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PC Gamers Crush Console Brethren
l_bratch writes "Since December 22nd DICE have been running a competition between each target platform of their latest Battlefield expansion — Bad Company 2: Vietnam. Players were required to complete a large number of 'team actions' in game, in order to unlock a hidden, remastered version of the Operation Hastings map from the original Battlefield: Vietnam. PC gamers have completed the task, whereas gamers on both console platforms are only about halfway there."
Players with superior input devices do better. More as this story develops.
pc is some serious shit. pcers generally play with keyboard wasd and function keys and mouse, which requires greater coordination, attention, and dedication (tiring). therefore, they are more honed in their gaming 'skillZ' (tm) than people playing with consoles with easy to use, ergonomic designed controllers. moreover, the pc gamers play full spectrum of games with that keyboard and mouse, as opposed to console-friendly games made for or ported to consoles, further increasing their skills regarding coordination and gaming.
Read radical news here
It doesn't say anything about the ability of the players.
Now, assuming that the player populations are of equal size, with equal numbers of hours played...
It might be construed to say that PC players are more team focused, willing to do things other than shoot the enemy.
Of course, it is just as possible that someone's programmed a bot on the PC version and the _bot_ is doing the running around, or that the PC players play 10 hours vs the console gamer's 1, or some other difference between the platforms.
Not to defend the console gamers but:
1) This is based on one game.
2) This assumes that the ports were equivalent
3) This was a count of collective actions of a community not averaged over the individual. The same tournament held between various PC OSes would have resulted in Microsoft crushing Linux's gamers simply because there are more of them on the PC platform.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Mostly this shows that the kind of people who like to play first-person shoot-em-ups prefer to play on a computer.
I wonder how much the sales numbers reflect this? Or are the kind of people who like to play FPSs also the kind of people who don't bother to pay for games they get a lot of enjoyment out of?
egypt urnash minimal art.
You need a decently powered PC to push DICE software, ergo your average PC gamer is probably NOT living in his Mom's basement and has a real job to afford nice toys such as said PC and is probably not the typical 14 year old idiot you hear screaming obsenities at you over $ConsolePlatformOfYourChoice....
So 14 year old ADD kid or older person with disposable income - who do you think would get done first?
Is more details behind it. There are two major thing I see that could be influencing this that I'd find interesting:
1) Number of copies sold. If there are more players, well then there's gonna be more points earned. This would be interesting particularly what with a number of publishers hating on the PC and claiming nobody buys games, they all pirate, etc, etc. If that is not the case (pirated copies are probably not happening here, since the servers are all controlled by trusted hosts and they check) it would be good to know. Perhaps for some games PC sales exceed any single console platform, or perhaps all the platforms. I suspect that may happen and EA (who publishes Battlefield) may know it as they've had a big PC gaming push as of late.
2) Number of online players. Even if copies sold are equal, the people who play online may not be. I wonder if there is a difference between players online and offline. Bad Company 2 DOES have a single player game, it sucks, but it has one. Perhaps consoles are still far more single player platforms. Doesn't mean people don't use them to play online, but perhaps PC gamers are far more in to online gaming whereas more console gamers are content to just play single player.
Knowing those would be very interesting, and also you could then control for them to get a better idea of another factor: Team play. Do PC gamers tend to team play more? Perhaps the people who tend to wards that platform are also more interested in cooperation than console gamers.
Either way, interesting given a number of the recent "OMG PC gaming is fucked!" stories that have been published. It would appear that for some games at least, people still want to play.
I read the summary title and thought - for once - some insane game company had enabled PCs to play in the same games with consoles. But no... PC gamers just performed more "team actions" in their own isolated world than console gamers did in theirs.
The game could be more popular on PC than consoles, or perhaps just more "serious" (and maybe older) players on PCs. Hell, maybe the PC version just got cracked and it didn't involve many players at all. Who knows. Slightly interesting, with so little data, only slightly.
Skill at gaming might actually be equal, but the interface is not. I believe someone from MS said at one time they had Xbox and PC FPS shooters(i forget the game) sharing servers and found that PC gamers always smoked the console gamers. KB/M > gamepad for FPS or RPG or RTS with hotkeys/macros/accuracy via mouse vs toggling a stick to move your reticle around and limited buttons. I thought this was common knowledge..
