Your weird gaming habits

[laggyteabag]

I recently upgraded my girlfriend's PC, and I bought her a copy of Halo, so now she has no excuse to not play with me.

But, she isn't too familiar with games in general, with her only PC "FPS" experience being Minecraft.

For the ease of teaching her how to play, just in case she suddenly calls out "How to I reload?" or whatever, I have decided to curse her with my... unique... PC control scheme.

So, aside from the usual WASD, R to reload, E to interact, etc, here are some of the unique keybinds that I insist on using:

L ALT to Crouch, L CTRL to Sprint, SHIFT to zoom, RMB to melee

This has some strange consequences, like if I play Skyrim with a Sword/Shield, SHIFT becomes the shield button - or in games where I have a gun in each hand, the left gun also becomes SHIFT.

Most people look at that, and gawk at me like im some kind of weirdo, and I don't fault them.

Many years ago, I went on holiday. I took my laptop with me, and I had installed the Halo CE demo onto it. I had 0 experience with PC shooters, and I didn't feel like the default control scheme really suited the game, so I experimented and experimented, until I could find a control scheme that worked for me. The thing with Halo CE is that zooming is not exactly important - nor is it featured on most of the guns - whereas melee is very important, so it just made sense to map the melee button to something easily accessible, and to relegate the zoom function to something else. So I just ended up moving a bunch of keys around, and it just kind of stuck...

Now, over 10 years later, here I am, aiming with Shift, and it is just muscle memory, at this point.

And now I will subject her to this, because it is just easier.

And there is nothing anyone can do about it.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

I am a dirty, filthy arrow-key user, because A) my dry skin makes me constantly itchy, so I'm always taking a hand off the keyboard, meaning I have to constantly re-find the WASD keys, and B) the angle I have to hold my arm at for the WASD keys sometimes causes my shoulder to cramp up (very painfully) because of my setup (and the rotting meat that composes my physical form).

 

[Gordon_4]

I am a dirty, filthy arrow-key user, because A) my dry skin makes me constantly itchy, so I'm always taking a hand off the keyboard, meaning I have to constantly re-find the WASD keys, and B) the angle I have to hold my arm at for the WASD keys sometimes causes my shoulder to cramp up (very painfully) because of my setup (and the rotting meat that composes my physical form).

You sound like you’d benefit from one of those WASD Gamepads.

 

[meiam]

I am a dirty, filthy arrow-key user, because A) my dry skin makes me constantly itchy, so I'm always taking a hand off the keyboard, meaning I have to constantly re-find the WASD keys, and B) the angle I have to hold my arm at for the WASD keys sometimes causes my shoulder to cramp up (very painfully) because of my setup (and the rotting meat that composes my physical form).

Arrow?! Oh the humanity!

You can get some special keyboard where the WASD key are different (either raised or different material) but at this point I guess muscle memory is in grained. I have a friend who grew up playing old doom and still use it's weird key setup (I think it's like qwes or something) so when we try to play something together that he can't rebind key he's literally incapable of playing them.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

In certain games where precise movement is really important I opt to use a controller for movement and mouse for aiming instead of using the keyboard. The controller has the stick, which can be clicked and 2 buttons I can hit while holding it, and my mouse has 3 programmable buttons within reach of my thumb and 2 additional programmable buttons in reach of my index finger. Those 8 buttons together tend to allow me to do everything I would need to on a keyboard if the game will support completely re-mappable controls.

It looks really awkward and in certain games the UI completely goes nuts as it keeps switching back and forth between controller and keyboard prompts, which is why I don't do it in more games, but it does give you the best of both worlds.

90% of the time though I don't bother and just use my keyboard as normal, it's easier to set things up.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

I recently upgraded my girlfriend's PC, and I bought her a copy of Halo, so now she has no excuse to not play with me.

But, she isn't too familiar with games in general, with her only PC "FPS" experience being Minecraft.

