Gamepad vs Mouse & Keyboard Discussion

[Bad Sector]

Oh, I don't know. Maybe things like using multiple tabs within tabs

So the game has multiple screens with categories at each screen and this is an issue because..?

for something that used to be on one screen

What used to be one screen? Are you comparing with Fallout 1 and Fallout 2's UI? Because those games certainly do not have their UI be just one screen: there is the character screen, the inventory (one of the worst by far inventory screens ever made, a major waste of screen space at a time when there wasn't really much of it available and was only able to show a tiny handful of items - a PITA especially in Fallout 2 which had a lot more pickable items), the data reader screen, the quest screen, the area map, the world map, ...

What "one screen"?

text- and list-based inventories in a game that's largely built around collecting trash

Text and list-based inventories with filters and sorting are exactly what you want in a game where you collect a ton of stuff. Not being able to sort items by their weight or price in (vanilla) Morrowind and having to hover over each item with the way too similar (and often identical) icons are the two major issues i have with its inventory UI.

clunky and bugged af aimbot that breaks the flow of otherwise rt game every 2 minutes, general UI so unwieldy that it needs to stop an otherwise rt game for everyone bar the player every time you use it, completely annihilating any illusion of challenge and difficulty.

I have no idea what you are referring to.

Are you being facetious right now? I seriously can't tell, but the fact you mentioned being a reviewer and then almost immediately saying you don't see a problem with F3 UI gives me a bad feeling.

I'm not sure what "bad feeling" you get. FWIW i'm not a reviewer, I used to write some reviews for a paper magazine like 13 years ago though even then most of my articles weren't reviews but opinion pieces on technical and game design topics. Professionally i've been working on game development.

Some may say you need to design GUI's with larger font and the like for console players, some of whom (decide to) sit some unreasonable distance from the TV,

...or because PC players may want to play their games on the TV either connected directly or via Steam Link. Or because they have a small monitor and aren't 16 year olds with perfect eyesight anymore. Or because they are using a GPD Win or a similar handheld PC to play games. Or because they are streaming their PC games to a handheld device. Or because they just have a shitty PC and can only play at low resolutions.

Or because of any other reasons that just help to make the game more accessible - not everyone is playing a game the same way with the same controls or monitor or setting or conditions. The PC's advantage as a gaming platform isn't the uberspeed or whatever /r/pcmasterrace garbage people may think (the vast majority of PC gamers do not even have such high end systems). Its advantage is its versatility, allowing people to play what they like however they like by enabling the use of way more input and output schemes than all other platforms combined. Good PC games with good controls and good UIs are those that actually allow people to take advantage of PC enabling that, not those that force you to play in a specific way.

EDIT: toned down my response, no point in getting antagonistic.

 

[Ash]

He was referring to VATS by the way. My impression is they added vats as some poor attempt to appease classic FO purists/fanatics,. They even intended for it to be possible to play the game using only VATS. that and it makes for some ingenious cinematic marketing material in trailers and such. Really I'm sure they intended for it to be worthwhile when starting out, but the end result didn't turn out that way. It would actually be a decent mechanic if it weren't so spammable and OP. You get 80% damage reduction while it is active ffs. 80%! (New Vegas rightly nerfed it to 20%. good start but it is still broke).

 

[Bad Sector]

Ah i see. Yeah, it is a bit OP, though FWIW -and that is on topic :-P- when i made my first New Vegas playthrough with a gamepad i was still not very accustomed to gamepads in FPP games and VATS helped a lot (it was also quite nice since at the time i had bought a brand new 47" TV which i had connected to my PC as a monitor and played the game from my bed... too bad i do not have the space -or TV, since i gave it to my sister at some point- nowadays to do that again. I have a big ass CRT on my bedroom but it is at the side of the bed, not across it and it isn't comfortable - and that thing is so heavy that i'd rather rotate the bed, but there is no space :-P).

 

[Morenatsu.]

So Ash is a decline-loving retard now? WTF?

 

[LudensCogitet]

Yeah, lets throw every game and genre into a blender so that it can be everywhere and for everyone, "not much difference". What's the worst that could happen.

Said someone around two and a half decades ago.

