Too Many Buttons

[Grampy_bone]

Making everything modular and context sensitive would not make the game simpler to control or easier to understand. Worse, it would drastically increase the learning curve behind the game because you could never be sure exactly what your character will actually do. This article fails.

 

[Dhatz]

this trial would end up as error, nobody sane or healthy would think it's a good idea. On the other hand, I know that Ginormo sword manages to be awesome RPG with minimum graphics, unusable sound(that thankfully is mutable) and using ONLY mouse movement and LMB.(well quality and volume controls are more of menu functions, but the are on the arrows-which is awesome, because no other game had real-time volume control)

 

[Evil the White]

I started gaming on the N64, so there are more buttons now than I started with. My main shooter was Goldeneye. In that, you used the C buttons to look up, down and strafe. The only time when it was needed was when you found a sniper rifle or you were shooting down/up stairs. You can get a similar setup in most games, only its known as the 'legacy' setout.

 

[theultimateend]

While I enjoy the idea. I'm under the impression that there can never be too many buttons as long as none are superfluous.

That might sound like a HUGE if but it is there regardless.

I will play a game with 90k controls if each one is necessary for a complete and smooth play while providing the least amount of headache.

Basically I don't want to be playing against my controller, I want to be playing against (or with) my game.

Basically the real thing folks need to fix is not controllers...but getting rid of that goddamn arthritis and carpel tunnel.

 

[SomethingUnrelated]

Controllers are fine as they are. I can't think of any half-decent gamer who can't handle 19 inputs.

 

[zombflux]

Yeah, sounds great, you can even stamp a nice little "CONTROLS FOR RETARDS" sticker on the box, too.

 

[Dhatz]

carpal tunnel is a whore, that's why I do the click-million-times games only seldomly(lol, I realised that playing CS all day would be shit because pistols need clickin).

 

[chinese_democracy]

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

I thought it was pretty good. It just got old after you basically do the same thing over and over again.

 

[Kiutu]

The 360's controller is the best controller I have ever used. If anything is guilty of too many buttons, its PC. A whole keyboard is overkill, and too many things are either hidden as possible traps or just something to get your arms tied up around.
Unless I am just amazing, using most any controller is second nature after oh...an hour max. I sometimes have a hard time being able to tell you X is reload, but I know it in my thumbs.

 

[Doug]

Frankly, I don't like the control scheme you suggest; Ok, some games do use too many buttons, but frankly this control scheme uses too few controls - without a view control, or a strafing control, how are you going to quickly look around for enemies in a 3D environment? And yeah, auto-lock sounds fine in theory, but by the same token, Ether theory sounded fine to the people of the 18th century.

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

Indeed.

 

[Markness]

This is a really terrible ideae, you take away a bunch of the games features and any skill while simultaneously making it harder to play. There is a reason we moved away from the one button controller. Also Doom isn't still a fun game to play because of gameplay, it's purely nostalgia. You can find hundreds of games better than doom for free, on the internet.

A really hope no developers take your advice from the last line.

 

[Khornefire]

Why do some (most, actually) of you guys have such a hard time understanding that the article doesn't really suggest having all our games use an analog stick and a button? The purpose of the article, as I see it, is to show that games can still be games without nineteen inputs. I admit that the specific game John suggests in his artice does seem pretty shitty to me. So what? It's still a game with only five inputs. Now, what if instead of five, we took, say, eleven inputs? The game would be drastically improved over Far Cry 2600, would probably include most or all the nuances of current games, and with eight less inputs, it would be far more accessible to new gamers. Get over this "If you can't master two hundred thousand controls in half a second you're a retard and shouldn't be allowed to touch a console" mindset. I bet it wasn't so simple with your first FPS's.

 

[Woodsey]

Maybe you shouldn't play games if you think there's too many buttons.

The only other people I know who'd say that would be my mum and grandparents.

The 360's controller is the best controller I have ever used. If anything is guilty of too many buttons, its PC. A whole keyboard is overkill, and too many things are either hidden as possible traps or just something to get your arms tied up around.
Unless I am just amazing, using most any controller is second nature after oh...an hour max. I sometimes have a hard time being able to tell you X is reload, but I know it in my thumbs.

