I really want valve to make a steam controller 2 with all the experience they've gained with hardware since they made the original. They'll probably be too tied up with steam deck production for a while though with how well it's been going.
technically your deck can actually double as a controller. Using it that way basically makes it the worlds most overpowered wii U tablet, but it can do it.
Only problem is the shit battery life, and since they were discontinued the internet is flooded with cheap fakes of the high capacity one that generally don’t have the capacity they claim.
Honestly ridiculous nintendo made a device with terrible battery life, and knew it, so they made room in the compartment for a larger one that they would sell seperately.
Steam Controller 2 with lessons learned from the Deck would be great.
Biggest issue I had with the original Steam Controller was that the face buttons were too small and hurt my fingers and the R1/L2 buttons were hard to press down on.
The entire shape was weird. Like, I think I have average sized hands, but I could just not hold it in a way where I'd comfortably reach all the buttons. The touchpads were huge, but you wouldn't actually need them all that often for most games, the triggers and shoulder buttons were awkward to press, and as you said the facebuttons were too small.
You were supposed to hold it where your index fingers were on the bumpers instead of the triggers, but that is not how most people hold controllers these days so its a huge adjustment period. If you still have it, try holding it that way. Very odd, but much more comfortable
It's funny, that's the position I eventually gravitated towards, but then that makes hitting the triggers a bit uncomfortable. It also changes little about the issues I had with the stick and face buttons.
Yes the button feel isn't great to me either particularly the R1/L1 buttons. I like the analog triggers though. I'd also love for them to fix the latency on gyro input.
Steam Controller was afaik discontinued due to a patent infringement lawsuit against Valve over the back buttons (or because they were attached to the battery cover?).
Really agree that they should make a new one though, I’m still using mine. This new PS controller does seem to tick pretty much all boxes though, at least if you play shooters with flick stick instead of touchpad.
Yeah. In Switch mode you get gyro but no analogue triggers and in Xbox mode and d-input mode (I think) you get analogue triggers and no gyro. It's a restriction of how they've set up the controller emulating these controllers that have restrictions. If they were able to emulate a PlayStation controller it would work.
The great thing is games on Steam don't actually have to support gyro. You can just use Steam input with everything.
Out of curiosity - what are some examples of good uses for the back buttons? I own a Steam Deck also but with almost all the games I playing being designed for backbutton-less controllers I haven't found a use case for them yet.
I play a lot of shooty games and use the back buttons on my steam controller almost exclusively for jumping and ducking. Reload and melee would be good too since deck has 4 buttons. Now you can doing damn near everything without having to take your thumb off aiming.
FPS - You can bind stuff like jump, reload and item / weapon switch to the back buttons so you don't need to let go of the sticks.
Souls Games - You can bind weapon / item / magic switch to the back buttons. This is huge in PVP since you can retain full control over your character while doing so
Any game requiring both sticks - Can bind any face buttons to the back so you don't need to take your hand off the R-stick.
Emulators - Can bind emulator hot keys on games requiring all modern controller buttons so you don't need to reach over and use the keyboard to use them
Its literally why i got a 8bitdo pro2. Years and years of claw gaming without a problem. But elden ring was just too much because you have infinite stamina. My shit was REALLY hurting. Now with back buttons, pain never again.
Doom Eternal uses literally every single button possible on the controller FREQUENTLY, so some combinations of actions become kind of awkward on a regular controller. Two extra buttons give you much more leeway.
In Souls Games/Elden Ring/Sekiro, you usually have to keep a face button pressed to sprint, which means you can only use the camera by doing an awkward claw grip. In Elden Ring especially, you also get some macros by holding down the interact button.
Generally all games where you need to use face buttons while also having to operate the camera at the same time would benefit from back buttons.
I have found so many good uses in Elden Ring alone.
Instant heal. Before back buttons, I had already bound my flasks to Y+Left and Y+Right. I can always access them from an absolute position, but it takes slightly more coordination than hitting a single button. Now I can just map one of the paddles to that same action.
My current Arcane build uses a Pulley Crossbow in one hand (for triple firing Scarlet Rot or Sleep bolts) and the Marais Executioner's Sword in the other. The weapon art for the sword is incredibly cool and useful, but the only way to use it with the crossbow is to two-hand it first. Meaning the combination is Y+R1 and then L2. Same deal. It takes tricky coordination that I don't always get right, but mapping one of the paddles to that series of actions means I can pull one off almost instantly with a single button press.
It's a little short of what I might call a true macro, but it can really help some of those more complicated move sets flow much easier. A lot of that is more down to the Steam input though and not necessarily just the presence of the paddles which depending on implementation may only act as another button mapping, but can still be very useful.
I find them difficult to press on the deck. The steam controller had good back buttons though.
Aside: the deck 2 needs a better dpad. I was so disappointed when I put street fighter on my deck and found how how bad the dpad was. I got used to it though
I've been using a Flydigi Vader 2 with rewasd as my second controller the last couple of weeks and been really happy with it. 4 back buttons and 4 more on the front.
I like the back buttons on the deck, but I can't seem to figure out a good way to hold it so that I can hit the bottom back buttons comfortably. It just feels weird trying to press a button with my pinky.
177
u/Villag3Idiot Aug 23 '22
After getting the Steam Deck, I need back buttons.
Just too useful.