Yep. Well said. This applies to genres, platforms, UI, every part of design. Even _if_ there isn't much of a difference between playing a game with a gamepad vs. mouse and keyboard (which is highly disputable) is that a good thing?
Is this not the definition of decline? The melding of everything into a lowest-common-denominator mass of homogeneous junk to get money from people who don't care?

Modern game developers (at least AAA, but it is everywhere I think) _begin_ designing a game with the presumption that it has to be playable with vastly different interfaces (KB + M, gamepad), on multiple size screens from 3 feet away and 10 feet away, in a dozen languages, with accessibility for color blind people, etc. etc. etc.

Imagine sitting down to write a song, but you have to write it for piano, guitar (electric and acoustic), and flute, and it has to sound good in a concert hall or a living room and it should be challenging for a virtuoso but approachable for a beginner.

 

[Latelistener]

The problem is that the lowest common denominator is not an input device, but the player. If you think casuals exist only on consoles, I have a surprise for you.

I remember that Polygon video with the guy playing Doom. He was really bad at it, but everyone were pointing out on the fact that he was playing it with a gamepad. I bet even if you gave him M/KB he would still suck.

And no, I'm not playing Doom on a gamepad, but I'm also not playing DMC and Assetto Corsa on M/KB, if you catch my meaning.

System Shock is actually in an interesting position. Back then they were only experimenting with controls, so it's not exactly an M/KB game.

I also see no clues that the remake will be a hardcore FPS. They're clearly aiming at the Bioshock crowd (while missing some important points of the original game).

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

That's called categorization.

Thank god for categorization, so that I can have separate tabs just to view SPECIAL values or rad count.

Bad game design = blame consoles, every time, not the devs behind silly/sellout decisions.

Who you blame makes absolutely no difference. What matters is that instead of coming up with their idea for a game and designing it around it, the devs need to focus on modern sensibilities like trash collecting crafting that then have to have control scheme design around them, despite the fact that the input device is not suited for it, then ultimately fail at it anyway and cause decline for everyone.

How do you come to terms with FO1's inventory when there is no console to blame?

There's nothing to come to terms with. Inventories that the player has to scroll through to find something every time are poor design by default. Coming back to my previous point however, Fallouts are not trash collecting games at all, they have nice and immediately obvious icons for every item of which you don't really carry that many and you ultimately don't have to spend that much time in the inventory (singular).

So the game has multiple screens with categories at each screen and this is an issue because..?

Umm... Sorry, I don't think I can do this.

Because those games certainly do not have their UI be just one screen

Using silly strawmen doesn't facilitate discussion. Nu-Fallouts use multiple screens and tabs for something that used to be on one in Fallout (like character info) and that's obviously what I meant.

I also like how you rant about an inventory that has literally one narrow, scrollable column with not that many items being one of the worst in history by far (and I agree that it is poorly designed overall), but then spend myriad paragraphs defending an inventory that uses exactly the same design principles just makes them incomparably worse by multiplying them, stretching to the entire screen, showering the player with hundreds of garbage items etc. WTF.

exactly what you want in a game

What you want from UI in a game, the absolute, absolute basics are things like: give access to the info you need using as little actions as possible, never ever (EV4R!!!) store information in a separate space unless absolutely necessary, be designed around the game and the way it plays so it won't do retarded stuff like obstructing entire view every couple of seconds, break the flow every couple of seconds or completely break the balance. Things that nu-Fallout UIs completely fail at, making them horrible.

Or because of any other reasons that just help to make the game more accessible - not everyone is playing a game the same way with the same controls or monitor or setting or conditions. The PC's advantage as a gaming platform isn't the uberspeed or whatever /r/pcmasterrace garbage people may think (the vast majority of PC gamers do not even have such high end systems). Its advantage is its versatility, allowing people to play what they like however they like by enabling the use of way more input and output schemes than all other platforms combined.

Amazingly enough, PC has more than one advantage when compared to modern consoles. Bar (to some extent) Nintendo, consoles are retarded PCs since couple generations ago and share pretty much same input and output options whenever someone feels like it. Back in the simpler days, people somehow knew that consoles being consoles and computers being computers is actually a good thing and that certain games suit certain platforms better, allowing to constantly evolve and improve the design instead of declining it for multiplatformization (that's probably not a word).