So many injustices..so little time..
the pc gamers play full spectrum of games with that keyboard and mouse
Games made for PC don't necessarily cover the full spectrum of genres. (In before Zed Ecks jokes.) For example, what's the closest PC counterpart to Mario Party series, Super Smash Bros. series, 4-player Tetris Party, and Super Mario Galaxy series? Sure, MySims can replace Animal Crossing series; who can think of other titles to convert Wii fans to PC gaming?
No, they just have the controllers more suited to first person shooter games.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Consoles have to be tied to a television
In the era of LCD HDTV, when gaming PCs have HDMI or DVI-D out and Best Buy's sales floor is littered with 720p and 1080p monitors that take composite, component, VGA, and HDMI in, what's the difference between a "television" and a "computer monitor" anymore?
It's much easier to concentrate if you're all alone in your parent's basement.
Consoles are easy to pick up and move down to the TV monitor in the basement, a lot easier than a typical minitower PC in my experience.
Are racecar drivers better at going fast than kids on tricycles?
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
Not just easier to learn, but better. The reason is because a mouse can be both fast and precise. You can easily make quick movements, but can dial that back and be extremely precise too. This is the reason it works so well as an input device. You can get the cursor across the screen fast, but then easily zero in on a small button. Joysticks can't do that. They can be fast or precise, but not both at once. You either have to turn up the sensitivity/acceleration for fast moves, meaning precise aiming is very hard, or you have to turn it down to allow precision, but sacrifice quick movement.
So for FPSes the mouse is by far a superior control system. That is part of the reason for next to no cross platform shooters. Xbox Live makes that possible, Windows and the 360 can play against each other, however in play testing the PC users just slaughter the console users. This is also why in the exceedingly rare cross platform play titles the console users have auto aim and the PC users do not.
Not all games benefit from a mouse. I'd say platformers are easier with a controller, but FPSes do in a big way.
The difference is DPI. TVs are massive because they're meant to be viewed from a distance by several people at once, while monitors tend to much smaller, and more suitable for reading text at non-eye-straining distances.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
The sales numbers don't reflect it at all, because that simply isn't the case. See Halo series sales.
But really we're all one big happy gaming geeky segment of the population.
It's much easier to concentrate if you're all alone in your parent's basement.
I'm sure this will come as a crushing blow, but the majority of gamers today are in the 30-45yr old bracket, married, and have kids. You can do searches on your favorite search engine and read all about it.
Maybe you should have said, "It's much easier to concentrate, if you're all alone, the kids aren't yelling and you're hiding from your wife, kids, and enjoying me time."
Om, nomnomnom...
Games made for PC don't necessarily cover the full spectrum of genres.
or through emulators.
Games that require emulators aren't "games made for PC", unless perhaps you count Flash, Java, .NET, and DOSBox as emulated environments. Besides, with Retrode sold out, how is one supposed to dump his own game cartridges to ROM files for use on a PC?
More people = more total player hours. PC players accomplished this with 55k player hours compared to the ~90 that each the consoles currently have.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
RIGHT? Having visions of Stalingrad and the propaganda officer shouting pep talks to the cannon fodder.
They're using their grammar skills there.
More likely what it means is that console players don't know how to play real FPS games. The controllers just don't support any game made from Quake or so on. I remember prior to Quake pretty much everybody played with keyboard only, then quake came out and people started to use keyboard and mouse other wise they were going to get crushed by the competition.
Comparatively speaking the controllers that these games are designed for on consoles fit midway between keyboard and keyboard/mouse combo. They require special tweaks and assistance to work which aren't necessary on PC.
Doesn't mean that console FPS can't or aren't fun, but it does mean that they're the equivalent of arcade race games to the PC's race simulators.
Can we have this guy and the nitwit who posts excerpts from "Turner Diaries" go fight it out on some deserted island somewhere?
Somewhere without internet, of course.
Uber Micro!
No, not if you include all the externalities. If you're measuring a race car against a trike going from a standing start on the line, then yes, the racecar wins. If you measure it from "wake up in the morning", the trike gets going a whole lot quicker, for a whole lot cheaper.
