How do people deal with console FPSes over PC ones?

[Continuity]

Well, I'm the exact opposite.

I recently got TF2, and I can't hit anything worth a fucking crap. It's legitimately impossible for me.

I assume you're saying you have some difficulty with the M&K controls? well no one said M&K was easy, what it does do however is exactly what you tell it to with pinpoint accuracy... so that gap between what you want to achieve and what actually happens is 100% down to skill or lack of the same, with a controller however you are at least in part fighting the inaccuracy of the stick and the contrary actions of the aim-assist... however it may be easier to achieve good results, simply because those good results are note purely resting on skill.

@MOTHERfan42: Yeah I don't get it either, but at the end of the day its personal preference what controls someone wants to play a game with. Thats not to say the controls are on an equal footing capability wise but just to recognise that it doesn't really matter a hill of beans whether someone uses poor controls in a game or not... at the end of the day what you're looking for from a game is entertainment, and so long as the controls aren't getting in the way of that for you then its all good.

 

[spartan231490]

Once upon a time, I legitimately thought I hated FPS games. I only played CoD4 on my 360 and I can only remember how frustrating it was. Not only were the people complete assholes, but I could never hit anything to save my life, excluding maybe with a rocket launcher. When I played my first FPS on the PC with a keyboard and mouse, it was an eye opening experience. I could point my crosshair towards what I wanted to hit and my bullets would actually make contact! Granted, I'm not claiming to be the best PC gamer ever, but my mind explodes whenever I hear someone say they prefer to play a FPS with a controller. To me, the pinpoint accuracy of a mouse is infinitely superior to whatever little aim you can attain with a controller's right analog stick. Can someone explain to me how people play these types of games with a controller?

I have "pinpoint accuracy" with a controller. Much better than I could ever attain with keyboard and mouse. I hate mouse games, I can never use the mouse accurately. I never understand these threads, I could never use a mouse and keyboard more accurately than I could my 360 controller, not if I practiced for years.

 

[Katana314]

Once upon a time, I legitimately thought I hated FPS games. I only played CoD4 on my 360 and I can only remember how frustrating it was. Not only were the people complete assholes, but I could never hit anything to save my life, excluding maybe with a rocket launcher. When I played my first FPS on the PC with a keyboard and mouse, it was an eye opening experience. I could point my crosshair towards what I wanted to hit and my bullets would actually make contact! Granted, I'm not claiming to be the best PC gamer ever, but my mind explodes whenever I hear someone say they prefer to play a FPS with a controller. To me, the pinpoint accuracy of a mouse is infinitely superior to whatever little aim you can attain with a controller's right analog stick. Can someone explain to me how people play these types of games with a controller?

I have "pinpoint accuracy" with a controller. Much better than I could ever attain with keyboard and mouse. I hate mouse games, I can never use the mouse accurately. I never understand these threads, I could never use a mouse and keyboard more accurately than I could my 360 controller, not if I practiced for years.

Try doing this with a controller?


I'm sure you have better accuracy with a controller; it's just the system you're more used to. But if you ever wanted to get better than what is physically possible with a controller, you need to use a mouse.

In a way, it's like a sniper rifle vs an assault rifle (speaking in real-life terms) A sniper rifle takes a bit more work to get used to, but you simply can't shoot a target two miles away with an assault rifle no matter how good you are. (In this analogy, I'm replacing "flexibility" in aiming with "range")

 

[Continuity]

I have "pinpoint accuracy" with a controller.

No I'm sorry you don't, you may be very competent with an analogue stick, very competent even, but the stick has built-in acceleration and a relatively small track length, meaning you dont have to move the stick far to achieve a correspondingly large movement on the screen. A mouse set to a low DPI or similar in game settings can achieve a minute on screen movement for a very large movement on the mat - this is accuracy.
Of course accuracy comes at the price of speed which is why a gamer has to balance the need for accuracy (a high "/360 ratio) with the need for speed (a low "/360 ratio), a good balance point is at about 10 inches movement on the mat for a 360 degree turn on the screen, thats a 10 inch movement controlled by your whole hand with no artificial acceleration vs an inch or so movement on a thumb stick controlled by your thumb with very substantial artificial acceleration.
A pro CS player on the other hand may play at 20"/360 or even 40"/360 achieving insane accuracy whilst flailing their arm around a colossal mouse mat at high speeds. Edit: Though I believe the average pro sens is 10"/360.

 

[Terminate421]

Its preference and content that affect controls.