For the ease of teaching her how to play, just in case she suddenly calls out "How to I reload?" or whatever, I have decided to curse her with my... unique... PC control scheme.

So, aside from the usual WASD, R to reload, E to interact, etc, here are some of the unique keybinds that I insist on using:

L ALT to Crouch, L CTRL to Sprint, SHIFT to zoom, RMB to melee

This has some strange consequences, like if I play Skyrim with a Sword/Shield, SHIFT becomes the shield button - or in games where I have a gun in each hand, the left gun also becomes SHIFT.

Most people look at that, and gawk at me like im some kind of weirdo, and I don't fault them.

Many years ago, I went on holiday. I took my laptop with me, and I had installed the Halo CE demo onto it. I had 0 experience with PC shooters, and I didn't feel like the default control scheme really suited the game, so I experimented and experimented, until I could find a control scheme that worked for me. The thing with Halo CE is that zooming is not exactly important - nor is it featured on most of the guns - whereas melee is very important, so it just made sense to map the melee button to something easily accessible, and to relegate the zoom function to something else. So I just ended up moving a bunch of keys around, and it just kind of stuck...

Now, over 10 years later, here I am, aiming with Shift, and it is just muscle memory, at this point.

And now I will subject her to this, because it is just easier.

And there is nothing anyone can do about it.

This could all be fixed by using a mouse that has a couple of extra programmable buttons on it.

 

[EvilRoy]

I have two mice on my desk. One for my fun computer, one for my not fun computer. My not fun computer is a laptop so it travels around the house and beyond quite a bit, but I don't really move the mouse with it. So there's just this other mouse perpetually taking up a portion of my single mousepad. In addition to this making me look crazy, it also means I rarely turn hard-left in games because it would mean smacking my other mouse. I have the sensitivity jacked up high enough that it isn't like a huge handicap, but there have been points while playing games where I have chosen to spin all the way around right rather than turn a bit left which sometimes nets me some comments. Especially in coop.

 

[SckizoBoy]

Left-handed mouse settings notwithstanding (I'm right handed and use ergonomically right-handed mice in my right-hand), not really. I learn defaults for every game and generally don't rebind anything unless it's really aggravating. Might explain why I suck at a game for a couple hours while I get used to the new key bindings and figure out where everything is.

 

[wings012]

I recently upgraded my girlfriend's PC, and I bought her a copy of Halo, so now she has no excuse to not play with me.

But, she isn't too familiar with games in general, with her only PC "FPS" experience being Minecraft.

For the ease of teaching her how to play, just in case she suddenly calls out "How to I reload?" or whatever, I have decided to curse her with my... unique... PC control scheme.

So, aside from the usual WASD, R to reload, E to interact, etc, here are some of the unique keybinds that I insist on using:

L ALT to Crouch, L CTRL to Sprint, SHIFT to zoom, RMB to melee

I don't mind the rebinding of crouch to something else if the default is something weird like C, cause that's not easily reachable(though I don't like using Alt for anything since that typically brings up menus and shit in non-fullscreen non-game applications and there's a lingering sense of wrongness). You do in fact melee very often in Halo so I understand the RMB remap. Rebinding sprint is just bloody weird. Nowadays everybody has a middle click and that's used for a lot of games with zoom. If you left sprint where it was and put L CTRL as zoom I might have went eh whatever, but that's when I saw a daisy chain of insanity brewing.

Just a note, MCC is bloody weird and does have separate bindings for the vehicles. So I was very confused as to how to use the Banshee bomb since none of the usual actions did anything. Turns out they were still mapped to the default controls, and the banshee bomb was melee(?) which by default was Q(?) or something like that. So you probably want to be wary for vehicular controls. I reckon the covenant vehicle boost is probably still shift or something, unless you bothered to change all of that too.

On a side note, on the classic X-Box I used to play Halo Southpaw with inverted Y-axis. Everytime I passed the controller I had very confused friends.

