The director of Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T., Jurassic Park, and many more classics has long spoken about his love of video games, stretching back to 1982 when he revealed the instant thrill and ego “massage” that playing games like Donkey Kong and Tempest provided.
The only controller I’ve ever really enjoyed using is the steam controller. Just about everything else felt worse than playing using a mouse and keyboard. To each their own though, if you like controllers then more power to you.
Its excellent for certain types of games but the lack of a right joystick made it useless with the vast majority.
I mean like “oh no, I’m being shot from behind, just give me 5 seconds to swipe 6 times on this touchpad and line up a shot”
Not quite the same, but I set up my steam deck’s right track pad to be a flick stick, turn around 180° with a flick. (And gyroscope)
I don’t play any multiplayer games, so this could be considered cheating, but it’s too nice to not use
It could totally be setup to feel/work like a trackball, remember playing a bunch of warframe with mine and being able to “throw” it and have it stop when you touch the pad again, took getting used to but substantially more flexible than a regular analogue stick.
I agree that the touchpad isn’t best for every game, but your example just sounds like your sensitivity is way too low. I used to have a couple steam controllers, I have a steam deck, and I used to play a lot of mobile shooters before I could afford a pc. In any case, I like my sensitivity to be 1 full swipe = 180° in game. Add in gyro and I’ll make that about 1-to-1 device rotation to in-game rotation (or if anything a little more sensitive).
I mean you can increase sensitivity but then it’s terribly difficult to aim for shit. That’s the problem.
Steam input lets you do different modes, if you’re holding the aim button, you can make the track pad much more sensitive or use gyro. Solutions for everything!