(note: please don't take this too seriously. it's just a thought exercise.)
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
TVs are massive because they're meant to be viewed from a distance by several people at once, while monitors tend to much smaller
So "monitors" are better for single-player and "TVs" are better for multiplayer. Now all we have to do is figure out how to convince the less geeky crowd to connect "TVs" to PCs for use with Hulu and PC games. In fact, the networks appear to be making it easier by blocking Google TV.
and more suitable for reading text at non-eye-straining distances.
I figured out the formula for how to set a usable DPI for surfing the web from your couch, given the TV size, resolution, and seating distance.
It's the same reason we don't get split-screen games on PC's. They can do it - but the developers just assume it won't get used, so don't bother implementing it.
If a developer were to make a PC game supporting shared-screen play with multiple gamepads (or one keyboard and one or more gamepads), and then promote this game on home theater PC enthusiast sites, would it be worth it? Hairyfeet seems to think so.
Whenever this tired argument breaks out I never hear mention of the REAL reasons why PC FPS gamers are better then consolers.
Yes, it is true that the k/m combination is much better then an analog controller for FPS games, but this has wider implications then just simple accuracy and speed. The fact is the tactics used by PC gamers are more sophisticated because of the better controls. PC gamers an defend themselves from flank attacks much better because of the ability to turn quickly. If you cannot turn 90/180 degrees in a tenth of a second or faster with a mouse then you need to set your sensitivity higher and practice some more. A consoler has far fewer options when defending from such attacks. How long does it take for a consoler to turn around when being shot in the back? Since such limitations exist, the defensive skills to utilize turn speed are never developed in consolers.
A large part of a master FPSer is superior situational awareness. Knowing where the enemy is at all times involves the ability to make quick visual checks at all times. You virtual 'eyes' should be darting around looking and checking every corner of your field of view AT ALL TIMES. This is what separates the proficient gamers from those with real talent. It is harder to get the element of surprise on a person who has the ability to see in all directions and uses it. This is achieved through the use of high mouse sensitivity. The distance a mouse should travel to turn 90 degrees should be much less then an inch. You should shoot for an eighth of an inch of physical space traveled to turn 90 degrees. If you can maintain accuracy at this speed, and I assure you this is very possible with practice, then your turning movements should be very near instant.
The contribution of situational awareness to the skill-set of a gamer cannot be understated. The poor response of analog controllers ensures that console gamers will never develop proper situational awareness skills.
The PC gamer has a much larger set of tools, so to speak, and so he or she learns to use these tools and becomes efficient with them. Console gamers don't have effective tools and so learn inferior tactics and are unable to capitalize on the awareness afforded by a better input device.
I've used this before and I'm sure most of /. has seen this, but I believe it fits the conversation at hand.
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This probably has a lot to do with the fact that console gamers are little teenagers. They like to shout stupid things over and over (and over) again while us1n6 l0t5 of numbers and punctua!on in their 1337 names about being teh sn1p3rzzz and have very little desire to actually do ANYTHING team based beyond using their teammates as a distraction so they can employ their 1337 sn1p3rrr thug k11l4h skillz.
God it's annoying.
WASD+M is a more accurate method of input, but Input method isn't relevant here, since we're talking about support actions that don't require any type of aiming or precision. Hit a button and you throw a health/ammo pack out.
Sounds like the whimpering bleatings of a CRUSHED CONSOLE PLAYER!
But yeah, it's not much of a representation of, well - anything, besides one task in one specific game - as you say. It's probably just that a big deal was made about the competition (it being massively cross-platform and all) and PC gamers coming out ahead so very quickly. It's only a single button press for console gamers to drop a medkit as well! But it's cringe-worthy in the "news" despartment. :) If anything, it's just a nice reminder that PC gaming is still going strong and the community still cares. It's easy to miss that sometimes with all the fuss publishers make about consoles.
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
The console player appears to be able to move at any speed in between 0 and fast, controlled by the amount you push on the stick. PC gamers don't have that luxury, they have several fixed speeds and no way to get in between them.
What!? You can move a mouse as fast or as slowly as you like, you're only limited by your arm/wrist speed. You can move at any speed you like below your physical maximum speed, too. With a controller you can only choose between 0 and some maximum speed defined in the game settings, with a limited usable range angles between those points.