 

[Zykon TheLich]

I am a dirty, filthy arrow-key user, because A) my dry skin makes me constantly itchy, so I'm always taking a hand off the keyboard, meaning I have to constantly re-find the WASD keys, and B) the angle I have to hold my arm at for the WASD keys sometimes causes my shoulder to cramp up (very painfully) because of my setup (and the rotting meat that composes my physical form).

I too am a filthy arrow key user
Rctrl for crouch
Rshift for jump
Keypad0 for sprint
Reload/use to mouse 4/5

Most other bits go on delete/end/pgup/pgdn/insert/home

After many years of partying I have the reactions and dexterity of a brain damaged sloth, I just cannot use WASD.

Every so often I also go through a "what am I doing with my life?" phase and uninstall all games, delete mods and save files.

 

[XsjadoBlayde]

I, err... *awkward tug at bear collar* only play on console. *Awkward cough* and have no desire yet to change.

 

[happyninja42]

Uhhh...I will rebind "non-lethal takedown" to the left mouse click in any game that gives me the option of lethal/non-lethal attacks, so that I can more easily do a no kill/minimal kill run.

I assign crouch to Left CTRL, because ALT just feels weird for me. Much easier to just dip my pinky down half an inch from where it idly rests over shift and tap ctrl. I always bind it to the toggle mode, as I hate trying to just hold it down the whole time.

If I am given a pet of some kind, I will always come up with the most tone inappropriate name possible. I am Shaitan Thunderbane! High King of the Dark Realms! Ruler of ALL that I have conquered!!.....and this is my trusty companion, Baron Von Wooffles McBarkykins III. I actually named one of my attack pets in Warframe a variant of Baron Von Woofles, much to the delight of the random people I would group with in missions.

lets see, what other goofy shit do i do.

If I'm playing a wizard/technomage/psychic/I HAVE BRAIN POWERS!! kind of class, I almost always pick a shaved bald look, with a goatee, and blue eyes, as bright as I can make them. If they can glow, definitely happening.

If I make a tanky, paladin type, especially if they use a two handed halberd type weapon, I always give them a specific name. In fact, I usually use the same sets of names, depending on class. I find it helps me sort through save files at a glance "Oh, that's my rogue save file, and that's...yes that's the mage run."

Every random npc is Steve. Especially if they are doing something stupid, because then I can shout "Damnit Steve!" at the screen.

If I'm playing a thief in an open game, like Skyrim, I will usually give myself a calling card of some kind, inspired by the Wet Bandits from Home Alone fame. I also always play him as if he is Garrett from the THIEF game series. Rob from the rich, not from the poor, no kills.

I will also tend to be selective in my thievery. I recall running across a dark elf asshole in a bar, who just randomly started talking arrogant shit to my PC, without ever having met me. So I followed him home that night, to figure out where he lived, and then robbed him of EVERY item worth money. Turned out, this guy was secretly a member of the Dark Brotherhood, as he had a safe in his wall, with a robe of the order in it. It felt REALLY good, to leave him my calling card at the foot of that now painfully empty safe.

I've probably got some more, but those are the ones that come to mind as "habits" I guess.

 

[laggyteabag]

I, err... *awkward tug at bear collar* only play on console. *Awkward cough* and have no desire yet to change.

Woah, gross

Speaking of consoles, though, when I play a game that requires the use of the right trigger - lets say an FPS, for example - I hold the controller with my thumb on the stick, my index finger curled over the A/B/X/Y buttons, and then I press the trigger and bumpers with my middle finger.

EDIT: Turns out it isn't just me, and is called the Claw Grip.

 

[SckizoBoy]

Speaking of consoles, though, when I play a game that requires the use of the right trigger - lets say an FPS, for example - I hold the controller with my thumb on the stick, my index finger curled over the A/B/X/Y buttons, and then I press the trigger and bumpers with my middle finger.

