard, or the game might not allow switching on the fly.
i don’t know how they do it, but this new setting feels and controls like a mouse/trackball, but it’s actually sent as analog stick input. Works like a charm for games that don’t support dual inputs on the fly.
I’ve been trying the game pad on Dragon Age Inquisition, for example, and first off, the right pad feels way better than an analogue stick. I still keep analog movement though, AND I can do neat things like, map soft trigger pulls to attack and to switch combat actions as normal, but also then map full trigger as buttons meaning I never have to stop my combat actions.
I can also map jump and search to the paddles making those actions less of a pain.
I’m considering getting this as an alternative to giving in and buying a plug-in XBox controller. I resent that nobody ever really supported the RumblePad (though I don’t resent any person or persons in particular). With Steam’s support, the Steam controller stands a much better chance of universal support without having to deal with Microsoft’s shit. However, I’d probably want one for my own computer and one for the computer running my television, for various gamepad oriented PC games like Simpson’s Hit and Run or Psychonauts. But because of the open floorplan of our house, my personal computer is just four meters away from the TV. Can you set the controllers up to switch between computers, or once I have two to know which computer I’m attempting to control at a given time?
Yep. If you hold “A” when powering on the controller you can switch between pairings.
And this gamepad has the possibility of being a truly universal controller, unlike a traditional dual analog stick one (or a mouse and keyboard for that matter).
Okay, I’ve read a bunch of stuff here and at Steam and at a couple of other gaming sites, but I haven’t been able to figure this out: can you use the Steam Controller without owning a Steam Machine?
Is it like a Logitech F710, where you basically plug in the wireless dongle thingy and away you go? Or is there more involved?
It certainly was my impression that it was good for any PC, though Steam is supposed to help put its influence behind smoothing over compatibility issues for the titles in its catalog, putting it at a huge advantage over other alternatives to the XBox Controller for PC.