I prefer controllers due to a smooth and easy to map interface.
Computers may be nice for much larger FPS's such as...Crysis. But I guess it comes down to processing power. Crysis has ALOT with it, so it will require a keyboard. Call of duty is usually limited to shooting controls, then X to either reload or interact.

 

[spartan231490]

I have "pinpoint accuracy" with a controller.

No I'm sorry you don't, you may be very competent with an analogue stick, very competent even, but the stick has built-in acceleration and a relatively small track length, meaning you dont have to move the stick far to achieve a correspondingly large movement on the screen. A mouse set to a low DPI or similar in game settings can achieve a minute on screen movement for a very large movement on the mat - this is accuracy.
Of course accuracy comes at the price of speed which is why a gamer has to balance the need for accuracy (a high "/360 ratio) with the need for speed (a low "/360 ratio), a good balance point is at about 10 inches movement on the mat for a 360 degree turn on the screen, thats a 10 inch movement controlled by your whole hand with no artificial acceleration vs an inch or so movement on a thumb stick controlled by your thumb with very substantial artificial acceleration.
A pro CS player on the other hand may play at 20"/360 or even 40"/360 achieving insane accuracy whilst flailing their arm around a colossal mouse mat at high speeds.

I like how you assume I can't do something just because you can't. That said, your right, I don't have quite pinpoint accuracy with my 360 controller's right analog, but I have far more precision and speed on large movements. Say, more than about 5 degrees of angle change, and for less than that, I just move my person with the left analog. This gives me the added precision I need for very small angle adjustments. Since I can accomplish the small precise movements with a controller, I see no benefit to giving up the large scale speed and flexibility of the 360 for something I already have.

Especially since I can never get a mouse to work like you are talking. If I move my mouse 5 inches back and forth at even moderate speed, the curser doesn't return to the same point. And that's the case with every mouse I've ever used. Even if I just moved it quickly to the right, and slowly back to the left, the curser wouldn't return to the same place every time.

 

[spartan231490]

Once upon a time, I legitimately thought I hated FPS games. I only played CoD4 on my 360 and I can only remember how frustrating it was. Not only were the people complete assholes, but I could never hit anything to save my life, excluding maybe with a rocket launcher. When I played my first FPS on the PC with a keyboard and mouse, it was an eye opening experience. I could point my crosshair towards what I wanted to hit and my bullets would actually make contact! Granted, I'm not claiming to be the best PC gamer ever, but my mind explodes whenever I hear someone say they prefer to play a FPS with a controller. To me, the pinpoint accuracy of a mouse is infinitely superior to whatever little aim you can attain with a controller's right analog stick. Can someone explain to me how people play these types of games with a controller?

I have "pinpoint accuracy" with a controller. Much better than I could ever attain with keyboard and mouse. I hate mouse games, I can never use the mouse accurately. I never understand these threads, I could never use a mouse and keyboard more accurately than I could my 360 controller, not if I practiced for years.

Try doing this with a controller?


I'm sure you have better accuracy with a controller; it's just the system you're more used to. But if you ever wanted to get better than what is physically possible with a controller, you need to use a mouse.

In a way, it's like a sniper rifle vs an assault rifle (speaking in real-life terms) A sniper rifle takes a bit more work to get used to, but you simply can't shoot a target two miles away with an assault rifle no matter how good you are. (In this analogy, I'm replacing "flexibility" in aiming with "range")

Unfortunately, I can't watch your video because of my internet(it's a long story) but based on the title, it's just a quick flick to the target and a great shot dead center. I can do that with a controller. Not always, I'd say between half the time and 3/4 of the time, on average. When i'm really, for lack of a better term, "in the zone," it's well above 90% of the time. The one problem I have with the controller is long range shots using a non-zooming weapon, just because the difference between a hit and a miss is so small, but I prefer close combat anyway, so I just take cover and work around to get closer.

 

[Plazmatic]

the only FPS I play on consoles is Resistance. and I only play the single player.

FPS multiplayer on consoles are terrible, there's so little control with the right stick. no wonder everybody uses auto aim

Who's everybody? I play with people with legitimate skill, calling "HAX!!1!" on someone for being better than you is insane. People use aim bots on PC, even more so than console.

Your are very ignorant, aim assist in console games is automatically put it by the developers, it isn't some added hack some one put in, so no, more people on the console use aim assisting techniques than pc players, and those pc players that try to play on servers that do have aimbot are kicked by the admins.

And you are very late to the party.

And so are you.