No they don't. Mouse and keyboard are better for aiming, true, and would give an advantage were the tasks based on that. They're not though, from TFA:
...perform 69 million collective team actions... Team actions, for those unfamiliar with the game, include spotting, performing repairs, and healing, reviving and resupplying your fellow soldiers
Presumably because making the challenges things like "Get 10 headshots in a row" would give PC gamers the advantage. That it's team based stuff more likely represents real differences in the players themselves, not the tools. If you've ever dabbled on xbox live and then tried an online PC game, this may not come as a shock (depending on the games of course.) In general, I'd have expected console gamers would be younger, and more interested in shooting things rather than actually playing as a team and winning.
Halo 3 for example. Didn't matter what the actual goal was, pretty much everyone went for "shoot the other team." Guard the flag? Well, sure, we'll do that by jumping in a warthog, driving to the opposite side of the map, and shooting the other team. If that doesn't work, shoot some more. If that doesn't work, quit in the middle of the round.
You'll see that to some extent in any game, I've been frustrated in some TF2 matches on the PC where my team was more interested in trying to snipe the other side rather than accomplish the objective of pushing the cart, but it doesn't happen every single time, like it tends to on xbox live.
I am by far much better on the console than on the PC. This is probably because my introduction to gaming was a NES and not a PC. I have been playing consoles since then. Don't get me wrong I play games on PC too just usually not FPSes. In fact until Halo came out for Xbox I was mostly a RTS on PC and console for everything else. Until recently, I could never get used to the speed of the mouse and my left fingers just could not hit WASD correctly so FPSes on PC were incredibly frustrating. My Logitech G11 Keyboard has programmable keys to the left. I set up the bottom 6 to be WASDQE and that seems to work for me but at the same time I have to concur with those who claim that the gamepad is much easier to use. When I started playing Halo, I had the game pad mastered in no time. It took me years and the right hardware to get used to the keyboard-mouse combo. I usually play games for enjoyment so if I had to choose a place to play a new FPS, I would choose console because it would be much easier for me to master than the PC. Alright that is my two cents on my console vs. pc gaming experience. As for the article, my response is that this is not at all surprising. It has to do with the target audience of each platform. PC gaming is marketed to those who spend their free time at a PC doing just about everything from email to gaming. PC gaming has always been about being the best and is far more competitive. Console gaming, while there are some out there that are more hardcore, is usually marketed for the casual gamer. These gamers aren't at their console all the time and maybe at their PC even less. Usually the console gamer will play several games and won't play the same game for long stretches of time. I have tons of games for my X360 and have played most of them at least a little. So thinking about casual vs hardcore, it is not surprising that the PC gamers accomplished the tasks faster. They are just more dedicated than console gamers. This is not a slight against console gamers it is just that they are not playing the game as often as PC gamers.
I play Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Unreal Tournament 3, Team Fortress 2 and various other games on my netbook (Acer Aspire One). I'd play call of duty black ops on it if I actually owned the game, but as you can tell, it's playing current FPS games just fine, which is why I am rather sceptical of your claims.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
How will we webcast it for gambling purposes then? I got big bucks on the racist
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
I would suddenly love to see Left 4 Dead on a console. Not to play it, just to watch it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
My take is that due to pervasiveness of cheaters in PC multiplayer games, most long time PC gamer have already joined some clan or another, or have long time in-game buddies. Otherwise, if you venture out alone, you will be playing against cheaters all day long.
In BF2, it is common for PC clans to host their own servers, so they can ban any cheaters found.
OTOH, the console don't have/need private servers. Hacks/aimbots/etc mods are not (yet) possible on PS3, so it is common for PS3 players to just join random multiplayer games without any clan or wait for buddies. Lots of BF2 games in PS3 are filled with players who don't know each other at all, you will find maybe 5-6 from clans out of 24 players in the game.
With this background, is it any wonder that tasks needing team work will be done much much faster for PC gamers than console gamers?
While some would say it is good news for PC gamers, as they logged only 1/2 of the hours played but "achieved" twice as much". I would think the opposite, as it indicates that PC sales is probably only 1/2 of either PS3 or XBox sales. I.e. combined console sales : PC sales would be about 4 : 1!