Overkill? You realise keyboards are used to type and other stuff as well, right?

The majority of ports that go between consoles and the PC have the same amounts of keys mapped to actions.

 

[Teiwaz83]

I see this "controllers are too complex" theory a lot, and I think it's based on an incorrect (and honestly, kind of arrogant) assumption.

Basically, it goes something like this:

"People who don't play games don't play games because they are stupid. Therefore, I need to dumb Super FPS 9000 down to the point that a retarded monkey can run it, and then my retarded mom will love it!"

The truth is, your mom can learn how to use a modern controller with a zillion buttons on it. (The 100+ controls in a standard car example was already mentioned.) The problem is that your mom has no *reason* to learn how to use that controller, because your mom isn't interested in shooting nazis or aliens or zombies or robot-mutant hamsters, or whatever else it is you do in Super FPS 9000.

That's the Wii's success. It's not that they simplified their controls - in reality, the Wii controls are frustrating and hard to use and in may ways more complex than the "core" controllers. (You know what's hard to learn? How to open a door with an arcane gesture the console only recognizes one time in three. What's easy? An "open the goddamn door" button.) What the Wii *did* do was put out a large stable of games about group play (an excellent way to facilitate learning, especially when the games aren't so directly competitive), exercise, and basic math/other "self help," etc, all wrapped up in a cheery "home appliance" wrapper with friendly sounds instead of a testosterone-soaked gorefest. The Wii *has* put out a number of gore-soaked "core" games with "simplified, easy" controls, and in general all they've managed to do is be harder to control and shallow, which has alienated the sorts of people who actually play those games, but have still completely failed to capture a "mainstream" audience because - yes - "mainstream" audiences are completely disinterested in that subject matter.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Okay. It's been said before, over and over, and yet so many people seem not to be listening, so allow me to state this clearly, with appropriate line breaks, bolding and use of Caps Lock.

Those of you who are "real gamers", who have mastered "Press L2 for frag grenade, press L3 for flash grenade", who could probably perform remote microsurgery with a controller?

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT FOR YOU.

This article explains (perhaps not the best way possible, but still) how a game with very complex controls could be boiled down to something as simple as an Atari 2600 controller. It is an effort to explain how controls could be simplified and condensed to make them more easily understood by someone who is new to that particular genre, or perhaps to electronic gaming itself.

Yeah, sounds great, you can even stamp a nice little "CONTROLS FOR RETARDS" sticker on the box, too.

Maybe you shouldn't play games if you think there's too many buttons.

The only other people I know who'd say that would be my mum and grandparents.

People like you two are a greater danger to gaming than a million Jack Thompsons. Why? Because you want gaming to stop growing. You want it to cater to you exclusively, to give you more of what you're familiar with, and to lock out those you deem "unworthy" with excessively complex controls and gameplay. Your path leads to stagnation, shrinking audiences, and eventually the death of "serious" gaming itself. Allow me to again make this clear:

PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT "EXPERT" GAMERS ARE NOT AUTOMATICALLY STUPID.

Unless you were born with a 360 controller in your hand (in which case I feel sorry for your mother) you did not come into this world with "leet gamzorz smarts". You put in the hours and learned to deal with ever-increasingly complex control schemes and gameplay. Which is great. The problem is that you expect other people to start at the level you've reached. Saying "Dad, you're such an idiot, right trigger is for melee and left trigger is for grenades" is condescending to someone who's never operated anything more complex than an ATM machine.

If we don't make gaming more open and welcoming to new blood, it is eventually going to wither and die. You will, eventually, stop playing games- and who will take your place? All those people who could have gotten into serious gaming "back in the day" will have instead been put off by the complexity of the games and the snide attitude of the gamers, havling log since opted to stick with simple Popcap-type games that have immediate payoff and- more importantly- no snobby elitist looking down on them for being a "retard".

It gets awfully lonely up in those ivory towers, when you've driven away everyone who wanted to come take a look.

