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The original was posted on /r/games by /u/lurebat on 2023-08-31 17:58:38+00:00.
One of my hopes for this generation, from the trends on the later days of last generation, is that they would add back buttons to controller.
The Steam Controller had them, the PS4 had an attachment thingy, and it just seemed like a natural update.
Instead we didn’t get anything new regarding of layout.
And it feels that games are starting to struggle with layout:
- Face buttons and d-pads are hard to use with their thumbsticks, since they both use the thumb.
So common actions like jumping or attacking with the face buttons come in expense of controlling the camera.
Some games move their attacking/dodging to the R buttons, which never feels quite right. 2. Buttons get more multi-use: In ghost of tsushima, the bar in the middle of the controller is both used as a click action, and four extra “swipe” directional actions, others have it mapped in halves or combine it.
In new games Aiming/shooting/firing modes are based on how much you push the trigger down. It’s pretty cool with the PS5 force feedback, but still feels like somewhat of a limitation. 3. Menus are using more and more of a “fake mouse” layout, which are annoying to control, but that is a must since uis became more complicated.
The basic design of the controller haven’t changed since the ps2/xbox area, and since then 3d games got a lot more complex, with more expectation of player-controlled camera.
Back buttons seem like the perfect solution - your last two fingers aren’t doing anything anyway, so you don’t have more effort on your existing fingers. You can easily add 4 extra buttons, or triggers, or even an extra touch pad.
They could easily replace the main face buttons and leave your thumbs to always be on the joysticks.
The problem is, of course, that unless everyone does it, games will not be built upon this layout.
And in the end no company has chosen to do it for this generation, and all the attempts that were weren’t really useful (mapping it to single button doesn’t really help, you need something like to steam controller mapping to really take advantage of games that weren’t designed for it).
What do you think?
Are controllers too complex already?
Are they just right?
Do they limit games to be worse, or it’s good that games have to think of clever ways to use it?
What would you ideal controller layout be?