I agree with you that controls are a problem in console games… but the fundamental issue is the controller design itself. Dual-analog belongs in the '90s.
That said, deadzones and acceleration are there for a purpose: mainly to make things easier for most people.
Most people don't have very fine control over the analog stick, so acceleration allows them to make smaller corrections when the input is not being held to turn, without making the turning speed very slow. And deadzones mean that small or accidental inputs are ignored by the game.
Deadzones are also required by analog sticks, since they all start to drift over time. Of course I agree that it should all be adjustable, with "off" being one of those options.
Acceleration is the bane of my existence though.
Not because it bothers me too much on an analog stick (I try to avoid them as much as possible) but because it works horribly if you try to map the controller's right analog stick to a touchpad or gyro, and many games which use it on their analog sticks often end up applying it to the mouse input now too.
Even high profile games like
Resident Evil 2 and
3 remakes are making this mistake - and they have deadzones on the mouse input too!
I just wish all console games that have a PC port would let you remap controls. They have to have button remapping in because of PC. Same goes for FoV options as well.
Many games on PC lack any kind of button remapping for controllers too.
Steam has a feature which lets you remap controls for games, similar to the system-level controls found on PS4/XB1.
The difference is that it goes far more in-depth than simple button remapping, and is configured on a per-game (and per-controller) basis rather than system-wide.
It has the same problem of not changing the in-game prompts to match though. But there is an exception: games which are actually built to use the Steam Input API
do change their in-game prompts to match the remapping, and can also have different states for things like gameplay and menus, so the gameplay remapping doesn't mess up control of the menus.
This is how I hope inputs are handled across all next-gen systems.
RDR2 is a great recent example of horrible controls on console and exchanging it for a different set of problems on PC. On PC the best compromise is controller with gyro aim because it gives you the analog controls and almost mouse-like accuracy. Keyboard controls are not great as there are a shitton of mappings. On consoles you can either aim at medium to long distance or short distance comfortably, not both at the same time because it's impossible to set the controls up for both. Makes shooting a complete mess.
I'm not sure why it is that Rockstar does this, but controls which are contextual on console seem to be mapped to individual keys in their PC ports.
I haven't played
RDR2 at all, but what little I played of
GTA V was horrible. For example: the on-foot movement controls used WASD like most games, but then you had to use a completely separate set of controls; e.g. IJKL to control movement when you are in a plane, and they cannot both be mapped to the same keys.
BOTW gyro controls is the best controls for aiming, unless you have a mouse.
I am a big fan of gyro aiming when using controllers - especially on PC where you have a lot of options to customize it - but
Breath of the Wild's implementation is not great.
It has a bit of a deadzone and does not allow for very fine control; like playing games with a low-resolution mouse.
I don't mean that it's bad, just that things can get even better. It's still far better than using analog sticks.
I thought this thread was gonna be about the disastrous industry wide move of melee combat controls from face buttons to shoulder buttons
Ideally games which use the right stick for aiming wouldn't be using face buttons outside of the menus, but current console controllers aren't really designed to facilitate that.
This is a fact: if you did your analog right, you don't need aim assist. If your game needs aim assist you did something WRONG.
For high-level play… there's maybe an argument to be had there, but most people are going to have a better time with a well-tuned aim assist - and probably don't even notice it.
Unless it's a snappy 60fps Shooter I think the "weightiness" on analog controls are an improvement over Mouse & Keyboard […]
I am someone who loved killzone 2 and it's heavy aiming.
Call it what it is: input lag.
It's very easy to
add input lag if you somehow prefer that. All games should be trying to minimize it as much as possible though.
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