We might lose Halo because we aren't used to console fpses with no mouse and keyboard. However, once we know the rules of the game, how all the weapons and such work, we should be able to do ok-ish.
In Quake I predict you will be destroyed repeatedly by orders of magnitude. You'll be fragged repeatedly from great distances. You'll never even touch the quad damage, if you even get a glimpse of it. If you get frags in the double digits, I'd be impressed.
So, what you're saying is that Helljumper will beat you at a game you're not used to or practiced at, and vice versa?
Well, No shit.
I think I've seen him make this argument before. He's saying that at Halo they would lose, but not too badly because the skill cap is lower. At Quake, Helljumper vs. Rym or Scott would be like a six year old softball player vs. Mike Tyson in a boxing match. Because of the precision a mouse and keyboard allows, old-school PC FPSs have a much higher ceiling in terms of how good you can be. You can aim as fast as you can move the mouse, in Halo you can aim as fast as the game allows you.
I think I've seen him make this argument before. He's saying that at Halo they would lose, but not too badly because the skill cap is lower. At Quake, Helljumper vs. Rym or Scott would be like a six year old softball player vs. Mike Tyson in a boxing match. Because of the precision a mouse and keyboard allows, old-school PC FPSs have a much higher ceiling in terms of how good you can be. You can aim as fast as you can move the mouse, in Halo you can aim as fast as the game allows you.
Horseshit. I've seen feats in Console FPS games, performed using a controller, that are easily the equal of anything I've seen on a Mouse and keyboard. The inability to use both is - of course, ignoring some games which just have diabolically shitty control schemes, but those exist on both platforms - frankly function of the lacking skill of the player. The developers - despite what Scrym might think, as is common - actually know what they're doing, and the reality of the control input that the game uses on a particular platform, and tailor the game as such. Go to any game that is released on both PC and Console, and compare the two side by side - the differences are there, if you look for them. If they're as good as they claim, then they should be able to adapt and play both competently.
Also, most people in the PC Vs Console FPS debate seem to forget something - they're not perfect machines. No matter what they do, they can't get around that. It's the difference between trying to dodge, at 30 feet, a bullet travelling 1400 feet per second, and one travelling at 1600 feet per second. The difference in speed of the bullet doesn't matter - You simply can't move fast enough to dodge it. There is a limit on how fast a human can react, and beyond that limit It doesn't matter if one is more accurate than another, because you simply can't perform any useful input fast enough for it to make a difference.
Shit, I can do both, And while I'm above average, I'm really not that good on the grand scheme of things. If one is so much better than I am at it, then why can't you do the same? Allow me to put forward a theory - Because they're not as good as they think they are.
For example - Scott Calls Halo a baby game. If this is the case, it should be simple for him to master, since he professes to such a high level of skill at FPS, and he claims that games like Halo require a lower level of skill. Will this happen? No. He'll get his ass handed to him constantly, and he'll blame the control scheme, the game, the console, the other players, whatever. Nothing more than a poorly skilled workman blaming his tools.
It's essentially, in my opinion, that it's just a more verbose version of the usual kid who happens to be extremely good at one specific game, or type of game, and when they suck at another game, it's not THEIR fault, no no no, it's got to be the game, or the control scheme, or whatever else, and will proclaim loudly and shrilly as such - It's NEVER just their lack of skill outside of a small area.
I'm not trying to make the point that you're bad, I'm trying to make the point that Quake has a higher skill cap than Halo. Isn't that the argument you were having?
I think I've seen him make this argument before. He's saying that at Halo they would lose, but not too badly because the skill cap is lower. At Quake, Helljumper vs. Rym or Scott would be like a six year old softball player vs. Mike Tyson in a boxing match. Because of the precision a mouse and keyboard allows, old-school PC FPSs have a much higher ceiling in terms of how good you can be. You can aim as fast as you can move the mouse, in Halo you can aim as fast as the game allows you.
Horeshit, words words words words.
That's not to say that Halo doesn't have a high skill cap. There's some damn good Halo players out there, and the range of skill is pretty wide, but by nature of their platform the skill of an PC gamer has a higher cap. You simply can't make a playable game on the Xbox that is as complex and precise as the most complex and precise PC games.
An interesting experiment - Quake 3 Arena is coming to the Xbox 360 via the marketplace. Rather than Scrm Vs Whoever on Quake 3 on PC and Halo on the Xbox, I think a far more interesting and useful experiment would be Scrym Vs whoever on Quake 3 on the 360, and Halo on the PC.
Then why are you playing shit like halo?
Why do some people collect stamps? Why do some people play German board games, or read, or knit, or watch anime for recreation? Because they enjoy it, rather than just bandwagoning, in most cases. Question answered. Next.
An interesting experiment - Quake 3 Arena is coming to the Xbox 360 via the marketplace. Rather than Scrm Vs Whoever on Quake 3 on PC and Halo on the Xbox, I think a far more interesting and useful experiment would be Scrym Vs whoever on Quake 3 on the 360, and Halo on the PC.
Halo was not made for a mouse, and Quake 3 will be significantly different on a controller. READ MAH EDIT.
That's not to say that Halo doesn't have a high skill cap. There's some damn good Halo players out there, and the range of skill is pretty wide, but by nature of their platform the skill of an PC FPS player has a higher cap. You simply can't make a playable game on the Xbox that is as complex and precise as the most complex and precise PC games.
But if you're not right up against that limit of skill for the game, it's absolutely fucking irrelevant. If you can't touch the bottom, it doesn't matter if you have 40 feet of water below you, or 45000, you're still going to drown.