Is it good news for PC when they only consist of 20% of the market share?
Oliver.
I can remember a time when the Microsoft OS users scoffed users other systems because they were "Games Machines" now the MS machines ARE the games machines....
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
10m people pay £8/month to play WoW alone. Many games are still released on PC only, and outsell games released on multiple platforms.
Yes some publishers are absolute twats. At least MS and Sony don't control the entire device..
But that's NOT how publishers see it nowadays. XBox360 is considered the premier FPS/3PS platform, vastly outselling (the important metric to pubs) PCs and getting games that never even hit the PC (such as the latest Halos)
What this shows, assuming the numbers haven't been fudged somehow, is what we all knew; PC players are more mature.
(I'm with the rest of the sane world, FPSes on Consoles make no sense whatsoever as long as they reject the mouse, which they do because they're ASSHOLES)
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Needs more El Alamein
They show the exact opposite, in fact.
So far there have been four times as many hours played on BF2:Vietnam for consoles than on the PC. PS3 and Xbox each almost double the number of hours played on the PC.
Bear in mind, four times as many people playing yet they are half way through when PC gamers have finished.
In other words, all the awkward thumbstick lovers are living in backwards land, where fewer players means it's far more like they'll finish the game first.
Unless you just meant to say console gamers suck at gaming. I'm sure you don't want to say that (and I wouldn't believe it even if you did).
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Basically, what it comes down to is a number of things, but IMO, one thing comes to the surface (from my experience):
* PCs allow for more seamless 'teaming' of groups. You can chat with the people in and prior/after the game on MSN, AIM, whatever while looking at porn or something.
* PCs have higher resolution capabilities, meaning an easier ability to distinguish what's actually in front of your eyes.
* PCs have better input. N-axis input + keyboard or 2x8 axis input + 6-12 buttons? I know which is more adaptable, to be sure. This one is key: while a gamepad may be leveraged to similar awesomeness by some, a mouse is still far superior for the average person. Not every 'team' can be universally awesome, so the result is that the average is brought down by joypads.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
The USB hub in question is self-powered (that is, it plugs into wall power through an AC adapter), and various DirectInput test programs read all gamepads fine. An emulator running a homebrew game also reads all gamepads fine. And it continues to work even when I yank the AC adapter and make it bus-powered. It's just that far too many native PC games have deficient implementations of multiplayer, allowing only one player per PC.
[Control in New Super Mario Bros. Wii would map to] five or six buttons. WASD, two mouse buttons, and the mouse itself take care of all of it.
But once you get someone on Luigi, Yvan, and Wolley, you end up with twenty-four buttons. Boop, boop, boop. It's uncommon to see a PC platformer designed for two to four USB gamepads; platformers are "for consoles." And it's even more rare to see a game designed for multiple keyboards or multiple mice connected to one home theater PC; the Raw Input API is too obscure.
Turner Diaries was a reasonable book, yes very racist, but I felt it was well written.. I tried to read his other book called Hunter and could not make it past a few chapters, too much racist ramblings... As far as an On Topic post: I always wondered how much better PC gamers would score on games like these, I really cant see, at least on average, console gamers competing on anywhere near the same level.
s/©//g
A good emulator means that what are not "games made for PC" can still effectively be "games made for PC".
Native games run more efficiently on low-end hardware, such as the netbook that you hooked up to the HDTV, or low-end nettops built and marketed more for H.264 playback than for real-time gaming. True, the 2D consoles are emulated "well enough" on netbooks, but a game with direct access to the system's 3D API (even if it's on Intel's Graphics My A* GPU) can offer far more sophisticated graphics and physics than a game made for a 1990 console and will therefore be more desirable to certain segments of the market. It's like the difference between a Wii by Nintendo and a Vii by KenSingTon.
There could probably be a market in providing such a [ROM dumping] service.
If the copyright owner provides ROM dumping with a bundled emulator as a service, it's a "classics compilation", like Namco Museum or Midway Arcade Treasures. But not all games are available this way, such as Mother series. Even those that are are often single-console exclusives, such as Nintendo's releases of its own past games in Virtual Console in Wii Shop Channel, or multi-console releases excluding the PC. If anyone else does it, it's copyright infringement. UMG v. MP3.com.