 

[The Heik]

Keyboard & mouse, good enough for Doom, good enough for Farcry2

Now there's TOO many buttons. I don't mind that there are a few more buttons than what I'm used to on the console; my main issue is that most of the buttons on a keyboard don't do anything in a game, leading a new gamer to have to press everything to figure out all the different actions, and often fumbling up at critical moments because the pushed the button next to what they wanted, not to mention your aim suddenly stopping because moved your mouse too far and have to place it back in the centre.

What a standard console controller has now might be considered the best balance of button amounts. Enough to give the programmers options, but not so many as to confuse the player with too big a button-to-usable finger ratio. Lets just pray that the uber-controller below doesn't come out (thank you almightywabbit for the image), otherwise we'll scare off newbie gamers for good.

http://www.hamovhotov.com/fun/wp-content/uploads/2006/10/ps4-controller.jpg

 

[zombflux]

Okay. It's been said before, over and over, and yet so many people seem not to be listening, so allow me to state this clearly, with appropriate line breaks, bolding and use of Caps Lock.

Those of you who are "real gamers", who have mastered "Press L2 for frag grenade, press L3 for flash grenade", who could probably perform remote microsurgery with a controller?

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT FOR YOU.

This article explains (perhaps not the best way possible, but still) how a game with very complex controls could be boiled down to something as simple as an Atari 2600 controller. It is an effort to explain how controls could be simplified and condensed to make them more easily understood by someone who is new to that particular genre, or perhaps to electronic gaming itself.

Yeah, sounds great, you can even stamp a nice little "CONTROLS FOR RETARDS" sticker on the box, too.

Maybe you shouldn't play games if you think there's too many buttons.

The only other people I know who'd say that would be my mum and grandparents.

People like you two are a greater danger to gaming than a million Jack Thompsons. Why? Because you want gaming to stop growing. You want it to cater to you exclusively, to give you more of what you're familiar with, and to lock out those you deem "unworthy" with excessively complex controls and gameplay. Your path leads to stagnation, shrinking audiences, and eventually the death of "serious" gaming itself. Allow me to again make this clear:

PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT "EXPERT" GAMERS ARE NOT AUTOMATICALLY STUPID.

Unless you were born with a 360 controller in your hand (in which case I feel sorry for your mother) you did not come into this world with "leet gamzorz smarts". You put in the hours and learned to deal with ever-increasingly complex control schemes and gameplay. Which is great. The problem is that you expect other people to start at the level you've reached. Saying "Dad, you're such an idiot, right trigger is for melee and left trigger is for grenades" is condescending to someone who's never operated anything more complex than an ATM machine.

If we don't make gaming more open and welcoming to new blood, it is eventually going to wither and die. You will, eventually, stop playing games- and who will take your place? All those people who could have gotten into serious gaming "back in the day" will have instead been put off by the complexity of the games and the snide attitude of the gamers, havling log since opted to stick with simple Popcap-type games that have immediate payoff and- more importantly- no snobby elitist looking down on them for being a "retard".

It gets awfully lonely up in those ivory towers, when you've driven away everyone who wanted to come take a look.

Downgrading controls = growing? I think you're a little confused, bud. You don't have to be a "gaming expert" to understand how to control a game. Sure, you might be a little awkward for the first 10 minutes if you're really new, but anyone with a half-decent short term memory should be able to understand basic game controls without them having to be dumbed down, and without having to spend the aforementioned hours to learn which buttons do what.

Making games worse so that more people will like them might seem like a "it's for the greater good!" situation to you, but if they're too dumb to get it, I don't want them crowding my multiplayer servers anyway.

Millions of people worldwide have gotten into gaming without the need to regress to "A to jump, B to attack" gameplay. If anything, you're the one who is anti-progress.

Retard.

 

[Kstreitenfeld]

No jump / crouch is bad for any FPS.

I don't care if your trying to make it casual friendly, its just going to hurt the game as a hole.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Okay. It's been said before, over and over, and yet so many people seem not to be listening, so allow me to state this clearly, with appropriate line breaks, bolding and use of Caps Lock.

Those of you who are "real gamers", who have mastered "Press L2 for frag grenade, press L3 for flash grenade", who could probably perform remote microsurgery with a controller?