Halo was not made for a mouse, and Quake 3 will be significantly different on a controller. READ MAH EDIT.
Read what I wrote. The games are tailored to the platform, and there is two perfectly adequate Halo games on the PC that have been tailored appropriately for the control scheme. Y'know, in other words, there was multiple versions of Halo made to be played with a keyboard and mouse.
As for them being different - Well, no shit. That's what makes it more interesting than people who are good at one version of a game besting those who are not. Otherwise, you've proved nothing other than the participant's skill at those particular versions of the games. If you're that good at a "Manly game of skill" like Quake 3 arena, then the differences should present no problems when moved to a different control scheme, and if you're so proficient at FPS on a keyboard and mouse system, then you should easily best someone at an unfamiliar FPS game using a keyboard and mouse.
Why do some people collect stamps? Why do some people play German board games, or read, or knit, or watch anime for recreation? Because they enjoy it, rather than just bandwagoning, in most cases. Question answered. Next.
Also, strange as it may be, there are lots of people out there who like playing video games on their couch, on a TV, perhaps sitting next to some of their good friends, where they can have a good time. LAN parties, fun as they may be, have no where near the ease-of-use as plugging an Xbox into a TV and pass around a couple controllers.
Why do some people collect stamps? Why do some people play German board games, or read, or knit, or watch anime for recreation? Because they enjoy it, rather than just bandwagoning, in most cases. Question answered. Next.
Also, strange as it may be, there are lots of people out there who like playing video games on their couch, on a TV, perhaps sitting next to some of their good friends, where they can have a good time. LAN parties, fun as they may be, have no where near the ease-of-use as plugging an Xbox into a TV and pass around a couple controllers.
I'm aware of that, but I'm also aware that console FPSes suck ass.
But if you're not right up against that limit of skill for the game, it's absolutely fucking irrelevant. If you can't touch the bottom, it doesn't matter if you have 40 feet of water below you, or 45000, you're still going to drown.
But could you play Halo for fifteen years without bumping against the upper limit of skill? I started this argument by telling you guys about the argument Scott was trying to make, and that's where he is with FPS games. He's climbed 500 feet up the mountain, and he's still got 600 to go if he wants to be the best. Halo is a much smaller mountain, how small I can't say, but that's really what the argument boils down too.
For the record, Halo is super fun and I play it all the time.
I've played mw2 and halo 3 at some of my friend's houses. Don't get me wrong, consoles have their place in driving games, rpgs, etc but the latency and lack of precision just doesnt work for FPSes
I've played mw2 and halo 3 at some of my friend's houses. Don't get me wrong, consoles have their place in driving games, rpgs, etc but the latency and sensitivity just doesnt work for FPSes
I'm aware of that, but I'm also aware that console FPSes suck ass.
Your opinion and reality are not one and the same, I'm quite happy to inform you. And As a question - Quake 3 is being ported to the 360. The content in the game won't be changed, pretty much only the controls, and most likely some extremely slight gameplay tweaks related to the controls to optimise it for that system. Does that mean that as soon as this is released, that quake 3 sucks, or that you're not as good as you think you are at quake three, because you can't adapt to the same game with different controls, especially considering that the gameplay has been tailored for those controls?
But could you play Halo for fifteen years without bumping against the upper limit of skill?
I'll wait until Halo's been out for fifteen years before I give you an answer. Could you Play quake 3 arena for fifteen years without bumping up against the upper limit of skill? I don't know. I'll wait until it's been out for fifteen years.
I started this argument by telling you guys about the argument Scott was trying to make, and that's where he is with FPS games.
If that's the argument Scott was trying to make, then he needs to either make it, or alternatively, get better at stating his arguments.
He's climbed 500 feet up the mountain, and he's still got 600 to go if he wants to be the best. Halo is a much smaller mountain, how small I can't say, but that's really what the argument boils down too.
There are two problems with this - 1)By what metric are you measuring that It's a smaller Mountain? If you don't have an overall, objective measure of skill of players and skill caps of the game, then your argument is useless purely by the strength that you're trying to measure the mountain without having any way to measure it.
2)Until the skill cap is reached, the argument is useless in either case, because otherwise, you're trying to measure the mountain without being able to observe the top. It's like asking "How long is a piece of sting?" without specifying any particular string.
If that's the argument Scott was trying to make, then he needs to either make it, or alternatively, get better at stating his arguments.
I'm reasonably sure that's what he was trying to say. Scott, step in and tell me whether or not I'm interpreting that properly. I'm going to go play X-Com.
THE PC GAME.
WHICH IS BETTAR.
BECUZ it has the MOUSE and KEYBOARD.
NYEAH NYEAH.
(I'm really tired of this argument, Churbs, you win by default.)
I can't believe we have to explain this to you people again. But I'll do it one last time to save you the trouble of searching and finding the 20 old threads and at least 2 GeekNights episodes in which we explain it.
An analog stick and a mouse are both dual-axis analog inputs. However, there is one incredibly important difference. It one small thing, but it makes all the difference in the universe. It is probably even the sole factor that separate console fps from PC.
An analog stick has a maximum. You move the stick as far to the left as it can go, and you will turn to the left at the maximum speed. You put the stick as far up as it will go and the game will have you look up as fast as the game will allow.
A mouse has no maximum. You can adjust the sensitivity to whatever you please. They even have mice that let you adjust sensitivity instantly. My mouse at work can do it. Rym's mouse can do it. A quality mouse also has vastly greater precision than an analog stick, but that is secondary to the fact that the stick has a maximum.
