In defence of the controller over the mouse for online FPS

[AlphaWolf13]

It is an oft heard cry that to play a First Person Shooter with anything less than a mouse and keyboard is some form of debasement, even a crime. For single player games I will admit the complete ease of use is obviously preferable but for online FPSs I believe the controller wins:

Levelled learning curve aiming with a mouse can get scary good. My brother (who is more dexterous than me and is better at practising) could snap UT2006 headshots off while jumping through the air dodging rockets. There will still be people who are great but they can never have the untouchablity of a pro-mouse user.

Fighting with brains not ... dexterity although I only play CoD4 a few hours a week I can normally finish in the top 3 of a free-for-all match. To think that I could do that on CoD4 PC is unrealistic and therefore undesirable. I get better with practice but it's me map knowledge, combat awareness and aggression that win me games - not being better at point and click.

All are equal everyone playing CoD4 or UT3 or Halo 3 or whatever on a PS3 or a 360 is using the same controller. Yes there are some modded ones but those are for the tragically inept. There is no advantaged gained from have spent £100 on a specially awesome gaming mouse.

Thoughts?

Your argument essentially states that controlling games with the controller is shitty but it's equally shitty for everyone. Oh and thanks to said controller there's limits on how good you can get. It's kind of like saying basketball in wheelchairs is better because it makes everyone the same height.

Not true!! You still have the people who use motorized wheel chairs... JERK

 

[Joeshie]

If pressed to choose though, I feel that salient console FPS games, with their substantially larger hitboxes and simplified gameplay mechanics, rely far less on "skill" than salient PC FPS games.

Then again, larger hitboxes makes skill in the form of tactics like covering fire more effective.

Covering fire in an FPS? Now that's a rare sight. While this is an effective tactic in real life, it certainly is not in FPS games.

It gives away your position
It is a terrible waste of ammo
It also just isn't that effective due to the much faster pace of FPS games (even console FPS) in comparison to real life

 

[DeadlyFred]

Who uses covering fire in MP gaming? Covering, or suppressing, an enemy means pointing in their general direction and unloading as steady as possible. All covering fire in a FPS is going to get you is shot in the head when the person you're shooting at realizes you just shot your entire magazine into a wall and pops out from behind said wall to shoot you in the face.

I do. Quite effectively. Mostly because I lay down covering fire when I've got cover to retreat to myself when my magazine runs out. Also, it's hard to 'pops out from behind said wall' when someone else on my team has already flanked them and killed them.

And you can't do this in a PC FPS?

None of the analogies stand (as they're all utterly irrelevant) save for this one: don't bring a knife to a gun fight. If you're playing PC shooters expect to need exceptional reflexes in addition to whatever other "1337 g4m3r skillz" you have in order to be truly competitive. This is the nature of the beast and if you don't like it, stick to consoles. Neither is "better" or "worse", they are different, a fact which renders side-by-side comparison an utterly null endeavor.

 

[slyder35]

I still find it utterly amazing how next-gen consoles don't support a simple mouse pointer. I mean come on - keyboards, steering wheels, wireless internet - and you can't use a mouse? Pathetic.

 

[DeadlyFred]

All well and good, but still doesn't explain why covering fire is supposedly a virtue only of console gaming.

 

[DeadlyFred]

I still find it utterly amazing how next-gen consoles don't support a simple mouse pointer. I mean come on - keyboards, steering wheels, wireless internet - and you can't use a mouse? Pathetic.

Microsoft explicitly doesn't want a mouse controller for the Xbox 360.

Maybe they're worried about massive backlash from all the dual analog FPS players?

It'd be horribly unfair to the people not using it. This is where that basket-ball-steroid-wheelchair analogy actually works, not when relating game experiences on two entirely separate platforms.

 

[DeadlyFred]

Now, maybe that has something to do with the difference between playing with a mouse and playing with a controller?

That accurate weapons are made more effective by a more accurate control scheme? Well, there's a leap of logic if I ever saw one.