And one of the PC strengths is definitely ye olde K + M setup allowing to quickly and comfortably control games with complicated rulesets and lots of information. That's why I'm willing to defend classic Fallout UI from the common opinion that it's somehow horrible. It actually allows you do to pretty much anything with one keystroke + one mouseclick tops, bar some very few exceptions (like saving and loading, cause qs and ql wasn't standard back then). I'm painfully aware that many (most?) "PC gamers" have been condition out of using this advantage though. I get a sneaky feeling that many people on the codex would not be able to instinctively tell me which of the 1-8 keys correspond to which skilldex option when awoken in the middle of the night. The famous decline and all that.

Good PC games with good controls and good UIs are those that actually allow people to take advantage of PC enabling that, not those that force you to play in a specific way

I assume your dream combination of a game and UI is something like a 4X game that you can control with a racing wheel?

Btw, both of you made multiple attempts at the ultimate "but it was also bad in a game made over 2 decades ago so it's cool!!!" argument, congrats.

 

[Morenatsu.]

gamepad good becuz fps wuz pleyd with keybord duh

Oh wait, FPSes were made for keyboard and mouse since the very beginning. You could play them keyboard-only or with a joystick or gamepad or whatever if you wanted to, but that's not what they're primarily designed for. Don't be dumb.

 

[Trithne]

gamepad good becuz fps wuz pleyd with keybord duh

Oh wait, FPSes were made for keyboard and mouse since the very beginning. You could play them keyboard-only or with a joystick or gamepad or whatever if you wanted to, but that's not what they're primarily designed for. Don't be dumb.

Well when the FPS became a thing and we just called it a Doom Clone, there was no expectation that the end user even owned a mouse - System Shock was an exception in that it was not functionally playable without one, unlike Doom, Duke, et al. So really the "FPS" was designed just for the keyboard.

 

[Neuromancer]

Oh wait, FPSes were made for keyboard and mouse since the very beginning. You could play them keyboard-only or with a joystick or gamepad or whatever if you wanted to, but that's not what they're primarily designed for.

While I agree, that Ms+Kb is the best way to play most FPS games, historically that this is not completely true.

The first FPS games on the PC (which used different kinds of "fake" 3D engines) like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Duke 3D, etc. had some basic support for mouse, but it was very different to the mouselook from today. These games were made (and played) primarily with a keyboard.
Only the modern source ports added real mouse support to these old games.

Your argument is partly right, if you consider FPS with a complete 3D engine.
Although I think, that even Quake - the first one of real 3D FPS games to my knowledge) also didn't have mouse support from the very beginning but patched in in a later version (but I may be wrong here).

By the way, gamepads were practically non-existent for PCs at that time. You used an analog joystick for some games (but rarely for FPSs).

 

[Bad Sector]

I also like how you rant about an inventory that has literally one narrow, scrollable column with not that many items being one of the worst in history by far (and I agree that it is poorly designed overall), but then spend myriad paragraphs defending an inventory that uses exactly the same design principles just makes them incomparably worse by multiplying them, stretching to the entire screen, showering the player with hundreds of garbage items etc. WTF.

I already mentioned how New Vegas' inventory is wasting screen space, especially with larger FOV. However it is superior in that it shows you more items on a screenful and is much easier to browse because of the filtering and sorting it has. In Fallout 1 the inventory wasn't much of an issue because you wouldn't collect many items anyway, but it did became an issue in Fallout 2.

What you want from UI in a game, the absolute, absolute basics are things like: give access to the info you need using as little actions as possible, never ever (EV4R!!!) store information in a separate space unless absolutely necessary, be designed around the game and the way it plays

Look i'm not going to shoehorned into defending Bethesda's UI decisions since i do not even think they're really that great, but the UI in New Vegas at least does what you describe.

so it won't do retarded stuff like obstructing entire view every couple of seconds, break the flow every couple of seconds or completely break the balance.

Obstructing the entire view is essentially the same as changing to a different screen in other games which is something that you'd find in the vast majority of games released ANY year when PC gaming was a thing. Some do not even pause the game, e.g. the map view in Doom.

And one of the PC strengths is definitely ye olde K + M setup allowing to quickly and comfortably control games with complicated rulesets and lots of information.