The in-game consequences of this fact for a game like Quake are absolutely enormous. Imagine playing Quake. You are flying through the air. You quickly spin 360 in a fraction of a second to survey everything. You see a rail gun shot coming from an upper platform. You instantly aim at the platform looking for the evil camper.
Imagine an avatar floating in space. Now imagine a sphere completely surrounding the avatar. If you have a mouse you have the ability to fire your weapon and look out of any point on the entire sphere, instantly. If you have an analog stick, then your ability to aim and look out of a point on the sphere is determined by its distance on the surface of the sphere from the spot you are currently at.
Maneuvers such as rocket jumping off of a wall, turning around instantly to fire upon other opponents are impossible on console FPS. Yes, I know that some console FPS have a button allowing you to do a 180 degree flip. That flip mitigates this problem, but only a very small amount. What if I want to do a 160 degree flip? I'm still limited. Also, it does nothing to help anything in terms of up and down, only left and right. FPS are 3d games and all dimensions of movement and aim are equally important.
Also, because of this issue, console FPS are necessarily slower all around than PC fps. And if you think a game like Quake Live is fast, you're in for a world of hurt. When Quake 3 came out originally everyone said the same thing. Why is this so slow? Quake 1 and 2 and other fpses of the time were orders of magnitude faster and more difficult.
And let us not neglect to mention the greatest FPS to ever exist, Tribes 2. A game that would be absolutely unplayable with anything but a mouse and keyboard. I would lol at some analog stick spinfusor duels.
But even much slower games, such as Natural Selection or Counter-Strike would be absolutely impossible with a gamepad. Imagine a marine walking down the hallway. A skulk comes up behind him to gnaw on his ankles. With a mouse, he might be able to respond and begin filling the skulk with hot lead in under a second, limited only by his skill and reaction time. With a gamepad, even if a player had a superhuman reaction time, he would be unable to aim at the skulk on the ground soon enough to even hit it with a single bullet before the skulk's bites did enough damage to kill him. Perhaps if he had heavy armor and the skulk had no focus or anything, he could do it. Or maybe if he had an explosive, he could drop it on the ground as a way to at least do some kamikaze damage. Because of the decreased speed of console fps, weapon selection and other factors are far more important in determining victory than the pure dexterity of the player.
I've only played very small amounts of Halo, but I have played plenty of console FPSes. I probably have as many, if not more, hours of Goldeneye and Perfect Dark as anyone here. I've played enough modern console FPSes to know that while there have been many improvements since the days Goldeneye, the fundamental flaw in being limited to an analog stick, even two of them, still remains.
What's even worse is that nowadays you have games like TF2 which carry over the limitations of the console to the PC, where they are not necessary.
Now, do not get me wrong. If I were trying to make money and sell many copies of a game, I would absolutely make an easy console fps. That is what sells, that is what is popular, that is what more people enjoy in the world today. That still does not change the fact that these console fpses are indeed baby games when compared to their ancestors.
Console fpses are to boxing as real PC fpses are to Roman gladiatorial combat.
But could you play Halo for fifteen years without bumping against the upper limit of skill?
I'll wait until Halo's been out for fifteen years before I give you an answer. Could you Play quake 3 arena for fifteen years without bumping up against the upper limit of skill? I don't know. I'll wait until it's been out for fifteen years.
Well, it's been out eleven years, so I think we can be reasonably say that the skill cap for Quake 3 is very high. You also have to keep in mind that Quake 3 was designed for the hardcore player, it was specifically made to be as skill-based as possible. Bungee doesn't have the kind of legacy that ID Software has and did not design Halo 3 with the same intentions in mind. I really don't feel like the two games are comparable at all. Quake and Halo were made to be at a completely different levels.
[Edit] I started typing this before Scott jumped in and stuff.
He's climbed 500 feet up the mountain, and he's still got 600 to go if he wants to be the best. Halo is a much smaller mountain, how small I can't say, but that's really what the argument boils down too.
There are two problems with this - 1)By what metric are you measuring that It's a smaller Mountain? If you don't have an overall, objective measure of skill of players and skill caps of the game, then your argument is useless purely by the strength that you're trying to measure the mountain without having any way to measure it.
2)Until the skill cap is reached, the argument is useless in either case, because otherwise, you're trying to measure the mountain without being able to observe the top. It's like asking "How long is a piece of sting?" without specifying any particular string.
This is pretty much my opinion on the matter too. You can't say a game has a higher skill cap without quantifying what that means. Why should a PC game have a higher cap than a console game? What are you basing that on? For people who argue for PC games, in this case FPS games, they always argue that a keyboard and mouse allows for more precision. Yes, I will give you that having a mouse to look around is more precise simply because you're moving it in an infinitely large 2D plane as opposed to pushing a stick in just one direction of an infinitely large 2D plane. But then, on the other hand, your WASD only has eight directions compared to the stick's infinite number of directions in a 2D plane. And you try to make the same argument for the keyboard, saying it has more buttons. Well, you can take any 360 or PS3 controller, and those allow up to well over 50,000 different button combinations. There is no lack of buttons, it's just up to the designers to figure out how to use them properly.
The only other argument you can really make is that skill cap is based on the number of players playing the game. Once you're the best player in the world at that game, you have hit the skill cap. Otherwise, the skill cap really cannot be measured in any way, unless you can prove that a game is perfectly solvable, and that you can play a game exactly that way.
[Edit] I started typing this before Scott jumped in and stuff.
But then, on the other hand, your WASD only has eight directions compared to the stick's infinite number of directions in a 2D plane.
Solution: Two mice.
