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The great video game controllers debate
Continuing a debate, whose previous post is here.
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.
So I guess then this is a path dependence thing as many gamers are already used to this. Makes sense I guess.
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.
But it doesn't get muddled on a keyboard; when you map controller buttons to keyboard keys you still have fewer buttons than you have fingers (unless you count the N64's crazy C buttons, which are just used in weird ways).
And then your fingers just manage those buttons. It's that simple. Unused keys become irrelevant. Just because there are a bunch of other keys doesn't mean a darn thing. There's a numpad on my keyboard and it's pretty much irrelevant to me since I never use it.
Comments
Controllers will always have less error because there is literally no room for error. That's the point; they're designed to only provide for the functions required of a game, whereas a keyboard is a work tool adapted for gaming purposes (in this context). This means there's infinitely greater potential to slip onto a useless key during a PC game (with a keyboard) than there is for a console game.
From personal experience, I can play most action games just fine on a keyboard, with or without a mouse. But that has no bearing on the psychological process of learning a game's button functions, which is always going to be easier and more streamlined on a controller because of the way it suggests its own inputs. For instance, a keyboard doesn't have movement buttons -- it has WASD, which is convenient but an external imposition on the keyboard. Game controllers have control sticks and D-pads, suggesting function immediately. When you use a controller, you're doing more than pressing buttons -- you're manipulating a three dimensional object across different surfaces, like the use of a complex tool. A keyboard's functionality doesn't wrap around the tool itself, however, so it less effectively sectors itself without some external, theoretical imposition.
This isn't about personal experience, or how well any individual gamer masters a particular control scheme. It's about wider interaction with the player tools of gaming. Semantic mapping (which is the concept this whole thing hinges on) isn't something I made up, but a well-known psychological phenomenon that applies to a wide variety of complex task masteries. It stands to reason that tools are created to have shapes efficient for semantic mapping, as this supports mastery of their function and therefore increased task efficiency. A game controller is nothing more than a tool specific to video games, and follows all the same rules.
tl;dr My personal experience lines up with yours, but science suggests that controllers are less prone to error through the psychological process of mastery via a dedicated tool.
So does that basically mean that I've psychologically mastered the keyboard as a controller tool?
Because...
No, there isn't. There isn't infinitely greater potential for me to accidentally hit the numpad on my keyboard just because it's there. Similarly, there isn't infinitely greater potential for me to accidentally hit irrelevant keys on a keyboard. The chance of me hitting irrelevant keys is the same as the chance of my fingers slipping on a controller.
Actually, a keyboard does have movement buttons--the arrow keys. Their inverted-T layout only very slightly more unnatural than the plus-sign layout of a gamepad's d-pad, and nothing that modern users of computers haven't already gotten used to anyway.
This...I wonder if this is one of the keys to the discrepancy here.
Because you're describing a joystick. And when I think of a controller, I don't think of one with a stick. And without a stick, a controller is indeed just "pressing buttons".
That said, having a stick isn't necessarily a good thing; I mentioned earlier how it made it harder to play Smash Melee competently than if I'd just had eight directional buttons.
Essentially, my view:
Keyboard+mouse has more interaction precision, since you can use the mouse to click on stuff or whatever.
Controllers have more movement precision, since they have analog sticks, so movement doesn't have to just be "on" or "off."
Which is better depends on the game.
Question: What about controllers without analog sticks?
And what about games where movement is digital--as in, you either move at a given speed or you don't, and your movement is determined mostly by how long you've held down the button or tilted the stick?
They have very little concrete advantage over keyboards beyond simplicity.
They gain no benefit from analog sticks.
So it actually all boiled down to analog sticks.
...well, what about the action buttons side of things?
No advantage either way, really. They both have buttons.
If the game is complex, though, advantage to keyboard for having a lot of them.
It is positional layout of the buttons and the smaller number of the buttons.
