Poll: ESDF The OTHER keyboard control system

[SmugFrog]

This ESDF nonsense is drastically inferior to the mighty WASD. It moves your hand farther from ctrl and shift, and ctrl+ (and shift+) is the best way to drastically increase your key bind options.

If a game is requiring the use of Shift and Ctrl combinations with keystrokes (usually RTS games), ESDF is still superior for me - though I usually remove my hand from the camera control set in order to make groups or press other buttons across the keyboard. My pinky easily reaches SHIFT and CTRL, and my thumb can slide over from the space bar to ALT. I have to skew my hand at a weird angle with WASD to get to CTRL and ALT.

 

[Subbies]

If you want wierd, you should try my binds: 3,Q,R,ALT (my hands are big and my keyboard is small don't judge me)

 

[veloper]

I wouldn't be able to comfortably hit ctrl while using ESDF, so I'll stick with WASD. Maybe on a small laptop keyboard it would be better.

 

[Teoes]

Yup, don't like the stretched feeling with my pinky trying to reach Shift and Ctrl on ESDF, so balls to that. WASD for life and I don't care what anyone thinks of me! /edge [Edit: Hell, AltTab too for when I'm not playing a game! WASD truly is master of all.]

No doubt there are extra keys accessible with ESDF; but I've never played a game that'd need 'em, so there's no point. The last game I played that required more binds than WASD might seemingly offer was WoW and in that case, Ctrl/Shift/Alt did the job something handsome.

The muscle memory I'd have to overwrite is bonkers. My left hand just plops on to a keyboard with fingers on Shift, A, W, S, D and Spacebar like it's the most natural thing for me to do.

 

[hawkeye52]

I used the numpad for a long time. My control scheme as follows:

8=forwards
4=strafe left
6=strafe right
2=back
5=reload
7=lean L
8=lean R
-=knife
enter=jump
0=crouch
.=prone
1=flashbang
+=use

 

[aozgolo]

My early days of PC Gaming were mostly mouse driven affairs with the original Diablo, Point & Click Adventure Games, and Dungeon Keeper, so the first time I needed to use the keyboard to move was Morrowind, I actually used the arrow keys for that game for a long time, it wasn't until a few years later I began running into games where rebinding keys wasn't so practical that I finally switched to WASD... also I grew up and having more space between my two hands helped a lot.

 

[SmallHatLogan]

I don't understand why people are acting like esdf is a total upheaval of the norm. All you're doing is shifting your hand slightly to the right.

The only thing stopping me from changing control schemes is that I'm too lazy to rebind the keys in every game I play.

 

[Zaltys]

Nah. I have small girly hands and cannot reach shift/ctrl from esdf without moving my hand. And trying to reach alt feels even more awkward.

 

[LetalisK]

I guess ESDF does make sense considering that's pretty much how we learn to type in school. Now that I think about it, I can't think of a reason that WASD would be functionally preferable to ESDF.

I'll never switch though. I'm too lazy.

 

[fenrizz]

I cannot for the life of me remember a single game I've played recently where I have not had enough buttons due to using WASD.
I have enough buttons to press, I certainly don't want more.

 

[Lazy Kitty]

Well, I don't use ESDF, but I do use ZQSD.

 

[sonicneedslovetoo]

I find that there is very little middle ground where ESDF would be useful over WASD, either there are enough keys for most FPS's or there are way too many keys and its an MMO and I might as well just use one of those gaming keypad things. Also ESDF moves my hand too far away from the ESC key and I can't rebind the windows button on my keyboard.

 

[DSK-]

I pretty much exclusively use arrow keys, and going from them to WASD/ESDF is just weird.