PC gamers took this challenge far too seriously, like they HAD to finish first because they are PC gamers, they can't lose to console gamers. Your average PC gamer knew about this challenge a long way off simply because they tend spend such a huge amount of their time reading shit on the 'net. PC gamers have been talking about this challenge for a while now, I've seen it on every PC related BFBC2 related forum. So when Vietnam released they were on the ball, spamming 'Team Actions' non-stop in an attempt to show the gaming world that they are the kings.
Your average console gamer never knew about this. They come home, plop down on the couch, crack a beer and blast away at some fools for a few hours. No internet forums, no research, no need to prove anything to the gaming community, just some good old fashioned fun.
I bet in thirty years we start to see PC gamers dying of coronary artery disease due to the sheer amount of stress they put on themselves. Sheesh.
Also, trigger pull > mouse click & left thumbsick > wasd for body movement
Make the dumper yourself?
It won't scale. The majority of gamers probably don't know what a "microcontroller" or a "resistor" is. Many think "transistor" means "battery powered", as it did with the first transistor radio receivers. And it can often be a female dog to find the right female connector to take a cartridge's edge connector, especially for the NES's non-standard 98.4 mil (2.50 mm) pin spacing.
(bla bla piracy i dont care, bla)
If I were building and installing home theater PCs for customers, then my lawyer would probably strongly advise me not to take such an attitude. There's a conception that PC gaming is either single player, online, or illegal, and I don't understand why it has to be this way.
............ in my mind that console gamers lack the ability to work as a team/squad.
The first game I ever saw with classic keyboard+mouse configuration was Descent 3D. It wasn't the default control configuration though, it was just the one everyone recommended. It made sense as a combination of FPS and flight simulator, and the mouse was really needed for full 3D navigation.
Pretty much what happened in WoW battlegrounds. If you were lucky you'd find a small group of people who knew what they were doing. Could only be three or four people out of a group of 40, but they'd be winning the fight while the headless chickens went running off to fight anything that moved.
The thing that really killed strategy was the system that provided pretty decent rewards to everyone - including people who just bounced on the spot. Another problem was that rushing became far too viable. Defence went out the window. People just raced to see who could be the first to reach a pretty much undefended base.
Shame that the game didn't issue assignments to people and punish them if they spend too long playing out of position or otherwise not doing the job they were assigned.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
I'd expect to see a lot of one-man army action, with chat dominated by the phrase "rez plz"
-- Using the preview button since 2005
What!? You can move a mouse as fast or as slowly as you like, you're only limited by your arm/wrist speed.
The faster you move a mouse, the less precise it becomes. Trackballs are also that way. I had to do quite a lot of searching to find a good trackball that had high tracking speed. Today's laser mice actually do pretty good but they cost a lot. You are still limited by physically having to swing around a mouse though. If you think about it you'll understand that there's a lot less inertia and travel distance in your right thumb moving a stick 3/4" than trying to whip a mouse halfway across your desk at anywhere near the same speed.
Also something I forgot to mention.... mice and analog sticks (as typically implemented) are fundamentally different kinds of input devices. Mice specify movement. Sticks specify position. This causes two differences that FPS experience:
1) lets say you are using the mouse to control your turn left / turn right. To stand in place and shoot at someone that's "circle straffing" you, you have to repeatedly pick up the mouse and move it back to the other side to resume spinning. With an analog stick set for movement, you just hold it a bit to the side to go in a smooth continuous uninterrupted spin. The same problem would occur if you were required to use the mouse to move forward. You'd constantly be picking up the mouse. In this application, sticks almost always have the advantage. Circle straffing some poor bastard with a mouse is almost unsporting. I remember doing that to the noobs trying to use a mouse as far back as marathon. "STOP DOING THAT DAMMIT!" hehe... good times.