Take, for example, my PS3 controller. On the right hand side of the controller, my thumb can reach over and control the right joystick, or any of the right-hand buttons (cross, triangle, etc). These buttons are the 'we do things' buttons, and are situated very conveniently right near where your thumb stands. They're also spaced slightly apart, so that unless your fingers are very big, you're unlikely to slip and hit another button. Behind, where my index finger sits, are the R1/R2/L1/L2 buttons, which also have various effects.
Generally, console games are designed as such that you'll only ever need the press three buttons at once; movement (left joystick or D-pad), the right-hand buttons, and the shoulder buttons. The controllers are built specifically to make this as easy as possible to use.
Meanwhile, a keyboard's primary usage is to type. This is adapted for gaming purposes, but unless you get a specially designed keyboard, it's not going to fit as well as a controller.
There is also the point that with WASD, you can only get up to 8 directions at a time, while with a controller, you can get in the realms of 360 directions of movement and differing degrees of sensitivity, offering a marked improvement in how you control your character.
There is. 'Cause it's there, and not on a controller. The point is that a moment's distraction can cause you to slip a row or column on a keyboard and not notice because of the plethora of keys and the consistency of their texture. This is impossible with a controller.
If one thing is impossible but another is possible, then the possible thing is infinitely more likely to occur than the impossible thing. This is logic and nothing more.
These aren't typically used, though, and were never intended for games in the first place. Those arrow buttons exist for mouse-free software manipulation.
A standard controller these days includes one or two control sticks; the old style of NES controller is well out of date. Even without a control stick or two, though, a controller typically includes shoulder buttons (ergo making the experience of play more "shapely" -- it's a part of the sectoring I mentioned before). At the very least, one wraps their hands around a controller, whereas one rests their hands on a keyboard.
It's impossible for me to hit a numpad on a controller, but it's equally possible (as for a row slip) for a moment's distraction to cause my finger to slip off a controller button or stick.
> aren't typically used
what
Exactly what it said. Almost all PC games do not use the arrow keys.
They aren't typically used by designers. They're too remote from other buttons (while directly around WASD you have 1,2,3, tab, q, e, caps lock, f, left shift, z, x, and c, around the arrow keys you have right ctrl, right shift, enter, numbad 0, 1 and 4). They're on the right-hand side of the keyboard, so you'll generally end up locking people out of using a mouse if you use them because they don't have a right hand to use them. And they're situated at the bottom right of the keyboard, about as far away from any useful buttons as you can get without being the numpad's enter key.
Plus, it's awkward as hell to situate your right hand in such a position as it can comfortably rest and press the arrow keys for long periods of time without damaging your fingers.
/me looks through Steam library and games folders and backloggery
And Yet It Moves, Aquaria (option), Bastion (I think), Blocks That Matter, Braid, Chantelise, Defy Gravity (either that or WASD, but effectively the same result), EDGE, Fortune Summoners (presumably?), Gish (I think so), Recettear, Rusty Hearts, Saira, Spiral Knights, Starscape (I think), Steel Storm (option, I think), Terraria (option), Tobe's Vertical Adventure (option, which I use), Ys Origin (presumably), Ys: the Oath in Felghana, Eden Eternal (option), Acceleration of Suguri, Action Fist!, Eternal Daughter, Gundemonium, Guxt, Hard Hat 3, Ikachan (I think), Mega Man: a Day in the Limelight, Rockman 7FC, Rockman 8FC, Spelunky, Stealth Bastard, Stepmania, Stealth Bastard, Syobon Action, Touhou, Tower of Heaven, Trauma (option), Vizati, Yume Nikki, Knytt Stories, Cave Story, La-Mulana, Flying Red Barrel, Explodemon, Grid Wars, Bunny Must Die!, and a huge crapton of flash games.
Something's wrong here.
Put it this way: the arrow keys aren't typically used in conjunction with the mouse. Note how with one hand in WASD position and the other on the mouse, your shoulders are a natural distance apart. Most PC games use the mouse for precision purposes -- most games that don't would be indie titles imitating the console games of yesteryear.