 

[Katana314]

Once upon a time, I legitimately thought I hated FPS games. I only played CoD4 on my 360 and I can only remember how frustrating it was. Not only were the people complete assholes, but I could never hit anything to save my life, excluding maybe with a rocket launcher. When I played my first FPS on the PC with a keyboard and mouse, it was an eye opening experience. I could point my crosshair towards what I wanted to hit and my bullets would actually make contact! Granted, I'm not claiming to be the best PC gamer ever, but my mind explodes whenever I hear someone say they prefer to play a FPS with a controller. To me, the pinpoint accuracy of a mouse is infinitely superior to whatever little aim you can attain with a controller's right analog stick. Can someone explain to me how people play these types of games with a controller?

I have "pinpoint accuracy" with a controller. Much better than I could ever attain with keyboard and mouse. I hate mouse games, I can never use the mouse accurately. I never understand these threads, I could never use a mouse and keyboard more accurately than I could my 360 controller, not if I practiced for years.

Try doing this with a controller?


I'm sure you have better accuracy with a controller; it's just the system you're more used to. But if you ever wanted to get better than what is physically possible with a controller, you need to use a mouse.

In a way, it's like a sniper rifle vs an assault rifle (speaking in real-life terms) A sniper rifle takes a bit more work to get used to, but you simply can't shoot a target two miles away with an assault rifle no matter how good you are. (In this analogy, I'm replacing "flexibility" in aiming with "range")

Unfortunately, I can't watch your video because of my internet(it's a long story) but based on the title, it's just a quick flick to the target and a great shot dead center. I can do that with a controller. Not always, I'd say between half the time and 3/4 of the time, on average. When i'm really, for lack of a better term, "in the zone," it's well above 90% of the time. The one problem I have with the controller is long range shots using a non-zooming weapon, just because the difference between a hit and a miss is so small, but I prefer close combat anyway, so I just take cover and work around to get closer.

To summarize the video, he is running forward down a hallway, and in a matter of 1/5th of a second, turns 90 degrees to someone he noticed elsewhere, fires, and turns back the direction he was facing. (all in about 0.2 seconds) It doesn't matter how good you are; controllers need you to hold down that direction for a period of time to face that way.

Of course, that sort of thing isn't really needed as often, since games like Quake and Unreal Tournament aren't really console games.

 

[Continuity]

I like how you assume I can't do something just because you can't. That said, your right, I don't have quite pinpoint accuracy with my 360 controller's right analog, but I have far more precision and speed on large movements. Say, more than about 5 degrees of angle change, and for less than that, I just move my person with the left analog. This gives me the added precision I need for very small angle adjustments. Since I can accomplish the small precise movements with a controller, I see no benefit to giving up the large scale speed and flexibility of the 360 for something I already have.

Well you've relieved my ignorance on a point there, I didn't know that some games have one stick at a lower sensitivity than the other... that will give you much more control than I was thinking. However even so you're going to hit a limit on how accurate you can get using a thumb stick especially when that stick has acceleration on it... turn off aim-assist and you'll find you have difficulty tracking targets as the cross-hair keeps accelerating off the target.
Also with a mouse you can have the best of both at one sensitivity, at low sens you have good target tracking and good accuracy plus the option of flicking your arm across the mat to achieve a fast turn.

Especially since I can never get a mouse to work like you are talking. If I move my mouse 5 inches back and forth at even moderate speed, the curser doesn't return to the same point. And that's the case with every mouse I've ever used. Even if I just moved it quickly to the right, and slowly back to the left, the curser wouldn't return to the same place every time.

True there are a lot of problems with mice in games these days, mostly because a lot of the game engines e.g. the UT engine, are designed predominantly for controllers, with mice basically having to put up with emulating an analogue stick. Valve games don't have this problem but games like Bioshock and Borderlands I find almost unplayable without .ini hacks.
Plus the marketing tendency for gaming mice is to have high DPI as a selling point, and high DPI is a fine thing for accurate tracking but its a bad thing for sensitivity, giving most gaming mice insanely high default sensitivity. Also many mice have built in smoothing or inadequacies such as low tracking through-put limits meaning that as you're accelerating the mouse across the mat the corresponding acceleration of the cursor on the screen caps at a certain point or even goes into negative acceleration due to the mouse sensor basically being overloaded with data.

Most of these things can be gotten around if you know what you're about but yes, M&K gaming is in something of a sorry state in general.

 

[The Heik]

That's strange. I understand you are used to a controller. But my thoughts about it are the exact opposite of this.

I've been primarily playing on my PC for a few years now, but before that I played everything on a console. I understand how FPS games work on consoles, and I just do not see it the same way you do.

I completely disagree about smoothness. Even nowadays I own a 360 and PS3, I don't have any FPS games installed at the moment, the one FPS game I've been playing recently is Halo: Reach. Which we all know to be 360 exclusive, and is designed to work as intuitively with the controller as possible, right?