2) to target someone at a distance with ironsights, with a mouse you move it as fast as you accurately can to about the location, then you slow down your hand movement and fine tune it before firing. How close you can get to the target before dropping into "fine tune" mode is the determining factor of how fast you can get off the first shot, and makes an unexpected "surprise melee in your face" a serious problem. With an analog stick and experience with the stick, you can get close to exact almost instantaneously, but getting fine tune can be difficult to impossible due to the limitation of the resolution of the stick. You may have to settle for "close" simply because the stick can't target the exact pixel you'd like to hit. So you can get close much faster than the mouse, but can't be as accurate. And that is why sticks beat mice close up and mice beat sticks at range.
time was back in the day when there were just basic controllers and joysticks, computers still tended to have the overall advantage because they had over 30 keys to bind to specific actions. Now with the average controller having 10 buttons on it in addition to dual analog sticks, that levels the playing field in that respect.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Consoles predate PC's in the home. In fact during the 70's and 80's consoles and the home computers had a lot more in common hardware-wise. Remember, the C64 was actually descended from the Commodore Max...a gaming console. The Commodore Amiga itself was originally conceived as a game console. Atari's 5200 console was based on their 400/800 home computer hardware. The Coleco ADAM was a Colecovision game console under the hood, and you could buy an expansion module to turn your Colecovision into an ADAM. Even the original Odyssey predates the Altair 8800
If you aren't willing to put in the tiny amount of effort it requires
If everyone had to put the tiny effort to solder together a PC, would PCs have become popular?
and you aren't willing to buy a console copier
Console copiers are sold out according to Retrode.com.
and you aren't willing to have someone else do it for you
I'm willing to have someone else do it for me, but the only someone else who has the legal right to do it often isn't willing at any price short of half its market cap. If anyone other than the game's copyright owner does it for me, it's copyright infringement.
I don't know this for a fact, but most games will not let a game running bots/mods be a 'ranked' server therefore it would not contribute to the stats. Some games even require cheats to be on to run bots (TF2 is this way I believe) and that will also makes the server unranked. Also ranked servers in this game are Punk Buster enabled, so this eliminates some, dare I say most of these sorts of issues.
Today's laser mice actually do pretty good but they cost a lot.
That comment would have made sense about 5 years ago.
than trying to whip a mouse halfway across your desk
Adjust your sensitivity. There's a reason mouse pads are so small, even those marketed for gaming.
Circle straffing some poor bastard with a mouse is almost unsporting.
C'mon, anyone using a mouse who can figure out how to get into the game can figure out how to evade someone circling around.
I remember doing that to the noobs trying to use a mouse as far back as marathon.
Give them a break, they only had one button.
to target someone at a distance with ironsights, with a mouse you...
With an analog stick and experience with the stick...
What, only the guy with the stick gets experience? Why doesn't this apply?:
With mouse and experience with the mouse, you can get close to exact almost instantaneously, then if you're still a few pixels off target you slow down your hand movement and fine tune it before firing.
And that is why sticks beat mice close up and mice beat sticks at range.
If you're close up then your target is many, many times larger than at range, and precision doesn't matter nearly as much. It's still down to only the speed you can move it at, and there's a reason why games let people adjust the mouse sensitivity so high. One small flick can move the cursor a long way.
computers still tended to have the overall advantage because they had over 30 keys to bind to specific actions. Now with the average controller having 10 buttons on it in addition to dual analog sticks, that levels the playing field in that respect.
Not when the standard keyboard has 101 or more keys, and you can get mice with buttons for each finger. There are several games that are too complex to move to a console, like X3.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Sounds like the whimpering bleatings of a CRUSHED CONSOLE PLAYER!
I play on both, you insensitive clod :P.
"Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
All the PC versions load instantly thanks to cache/hds.
All ps3 versions load... slowly between battles, adding probably 2mins per 20mins play of zero time.
I still see 100x more people on BC, than Killzone which is sometimes empty but can get dull boring too.
Resistance2 has heaps of players but is just insanely wild and crazy, its pure mayhem all against all.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Well, racecar drivers have a racecar, which is the controller more suited to going fast.
I am not devoid of humor.
Awww, someone can't afford a console or a decent gaming rig.
- Don't do what I do, it's probably not healthy nor safe. -
36.6 million of 69 million actions on Xbox is about 53%. The graph shows less than 25% completion. Same applies for the PS3 graph, where 40% completion is represented by aproximately 20% on the graph.
Quake required you to hold a button to use mouselook, unless you made some tweaks. That alone would make keyboard+mouse very annoying to use.