Answer to hidden question: How would you move forward or backward with a mouse? Does the idea of moving the mouse forward every time you want your character to move forward appeal to you? The only way to do it this way is to have a zero reference point, then move the mouse a certain amount of distance away in a particular direction to achieve the same effect a stick does.
You know all this talk about Quake made me want to play Quakelive tonight, and of course the site is having DNS problems.... damn it.
Yeah, me too. This weekend for sure.
As for movement with WASD instead of analog stick, you are correct. WASD technically only allows 8 directions whereas the analog stick does not. The thing is, it doesn't matter, as I will now explain.
Let's say you want to move forward and to the right at a 15 degree angle. You can't just hold W since that is straight forward. You can't hold WD because that is a 45 degree angle. What do you do? You hold W and tap D at intervals to move only slightly to the right. Skilled players have mastered this to the point where there really is no limitation to the directions they can move. When playing a PC fps players are able to move in any direction, and translating that into presses of WASD is completely in muscle memory.
Now, there is one key area you neglected to mention, that is movement speed. You see, it's ok to use an analog stick for fps movement because every fps ever created has a maximum movement speed. Hold down W, and that's as fast as you can go, by just walking. Some FPS have sprint buttons, some have walk slowly buttons. An analog stick potentially allows very fine grained control of exact movement speed below the maximum. Instead of just a choice between run and walk, a stick could offer all different walking/running speeds in-between.That's nice. An analog stick in the left hand, like a Wii nunchuck, with a mouse in the right hand would probably be better than mouse and keyboard if you could get enough buttons on there.
The thing is, this doesn't really matter all that much. Skill based fpses are all about speed. Speed beyond the maximum speed of holding down the forward button. Rocket jump speed. Tribes Skiing speed. Fade celerity speed. Giving you a wide range of slow speeds to choose from for plain old walking doesn't mean jack.
Think of it like this. You have two cars. The console car can go any speed up to 60mph. It can go 1mph, 2mph, 3mph. The PC car can go three speeds. 0mph, 30mph, and 60mph. The game is played at 200mph. The ability to walk at 45mph doesn't buy you anything except a rocket up your ass. Also, the speed of 45mph can be simulated on the PC, again, by tapping the run/walk button. Meanwhile, the console's inability to quickly aim at the other people going at Formula 1 speeds means none of your rockets will be seeing any anuses any time soon.
Now, someone could create an fps where the movement axes were unlimited. This would necessitate dual-mouse play if no other input device could be invented. In such a game, a player would move as quickly as they could move the mouse. That's good on paper, but fails in reality due to the fact that humans only have two hands. If we had three hands, it would be fucking epic. Two mice and the third hand on the keyboard.
Does the idea of moving the mouse forward every time you want your character to move forward appeal to you?
Yes, because it means I have infinite precision in the way I walk. Such a game would have an infinitely high skill cap. I can step forward BY THE PIXEL. j/k obv
An analog stick has a maximum. You move the stick as far to the left as it can go, and you will turn to the left at the maximum speed. You put the stick as far up as it will go and the game will have you look up as fast as the game will allow.
A mouse has no maximum. You can adjust the sensitivity to whatever you please. They even have mice that let you adjust sensitivity instantly. My mouse at work can do it. Rym's mouse can do it. A quality mouse also has vastly greater precision than an analog stick, but that is secondary to the fact that the stick has a maximum.
See, I think the problem here is that you're not specifying the difference as clearly as possible. You can say that a stick can allow a player to only turn at the whatever the maximum speed for the game is. So, does that mean that with a mouse, you can suddenly turn faster than the maximum speed for the game, thus breaking the laws of the game? No, you can't. Assuming you can move a mouse infinitely fast to the left, then you can assume the player in the game will turn infinitely fast to the left. You can achieve the exact same thing with a stick, where you just say, if the stick is 100% to the left, then the player will turn infinitely fast to the left.
What you should really be basing your argument on is that a mouse has infinitely more control over variable speeds. Because the speed at which you move the mouse has an infinite number of possibilities, the mouse is more precise because a stick cannot judge by the speed of movement, only the position of the stick. (Theoretically you could judge by the speed of movement of the stick, but that would be pointless since, as has been said, the stick is restrained by distance. A mouse can move forever in the 2D plane).
See, I think the problem here is that you're not specifying the difference as clearly as possible. You can say that a stick can allow a player to only turn at the whatever the maximum speed for the game is. So, does that mean that with a mouse, you can suddenly turn faster than the maximum speed for the game, thus breaking the laws of the game? No, you can't. Assuming you can move a mouse infinitely fast to the left, then you can assume the player in the game will turn infinitely fast to the left. You can achieve the exact same thing with a stick, where you just say, if the stick is 100% to the left, then the player will turn infinitely fast to the left.
This is incorrect. Let me try to explain it one more time.
Let's say that I have my mouse set to a high sensitivity. It is set such that moving the mouse exactly straight to the right five centimeters will rotate my character 360 degrees. If I were playing Quake, and I moved the mouse to the right 10 centimeters, the view would rotate 720 degrees at the speed at which I move the mouse. There are no imposed software limits on the speed at which you may look and aim in a quality PC fps.
Now let's say I were playing a console. I move the stick all the way to the right. Now the aim is moving to the right as the fastest speed allowed by the game. I must sit there and hold the stick and wait for the aim to slowly pan to the right and eventually I will have spun 180 degrees. The game has a built in software maximum speed at which you may move your aim.
(I'm really tired of this argument, Churbs, you win by default.)
Eh, I'll take what I can get.
