What's your opinion on playing first-person shooters on a controller?

I honestly tried to convert to controllers when the Steam Link and Steam Controller came out in 2015. And it had accelerometers and a gyroscope. Wasn't trying to replace KB+M or use in online PVP. Just thought it would be nice to play Borderlands or No Mans Sky from the living room couch on a big ass TV.

And the god's honest truth is that I suck mighty on a console controller. I'm not wired with the muscle memory that I have after with 25+ years of KB+M. (the last console I purchased was a SNES) And I flounder (Stephen Furst Flounder) in the 3rd person games that were specifically designed for controllers: Star Wars Jedi, Middle-Earth, Marvel Spiderman. Even Stray is a struggle.

I did get the hang of Rocket League on a controller. But I'm not at all good at it.
 
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For traditional FPS I prefer K+M. I have moved over to a controller for everything else 2-3 years ago.

I can play on normal difficulty with a controller. I used to start on hard when I was 100% K+M and younger. It is more chill to sit on the couch with a controller, I am a convert. I even swapped my HTPC to my gaming PC in the living room. the grey areas for me are RDR2 and Borderlands. I use a controller until I need to shoot accurate and fast. I put a mouse on my couch arm reset, a controller in my left hand, mouse in my right hand. Avatar has been no problem on normal with a controller.

TF2/BF/COD type games 100% K+M because I can't aim with a controller as I can with a mouse.
 
socK said:
Nothing compared to how broken dead eye is with a mouse.

Literally trivial to just wipe the entire screen in 3 seconds.


I don't believe this. Even if you had the aim, you can't move the same on a controller or track ball. It's impossible to replicate the movement to accelerate in Quake. And if you have zero map control, winning duel is utterly impossible against anyone who has even the vaguest idea.

You'll literally be moving at half the speed of another player or less on average probably.

There's no way to even do the most basic of trick jumps like jumping from bridge to rail on DM6. You need a decent strafe jump to make the jump - you can't just run at it and you can't just turn into it. There's a deliberate way to do it or you'll gain no speed and fail.




I don't remember how Halo was, but Destiny was _absurd_ with the aim assist. It was so heavy that someone driving past you on a vehicle in PVP could actually pull your aim off whoever you were shooting as they raced by at 40mph.

Literally your goal was to just get your cross hair on someone then only adjust to their head. The game will track perfectly unless they teleport and you'll actually fuck up your aim if you try to track them.
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I haven't played modern shooters with a controller but the aim assist is done in a specific way. For example, it won't aim for you, but it will lower the sensitivity when you're on your target.

Console shooters usually have increased TTK to compensate for aim assist. In the end it still feels fair and competitive.
 
t1337duder said:
I haven't played modern shooters with a controller but the aim assist is done in a specific way. For example, it won't aim for you, but it will lower the sensitivity when you're on your target.

Console shooters usually have increased TTK to compensate for aim assist. In the end it still feels fair and competitive.
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There are other features for controllers:

Snap-to when you aim down sights. If your crosshair is within detection range of a target, simply pressing the ADS button will snap your crosshair center mass on the target. This is what NattyKathy was referring to on the last page.

Magnetism. If your crosshair is honed in on a target the crosshair will follow the target within a fixed range of sensitivity of the joystick.

It's not fair and competitive. There is a graphic that has been posted here before that compared the skill ceiling between controller and KB&M on a sample of games. It found that the skill ceiling is much higher on KB&M with auto aim features than it is on controller. If it were fair and balanced then the data points for both control methods would be tightly grouped around the same percentage. This is why PC players have gone to the lengths of spoofing controller input while using KB&M by daisy chaining with devices like the Cronus MAX to bring that balance back.
 
Armenius said:
There are other features for controllers:

Snap-to when you aim down sights. If your crosshair is within detection range of a target, simply pressing the ADS button will snap your crosshair center mass on the target. This is what NattyKathy was referring to on the last page.

Magnetism. If your crosshair is honed in on a target the crosshair will follow the target within a fixed range of sensitivity of the joystick.

