Darkasassin96 said:
Console controllers are perfect for shooters, never understood why people don think so.
Because anyone that's spent any appreciable amount of time playing them on PC finds game controllers slow and unresponsive.
Don't get me wrong, it works reasonably well, but if you take one thing home from the comparison between mouse and gamepad (keyboard isn't that great, but eh.), is that the aiming accuracy of a gamepad is absolutely atrocious.
I for instance miss about 2/3 of shots on a gamepad that I wouldn't even come close to missing using mouse aiming.
You can argue the point all you like, but the results speak for themselves.
Gamepads work, yes. But they are inferior to using a mouse to aim.
Saying a gamepad is perfect, given just how obviously better an alternative is... Well, it's like saying a crossbow is perfect, so why bother using a gun?
In the end you can do the same thing with either... But that doesn't mean one isn't better at the task than the other in most situations.
As for the RTS games ive moderately enjoyed the ones that are on the consoles, but why should we make a hiant controller when the only benefit is limited to a single genre of topdown strategy games. WHy not make it a periferal like the original wiis classic controller. Just because it could help in some doesnt mean it should be required for all.
The answer to this is simply that nobody uses optional controllers, especially expensive ones. Aside from which, the Wii U controller only works as well as it does because the console hardware is carefully optimised for it.
An optional peripheral wouldn't have been built that way, and thus would probably do very badly at what the Wii U gamepad manages. (Low latency wireless video streaming is a lot harder to pull off than it sounds.)
I've said this before, but it bears repeating: You cannot build a game around an optional controller. If you cannot rely on people owning such a controller, then you're stuck designing a game which will still be playable using the standard controller.
Thus, the game HAS to play well using standard controls, and the optional controls become limited to whatever can still work without being critical to the gameplay. (IE, optional controllers become gimmicks by default because you usually can't afford to make games that actually require features only it provides as part of core game mechanics.)
Even the Wii Classic controller suffers this fate. Despite being a traditional game controller, because it's not the default Wii controller, games that allow it to be used don't tend to do anything with it that plays to it's specific strengths. They merely re-map the control schemes that the remote + nunchuk allow.
There are almost no games that require it, aside from the virtual console games which emulate other systems which had different controllers to the wii anyway. And here we're talking about a relatively cheap controller, unlike the Wii-U gamepad which costs a fortune by comparison.
ATM the controllers are probably as good as they are ever going to get, personally PC gaming is a novelty to me. A controller is just so much more easier, your hands fit around it perfectly, you always know where the buttons are without looking and it is just all around easier. Whenever I play games on the Pc i always use the controller because it is better in my opinion. Then again I was indoctrinated on controllers so I suppose it is opinion, but honestly is having all of the buttons spread out over a flat surface better than having your hands curved around something with with the buttons always in the same place. Its easy to hit the wrong button without looking on pc just by accidentally returning one button to the side so your hands are at esdf rather than wasd. That can never happen on a controller.
I think you're focusing on the wrong thing with this comparison. The key to most games where the PC has superior controls is almost always the mouse, NOT the keyboard.
The only thing the keyboard has going for it is a lot of buttons. Now, admittedly this is sometimes a benefit too.
For instance, I've been playing Far Cry 3 on Xbox recently, and too many of the buttons have multiple functions.
Hold them down, they do one thing, press them quickly, they do another.
That's all well and good, but when one of those functions is 'heal', and the other is 'change weapons', I can tell you changing weapons when you meant to heal is liable to get you killed.
When the gamepad bindings start to get that complicated, you get exactly the same issues as you claim to be the problem with a keyboard. (hitting a button next to the one you intended.)
Of course, as anyone that has learned touch-typing knows, with enough practice you can know where the buttons on a keyboard are from muscle memory alone, without having to look.
But still, the keyboard is the weaker half of the PC control scheme.
The benefits of PC controls are mostly with the mouse.
RTS/Turn based strategy games? - Possible because of the mouse.
Simulation games (Sim City, etc?) - Work well because of the mouse.
First person shooters 'superior on PC?' - Mostly due to the accuracy of aiming with a mouse.
I could go on, but I think you get the picture.
If you're going to do a PC/Console comparison, remember it's the mouse, not the keyboard that is the key to PC games working well.
(Just as an aside, I can add to this that I own a laptop with a touchpad, and the touchpad is still OK for Simulations and RTS use, but absolutely useless for FPS controls. All the advantages of a mouse dissapear when using a touchpad. - which probably explains why shooters on tablet computers use pretend analog sticks instead...)