I can't believe we have to explain this to you people again. But I'll do it one last time to save you the trouble of searching and finding the 20 old threads and at least 2 GeekNights episodes in which we explain it.
Just as I can't believe that this is a concept that you can't seem to grasp. Pardon me for putting it incredibly simply after you went to all that effort.
Most of that? Well, it doesn't really matter. Sorry that your effort was, for the most part, wasted.
Let me give you a simple example - A motorbike is far more agile than a car. The controls are much more precise, and offer more input - you can control the position of the front wheel which provides steering, you control the degree of lean when you manoeuvre, and you can also control the forwards and backwards tilt of the bike. They also provide an extremely high level of feedback during this, as well as generally being faster both in acceleration and top speed. Cars don't provide any of that - you have less control over the way the car moves, and less feedback, and less speed available both immediately and overall.
Does this mean that driving a car competently automatically requires less skill than riding a motorbike competently? Are motorbikes automatically better than cars? Not really a valid comparison - it's an apples an oranges comparison. It's a completely different skillset that happens to be used in the same space, the road.
As for your argument that manuvers such as Rocket-jumping off a wall and instantly turning and firing on an opponent being impossible on a console FPS, well, it's just utter bollocks - I've done exactly that, playing Quake 3 arena on the original Xbox. Beyond my meagre level of skill, I've seen people match every move from quake 3 on the PC, on quake 3 on the original Xbox. The game was, admittedly, fractionally slower - but frankly, it just wasn't really enough to make a difference, as the amount that it was slower was still faster than a very large segment of even the gaming population would be able to react.
Now, do not get me wrong. If I were trying to make money and sell many copies of a game, I would absolutely make an easy console fps. That is what sells, that is what is popular, that is what more people enjoy in the world today.
I said your conclusion was incorrect, not that you're stupid, and it would take a pretty high class of idiot to screw up a decision like that.
That still does not change the fact that these console fpses are indeed baby games when compared to their ancestors.
If it's a baby game, then Prove. Put your money where your mouth is, so to speak, and Either master an equivalent console FPS far, far easier than mastering a PC FPS, or cease shit-talking. And of course, you even come into it with the benefit of your pre-existing skill at FPS games - some of which will carry over - all you need to do is master the new system.
Console fpses are to boxing as real PC fpses are to Roman gladiatorial combat.
Er, right. I'm going to go with Gunter's assessment of what you were trying to say here, and go back to my previous metaphor as a more correct alternative - PC FPS is to console FPS as riding a motorbike is to driving a car.
Let's say you want to move forward and to the right at a 15 degree angle. You can't just hold W since that is straight forward. You can't hold WD because that is a 45 degree angle. What do you do? You hold W and tap D at intervals to move only slightly to the right. Skilled players have mastered this to the point where there really is no limitation to the directions they can move. When playing a PC fps players are able to move in any direction, and translating that into presses of WASD is completely in muscle memory.
So, You're saying that the limitations of PC games are irrelevant, because skilled players find ways around them, but despite that the same is true for the console, those limitations matter immensely? Can't have your Kayak and heat it, Scott.
Think of it like this. You have two cars. The console car can go any speed up to 60mph. It can go 1mph, 2mph, 3mph. The PC car can go three speeds. 0mph, 30mph, and 60mph. The game is played at 200mph. The ability to walk at 45mph doesn't buy you anything except a rocket up your ass. Also, the speed of 45mph can be simulated on the PC, again, by tapping the run/walk button. Meanwhile, the console's inability to quickly aim at the other people going at Formula 1 speeds means none of your rockets will be seeing any anuses any time soon.
That's a bullshit argument, because you're comparing apples and oranges yet again. Yes, many console games are slower compared to their pc counterparts. But they're still different. It's not two cars, one going 1-3 MPH and the other going 0-60, in a 200 MPH race. It's two cars, one going 0-100 MPH in a 200MPH race, and another going 0-50 in a 100 MPH race. It doesn't matter if you've got an F1 car that goes 300 klicks an hour, if you're racing in a road rally, because that's not that car's race.
The problem is that you can't seem to reconcile the fact that PC FPS and Console FPS are not the same thing. You know what would happen if you could, by some magic, hook your mouse and keyboard up to an 360 and have it work as a control input, and you could take on people playing, say, MW2 using controllers? You'd lose, probably by a large margin, because the game was optimised to be played on a different control setup. The reverse is equally true. Your argument, is essentially, that a motorbike is better than a car, because you have more speed and more control and feedback, when in reality, they're just not the same thing.
Well, it's been out eleven years, so I think we can be reasonably say that the skill cap for Quake 3 is very high. You also have to keep in mind that Quake 3 was designed for the hardcore player, it was specifically made to be as skill-based as possible. Bungee doesn't have the kind of legacy that ID Software has and did not design Halo 3 with the same intentions in mind. I really don't feel like the two games are comparable at all. Quake and Halo weremadeto be at a completely different levels.
I'm aware, I was simply stating both for completeness.
Right, I'm done now. I've said my piece, and I'm following gunter's lead, if you want to continue dick-fencing over nothing more than your preferred game and skillset, please, continue to carry on till you're blue in the face. I've made my argument, and there's not much more I can say without repeating myself.
See, I think the problem here is that you're not specifying the difference as clearly as possible. You can say that a stick can allow a player to only turn at the whatever the maximum speed for the game is. So, does that mean that with a mouse, you can suddenly turn faster than the maximum speed for the game, thus breaking the laws of the game? No, you can't. Assuming you can move a mouse infinitely fast to the left, then you can assume the player in the game will turn infinitely fast to the left. You can achieve the exact same thing with a stick, where you just say, if the stick is 100% to the left, then the player will turn infinitely fast to the left.