It's not fair and competitive. There is a graphic that has been posted here before that compared the skill ceiling between controller and KB&M on a sample of games. It found that the skill ceiling is much higher on KB&M with auto aim features than it is on controller. If it were fair and balanced then the data points for both control methods would be tightly grouped around the same percentage. This is why PC players have gone to the lengths of spoofing controller input while using KB&M by daisy chaining with devices like the Cronus MAX to bring that balance back.
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Yeah the skill cap for aiming is very low on controllers since they add so much aim assist and make everything hitscan.

In games with very short time to kill like COD there is almost no skill with aiming, it's mainly just reflexes and ping. You tap left trigger to "quick scope" and auto lock onto them and immediately press right trigger without really aiming.

There isn't a lot of skill differential in aiming in longer TTK game like Halo either. One of the things you see at the highest level is moving in a way that specifically messes up the enemy's aim assist. It's not moving unpredictably, zig zaging, etc, similar to how you would make yourself hard to hit IRL it's completely different and unintuitive.


And yeah people spoof controllers so they get auto-aim with keyboard and mouse. They do this both on PC and consoles. It's cheating and games try to stop it. They've recently started cracking down harder on it and banning more people Xbox started banning alot of the devices a couple months ago and there were tons of cheaters crying about it.
 
I can't do it. I tried playing Goldeneye for old times sake with a buddy when it released on Xbox, literally don't have the dexterity for it anymore. Nothing about FPS on controller is fluid in my brain.
 
Tried to play FPS' back in the day when Golden Eye came out, I could not play with a controller everything about it was weird. I play with KB/M exclusively... However, that being said I think it is because I did not teach myself to play with a controller and had I invested the time into the controller that I did with KB/M then I believe that it would be possible.
 
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I was fine back in the days of Goldeneye, but as shooters got faster I hated it. I just can't do it. My brain just short circuits.
 
I think it's fine. I just finished RDR2 with keyboard & mouse aim assist off. This game is so ridiculously easy. Zero difficulty anywhere, and then it hit me why: it's a console port. They have to make the game easy for the kids on their consoles and controllers, TV input lag, etc. The problem is they don't compensate for it when porting the game over which they could have done with more enemies, less ammo around, etc. I definitely wouldn't expect humans to move faster.

In other words, it's fine using a controller because FPS are too easy these days IMO. The last great FPS I played was Unreal Tournament 2004, but look at why it would have been mad to use a controller. You have characters jumping all over the place with their double jumps, bouncing off walls, etc. I haven't played an online FPS in a while, though. I really don't know what is out there that is fast enough to think using a controller would be ridiculous.
 
Dan_D said:
I hate it. I won't use controllers on PC for anything other than driving / flying games.
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I play Mortal Kombat on PC and I'll use a PS5 controller for that but anything else is mouse and keyboard.
 
sharknice said:
They literally brought in soccer moms to test Halo 2 to make sure it was playable by anyone with a controller. I was a big Halo fan back in the day and read all the dev blogs. This is something they bragged about. They wanted Halo to be more mainstream, and it was.


A lot of the pro community did not like Halo 2 because it significantly lessened the skill gap you could have in aim.

It wasn't just the autoaim that was increased, the game was designed around making aiming easier.

In Halo 1 every weapon shot a projectile. In Halo 2 nearly every weapon was hitscan.
This was partially to make online play work better, but also to make aiming easier. In Halo 1 you had to lead people with your shots which is very hard with a controller, even with all the aim assistance.
In Halo 2 you could fire your sniper rifle a foot to the side of someone's head, then swipe your joystick to the side so it crosses their head (after the bullet has already left your gun) and it would count as a headshot.
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Loved playing Halo 1 online going through GameSpy. Oh the memories of Halo LAN parties.
 
FlawleZ said:
I play Mortal Kombat on PC and I'll use a PS5 controller for that but anything else is mouse and keyboard.
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I would also add racing games to that since I don't have a wheel and some third person pov games. Games like Assassin's Creed always felt more natural on a controller over a keyboard and mouse at least for combat.
 
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