How can some people have no clue how to use a controller?

[manythings]

Try out some welding or architecture and see how that works out with zero training, experience or expertise.

More serious answer? You learn how to use your hands from about 18 months (I think) on till you are about 7 years old. After that hand skills that you don't have a basic proficiency in become harder to pick up. Want your kid to become a great sportsman? Get their hands accustomed to that specific sporting equipment (tiny tennis racket, hockey stick, American football etc.). I've been playing games since way back in the dinosaur times of the Amiga 500 so I've just moved from control scheme to control scheme.

 

[BENZOOKA]

How can some people not know how to drive an automatic-geared car?

What the fuck's wrong with you lil' toddler? Don't know how to use a fork, eh?

That's kind of a childish way to view things, isn't it.

 

[omega 616]

Hell, some people on here can't use a controller.

"the PS3 has shitty triggers" no, the PS3 has fine triggers, just don't press the middle of the trigger. You put your finger between the R/L1 and R/L2 buttons/triggers and roll your finger up or down.

It's not so much rolling as pressing the bottom of the 1's and tops of the 2's with half your finger, it sounds like crazy talk but trust me.

You may be used to the PS3 triggers, but they annoy the hell out of me. It might be because I played the 360 so long, and its triggers are curved upward so my fingers stay comfortably in a sweet spot. I also now have trouble using the R1 and L1 buttons to shoot and aim down the sights in CoD. I used to have no problem at all, and I still don't on PS2, but for some reason the shoulder buttons of a PS3 controller are annoying.

OP, invert and southpaw your controls one day. See how you like it. And then you'll understand exactly why people who have never used a controller at all have a problem with it. It takes a while to get used to dual analog and knowing where the buttons are.

Re read my post 'cos you don't get it at all. You don't press the centre of the trigger to use it, thats when your finger slips off, you put it between R1 and R2 then use half your index finger to press the bottom or top of the button you want.

If you do that your fingers will never, ever slip off. Thats how you use your PS3 controller, it will also speed up your aiming and shooting 'cos your not making a huge movement from R2 (throwing a nade) to R1 (firing) or whatever, your just making a tiny movement.

 

[Gralian]

It's all too easy for me to hold the elitist view of 'how can people seriously not understand that left stick moves you, right stick moves camera, and the trigger-like button fires your gun?" but then i remember playing my very first home console game as a kid. Can't remember how old i was. It was Super Mario 64. It took me -forever- to climb Big Bob-Omb's tower. You know how incredibly slow he moves? He kept picking me up and throwing me off the tower because i was too slow. Any self-respecting gamer worth his salt will tell you what a complete doddle King Bob-Omb is, yet as a child it took me many frustrating hours to beat him. Following that, i went into World 2, Whomp's Fortress. You know those moving stone blocks that try to push you off the side at the very start, just before you meet those blue Thwomps? They kept pushing me off to my demise and i couldn't understand how, why, or what the hell i was meant to do to get past them. I remember my uncle telling me to jump at the right moment. It's just one simple button. The A button. So passing the obstacle should be simple, right? Not for me, at the time. That one experience sticks in my mind so much that i am forced to empathise with people who've never touched a controller in their life.

 

[DarkPegasus333]

If you've been around it long enough, it's easier. For me, I just have to know what button does what and I'm good. Though, I will admit PS3 controllers are still awkward to me.

A keyboard and mouse isn't gonna be any better to someone who has never played a PC game. I tried to teach my wife how to play Halo once...ahhhh that was funny.

 

[elvor0]

Everyones seen it at least once, a parent trying gears of war for the first time, a girl whos never played an fps picking up Call of duty for the first time. How can people be so unable to grasp the concept of a controller? Or are we just faster when it comes to understanding?

I think its because some peoples grew up playing games their whole lives. As a child i had two competitive brothers, an n64, and super smash bros and I think thats why I'm able to play games so easily. I notice the same thing happens when it comes to using a computer.

You mean the people that grew up with them have learned how to use them over many many years?
And people brand new to the concept don't have the skills to jump right in?

Ye gads, give this man a medal. What exactly is your point here? This is a complete waste of internet, and that's saying something given some of the shit thats on here.

 

[itsnotyouitsme]

It's easy to learn to use a controller. Most of you in any game will take 5 seconds at the very beginning to just say to yourself, "Ok, this button does this and this button does this" Do this a few more times and you've mastered the controller.

 

[LaughingAtlas]

"Push button, make thing happen onscreen" may seem simple, but so does common sense. A lot of people still manage to fuck up the latter.

 

[TheSchaef]

Probably because they weren't born with a controller glued to their hand, and/or had 25 years of conditioning in the combination of d-pad/stick and buttons.

 

[Scars Unseen]

How well can you use a multimeter? Can you fly an airplane? Play the flute?

Any interface seems easy when you've been using it for years.

 

[DeeWiz]

Everyones seen it at least once, a parent trying gears of war for the first time, a girl whos never played an fps picking up Call of duty for the first time. How can people be so unable to grasp the concept of a controller? Or are we just faster when it comes to understanding?

I think its because some peoples grew up playing games their whole lives. As a child i had two competitive brothers, an n64, and super smash bros and I think thats why I'm able to play games so easily. I notice the same thing happens when it comes to using a computer.

Are you old enough to have learned how to drive a car? Are your siblings? Did you not notice a disparity between the ability to learn to drive. Certain actions come faster to others but on the base line it is a learned skill. My sister could not keep the car on the road when she learned but was good a situation awarness. Me I could drive right away but had to learn situational awarness. My other sister was good a neither and my brother was the same as me.