But I find that even with that, the controls are for Reach unfortunately fall under most of the same limitations as other console FPS games.
I don't agree about smoothness. I find aiming on a console to be jerky, rough, and muddy. Faster turning sensitivity makes you better in close quarters but affects your aim over a distance and vice versa. If your sensitivity is high then chances are you are going to have to compensate for the jerky nature by using movement instead of aiming alone. It can even be disorienting when in close range against someone.

Using a controller for an FPS game makes me feel like I'm fighting against it just to get things done. I'm by no means a bad player and I'm very effective at getting kills and accomplishing objectives while playing on Reach, but I always aware of the limitations controllers possess, such as inherent muddiness. Just watching the screen is full of jerky leftrightupdown movements. It's just not what I would call smooth.

Even in the old days of Halo 2, I habitually played with a controller and the sensitivity turned up to 10. Which was insane getting used to, but I forced myself to because I was tired of the muddy feeling of aiming. Mastering the 10 sensitivity made me a more effective player, my ability in the game increased, all from learning to aim faster. Sure it made me feel good I was crazy enough to get accustomed to it, but all this still made me feel like I was fighting the controls of the game.

I don't think controllers are by design for shooters either. I think they work much better for adventure games, platformers, some third person shooters, and sports games. In my eyes, FPS games are on the very bottom of the list.

As I mentioned before there is a degree of adaptation to the the system that you use. Since you are primarily a PC user, that means that using a PC control layout is what your brain is geared to, so the sole FPS that you play on a console is "out of the norm" to what you usually do. No matter what it's going to feel clunky.

Now I am primarily a controller user, but when I first started playing FPS games, I was PC exclusive player. And the first time I played a console shooter it felt weird. But i found that, as time went on, I came to prefer it because of the smoothness that I got from the stick intensity function. I found what the controller offers in shooter games is smooth tracking ability. Say you are trying to snipe a moving enemy in the distance. A mouse would have to constantly move in order to track them properly, each move possibly leading to the skew that occurs with extended tracking that I mentioned earlier. This never happens with a controller. You can just nudge the stick until the tracking matches the target's speed and it will always track them like that until either the target moves to a different range or starts moving at a different pace, both of which only require the slightest of nudges. It's simply lower maintenance to use while shooting.

But really this is rather a moot point, since it has already been stated that one's experience with a specific control scheme trumps everything else. The best example of this is whether one is left- or right-handed. Technically speaking, we are fully able to use either hand, it's simply that we have more experience with one or the other, so we left our skills with the off-hand to wither. That's all this really is. All I can say is that being someone who has played with both systems heavily, that the controller has just better fit the requirements of the game.

 

[DesertMummy]

Ummm, I just am? I have no idea how, but I am worlds better with a stick than a mouse. It might be because I am twitching my thumb, rather than moving my hand. I have played against a friend who was using a keyboard and mouse and me a 360 gamepad, and I mopped the fucking floor with him. On the other hand, when I play TF2, Half Life opposing force online and the likes, I am simply not as good.

 

[spartan231490]

I like how you assume I can't do something just because you can't. That said, your right, I don't have quite pinpoint accuracy with my 360 controller's right analog, but I have far more precision and speed on large movements. Say, more than about 5 degrees of angle change, and for less than that, I just move my person with the left analog. This gives me the added precision I need for very small angle adjustments. Since I can accomplish the small precise movements with a controller, I see no benefit to giving up the large scale speed and flexibility of the 360 for something I already have.

Well you've relieved my ignorance on a point there, I didn't know that some games have one stick at a lower sensitivity than the other... that will give you much more control than I was thinking. However even so you're going to hit a limit on how accurate you can get using a thumb stick especially when that stick has acceleration on it... turn off aim-assist and you'll find you have difficulty tracking targets as the cross-hair keeps accelerating off the target.
Also with a mouse you can have the best of both at one sensitivity, at low sens you have good target tracking and good accuracy plus the option of flicking your arm across the mat to achieve a fast turn.

Especially since I can never get a mouse to work like you are talking. If I move my mouse 5 inches back and forth at even moderate speed, the curser doesn't return to the same point. And that's the case with every mouse I've ever used. Even if I just moved it quickly to the right, and slowly back to the left, the curser wouldn't return to the same place every time.

