Too Many Buttons

[John Scott Tynes]

Too Many Buttons

Too many buttons on controllers makes games inaccessible, and John Scott Tynes offers a solution with Far Cry 2600.

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[Jim Grim]

I don't like this idea. Playing with a bunch of buttons makes me feel awesome skilled.

 

[QuirkyTambourine]

I really don't like the idea of two buttons. I feel that the games today are way too complex for that. I do love me some retro gaming though, and it's comforting when I boot up an NES game or a Genesis game on my computer, using my PS3 controller, and only being able to use a third of it at most. Simpler times were fun too

 

[Nimbus]

Far Cry 2 was bad. This would make it better for some (few) people, but worse for most.

 

[hamster mk 4]

There was this game design competition that required a 4 button joystick input (A, B, Start, and Sellect). It was pretty challanging figuring out how to map all user actions to the Dpad and two primary buttons. Ultimatly features were cut, but I think it led to a cleaner feeling game. FYI the contest was Speedhack: http://speedhack.allegro.cc/

 

[TheNumber1Zero]

Woudln't taking away buttons imply that the player is too stupid to know how to use them?

The mere thought of it makes me feel insulted, imagine how the people this is supposedly being done for would feel.

 

[Arbitrary Cidin]

Yeah, and then we can put video games on the radio for blind people!

 

[Andrecova]

I think we could do with some more buttons, but definitely not less. As games get more complex, with more functions, the need for more buttons arises.

Plus gaming would be slower in general, you couldn't have so much immersion as you do in some of today's games, and multi-player would be especially bland, with none of the head shots or carefully thrown grenades.

 

[twcblaze]

I honestly prefer the multi-button layout because it gives the player more control over what's happening. One of my biggest frustrations with gaming is when something "automatic" is supposed to happen and it doesn't (or worse, it's not supposed to happen and it does)... it completely breaks the flow of the game and generally gets me killed and sets me swearing up a storm.

a non-lethal example'd be like final fantasy 7 and below, any time you walked into a town, you automatically entered the town, you went through the loading sequence and bam! you're in town. every so often, when I enter the world map, I just press forward because I "know where I'm going" and lo and behold, to my ever-jubilant surprise: my camera was facing back towards town... gogo loading sequence. ff8 (or 9, it's been too damn long) solved this by making it so you had to confirm that you wanted to enter the town by pressing x or something, I don't honestly remember, but the point is it saved me about 20 minutes of swearing and frustration.

 

[Eldritch Warlord]

Here's a better idea: if your wife has a problem with too many buttons try

Which has 10 controls counting every direction and the superfluous pause option. If there's a problem with Far Cry 2 it's not the controls.

And personally, I think your radial menu idea is more baffling than the four extra buttons.

 

[Krakyn]

You can't have multiplayer with radial controls. You would have to not put anything except shooting and grenade throwing in multiplayer matches. Boring.

 

[BrotherRool]

Too complicated less skill and strategy. We didn't move on from Doom for a reason. Th real reason the Wii is popular is because it chose a different market to us. Doom wouldn't help

 

[51gunner]

I've never felt that I had too many buttons. The keyboard attached to the computer that you're reading this on has a lot of buttons, and pretty much everyone uses one just fine.

(also, mac wheel! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0Gzq-QEt0s)

 

[Outlaw Torn]

I think the point wasn't to make every game only have one button and one analogue stick, but to demonstrate that you could use two inputs in a more complex game than pacman (if you played the one where you can jump that is).

I sometimes think that developers add in pointless extra features just because the controller has some buttons that they haven't mapped into their control scheme yet. And I think the idea of only being able to heal/switch weapons etc. out of combat or behind cover is pretty good.

But I do like having more buttons than the absolute minimum, in more frantically paced action games it's always more comforting to know that your favourite gun/special power/pointy stick is one button click away.

 

[AdmiralMemo]

Alright, here's my perfect controller. Start with a SNES controller. Replace the D-Pad with a clickable analog stick. Add 2 more buttons on the back.

And that's it. 10 buttons and a clickable analog stick, in just the arrangement that fits me best.

 

[AdmiralMemo]

Yeah, and then we can put video games on the radio for blind people!

A blind guy actually beat Mike Tyson's Punch-Out for the NES just by listening to the sound effects.

And a few games do have the ability to be specially modded for blind people. The same guy plays some FPSs that are modded to do something akin to the echolocation that bats use. (I don't know if he does multiplayer or not.)

 

[nairb1582]

I can see the appeal of a simplistic controller, after all it has been done before (every console pre-n64 with a few exceptions), but really this generation seems to have hit a happy median. You will notice that the PS3 and Xbox 360 have almost identical layouts, because most people prefer this and it is a pretty damn good setup. Another thing, this could be a problem related to the developers believing console games need to use every button, but I beat Far Cry 2 and plenty of other games on the PC and you use maybe six buttons realistically. With movement mapped to a stick, a button for reload/actions, and a change weapon button, as well as the buttons to fire them, thats about it. Just don't really see the problem here.

 

[4RT1LL3RY]

Yeah, and then we can put video games on the radio for blind people!

A blind guy actually beat Mike Tyson's Punch-Out for the NES just by listening to the sound effects.

And a few games do have the ability to be specially modded for blind people. The same guy plays some FPSs that are modded to do something akin to the echolocation that bats use. (I don't know if he does multiplayer or not.)

There is a person youtube called genuinecorruption, he is blind and did a complete play through of Ocarina of Time, he had some help in a guide people helped right, but he played the entire thing. He even kicked Phantom Ganon's ass [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHDh_-z_crM] better then I did my first run throughs. This was unmodded, using just a set of stereo headphones.