ciortas1 said:
internetzealot1 said:
snip
1 What I mean by "directly in front of you" is that when you are looking at or near an enemy, you need to move the mouse very little to place the cursor on him. But when an enemy is, say, behind you, then you will have to move the mouse a lot to turn around and target him. Now imagine that you are being attacked by multiple enemies from multiple directions. As you fight them, you will have to keep turning to face different directions. Because a mouse is operated by sliding it across a real-world surface, you will, unless the enemies present themselves in the the perfect order, eventually run out of real-world space ( or arm-length) in which to slide this mouse. This means that you will have to do one of two things. A) Pick up the mouse and reposition it, or B) take the longer turn in the opposite direction in order to move the mouse closer to its original real-world postion. Both of these break the flow of the game and leave the player vulnerable for a moment.
On the other hand, a player using a controller will be able to turn to face all of the enemies without interruption, though his targeting will be less precise.
So, essentially, the Mouse is good for targeting, bad for turning. The joystick is bad for targeting, good for turning.
2 You say that "Movement is heavily tied with aiming and thus works worse with the shittier aiming system." It probably seems that way because WASD provides such limited movement (8 directions are
not just enough to make the difference negligible). Since movement is so restricted on PC's, the importance of the aiming in relation to movement is multiplied. On a console every degree turned can be matched with a change in movement direction, so camera position does not have such an influence on movement.
To illustrate the flaw in PC movement, let's get hypothetical again. Say that you are in a firefight with an enemy, and for one reason or another you want to cross a catwalk that happens to have no rails. While crossing, you are exposed, and will want to keep shooting at your enemy. Now, WASD permits movement in 8 directions, right? Well assuming that you want to stay on the catwalk and assuming that you want to cross the entire catwalk on the same WASD combination, then there are 8 positions relative to you in which your enemy must be standing for you to be able to shoot him. Only two of those positions (directly in front of and directly behind) don't require that your enemy move in the same direction at the same rate as you.
But lets say that the enemy is in none of those three positions(he probably won't be). You will not be able to shoot at him while crossing the catwalk if you go all the way on one of the 8 directions. So you have three options.
1. Do not cross the catwalk(the controls are preventing you from doing what you want to do, which is bad.)
2. Cross the catwalk moving forward, looking straight ahead, not shooting your enemy while he shoots you(you are taking damage while he takes none, which is bad)
3. Cross the catwalk while shooting at him, having to do this batshit rediculous dance with WASD, juggling directions, while trying to shoot your enemy, and the whole thing will cause you to fall right the hell off. Even if you somehow manage to stay on, the zig-zag motion will cause you to move slower than if you had just gone in a straight line.
This is an extremely specific example, but it illustrates the issues with WASD. Also, its cost me a metric ass-ton of deaths. (BTW, WASD requires three fingers while a joystick only requires one. This won't matter unless you're extremely uncoordinated, but I think it should be mentioned.)
3 Button availability, hmm? You say that there are five buttons on the mouse alone. Counting wheel up and wheel down as seperate buttons is pushing it because they're usually just the reverses of each other, but its possible, and I'm sure someone's done it, so we'll let it slide. Now, you've counted four buttons on the controller that are usable in conjunction with both sticks: The two triggers and the two bumpers. What you're forgetting is that modern console joysticks (excluding the Wii, and we're not even going there) can be clicked in addition to being rotated. That brings the number of readily available buttons for console controllers up to six.
Now, if you want to press a button on the Keyboard, you're going to use the hand with which you operate WASD. That means that to press a button, you're going to have to take at least one finger off of WASD. That's at least 3 direction that will be unavailable for a moment. Unless the desired key is far away from WASD, in which case
all of your movement will be unavailable. Then, you have to move your hand back over the sea of identical keys and put them on the exact four that you need.
I should also mention that on a PC, to have more than one movement speed, you need to reserve a whole button per each different speed. On a console, the degree to which the control sticks are tilted determines the speed.
As far as mouse buttons taking less effort to click...I really don't have that much trouble pulling my triggers. From a utilitarian standpoint, a bland mouse click might work slightly better. But triggers enhance the experience of shooting a gun much, much more. A mouse button feels like a poor substitute in comparison.
I should also mention rumble. I'm pretty sure that most mouses don't come with rumble, and I'm almost certain that no keyboard has been rumble equipped. It doesn't seem lik a big deal and it can't be evaluated objectively, but it lends itself to modern games (especially FPS's)extremely well.
4 Navigating menus...nope, got me there.
