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Comments
If a game is about not killing my fingers, controllers are better.
It depends more on what's supposed to be more precise -- your movement or your actions. If it's the former, you're not going to get it with WASD. If the latter, you're probably not going to get it without a mouse. Games have to be designed to meet the platform.
Virtue's Last Reward arrived today.
i am
so
pumped
But I'm gonna reread 999 first.
Playing KH wouldn't have been very good on PC.
So, the Magus battle in Chrono Trigger might just be one of the best designed bosses ever.
Spoiler: don't goad him into a second fight later on.
What count as "twitch games"?
But...but...people are saying that platformers are better suited for controllers! And I am unable to comprehend that!
I seriously think the 2D/3D divide might be the difference here; I'm thinking of up/left/down/right for controlling my character, which is much more typical of 2D games, while you're referring to WASD, which is much more typical of 3D games.
That said, even for 3D games, I don't find my drop-off, if any, in precision from my keyboard. If I want to move very short distances, I can just tap a key lightly.
Now I do admit that I've been using keyboard as a controller for years; I started on MS-DOS games like the original Duke Nukem and Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure, and while my PC gaming experienced a drop-off as I took to an interest in the Super Nintendo, my gaming activities returned to PC in the form of emulation a few years after that, and I've been using keyboard controls for twelve years now. In contrast, I've had less experience with controllers in the past decade; most of my controller usage since the 16-bit era has been for Super Smash Bros. Melee during summer 2007, when I played extensively. Apart from that, I've played some Metroid Prime as well, and tiny amounts of Halo and Tales of Symphonia.
I do find Smash Melee somewhat difficult to control with controller, especially with certain things like doing Pikachu's double quick-attack recovery move. It requires that I quickly move in two distinct (albeit not very different) directions, and very often I fail to get in a second quick-attack because my second direction wasn't quite distinct enough. My play also suffers from some inaccuracy from the delay of registering a direction on the joystick--for example, sometimes I'll let out a meek thundershock when I meant to call down a thunderbolt from the heavens. These are issues that would NOT happen if I were playing by keyboard; I can much more easily time my left and right hand button presses to be simultaneous, rather than worrying about the tilt on a joystick. But Smash is, notably, a game that doesn't depend on the joystick's tilt, I admit.
It is certainly the one with the longest battle script description on RPGClassics.
Well, let's lay it out, shall we?
What controllers definitely do better is semantic and neural mapping. This is the process of a task becoming both well-understood and physically automatic. A good example is this post; as words pop into my head, I'm automatically putting them down without thinking about individual letters, grammar, spacing or anything of the kind. I've mapped the skill of typing to both physical finger manipulation and my "will" rather than thought. I think of words; they appear.
Games operate within a much less diverse set of inputs, though. Whereas typing requires 26 characters in English, plus additional buttons for grammar, spaces, capital letters and so on, a game might only have a handful of different functions -- if that many. This is where a controller comes in. It maps game functions in a semantic and neurological sense to certain fingers and controller positions. What's more, you can't lose your position, as semantic mapping in a keyboard relies on a consistent position. After all, if "jump" is semantically mapped to Z and "attack" is mapped to X, accidentally slipping up one row of keys will throw you right off. Due to the structure of a controller, this is impossible. Once you know, remember and have experience with a certain set of button inputs, you will never make an error until your understanding of those inputs is overwritten by a different game.
Notice how every controller these days has two halves with three sections? These sections are:
This allows a controller to map six different sectors, with two of each type of sector. This allows the semantic mapping to occur much more efficiently, as you then relate particular game functions to said sectors rather than remembering a whole lot of individual button presses. It's extremely natural to use the right-side shoulder buttons to shoot a gun, or the right-side face buttons to swing an axe, isn't it?
We can also use this information to understand why more complex controller types tend to fail. If you look back at, say, the Sega Genesis, that had something like six (!!!) face buttons (if I'm remembering the controller correctly). That's 50% more than the SNES or, later, the PlayStation, both of which established that four face buttons within a sector is the maximum and probably the ideal amount. Aftermarket controllers often fail for similar reasons, adding pointless and unnecessary functions that barely improve the experience at best, destroy good games at worst and are irrelevant most of the time.
If you look at the standard WASD-and-mouse setup for PC games, you can see that the keyboard has been similarly separated into sectors. While combat functions are usually bound to the mouse, other functions are usually bound to keys right near the WASD keys themselves; E, F, Q and R all being common examples, as well as Tab, Shift, Ctrl and Space. So we can derive, I think, three sectors from that; WASD and its surrounding character keys, the Tab-Shift-Ctrl-Space group in an L-shaped border around the WASD functions, and the mouse. I suppose the number keys above the alphabetical characters can also count, depending on the type of game being played.
Anyway, I guess this was a pretty long post.
Sectors.
It typically only had 3. There were controllers made with 6 buttons, but they weren't widely supported.