True there are a lot of problems with mice in games these days, mostly because a lot of the game engines e.g. the UT engine, are designed predominantly for controllers, with mice basically having to put up with emulating an analogue stick. Valve games don't have this problem but games like Bioshock and Borderlands I find almost unplayable without .ini hacks.
Plus the marketing tendency for gaming mice is to have high DPI as a selling point, and high DPI is a fine thing for accurate tracking but its a bad thing for sensitivity, giving most gaming mice insanely high default sensitivity. Also many mice have built in smoothing or inadequacies such as low tracking through-put limits meaning that as you're accelerating the mouse across the mat the corresponding acceleration of the cursor on the screen caps at a certain point or even goes into negative acceleration due to the mouse sensor basically being overloaded with data.

Most of these things can be gotten around if you know what you're about but yes, M&K gaming is in something of a sorry state in general.

the sticks don't have diff sensitivities, I'm talking about the one you walk with. If you strafe a little to the left, it moves your cross-hairs a little to the left as well. It's a trick I learned for precision aiming when I was counter-sniping with my ARs in Black Ops.

I never play with auto-aim. It's WAY more fucking trouble than it's worth. It makes aiming non-uniform which really makes it difficult to be either precise or flexible. I just don't have the problems with controllers that most PC gamers seem to complain about. At least not enough to worry about, and not enough to convince me it's worth it to play with a keyboard and mouse which I find incredibly uncomfortable, and I can never find a mouse that works right as a mouse, much less as a game controller. IDK, maybe it's just me, but I don't have all the accuracy problems that every talks about with controllers. Not anymore, now that I'm familiar with and comfortable with the 360 controller.

 

[Continuity]

the sticks don't have diff sensitivities, I'm talking about the one you walk with. If you strafe a little to the left, it moves your cross-hairs a little to the left as well. It's a trick I learned for precision aiming when I was counter-sniping with my ARs in Black Ops.

Well to me that says everything that needs to be said about accuracy of aiming with a stick, if you're having to resort to using your strafe controls to achieve an accurate snipe shot :-/

So long as you're happy and comfortable with it though then its all good, at the end of the day the only thing on the line is your entertainment, so if you're happy then its good enough.

 

[Treblaine]

I just can. I can shoot down birds in red dead redemption without auto aim or dead eye.

But how quickly can you aim? Mouse isn't just more accurate, it is the SPEED the the precision that matters and more than that, the responsiveness. See you can literally in a millisecond reverse direction of a mouse, but with a thumbstick that requires you recentre the stick then try to direct it over in the opposite direction. That may seem subtle but when your opponent darts around unexpectedly you need to respond quickly. PC keyboard even has the advantage here, as though movement is digital with WASD controls you can dart left and right very quickly just by tapping A or D. Circle strafing is easy, just hold D and keep aiming at the target.

Number one, I can aim as quickly as I want to with sensitivity tuning. Number 2, I just don't give a shit about how superior your aiming methods are. I get it. The mouse is more accurate, the mouse can turn faster, the mouse can this, the mouse can that. I DON'T CARE! I can play FPS games perfectly fine with a controller and I'm tired of being told how superior the mouse is. I wish people would stop telling me, because this is probably the 10th time i've seen the same argument. It's getting really fucking annoying.

OK, so you know this already and you don't want to discuss how mouse is better than gamepad. WHY don't you care?

Why do you settle for less?

Don't you want something better? Like after you miss that shot that cost you a game, wouldn't you like to raise the stakes? As good as it is now you could have it even better with mouse + keyboard. Are you just comfortable and conservative, afraid of things you haven't tried before?

Why are you so disturbed by the idea that mouse + keyboard might be better? Have you really deluded yourself gamepad is on par with mouse?

We'd probably stop telling you if you gave mouse-aim a try.

 

[Popido]

It balances imo. The accuracy of the mouse is counteracted by the inaccuracy of the WASD keys for movement. The inaccuracy of the Analog stick for aiming is balanced by the accuracy of the other analog stick for movement.

In a perfect world you can merge the two. Or play Far Cry 2 which allows the controller and mouse to be used simultaneously.

....

"stands up and starts walking around while staring at the monitor"

I have no idea what you're talking about. All you really need is 8 directions and sneak/sprint buttons. Top that with mouses mobility and you're set to go.

 

[Mechanix]

Oh look, it's another thread where PC gamers pretentiously act like they don't understand consoles. We sure don't have many of these around.

People enjoy shooters on consoles because they're used to the controllers. Just because a mouse and keyboard are better tools, doesn't mean they are the most enjoyable.

 

[MOTHERfan42]

Why? WHY? Just be happy that your fellow gamers even exist, remember how 95% of the world doesn't share your hobbies and interests? Shoot, I'm happy to meet someone that even knows what FPS stands for usually.