Most of those games don't involve anything but arrow keys and three to four other buttons, mostly the mouse.
In fact, for most of those, console controllers would work exactly as well or even better than keyboards.
^^ That I know, since Terraria forced me to learn WASD for platforming.
^
Yeah, that's what I figured before I typed up this list. This list notably omits stuff like TF2, Age of Empires, and stuff with more complex controls.
But for these "simpler-control" games, why would console controllers work better, when you have more fingers on the keyboard to control your movement and action inputs? Or is it just that I'm more used to using keyboard for these sorts of games?
That depends on which console controller it is. The PS3 controller might be fine, but the 360's controller has awful directional buttons and really, awful buttons in general so it actually probably wouldn't be better. I think the PS3 controller is pretty much the same as previous Playstation controllers though, right? So that is probably better.
Because for most of those games, you don't need more fingers. All you need is to press a small set of buttons. Cave Story, for instance, works fine on the Wii. Touhou needs only a four-directional movement system (the D-Pad), a shoot button, and a bomb button, which is conveniently exactly what the DS offers.
A game like Spiral Knights is iffy, because it uses the mouse, but I'm unclear on whether or not the mouse could be replaced with regular buttons.
^ The 360's controller isn't that bad as long as you don't have small hands. The buttons are shaped really awkwardly though.
The PS3 and the DS in general are great for this though.
What I mean is that it's easier to get precision controls when you can lift one finger for left and depress one finger for right to instantly change direction (or decelerate, if need be), rather than to move one's thumb from the left direction button to the right direction button, because the latter is a slower process when it comes down to instantaneous reflexes.
Take the DS's D-Pad, where it's perfectly possible to just slide your finger over. Or the 3DS's circle pad, which is pretty much exactly as efficient.
I'm actually kind of becoming an arcade stick fanboy, which annoys even me.
I can't help but notice that you mostly seem to be talking about controllers manufactured over a decade ago, when movement with the directional buttons was a thing.
They're still a thing in some cases.
An optional thing.
Hell, it isn't even the norm for handhelds now that the 3DS is out.
It's still useful for DS/3DS games that have a four-directional movement system and a quick movement system.
Definitely true. My point is more that even in the one system line that was still using it, it's being phased out.
As soon as they discovered an alternative that would work, in fact.
D-Pads are basically obsolete outside of certain situational things nowadays.
> I can't help but notice that you mostly seem to be talking about controllers manufactured over a decade ago, when movement with the directional buttons was a thing.
Yeah, it took me a while to realize that I wasn't accounting for analog sticks being standard on all controllers these days. Partly because I don't play games that use them (partly by necessity since they don't work well with the fact that I only have a keyboard, partly because I haven't taken a liking to the games that do (since I still mainly focus on platformers and top-down games, and use WASD+mouse for 3D games because I buy ones for computers).
That said, I still think that d-pads have advantages when it comes to games structured as platformers. Smash Melee, which I cited earlier, is in fact one of those, despite being on a system that uses analog sticks as controls. For example, you have to double-tap a direction to run; it's far easier to double-tap a button than it is to double-swing an analog stick (which I've had trouble doing accurately a pretty significant fraction of the time). Same goes with Pikachu's recovery move, the quick-attack, where you have to pick two different cardinal/intercardinal directions if you want to do a double-recovery, and where I frequently end up not tilting the stick in a different enough direction and getting only one quick-attack--that's something that would be helped by discretization of my control inputs.
TL;DR: ITT: GMH continues to play games that primarily use the eight cardinal and intercardinal directions for movement
That explains half of the issue. The d-pad/analog-stick half, specifically.
Well, though SSB /is/ a platformer, it isn't really based around having any precision of movement controls -- rather, you just need to know which direction you want to be in.
Yeah, but I'd argue that that's just bad design on SSB's part; how many other games require you to do that?
Umm, you don't need to double-tap in Smash, a quick tap works just fine. Well, that's how it is in Brawl, I haven't played Melee in ages.