Sure, and good PC games should allow for playing with a Keyboard and Mouse setup, like any other relatively mainstream setup the PC allows for (i think expecting games to be controlled by sight tracking devices isn't mainstream enough to be considered expected, but then again even that is something you can do on the PC with devices like Tobii).

That's why I'm willing to defend classic Fallout UI from the common opinion that it's somehow horrible.

So even though you know the interface is bad (as you mentioned previously), you are only going to defend it because it uses a mouse? What sort of argument is that?

I'm painfully aware that many (most?) "PC gamers" have been condition out of using this advantage though. I get a sneaky feeling that many people on the codex would not be able to instinctively tell me which of the 1-8 keys correspond to which skilldex option when awoken in the middle of the night. The famous decline and all that.

What people would do isn't that relevant, though games not allowing for things like assigning custom key bindings is a common complaint. Again to bring back the topic to "good PC games", they should be designed with an abstracted input/action system so they can not only support any (or at least most common) input devices but also allow for arbitrary input events from them - and honestly some other desktop software has had support for assigning custom key chords to actions for more than a decade now, games should be able to allow that too (though i'm not aware of any that does).

I assume your dream combination of a game and UI is something like a 4X game that you can control with a racing wheel?

I haven't played any 4X game to know what that would control, but assuming the game hasn't hardcoded input schemes and the racing wheel uses a standardized input API (i think many such controllers use DirectInput which was designed to allow for arbitrary controller support) then a game with good input handling should be able to use the wheel - if that'd make practical sense is another matter though and not really what i was referring to.

Btw, both of you made multiple attempts at the ultimate "but it was also bad in a game made over 2 decades ago so it's cool!!!" argument, congrats.

The only reason i mentioned Fallout 1/2 is you bringing up the "nu-Fallout" games and how their UIs are worse than the original Fallout games.

Though of course it does make sense to bring up older games since a very common sentiment is how back in the good old golden days when PCs were PCs and consoles were consoles, every UI was perfect and it was only because of those stinking consoles and their gamepads becoming popular that the UIs downgraded to... supporting more input schemes - when in reality controllers were a thing on PC since the 80s and even since its inception. In fact during the 80s and early 90s, it wasn't uncommon for DOS games to support joystick and/or gamepad but not a mouse.

Oh wait, FPSes were made for keyboard and mouse since the very beginning. You could play them keyboard-only or with a joystick or gamepad or whatever if you wanted to, but that's not what they're primarily designed for.

FPS allowed mouse input but they were perfectly playable with only a keyboard as many gamers at the time had no mouse support (or had but weren't associating it with gaming). Personally i was playing FPS games with just a keyboard until around 2003 when some FPS game (Will Rock) had no key bindings for turn left/right and had to use a mouse. Yet by that time i had played and finished a bunch of classics already like Doom and Duke3D.

Although I think, that even Quake - the first one of real 3D FPS games to my knowledge) also didn't have mouse support from the very beginning but patched in in a later version (but I may be wrong here).

Quake had mouse support from the beginning but it also was fully keyboard playable (actually even Doom 3 is keyboard playable) and had support for automatically turning up/down on slopes when using the keyboard.

By the way, gamepads were practically non-existent for PCs at that time. You used an analog joystick for some games (but rarely for FPSs).

Gravis gamepads were quite common on PCs, though they weren't used for FPS games much (but PC isn't just about FPS games of course).

 

[Morenatsu.]

Well when the FPS became a thing and we just called it a Doom Clone, there was no expectation that the end user even owned a mouse - System Shock was an exception in that it was not functionally playable without one, unlike Doom, Duke, et al. So really the "FPS" was designed just for the keyboard.

Doom was intended to be played with a mouse, and Duke Nukem especially so. Even Wolfenstein 3D has mouse support. It's like saying the minimum requirements for a game are the intended hardware.

While I agree, that Ms+Kb is the best way to play most FPS games, historically that this is not completely true.

The first FPS games on the PC (which used different kinds of "fake" 3D engines) like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Duke 3D, etc. had some basic support for mouse, but it was very different to the mouselook from today. These games were made (and played) primarily with a keyboard.
Only the modern source ports added real mouse support to these old games.

