I’ve mostly done joy sticks.
I like to use pads as a substitute for a mouse. Games like peggle, zuma, and mini metro are great with the pads. I also like to use the pads with gyro to aim in first person games. Portal is a good game to ease into that.
I only really use them with the keyboard, desktop mode or any game that uses mouse emulation.
Age of empires II, I’ve cleared a few campaigns with it! Left pad as mouse region on bottom left icons, right pad as mouse.
Can you respond well with the pad and no keyboard?
To give context I was never a good competitive player, so I’m talking about casual play. I think I’m slightly less responsive than mouse+kb, but playing on the train is just a blast!
I also had to bind other buttons to improve response time:
- dpad down to go to last notification
- dpad to cycle between forums
- dpad eight for inactive villagers, left for army
Then Right Joystick is a radial menu to go to 6 groups. A is select all on screen. On top of that, I binded shift to L1 (the bottom left palet) which can be user in combination of most other buttons I binded: e.g. create 5 units, assign to group, select all inactive villagers etc…
I went through the William Wallace campaign to tune my conf, but I find it pretty good now!
right pad for mouse, left pad for hotkeys, all the way. Great for games that use the entire left half of the keyboard.
I pretty much do precisely this
Anything that’s an FPS, like Deep Rock Galactic or Borderlands, or any game that requires a mouse, like Little Inferno or Machinarium. Usually it’s a combo of left stick and R pad + gyro.
I also use a combination of stick and L pad for Helldivers, with the pad being set up as a Dpad.
Interesting. Had not thought of it for FPS
It becomes your mouse. Making quick turns or precise aims is a lot easier with the pad and gyro.
I bought a Steam Controller years ago for that same purpose, and it makes a world of difference.
Will give it a shot next time I do halo or l4d2
It has a little learning curve, so don’t give up if it feels a little wonky at first. I also recommend adjusting the vertical friction (I turn mine all the way up) to make turning around a lot easier.
I do imagine it would be super wonky to start. I’m so engrained with a controller
MineCraft and Dune spice wars
There’s a community profile for Monster Hunter rise that maps the quick access wheel to the right touch pad really well. I wish I could do whatever that guy did but for world as well. It’s really useful.
The right one as mouse, in RPGs, mostly isometric ones without gamepad support. Currently Pillars of Eternity 2. Works surprisingly well.
Also the left one I started using for virtual menus in games where I need to use lots of quickslots and/or abilities. The customisability is awesome, you can even add little icons to show what each menu item represents.
Turn based strategy games. Especially 4X games like Civilization or the Master of Magic remake.
Came here to say. Dominions is pretty cool on deck.
I did the original Deus Ex on mostly pads, worked pretty well!
Epic Game Launcher … OwO
Factorio - but I tend to flip between both pads and sticks
Civ VI and Inscryption required me to use the pads. Basically everything else is sticks.
Ixion seems to require them. It’s playable on Steam Deck, but probably much easier on PC with a mouse.
I’m curious how people use the 4 buttons on the back. My ring and pinkie fingers can just barely press them.
My fingers naturally rest on the back buttons, and I find them really easy to use. I usually have them set to mirror the face buttons for shooters (so I don’t have to take my finger off of the right stick to jump/reload/etc). In some other games I have them set as dpad buttons (Elden ring for example) to swap gear and use items.
Finally I don’t like button mashing, so in games where you have to mash a button I will often set the back buttons to be turbo buttons, where I can hold to spam a key.
the back buttons got a lot easier for me when I realized you’re supposed to push the flat part of the buttons on the back of the deck instead of where they curve around the grips. like, if the deck was sitting flat on a table you’d be pressing straight up instead of to the right or left.
bind the top two to the thumbstick clicks and finally be free of those terrible inputs
Factorio