Perhaps it was something to do with Australian distribution. I remember them having six, but I never owned one myself and played them in public/at friends' places. Thank you for the correction in any case.
Anyway, apply the example to the six-button variation or any other dumb controller you can think of.
So while waiting for a virus scan, I tried doing Minesweeper with no flags. This was the result.
I think I've convinced myself that I'm capable of doing it to the point that I don't care enough to actually do it, but it's just a matter of not randomly coming down to a bullshit guess like that one.
Curiously, I use the Z-jump-X-attack scheme very often, and I actually slip up on that scheme less than I do with standard typing position. I think it has something to do with my automatically sensing my position using my other fingers--for example, it seems my left little finger normally automatically rubs itself against the closer left corner of the left CTRL key.
Which is why I know to check the controls of a game first before playing. This applies especially to PC games of course, since there is a nearly-infinite variety of possible mappings. That said, there are particularly common control settings, which for platformers (and old-Zelda-like top-down games) are basically these:
* arrow keys to move, Z to jump, X to attack, or some other variation involving ZXC(VASD LShift LCtrl).
* WASD to move, nearby keys for functions, mouse to aim (when the game requires omnidirectional aiming, such as Terraria).
* arrow keys to move, up to jump, space to attack (basic weapon)
Now this problem is actually not unique to PC games. Thanks to some stupidity regarding "oh western gamers might be cnofused by X being for confirm", Playstation (and presumably PS2 and PS3 and so forth) games have the problem of using the bottom button for confirm rather than cancel, as was the convention on the SNES.
Not really.
The closest thing is assigning right-shoulder button to shoot a gun, but unless you're very used to using guns in real life, learning that association is no more or less difficult than any other.
Pressing a button to swing an axe just is an association out of thin air.
Also, my point goes doubly so for left-handed people, I would imagine.
I think the key for the SNES's and PS1's successful control schemes were...well, actually, first, because the SNES was very successful, and then the PS1 just copied that.
That said, the other key was the positioning. I think that had they been placed in a "parallel" square fashion rather than a "tilted" square fashion, the four buttons would be less useful. One of the useful things that the diamond-like tilted placement allows is for the thumb to choose either the B or A button when using X or Y, simply by turning the hand, and without having to turn the hand past horizontal. My best example is from Mega Man X where I can hold down Y to charge a shot while jumping (B) and/or sliding (A) freely. An example from Super Mario World is holding down Y to run and then choosing a spin-jump with A or a normal jump with B. Put it this way: the tilted placement allows the hand to do YB at 4:30 and YA at 3-o'clock, which are most comfortable.
That's actually related to my dislike of the PS1 (and likely subsequent PSwhatever) controllers: The handle beneath the four-button action pad makes it more difficult to angle one's hand properly to do those things.
The FPS keyboard scheme I'm most used to, for playing TF2, is as follows:
* movement sector: WASD
* movement sector periphery: Q E 1 2 3 4 5 for switching between weapons, F for MEDIC!, G for taunt, H for item (rarely used)
* duck sector: left Ctrl (left little finger) (there was some reason I stopped using left shift for this, and I can't remember why)
* jump sector: space (left thumb)
I think the little finger and thumb sectors are pretty distinct.
Also, Tab is mapped to "show players list", but that's also rarely used, and I think that's a bit of a different sector too.
Anyway, probably my overarching point is this:
I disagree. All I do with a keyboard is to map those same game functions to a subset of keys. I don't see any theoretical difference between a controller and a keyboard, on this (perhaps narrow) basis. (I addressed the point of row shift error earlier.)
Now we expand the horizon a bit, and observe that while I am primarily using one or two fingers in each hand (a total of four) to operate a controller, I am typically using at least seven fingers to operate a keyboard as a gaming device. I have the advantage of placing my fingers right where they need to be, and simply telling which finger to hit or lift which key at the right time. There is much less lateral finger movement involved--which means much less muscle-memory guesswork as to where the appropriate button is (even if it is minimal in a well-designed controller). And if anything, that actually leads to more error than row shifts on a keyboard--those are just one-time corrections, while I've had multiple instances of my fingers slipping off buttons on a controller because of sweat or something, or very occasionally hitting a spot slightly off which affects my performance in the game.
So that's why I find keyboards to be superior to gamepad controllers.
(Can we call them gamepads? Because the keyboard is technically also a controller.)
I can't count the number of times I've pressed 4 when I meant to press 5, or accidentally pressed Caps Lock instead of tab. Never done that with a controller.
So, how about that Chrono Triggers?
If it's boring, you could always just not read it.
^^^ Actually, 4 and 5 present me that problem too since when I'm centered at WASD both those numbers are a stretch away--which involves muscle memory movement, as I mentioned in my second consecutive post.
Don't think I've much hit Caps Lock instead of Tab but I rarely hit Tab so that doesn't really say much.