Your argument is partly right, if you consider FPS with a complete 3D engine.
Although I think, that even Quake - the first one of real 3D FPS games to my knowledge) also didn't have mouse support from the very beginning but patched in in a later version (but I may be wrong here).

The games support mouse input, and therefore they have mouse support. That's what that means, dumbass. They may not have vertical aiming, but they have mouse support. And even in your examples, Duke Nukem 3D had full mouse-look. Even if the limitations of its renderer make it look strange, it's still there.

Quake always had mouse-look, but could only be used while holding a button.

Here, let's bring this back:
https://soulsphere.org/apocrypha/keyboard/

DEBOOOOONKED!!!

It was an understandable limitation of the time that not everyone had a mouse, but there's no reason to suffer that now and it was never the intended way to play those games. The case for controllers is even worse as that's just going backwards for no good reason at all. Don't even bother defending it - PC genres are shit on controllers and the compromises made for them make it worse for everyone.

 

[Neuromancer]

Sorry, but I explained clearly that "mouse support" is not the same as modern mouselook. The control was completely different.
Almost no one played these games with the mouse at the time because the games were designed primarily with keyboard in mind.

And your article only shows scans from the manual that says that the games have basic support for using some mouse functions - which is basically the same thing that I wrote before.

So nothing "DEBOOOOONKED!!!".

 

[Morenatsu.]

So I am to assume you only play Doom in a modern source port with full mouse-look, jumping and crouching, coloured lighting and sorts of other retarded shit enabled? Because if you played the original, you'd know there's no real difference aside from the lack of vertical aiming.

It's also apparent you only looked at the article for one second and left without scrolling down. Romero himself playing the game with a mouse and saying that's what they intended = NO EVIDENCE, KEYBOARD ONLY

Next you're going to tell me the music was composed for the Soundblaster and not the SC-55. Or that you're supposed to play the game with only your PC speaker and the lowest graphical settings.

 

[Neuromancer]

I played the game when it came out, so I know what I am talking about.
No one I knew played the game with the mouse - a few tried, but reverted back to keyboard for obvious reasons.

And by the way, to enable mouselook on Quake, even on the newest version you have to use a console command:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=118773632
So, it is obvious, that this was not the intended control method, when the game was released, despite what bullocks John Romero says these days (and yes, he says a lot of stupid stuff - no wonder he didn't release anything remarkable for decades.)

But I see, that this discussion is kind of senseless, since you are not interested in a constructive discourse...so long.

 

[Luckmann]

Doom was intended to be played with a mouse ...

 

[Morenatsu.]

I played the game when it came out, so I know what I am talking about.
No one I knew played the game with the mouse - a few tried, but reverted back to keyboard for obvious reasons.

That reason being the same as why consoletards still use controllers when given better options: They're too lazy/stubborn/retarded to learn something different. Keyboard-only players are the casuals of 90s PC gaming trololololo

And by the way, to enable mouselook on Quake, even on the newest version you have to use a console command:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=118773632
So, it is obvious, that this was not the intended control method, when the game was released, despite what bullocks John Romero says these days (and yes, he says a lot of stupid stuff - no wonder he didn't release anything remarkable for decades.)

Indeed, you're not supposed to play the game with vertical aiming on all the time. You're actually supposed to bind it to a key and hold it, like I said. They even recommend using the mouse, just like they did with Doom. But nope, guess they clearly made it for keyboards lol. John Romero can be wrong, but when there's actual video evidence of his playing the game with a mouse during its development, don't you think he may actually be right in this case? So what if the mouse controls aren't exactly modern? You're still meant to use them, and the alternative is far worse. By your own logic we could say that even the keyboard isn't in meant to be used because some of the bindings are weird.

But I see, that this discussion is kind of senseless, since you are not interested in a constructive discourse...so long.

‘Constructive discourse’ is masturbatory drivel where everything is relative and therefore invalid. Guess what, faggot, you're on the Codex. Deconstructive discourse that hurts your feelings with the truth is the very reason this site exists. If you don't like it, too bad. You may think it's petty, but even the smallest errors are the beginnings of a larger retardation.

Really, how do you people keep arguing this bullshit. You're acting like the game is completely unplayable with the mouse. I don't care how you played it back in the day - it's not true.