Each human is different as we are born with under-developed brains and they will grow in a certain way based on stimuli, a deer would laugh at you if it could for not being able to walk within a day of being born. Using a controller is not instinct no matter how you slice it must be learned, just like any sport (baseball,football or football), activity (skiing, dancing. Though gamers seem to be the only ones arrogant enough to think, gee.. I can do since I play games, why can't you? I don't any of the above examples would wonder why a complete novice couldn't do why they have been training years for.

 

[thedeathscythe]

How come you can't fly a B52 bomber? I mean, you've seen top gun right? And you've probably even played a flight sim game, and seen the inside of a plane a couple times for school trips. Can you take off, fly, and land perfectly, or better, would you even have a single clue on how to pilot it? My guess is you would have no clue, just as you state. If you use something for years, you get used to it. Pilot's could say the same thing to you, yet they may not be able to play Gears of War.

 

[ThatLankyBastard]

I remember the day when my grandfather tried to play Black Ops... He got frustrated because he couldn't figure out how to not look at the floor, (I didn't bother telling him he was holding the controller upside-down)...

It's a completely new concept to them! I can honestly say it's like giving a neanderthal a DS and trying to battle him at Pokemon...

 

[Asuka Soryu]

lol Same reason why we can't ride bikes right off the bat without any previous practicing/riding.


Sure, when you spent your childhood with it, you adapt it to yourself and it becomes the same as breathing, simple and easy.

But to someone else, it's amazingly strange and odd.

 

[burningdragoon]

This comes of sounding (looking?) like an asshole really. Either that or you are being sarcastic or something.

A ps3/xbox360 controller has twelve buttons and two joysticks and two of the buttons are also the joysticks. Is it surprising that someone has never used one before will have trouble even without taking into account how most similar games have similar control schemes. Have you never played a game with a control setup that goes against what you've come to expect from that type of game? Did that not throw you off even a little?

 

[51gunner]

On top of the points that other people are making, I'd like to throw out another couple points as-of-yet unmentioned:

- There's a set of conventions (unwritten rules) that are fairly closely followed on most consoles for interfaces. If you hand me a new first person shooter (or first-person anything) on the Xbox, the following things ALMOST NEVER change by default:

1) The right stick will move the camera around, the left stick will move my character around. It *may* be possible to reverse this for some games, but the default right = look, left = move will seldom be different.

2) While armed, squeezing the right trigger will fire. This is the finger most people would use to fire a real firearm, and on the Xbox it even feels like a trigger. (I know the Wii has a trigger, and so did the N64).

3) In menus, the A button selects something and the B button unselects/goes back.

The following things are QUITE OFTEN similar:

1) If I have a weapon, X reloads it.
2) If I have multiple weapons, Y will switch between them.
3) If I want to jump, I'll push A.

The first three conventions are so rarely broken for a reason. As long as a new player can move and look, they can survive long enough to get the other parts down. The second three conventions are accepted because they work pretty well. However, if you want to design a different system (I know of many examples), your players will at least be able to complete a tutorial. Learning where "Throw Grenade" or "Use scope/binoculars" are on the controller are not so pressing and can be learned at a pace. If you look at the amount of time a player spends making any given action, you'll realize that moving and looking are or should be just about constant, while reloading and weapon swaps are frequent but not constant.

 

[Rayne870]

lol Same reason why we can't ride bikes right off the bat without any previous practicing/riding.


Sure, when you spent your childhood with it, you adapt it to yourself and it becomes the same as breathing, simple and easy.

But to someone else, it's amazingly strange and odd.

Exactly this, controllers are just another form of bicycle. Mastering controllers/game specific control schemes gets programmed into "muscle memory" the same stuff that helps people learn a proper golf swing or proper shooting and weapon mechanics. Hell look at people who are new to a table saw, most of them will do something that if it didn't hurt them in the first attempt probably will if they keep doing it.

So this phenomena is not specific to controllers it's just learning curve for new tools.

 

[FalloutJack]

I don't and won't use a controller (or own a console). The console companies deliberately didn't go with mouse/keyboard so they could sell more expensive (and less effective) controllers instead, which led to the dumbed-down aimbotted console games you have now. So screw them, they can't have my money and I won't ever know how to use a controller. Not missing a thing imo.

This is a one-sided argument, and not an accurate one.

The truth of the matter is that maintaining a computer capable of playing high-powered games may be more expensive than a console and controller, especially if it's a Wii. Console companies did not blah-de-blah-de-blah as you say. They said "This looks like a new branch of entertainment to make good money on.", a decision that started way back in the Atari days and has evolved since with Sega, Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft. Speaking of which, if Microsoft - head-deep in computer technology - did not acknowledge console gaming as viable and worthwhile, there would be no X-Box.

Second truth. I have played on console and I have played on PC. No teacher to the pros and cons of either one is greater than personal experience. You can have all the controls you want on a keyboard, but it may be irritating as hell to make use of them properly, a complex action for a split-second situation, say. You can complain if you like, but a console controller was designed for its technology, for the hands of its users, and (in the case of the Wii, for instance) for different methods of play. A person who uses a computer only will always say that a controller is wrong, because of their lack of exposure.

You have to try both worlds before you can judge.

 

[Outright Villainy]

You mean us, with years or even decades of practice under or belts, are more adept than beginners? Colour me surprised!

Maybe I shouldn't beat my brother with the whipping stick for not being able to play van halen the first time he picked up a guitar either.

The more you know!