I was about to say (with genuine perplexity) how utterly weird that is... then I realised that I hold the controller weird, too. Like, I'll hold it like a normal person in my left hand, but in my right, it'll be like a pleb doing the whole faux cultured British toff holding a teacup and when I press the right trigger, it'll be with both index and middle finger (or just the middle finger with my index finger sticking out a mile) and done at a ridiculous angle. Something stupid, 45 degrees from way to the side of the controller.

 

[Kyrian007]

Trackball instead of mouse. For everything I don't use a gamepad for except flight sims (I have a flight stick with rudder control and throttle.) I've used the same trackball I had since my parents bought our first computer all the way back in 1994... it finally died in 2020. I could have just replaced it with a mouse. I have a pretty sweet dozen button or so gaming mouse that I've never used (pack in with something I bought sometime or another.) But instead I ordered a trackball for a replacement and haven't looked back.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

In open world games like Horizon Zero Dawn or RDR2, I like leaving my character in a pleasant location when I end a gaming session. Sometimes in the latter specifically I’ll traverse half the map or more finding a suitable area to match the kind of environment I’m feeling at that given time. It could change by the day too.

 

[Trunkage]

Arrow?! Oh the humanity!

You can get some special keyboard where the WASD key are different (either raised or different material) but at this point I guess muscle memory is in grained. I have a friend who grew up playing old doom and still use it's weird key setup (I think it's like qwes or something) so when we try to play something together that he can't rebind key he's literally incapable of playing them.

Edit: when I first player played Doom, I could only use keys to turn and then they had other non-Wasd keys for strafing

 

[happyninja42]

I've found myself saying this


whenever I walk away from an NPC in a video game. Whether that be due to just simply leaving, or me doing some combat thing like kicking them off a ledge and seeing their body fly off. Mostly notable it's been happening in Nioh 2, as that game is filled with people just fading away into smoke and vanishing. Especially the little Kodama spirits that are hiding, and you go find them, and take them back to the shrine. They always end their interaction with a bow, and a hearty wave to you, as they fade away. And....EVERY time....


I also would always say the first bit of


when I was playing AssCred: Odyssey, as I would often take the corpses of my enemies, and toss them off the side of outposts, to prevent them being discovered during a stealth run. Humorously, I would either misjudge the arc on the corpse, and they would splat at my feet just a few feet in front of me, catching on some terrain. Or, they would just fall say, 20 feet down to the ground right outside the keep, and splat with ragdoll hilarity. So, I started saying that, after I picked up the body for the second time, and would fling it up into the sky, to try and get enough clearance to make it over the ledge. I did it every time, so much so, that if I forgot to do it once in a while, my wife would cry out in dismay, and kick me, demanding I say the required statement.

 

[BrawlMan]

Sometimes when playing games like Bayonetta, Devil May Cry, or similar action games, I imagine Piccolo shouting in my head Dodge when using the Dodge button to dodge an attack. Or sometimes I'll say it out loud in his voice.

​

 

[Worgen]

Just a note, MCC is bloody weird and does have separate bindings for the vehicles. So I was very confused as to how to use the Banshee bomb since none of the usual actions did anything. Turns out they were still mapped to the default controls, and the banshee bomb was melee(?) which by default was Q(?) or something like that. So you probably want to be wary for vehicular controls. I reckon the covenant vehicle boost is probably still shift or something, unless you bothered to change all of that too.

Whats even more fun is that the controls for using the fuel rod gun on the banshee changes in each game so each time you get into one for the first time you have to figure out how to use it. Sometimes its the melee button, sometimes its q, sometimes you have to select the weapon.

I tend to just map melee to either mouse 4 or scroll wheel down. Kinda been doing that since cod 4, not sure how I got started doing it. At least the wheel down thing, I think cause cod has like 2 or 3 weapons you switch between, you don't need to use the mouse wheel to go between them so I would use wheel down for melee and wheel up for stun nades and wheel press for normal nades. At least before I got a mouse with side buttons, so now its usually mouse 4 for melee.