This is incorrect. Let me try to explain it one more time.
Let's say that I have my mouse set to a high sensitivity. It is set such that moving the mouse exactly straight to the right five centimeters will rotate my character 360 degrees. If I were playing Quake, and I moved the mouse to the right 10 centimeters, the view would rotate 720 degrees at the speed at which I move the mouse. There are no imposed software limits on the speed at which you may look and aim in a quality PC fps.
Now let's say I were playing a console. I move the stick all the way to the right. Now the aim is moving to the right as the fastest speed allowed by the game. I must sit there and hold the stick and wait for the aim to slowly pan to the right and eventually I will have spun 180 degrees. The game has a built in software maximum speed at which you may move your aim.
I get what you are saying. Moving a mouse is distance times a factor of time, whereas a stick is time times a factor of distance. I'm saying that theoretically (as in mathematically, not realistically), a stick can achieve the same speed of movement. Obviously, in the real world, that doesn't work. The reason a stick cannot win is because they don't have the precision necessary to make their factor of distance equal to a mouse's factor of time (as in, making the number of stick positions equal to the number of speeds a mouse can move at).
To be clear, I agree with your position. I just thought your explanation was (until this last post) lacking. Good on you to explain it more clearly.
Let's say you want to move forward and to the right at a 15 degree angle. You can't just hold W since that is straight forward. You can't hold WD because that is a 45 degree angle. What do you do? You hold W and tap D at intervals to move only slightly to the right. Skilled players have mastered this to the point where there really is no limitation to the directions they can move. When playing a PC fps players are able to move in any direction, and translating that into presses of WASD is completely in muscle memory.
So, You're saying that the limitations of PC games are irrelevant, because skilled players find ways around them, but despite that the same is true for the console, those limitations matter immensely? Can't have your Kayak and heat it, Scott.
This is just saying that with practice, a digital form can realistically mimic an analog form. It's basically the same reason why an MP3, which is a digital waveform, can sound virtually the same as an analog waveform of the same thing. Will it ever be the same? No. Is it good enough? Yes. I can make the same argument for using a stick over a mouse.
This is just saying that with practice, a digital form can realistically mimic an analog form. It's basically the same reason why an MP3, which is a digital waveform, can sound virtually the same as an analog waveform of the same thing. Will it ever be the same? No. Is it good enough? Yes. I can make the same argument for using a stick over a mouse.
I was also going to make this analogy, but decided not to. It's just Nyquist's theorem. If the sampling rate is high enough, then the digital buttons on the keyboard can be an exact substitute for the analog stick.
Maybe I can make one more analogy really quickly to try to make my point. NASCAR. Vroom. Cars go fast. Console FPS = NASCAR with restrictor plates. It is fail. PC FPS is NASCAR with afterburners, turbos. Hell, it's fuckin Speed Racer with spring jumping and shit.
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If they're as good as they claim, then they should be able to adapt and play both competently.
Also, most people in the PC Vs Console FPS debate seem to forget something - they're not perfect machines. No matter what they do, they can't get around that. It's the difference between trying to dodge, at 30 feet, a bullet travelling 1400 feet per second, and one travelling at 1600 feet per second. The difference in speed of the bullet doesn't matter - You simply can't move fast enough to dodge it. There is a limit on how fast a human can react, and beyond that limit It doesn't matter if one is more accurate than another, because you simply can't perform any useful input fast enough for it to make a difference.
Shit, I can do both, And while I'm above average, I'm really not that good on the grand scheme of things. If one is so much better than I am at it, then why can't you do the same?
Allow me to put forward a theory - Because they're not as good as they think they are.
For example - Scott Calls Halo a baby game. If this is the case, it should be simple for him to master, since he professes to such a high level of skill at FPS, and he claims that games like Halo require a lower level of skill.
Will this happen? No. He'll get his ass handed to him constantly, and he'll blame the control scheme, the game, the console, the other players, whatever. Nothing more than a poorly skilled workman blaming his tools.
It's essentially, in my opinion, that it's just a more verbose version of the usual kid who happens to be extremely good at one specific game, or type of game, and when they suck at another game, it's not THEIR fault, no no no, it's got to be the game, or the control scheme, or whatever else, and will proclaim loudly and shrilly as such - It's NEVER just their lack of skill outside of a small area.
As for them being different - Well, no shit. That's what makes it more interesting than people who are good at one version of a game besting those who are not. Otherwise, you've proved nothing other than the participant's skill at those particular versions of the games. If you're that good at a "Manly game of skill" like Quake 3 arena, then the differences should present no problems when moved to a different control scheme, and if you're so proficient at FPS on a keyboard and mouse system, then you should easily best someone at an unfamiliar FPS game using a keyboard and mouse.
For the record, Halo is super fun and I play it all the time.
1)By what metric are you measuring that It's a smaller Mountain? If you don't have an overall, objective measure of skill of players and skill caps of the game, then your argument is useless purely by the strength that you're trying to measure the mountain without having any way to measure it.
2)Until the skill cap is reached, the argument is useless in either case, because otherwise, you're trying to measure the mountain without being able to observe the top. It's like asking "How long is a piece of sting?" without specifying any particular string.
THE PC GAME.
WHICH IS BETTAR.
BECUZ it has the MOUSE and KEYBOARD.
NYEAH NYEAH.
(I'm really tired of this argument, Churbs, you win by default.)
