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Name: G.I. Jonesy
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Posts: 2441
Location:
Posts: 2441
Unlike in other types of games, using a mouse and keyboard in an FPS is challenging. It is markedly different than using a joystick. It's like chopsticks compared to a fork. These console players are comfortable with their forks. Even though it takes little time to learn how to use chopsticks, they are still reluctant.
There are many remedies to the bottleneck. One, which would be the easiest and fastest, is to create a training program. It teaches the joystick user, step by step, how to use a mouse and keyboard. The first step would be mouse training. Learning how to aim with the mouse is the easiest and most beneficial step in the training. During this stage, the user would not need to use the keyboard. They simply aim and shoot in a 3-dimensional environment.
This particular solution could be employed within QL. The game is free, and any computer today can run it at full speed. If the bottleneck were expanded, and the players poured into QL, we could achieve the progress for which we've been searching.
The other solutions are more complicated, and do not need to be addressed in this column. But, expanding the bottleneck is precisely what needs to be done. To look around here, you'd think FPS's were dying, but really, it's just mouse and keyboard FPS'ing that's having trouble.
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If you try something like FoxxMod for UT3, make a few custom binds via script/ini, and add one of those FPSFreek extenders (like buying a bigger mouse pad), you can do moving shock combos and own UT3 bots on Godlike using a 360 pad with zero auto-aim, after just a bit of practice. Same goes with Q3 and Xpadder; with a good config you can own CPM level 80+ bots using a gamepad.
The most crucial part is just setting your binds so ABXY acceses the first 4 weapons, and then holding left trigger switches ABXY to access the other 4 weapons. Also helpful, especially for Q3, is setting that same left trigger to double your aim sensitivity while held, and setting it up so pushing in the right stick toggle-zooms and cuts your base sensitivity in half.
Just like mouse and keyboard, it's all about having good binds. For a console gamer trying out Quake to see if he gets into it, it makes more sense to set him up with good binds on his existing 360 pad, rather than force him to go buy a high dpi mouse, large mouse pad, learn the new gear from scratch, and figure out the binds...all at once.
Furthermore, mouse and keyboard is starting to go obsolete with the advent of stuff like the Razer Hydra, which combines the best aspects of mice, gamepads, and motion control, into one simple unit. Eventually stuff like Oculus Rift + Razer Hydra combo will be the optimal control setup for both consoles and PC, and then getting people to try a game will be all about the gameplay, not the hardware.
The biggest problem getting mainstream gamers into deathmatch games isn't gamepads, it's bad marketing and business decisions on the part of Epic Games and Id Software. If you don't try to showcase the movement system as a cool-looking badass part of the game, and instead just leave it looking like an unintentional glitch, how do you expect the COD generation to get into your genre? The devs have run their own franchises into the ground.