Anyway, I think the two most likely explanations for my preference for keyboard controls are (in order of likelihood):
1. I play different sorts of games.
2. I play the piano so I'm used to fingerwork using all ten fingers.
Now I'm not so sure about #1 because some people here have been talking about platformers too...though since someone specifically mentioned Super Mario 64, I wonder if y'all are talking about 3D platformers versus 2D platformers, and I know joysticks (and thus controllers) are much better than keyboards for 3D games (at least ones that are designed with variable joystick tilt input in mind).
Okay then.
I feel the need to replay CT again, god I love that game.
On the other hand, never finished a lot of the games I have. My backlog is so big, and I just go ugh...
Look, I can hit WASD just fine, but anything beyond WASD trips me up a lot more than controllers ever do.
The point here is that everyone is used to R1 or Right Trigger to fire a gun. When you play a console shooter, you pretty much just do it. And for the most part, the same applies to close combat games, but with a different input.
My post wasn't speculation; this is why controllers exist in the first place. Their whole purpose is to limit the amount of game inputs down for relevance's sake, which helps with semantic mapping. So the use of a button on a controller becomes like any other technical skill rather than potentially being muddled as can happen on a keyboard. That's why you get a significant amount of "hardcore" gamers who use their PC to play "properly" but use their consoles to "relax".
Makes sense; PC games are less effective at both semantic mapping (barring a PC controller) and tend to be more complex to play. They use their control context to justify additional complexity. To this day, you couldn't really have Neverwinter Nights or Starcraft on consoles (despite the latter actually happening). Both games depend too heavily on the breadth of PC controls while having styles of gameplay that don't demand instantaneous and complex reaction (unless you're Korean). But likewise, Super Mario Brothers is never going to be as good on a keyboard as it is with a controller, since the semantic mapping of a controller controls error much more effectively, even if it doesn't offer as much precision.
I'm continuing this debate here: http://itjustbugsme.com/forums/discussion/11469/the-great-video-game-controllers-debate-keyboard-mouse-versus-controllergamepad
YES
The buildup, the scene itself, the music...It's just perfect. Magus is probably the best character in Chrono Trigger for this reason alone.
I guess this post might be a little spoilery for those who haven't played Chrono Trigger but want to? I'm not going to blacktext this whole post since that would be dumb, so those people can proceed with caution.
While the artistic elements of the Magus battle are fantastic, from the music to the arena to the general sense of drama, I'm more referring to the design of the actual fight. Magus himself sets the tempo of the battle, unlike most encounters. You can only mirror his use of magic, and physical attacks do bugger all damage to him until the latter stages of the battle. This means the bulk of the fight is a kind of magical dance, where you follow each of his spells in kind until you get an opportunity to take the initiative. Since you can only have three characters in your party, but there are five kinds of magic, this inevitably means that Magus will spend some of the battle being almost entirely immune to your attacks.
Most fights have some kind of dominant strategy once you work them out, but the Magus fight flows and changes according to both Magus' own behaviour and your party structure. You have to be on the ball at all times and think about what you're going to do with the limited time you have until Magus inevitably hits you with a truck.
Chrono Trigger in general is great like this; it creates an "ordered fight" where sequencing your attacks correctly is extremely important. You obviously have to take your actions in quick enough time for them to be useful at that point in the battle, but the efficiency of your combat order is overall much more important than how quickly you can make your characters attack. Even more importantly, the game teaches its own system masterfully through both its encounters and boss battles. Think about the Dragon Tank, and how it introduced to you (in an easy context) that some encounters hinged on destroying a centrepiece element before overcoming the rest. Without Dragon Tank, we'd be lost when it came to the other multi-part bosses because we'd never have been taught to discriminate between separate entities within each battle.
Wow.... I didn't even consider that kind of stuff when I play. Or any game I play really. Bravo.
I really wonder if I should try to emulate you when it comes to analyzing these things or just go, "You know what, I'm not Alex and that's okay.". I don't know how to approach it from that viewpoint, given that I tend to like things for simplistic reasons. ._.
guys guys
should we tell him that you could change magus' barriers by meleeing him
Psst... Masamune wrecks Magus.
I know both of those things. But physical attacks at that stage only deal 50 or so damage to him (unless I was severely underlevelled?), which doesn't get fixed until later in the fight. Switching his resistance type might do nothing at all to help you, and he hits hard enough that you have to give up turns on a regular basis to heal up. For instance, I spent a fair few turns with Chrono and Marle using their synchronised healing ability while using Frog to cycle through Magus' resistances until I hit on something that I could exploit -- such as a water attack, which allowed me to synchronise Frog and Chrono.
For what it's worth, I like swords 'cause they're cool. I can tell you how to used applied geometry to significantly increase your skill in short time, but I know that because I think swords are cool so I did research and stuff. Also, I like video games because they're fun, and I like Chrono Trigger because it's really fun. The way I look at things has emerged because I'm a pedant rather than because I go into things with a deep appreciation of their core function.
Also, I've read like game design books and stuff. That helps. A lot.