 

[schru]

While using only the keyboard to control shooters may have been wide-spread early on, what Unreal says is completely true. Wolfenstein 3D's manual mentions the mouse and Doom's recommends it. Looking at the menu demo loops, it seems that only Wolfenstein's was recorded with keyboard-only controls. But most of this is listed on that site.

The mouse-controlled horizontal look in Doom wasn't that different either, even if it wasn't free look as such. The additional to-and-fro movement controlled with the mouse feels strange at first, but it actually gives the game a nice sense of sweeping movement and can be pretty useful. I dislike how some source ports decrease this movement's strength by default.

I think the real difference was that without dedicated strafe keys right next to ‘forward’ and ‘backward’ keys in the default configuration, circle-strafing and strafing in general didn't feel as natural, making certain encounters not so easy to overcome.

And by the way, to enable mouselook on Quake, even on the newest version you have to use a console command:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=118773632
So, it is obvious, that this was not the intended control method, when the game was released, despite what bullocks John Romero says these days (and yes, he says a lot of stupid stuff - no wonder he didn't release anything remarkable for decades.)

The console command is only needed to enable (full) mouselook permanently, otherwise there's a dedicated mouselook button that's listed in the controls in every version of the game.

 

[Trans-Financial-Man]

VR for System Shock 2 sounds great. But adding VR to an existing game that wasn't built for it never seems to work out. As soon as your hand phases through a wall with no physics or collision detection the immersion is ruined. So unless they are re-doing all the physics to work with grabby hands it probably won't be the best thing.

 

[LudensCogitet]

but even the smallest errors are the beginnings of a larger retardation.

-- Aristotle

 

[Ash]

All this butthurt is glorious :D

It is my belief PC games should stay PC games, yet that if multiplatformization (this is now a word) has to happen then the design need not be butchered, or if it really has to then make the design PC-first and then commit to minor tailoring for the console version.

Everyone is focusing on New Vegas when I said it was a lesser example. Morrowind is the finest example of how it's done: make the game PC-first, later port to console. Make very few changes. All they really did was split the game's seperate windows (which render all at once) into four seperate tabs/windows that render separately. That's it. Otherwise all important functionality remains; the console version had no impact on the PC version, and the console version itself was not dumbed down. That is how it is done best case scenario. Well, no, best case scenario is the UI being exactly the same, but not many devs have the balls to retain cursor control and small font on consoles (some, however, do).

Most people played Doom and others of the time with the keyboard. It was the (very low) standard. I remember. Pads are significantly better than keyboard aiming, therefore people blow how much pads affect FPS design way out of proportion, if the GOAT FPS (and others) could be played with such primitive input. That was my point is all and it will forever stand. What people fail to see is devs just universally sold out, fact. Blaming consoles misses the point. PC and console gaming used to be great. Now both are bad in the mainstream sense. It doesn't help that most gamers (PC or console) are salivating retards, graphics whores and casuals which is partly what inspired said selling out.

 

[SumDrunkGuy]

Only pimply faced nerd fatties play with mice and keyboard. Normal attractive people use gamepad. I will play this on the PS5 as god intended.

 

[Ash]

^Still in serious denial

Spoiler

OK I'll leave you alone now. Bit of a casual and a slobbering drunkard but you're alright

 

[Bad Sector]

Ash
In general i agree with what you wrote, except one thing: you are making the association that KBM=PC and gamepad=consoles, which is wrong as the PC can use not only gamepads but all sorts of controllers and peripherals (and that was the case ever since day 1). Personally in this thread i never made any such association, i was always referring to *gamepads* not to *consoles* as i do not care at all about consoles (not because of their input methods but because they are extremely locked down and are designed from day 1 to become obsolete the moment their manufacturers decide - essentially you are at their mercy). Well, except some attempts at making open consoles like new Atari VCS anyway (but those are essentially tiny PCs).