An analog stick and a mouse are both dual-axis analog inputs. However, there is one incredibly important difference. It one small thing, but it makes all the difference in the universe. It is probably even the sole factor that separate console fps from PC.
An analog stick has a maximum. You move the stick as far to the left as it can go, and you will turn to the left at the maximum speed. You put the stick as far up as it will go and the game will have you look up as fast as the game will allow.
A mouse has no maximum. You can adjust the sensitivity to whatever you please. They even have mice that let you adjust sensitivity instantly. My mouse at work can do it. Rym's mouse can do it. A quality mouse also has vastly greater precision than an analog stick, but that is secondary to the fact that the stick has a maximum.
The in-game consequences of this fact for a game like Quake are absolutely enormous. Imagine playing Quake. You are flying through the air. You quickly spin 360 in a fraction of a second to survey everything. You see a rail gun shot coming from an upper platform. You instantly aim at the platform looking for the evil camper.
Imagine an avatar floating in space. Now imagine a sphere completely surrounding the avatar. If you have a mouse you have the ability to fire your weapon and look out of any point on the entire sphere, instantly. If you have an analog stick, then your ability to aim and look out of a point on the sphere is determined by its distance on the surface of the sphere from the spot you are currently at.
Maneuvers such as rocket jumping off of a wall, turning around instantly to fire upon other opponents are impossible on console FPS. Yes, I know that some console FPS have a button allowing you to do a 180 degree flip. That flip mitigates this problem, but only a very small amount. What if I want to do a 160 degree flip? I'm still limited. Also, it does nothing to help anything in terms of up and down, only left and right. FPS are 3d games and all dimensions of movement and aim are equally important.
Also, because of this issue, console FPS are necessarily slower all around than PC fps. And if you think a game like Quake Live is fast, you're in for a world of hurt. When Quake 3 came out originally everyone said the same thing. Why is this so slow? Quake 1 and 2 and other fpses of the time were orders of magnitude faster and more difficult.
And let us not neglect to mention the greatest FPS to ever exist, Tribes 2. A game that would be absolutely unplayable with anything but a mouse and keyboard. I would lol at some analog stick spinfusor duels.
But even much slower games, such as Natural Selection or Counter-Strike would be absolutely impossible with a gamepad. Imagine a marine walking down the hallway. A skulk comes up behind him to gnaw on his ankles. With a mouse, he might be able to respond and begin filling the skulk with hot lead in under a second, limited only by his skill and reaction time. With a gamepad, even if a player had a superhuman reaction time, he would be unable to aim at the skulk on the ground soon enough to even hit it with a single bullet before the skulk's bites did enough damage to kill him. Perhaps if he had heavy armor and the skulk had no focus or anything, he could do it. Or maybe if he had an explosive, he could drop it on the ground as a way to at least do some kamikaze damage. Because of the decreased speed of console fps, weapon selection and other factors are far more important in determining victory than the pure dexterity of the player.
I've only played very small amounts of Halo, but I have played plenty of console FPSes. I probably have as many, if not more, hours of Goldeneye and Perfect Dark as anyone here. I've played enough modern console FPSes to know that while there have been many improvements since the days Goldeneye, the fundamental flaw in being limited to an analog stick, even two of them, still remains.
What's even worse is that nowadays you have games like TF2 which carry over the limitations of the console to the PC, where they are not necessary.
Now, do not get me wrong. If I were trying to make money and sell many copies of a game, I would absolutely make an easy console fps. That is what sells, that is what is popular, that is what more people enjoy in the world today. That still does not change the fact that these console fpses are indeed baby games when compared to their ancestors.
Console fpses are to boxing as real PC fpses are to Roman gladiatorial combat.
[Edit] I started typing this before Scott jumped in and stuff.
The only other argument you can really make is that skill cap is based on the number of players playing the game. Once you're the best player in the world at that game, you have hit the skill cap. Otherwise, the skill cap really cannot be measured in any way, unless you can prove that a game is perfectly solvable, and that you can play a game exactly that way.
As for movement with WASD instead of analog stick, you are correct. WASD technically only allows 8 directions whereas the analog stick does not. The thing is, it doesn't matter, as I will now explain.
Let's say you want to move forward and to the right at a 15 degree angle. You can't just hold W since that is straight forward. You can't hold WD because that is a 45 degree angle. What do you do? You hold W and tap D at intervals to move only slightly to the right. Skilled players have mastered this to the point where there really is no limitation to the directions they can move. When playing a PC fps players are able to move in any direction, and translating that into presses of WASD is completely in muscle memory.
Now, there is one key area you neglected to mention, that is movement speed. You see, it's ok to use an analog stick for fps movement because every fps ever created has a maximum movement speed. Hold down W, and that's as fast as you can go, by just walking. Some FPS have sprint buttons, some have walk slowly buttons. An analog stick potentially allows very fine grained control of exact movement speed below the maximum. Instead of just a choice between run and walk, a stick could offer all different walking/running speeds in-between.That's nice. An analog stick in the left hand, like a Wii nunchuck, with a mouse in the right hand would probably be better than mouse and keyboard if you could get enough buttons on there.
The thing is, this doesn't really matter all that much. Skill based fpses are all about speed. Speed beyond the maximum speed of holding down the forward button. Rocket jump speed. Tribes Skiing speed. Fade celerity speed. Giving you a wide range of slow speeds to choose from for plain old walking doesn't mean jack.