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT FOR YOU.

This article explains (perhaps not the best way possible, but still) how a game with very complex controls could be boiled down to something as simple as an Atari 2600 controller. It is an effort to explain how controls could be simplified and condensed to make them more easily understood by someone who is new to that particular genre, or perhaps to electronic gaming itself.

Yeah, sounds great, you can even stamp a nice little "CONTROLS FOR RETARDS" sticker on the box, too.

Maybe you shouldn't play games if you think there's too many buttons.

The only other people I know who'd say that would be my mum and grandparents.

People like you two are a greater danger to gaming than a million Jack Thompsons. Why? Because you want gaming to stop growing. You want it to cater to you exclusively, to give you more of what you're familiar with, and to lock out those you deem "unworthy" with excessively complex controls and gameplay. Your path leads to stagnation, shrinking audiences, and eventually the death of "serious" gaming itself. Allow me to again make this clear:

PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT "EXPERT" GAMERS ARE NOT AUTOMATICALLY STUPID.

Unless you were born with a 360 controller in your hand (in which case I feel sorry for your mother) you did not come into this world with "leet gamzorz smarts". You put in the hours and learned to deal with ever-increasingly complex control schemes and gameplay. Which is great. The problem is that you expect other people to start at the level you've reached. Saying "Dad, you're such an idiot, right trigger is for melee and left trigger is for grenades" is condescending to someone who's never operated anything more complex than an ATM machine.

If we don't make gaming more open and welcoming to new blood, it is eventually going to wither and die. You will, eventually, stop playing games- and who will take your place? All those people who could have gotten into serious gaming "back in the day" will have instead been put off by the complexity of the games and the snide attitude of the gamers, havling log since opted to stick with simple Popcap-type games that have immediate payoff and- more importantly- no snobby elitist looking down on them for being a "retard".

It gets awfully lonely up in those ivory towers, when you've driven away everyone who wanted to come take a look.

Downgrading controls = growing? I think you're a little confused, bud. You don't have to be a "gaming expert" to understand how to control a game. Sure, you might be a little awkward for the first 10 minutes if you're really new, but anyone with a half-decent short term memory should be able to understand basic game controls without them having to be dumbed down, and without having to spend the aforementioned hours to learn which buttons do what.

Making games worse so that more people will like them might seem like a "it's for the greater good!" situation to you, but if they're too dumb to get it, I don't want them crowding my multiplayer servers anyway.

Millions of people worldwide have gotten into gaming without the need to regress to "A to jump, B to attack" gameplay. If anything, you're the one who is anti-progress.

Retard.

Yes, millions of people worldwide have gotten into gaming. What I want is for that to continue. I'm not saying "make the games worse"; I'm saying take ease of control into mind, rather than have a button each assigned to "scratch left foot/right foot/groin/nose" just because there happen to be extra buttons on the controller. Especially games which don't allow for any sort of button reassignment- and this happens a lot on PC ports of console games- meaning you have to memorize exactly what button does what, when, rather than being able to set it to your own comfort. And this is seldom consistent along individual titles in a genre, with each having its own idea of what the "best" layout is. Sure, it's easy for experienced gamers, who expect certain functionality to carry over and need merely find the correct button, but for someone who's new? It's just going to be more confusing.

An "easy to learn, hard to master" ideal is not the terrible thing some people are making it out to be. Couching new players in a bit of a "comfort zone" to get them up and running does not at all take away from YOUR experience. All it would take is a handful of configurations and tutorials for anyone new to gaming, as well as other more complex ones for those who know what to do. Just because it comes naturally to you doesn't mean it does to everyone else, and struggling to understand complex controls while the game hands one pointless death after another to you doesn't appeal to everyone. I'm not calling for "A to jump, B to attack" like you claim- but I would just as soon see "five buttons for separate grenades, and if you confuse them you'll probably die" control schemes bite the dust.

A way for everyone to get into a game, from casual to hardcore. I think it's possible. If the idea of casuals playing "your" game on "your" servers offends you, I think the problem lies more with you than with them.