I’ve had this debate before with friends. They insist (wrongly) that the standard console control pad is better for FPS games than the mouse and keyboard combination. I merely laugh mockingly at such a proposition, firmly believing that for speed and accuracy of aim a mouse is markedly superior to a control pad, granted the buttons on a controller make selecting and using weapons somewhat easier but this isn’t enough to swing it in its favour.
What say you gamers of the dope?
btw I admit that I have a somewhat unorthodox control method, I use the right mouse button for ‘forward’ and the W key for the standard right mouse function (usually to zoom in/use sights). I had to give up on the ARMA 2 game because it wouldn’t allow me to swap these functions.
Games which allow multiplayer between computer and console always either see a complete dominance by the computer players over the console players, or give the console players some degree of auto-aim to make up for it. This isn’t really a controversial question.
Almost as bad Beef’s weird way of using a M&K with FPS’.
But in terms of accuracy, speed, etc, you cannot possibly beat a mouse with two sticks.
It’s been proven a number of times. One such time was right before the xbox 360 came out. MS themselves planned on allowing the PC and the xbox 360 to play together.
Problem was that when they tested competitive games, even professional console gamers could not beat average Joe PC gamer with his mouse and keyboard.
So they dropped the idea. There are also numerous mentions by developers on how designing a game for gamepad vs M&K is different. From the necessity of making AI harder for M&K, to making the hit boxes larger for gamepads, and using anything from subtle to strong aim assists.
Ultimately I think they are just two different game peripherals that excel at different tasks (an d can also adapt to take on less optimal challenges too).
The BIG difference, IMHO, is that with a PC, I have a choice. I can use my gamepad for my racing games, and my 2D plat forrmers, and my fighting games, and I can use my mouse for everything else.
I son’t have that option with a console. I’m, stuck with a gamepad, even in games where it is subpar.
I have a terrible time using a game controller for anything.
The idea that I am supposed to aim with my THUMBS seems absurd to me.
So, I am a mouse (actually a trackball… but that is an entirely different discussion) and keyboard type of guy. And I don’t use my keypad for numeric entry either because back in the old days we didn’t have keypads and we were HAPPY with it!
Of course a mouse and keyboard are more effective, but there’s something kind of fun about using controllers. I’ve mostly played FPSs on computers but I do enjoy playing Zombies with a controller.
Mouse and keyboard, especially if you have a mouse with multiple buttons that you can customize. It becomes about half of a console controller right there and then you have a whole fucking keyboard being used by your other hand. How people can think being limited to whatever buttons the controller gives is superior to a keyboard and mouse is completely beyond me.
Yerp, this argument was settled by 1994. Joysticks and gamepads were a thriving home computer peripheral market long before the mouse became ubiquitous. Shooter games universally adopted the mouse for a reason, and anyone arguing in favor of the joystick/gamepad/joypad is too new to gaming to take seriously.
The exception would be vehicle shooter games like Descent, where you’ve got an enforced maximum turn rate regardless of input method. I’ll still take a full-size stick & keyboard over the typical thumb controller, though.
I want to cop out with the “it depends” answer. It’s a question of the feel of a game, IMHO.
I just got Max Payne 3 for the PS3. Since I played the first two volumes for the PC, this one feels off for me, so I rely more and more on the AI “auto lock” to get the kill shots for me.
By contrast, I played GTA III for the PS2, then replayed it as a PC port, and I didn’t like it one bit; I felt like the mouse was making the aiming too difficult because of swirling around the screen, if that makes sense…
This is really it; Most games are (IMHO, dubiously logically, for anything that purports any degree of ‘realism’) designed to allow the player to turn as fast as they can swipe their mouse across the table. The ability to dictate your turn rate and distance cleanly with the mouse will pretty much always dominate over an analogue thumbstick simply because the latter will either end up with a restrictive max turn rate, or an overly sensitive min turn rate. There are ways to fight this at the design level, and it’s essentially not a problem if there’s a ‘max’ turn rate (which, frankly, totally f-s up mouse control to the point where I won’t even TRY to play games like this with a mouse.) but for the ‘standard’ FPS, there’s not even a contest.
That said, there are plenty of game types where mouse/keyboard is a terrible input method, but FPS games are not in that list.
I have never been comfortable using the keyboard for movement. Mouse aiming beats console stick aiming, but there is no way (for me) that pressing keyboard buttons beats using a control stick. I don’t even like using the keyboard in turn-based games, and use the mouse exclusively (or at least as exclusively as the game permits, and if it doesn’t allow a mouse or controller to be used at all I won’t play it). That’s why my trackpad is disabled on my laptop in favor of a wireless mouse.
If you have a game that uses that many buttons, something’s wrong with the game. However, using a special mouse is really just another controller.