Think of it like this. You have two cars. The console car can go any speed up to 60mph. It can go 1mph, 2mph, 3mph. The PC car can go three speeds. 0mph, 30mph, and 60mph. The game is played at 200mph. The ability to walk at 45mph doesn't buy you anything except a rocket up your ass. Also, the speed of 45mph can be simulated on the PC, again, by tapping the run/walk button. Meanwhile, the console's inability to quickly aim at the other people going at Formula 1 speeds means none of your rockets will be seeing any anuses any time soon.
Now, someone could create an fps where the movement axes were unlimited. This would necessitate dual-mouse play if no other input device could be invented. In such a game, a player would move as quickly as they could move the mouse. That's good on paper, but fails in reality due to the fact that humans only have two hands. If we had three hands, it would be fucking epic. Two mice and the third hand on the keyboard.
What you should really be basing your argument on is that a mouse has infinitely more control over variable speeds. Because the speed at which you move the mouse has an infinite number of possibilities, the mouse is more precise because a stick cannot judge by the speed of movement, only the position of the stick. (Theoretically you could judge by the speed of movement of the stick, but that would be pointless since, as has been said, the stick is restrained by distance. A mouse can move forever in the 2D plane).
Let's say that I have my mouse set to a high sensitivity. It is set such that moving the mouse exactly straight to the right five centimeters will rotate my character 360 degrees. If I were playing Quake, and I moved the mouse to the right 10 centimeters, the view would rotate 720 degrees at the speed at which I move the mouse. There are no imposed software limits on the speed at which you may look and aim in a quality PC fps.
Now let's say I were playing a console. I move the stick all the way to the right. Now the aim is moving to the right as the fastest speed allowed by the game. I must sit there and hold the stick and wait for the aim to slowly pan to the right and eventually I will have spun 180 degrees. The game has a built in software maximum speed at which you may move your aim.
Most of that? Well, it doesn't really matter. Sorry that your effort was, for the most part, wasted.
Let me give you a simple example - A motorbike is far more agile than a car. The controls are much more precise, and offer more input - you can control the position of the front wheel which provides steering, you control the degree of lean when you manoeuvre, and you can also control the forwards and backwards tilt of the bike. They also provide an extremely high level of feedback during this, as well as generally being faster both in acceleration and top speed. Cars don't provide any of that - you have less control over the way the car moves, and less feedback, and less speed available both immediately and overall.
Does this mean that driving a car competently automatically requires less skill than riding a motorbike competently? Are motorbikes automatically better than cars? Not really a valid comparison - it's an apples an oranges comparison. It's a completely different skillset that happens to be used in the same space, the road.
As for your argument that manuvers such as Rocket-jumping off a wall and instantly turning and firing on an opponent being impossible on a console FPS, well, it's just utter bollocks - I've done exactly that, playing Quake 3 arena on the original Xbox. Beyond my meagre level of skill, I've seen people match every move from quake 3 on the PC, on quake 3 on the original Xbox. The game was, admittedly, fractionally slower - but frankly, it just wasn't really enough to make a difference, as the amount that it was slower was still faster than a very large segment of even the gaming population would be able to react. I said your conclusion was incorrect, not that you're stupid, and it would take a pretty high class of idiot to screw up a decision like that. If it's a baby game, then Prove. Put your money where your mouth is, so to speak, and Either master an equivalent console FPS far, far easier than mastering a PC FPS, or cease shit-talking. And of course, you even come into it with the benefit of your pre-existing skill at FPS games - some of which will carry over - all you need to do is master the new system. Er, right. I'm going to go with Gunter's assessment of what you were trying to say here, and go back to my previous metaphor as a more correct alternative - PC FPS is to console FPS as riding a motorbike is to driving a car. So, You're saying that the limitations of PC games are irrelevant, because skilled players find ways around them, but despite that the same is true for the console, those limitations matter immensely? Can't have your Kayak and heat it, Scott. That's a bullshit argument, because you're comparing apples and oranges yet again. Yes, many console games are slower compared to their pc counterparts. But they're still different. It's not two cars, one going 1-3 MPH and the other going 0-60, in a 200 MPH race. It's two cars, one going 0-100 MPH in a 200MPH race, and another going 0-50 in a 100 MPH race. It doesn't matter if you've got an F1 car that goes 300 klicks an hour, if you're racing in a road rally, because that's not that car's race.
The problem is that you can't seem to reconcile the fact that PC FPS and Console FPS are not the same thing. You know what would happen if you could, by some magic, hook your mouse and keyboard up to an 360 and have it work as a control input, and you could take on people playing, say, MW2 using controllers? You'd lose, probably by a large margin, because the game was optimised to be played on a different control setup. The reverse is equally true. Your argument, is essentially, that a motorbike is better than a car, because you have more speed and more control and feedback, when in reality, they're just not the same thing. I'm aware, I was simply stating both for completeness.
Right, I'm done now. I've said my piece, and I'm following gunter's lead, if you want to continue dick-fencing over nothing more than your preferred game and skillset, please, continue to carry on till you're blue in the face. I've made my argument, and there's not much more I can say without repeating myself.
To be clear, I agree with your position. I just thought your explanation was (until this last post) lacking. Good on you to explain it more clearly. This is just saying that with practice, a digital form can realistically mimic an analog form. It's basically the same reason why an MP3, which is a digital waveform, can sound virtually the same as an analog waveform of the same thing. Will it ever be the same? No. Is it good enough? Yes. I can make the same argument for using a stick over a mouse.
Maybe I can make one more analogy really quickly to try to make my point. NASCAR. Vroom. Cars go fast. Console FPS = NASCAR with restrictor plates. It is fail. PC FPS is NASCAR with afterburners, turbos. Hell, it's fuckin Speed Racer with spring jumping and shit.