So making a proper UI interface for the PC has to take into account that the user may want to play their game with either KBM or with a gamepad *at least* (remember that there are other options too - for example many laptops, Windows tablets and devices like GPD Win now have touch controls and while tablets are most likely a tiny minority, it might be useful to have touch support for some actions -especially on something like GPD Win or a laptop without an external mouse connected- in addition to KBM/gamepad). This is true nowadays more than ever before, considering that controller usage has more than doubled in the last two years:

Do people really play PC games with controllers?
In the past two years, the number of daily average users playing a Steam game with a controller has more than doubled, with millions enjoying the growing catalog of controller-friendly titles everyday. In controller friendly games, the percentage of players for that game that use a controller can easily be 60% or higher. Some games, such as skateboarding games, have well over 90% of their players using controllers in game. The growth in controller usage has been even higher among players using PlayStation controllers, which has grown in the past two years from 10.9% of controller play sessions to 21.6% of all controller sessions across Steam.

Also related, not everyone plays PC games on a gigantic monitor in front of their face, some use small monitors, others play through a TV, others use laptops (often with tiny screens) or devices like GPD Win or streaming to their phones with a bluetooth gamepad addon or whatever, so tiny text can easily be hard or even impossible to read. This means that UIs need to have some form scaling support, like you'd see in modern Doom/Quake source ports and mods for games like Deus Ex. Preferably also have the option to adjust the edge distances too, for people with dual and triple monitor setups so they can adjust exactly where the UI is placed (each edge should be configured separately so that someone with a dual monitor setup can make all of the UI appear in one monitor by padding one edge to go through the entire monitor they do not want any UI stuff).

 

[RoSoDude]

Comments on the preceding discussion (which was simply appalling to read, by the way):

• Good aim is largely irrelevant in most classic FPS games. Doom obviously has you aiming on only one axis, Build games shipped with generous autoaim on by default, and while Quake expects you to aim in 3D, it's always in close quarters against large targets who don't move that much. Multiplayer arena FPS is a completely different story even with the same weapons and mechanics, but the best singleplayer FPS of that era were dominated by movement, weapon selection, and target prioritization concerns; raw aim ability is hugely de-emphasized compared to the most "popamole" cover-based shooting affair you can think of. In other words, gameplay mandating precise crosshair placement is in no way indicative of quality FPS design when taken out of context
• The original System Shock isn't much different in terms of the (un)importance of precise aiming, and I doubt the remake will deviate much from that. I somewhat hope it does, since SS1's enemy archetypes are lacking in gameplay identity, variety, and challenge, and having to aim for weakpoints could add interesting texture to shootouts, but I'm not holding my breath here
  
• It's pretty rich to hear people whining about the nu-Fallout UI when the original Fallout UI was absolutely abysmal by comparison. Bethesda's modern UI design sucks and is clearly gamepad-oriented, but at least I could scroll through more than 6 items at a time and didn't have to use the steal menu to swap gear with my companions like in FO1, which disallows me from viewing the stats or even the name of the items transferred, thus requiring me to reopen my own inventory and scroll all the way to the bottom just to check which holotape or whatever I need for some quest. If you think this compares favorably to the (admittedly awful) Pip-Boy menus as an examplar of good UI design principles, then I have a copy of Windows 8 to sell you
• The irony is doubled when we circle back to System Shock, which is the poster child for UI driven by layers upon layers of tabs. The whole thing is tabs! And it's great! The annoyance with tabs on M+KB is when they're not quickly accessible either as something you can leave on screen (e.g. System Shock) or via hotkeys (e.g. Deus Ex). Tabs are a natural way to organize menus, we just don't want them to be so split up into multiple screens that you have to tab through multiple layers just to get to something that ought to be a click away
• Prey (2017) is a great example of UI design that works well with M+KB and gamepad with minimal compromise on either front, and is also a great point of contact for System Shock. While I still prefer SS2's UI for being real-time and leaving most of the screen space free while it's open (because of TABS), Prey is able to pack most of the core functionality you'd want from a grid inventory, quickloot menu, upgrade screen, quest log, etc. into a single click or two, while also allowing for hotkeys to take you to individual menu tabs. It's not far off from Deus Ex's UI design, which is one of the best of its era save for minor omissions like hotkey shortcuts for equipping/activating items/augs, which Prey does a smidge better even if it's not quite as slick on the whole

For the record, I personally hate using a gamepad for anything that requires me to control a 3D camera with an analog stick. But my mere preference doesn't justify poor arguments on that basis.