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Steam Controller Thread | Comfy Couch Sold Separately

Is there a list (or maybe we could do that) of games that work particularly well with the steam controller?

From my experience, Adventure games and RTS games are the only two that works well with Valve Controller. Both works better with M/KB but the Valve Controller out-performs Xbox controller in these two categories. Everything else the Xbox controller out performs.

Games like Monkey Island, Grey Goo, and Broken Age are a few to try

EDIT: And Survival games with large inventories (Minecraft and Ark)
 

Tobor

Member
From my experience, Adventure games and RTS games are the only two that works well with Valve Controller. Both works better with M/KB but the Valve Controller out-performs Xbox controller in these two categories. Everything else the Xbox controller out performs.

Games like Monkey Island, Grey Goo, and Broken Age are a few to try

You're not setting up the controller properly. The Steam Controller is superior to the Xbox controller for every game I've tried.
 

Crayon

Member
after several hours of tweaking yesterday i managed to get ark mapped out. i uploaded it as rump doctors dual touch. i actually ended up using the left touchpad for movement.

ark has been the biggest control clusterfuck to play from the couch and the steam controller tamed it. Thats a success in my book. Although at a cumulative 6 hours of use, im still slowly adjusting to the trackball input. And while the stiffness of the pad clicks makes sense now, the noise is still dissapointing.
 
You're not setting up the controller properly. The Steam Controller is superior to the Xbox controller for every game I've tried.

I hope I am setting it up wrong, because its inaccurate with FPS games, awkward to use in action/adventure, platformers, fighting games, and racing games. I dont see where this succeeds at other than emulating games with no controller support. It does a better job than Xpadder, but doesnt seem to be a great alternative for games that already has good controller support.
 
after several hours of tweaking yesterday i managed to get ark mapped out. i uploaded it as rump doctors dual touch. i actually ended up using the left touchpad for movement.

ark has been the biggest control clusterfuck to play from the couch and the steam controller tamed it. Thats a success in my book. Although at a cumulative 6 hours of use, im still slowly adjusting to the trackball input. And while the stiffness of the pad clicks makes sense now, the noise is still dissapointing.

Yeah i had set one up to, but dont have emotes on mine. I have it using mouse on right, and used LB as Alternate bindings mapping 1-8 to the dpad. I am actually pretty happy with my binding for the ark and it feels comfortable to use, but because there is so many buttons in ark, it can be a mess. I also used ABYX for 4 more Alternate bindings.
 
What are your mouse settings? Maybe using your configs I can finally figure out some decent controls.

I've played a few hours of Civ V with the default controller config, and it felt fine to me. There's some small things I would tweak, but it was completely usable. If you're having a lot of trouble with the default config, it may be something up with the hardware, or it could be that you're holding the controller wrong.

So, the way I hold the controller is fairly loosely in my fingers, so that the finger tips on my index fingers are resting on the triggers, and middle and ring fingers are curled around the grips just enough to use the paddles. My middle fingers are positioned in the curve where the grips end and the trigger begins, and the controller is partially resting on those fingers. The key, I think, is when you're holding the controller correctly, the face of the controller is pointed slightly up but mostly towards your body, as opposed to pointing towards the ceiling.

Holding the controller that way, you naturally manipulate the controls with the tips of you thumbs, and not the flats of your thumbs, which is very important for precise control on the touch pads.
 

Tobor

Member
I hope I am setting it up wrong, because its inaccurate with FPS games, awkward to use in action/adventure, platformers, fighting games, and racing games. I dont see where this succeeds at other than emulating games with no controller support. It does a better job than Xpadder, but doesnt seem to be a great alternative for games that already has good controller support.

I don't know what to tell you. I don't understand how you could find it inaccurate in a first person game compared to a 360 controller. It's incredibly precise and blows the doors off a right analog stick.
 
I don't know what to tell you. I don't understand how you could find it inaccurate in a first person game compared to a 360 controller. It's incredibly precise and blows the doors off a right analog stick.

I disagree with that completely and i dont think anybody should mislead people who are on the fence about the Valve controller that this thing is good with FPS games. While this is still early, I think people should wait and see if somebody can do well competitively with the Valve Controller on a consistent basis before saying its accurate. Right now, i would say its playable, but with a lot of practice maybe somebody will come out and show this thing has potential. Too early to say much other than that though.
 
I'm having some success with right analogue stick emulaton - particularly in MGSV. I've uploaded the bindings called "Responsive Traditional Analogue gamepad"

Messing with the anti deadzone and buffer settings as the vertical sensitivity scale, I can actually track targets really well and move around / look where I want with ease. It's not quite perfect yet and I'm still getting used to messing with a dynamic deadzone, but it certainly has me quite optimistic for the stick.

If I can get a similar setup in other games I'd be happy, however the MGSV and GZ stick setting have always been different to other games, since there is this weird deadzone that you get used to on other controllers, but with the Steam Controller you can essentially edit that the way you want

Will check that out, you put me on the right track with this yesterday. Those initial settings plus these should be really close now. Thanks.
 

Tobor

Member
I disagree with that completely and i dont think anybody should mislead people who are on the fence about the Valve controller that this thing is good with FPS games. While this is still early, I think people should wait and see if somebody can do well competitively with the Valve Controller on a consistent basis before saying its accurate. Right now, i would say its playable, but with a lot of practice maybe somebody will come out and show this thing has potential. Too early to say much other than that though.

Youre moving the goalposts. We were talking about the Steam Controller versus the 360 controller, not competitive PC multiplayer.

The Steam controller is more accurate than the 360 controller, period. If you want to argue about kb/m in competitive shooters, that's another debate, one in which I would bring up the intention of this controller, which is to play on the couch.
 
The biggest problem with FPS games is the size of the trackpads. If you want accuracy you will have to use a low enough sensitivity that you are constantly repositioning your thumb to swipe again just to make turns. And even with trackball inertia at it's lowest friction setting it still won't turn fast and long enough to make up for that fact. If you turn the sensitivity up to be more usable without constant repositioning, it is insanely twitchy and much too fast and sensitive. To the point where just your thumb sitting at what you would think is stationary on the pad would give you some unintentional cursor movement, and tracking a moving target leads to 'rolling' your thumb on the pad rather than actually aiming using the entire thing because it is just that sensitive.
 

mattiewheels

And then the LORD David Bowie saith to his Son, Jonny Depp: 'Go, and spread my image amongst the cosmos. For every living thing is in anguish and only the LIGHT shall give them reprieve.'
I've found it, but that's not the point. The point is that all of the things default controls control like absolute junk. I don't have the time nor inclination to spend hours configuring controls for every game I play. There's a reason I don't have xpadder.
Hours, haha.
 

th4tguy

Member
I don't know what to tell you. I don't understand how you could find it inaccurate in a first person game compared to a 360 controller. It's incredibly precise and blows the doors off a right analog stick.

I disagree with that completely and i dont think anybody should mislead people who are on the fence about the Valve controller that this thing is good with FPS games. While this is still early, I think people should wait and see if somebody can do well competitively with the Valve Controller on a consistent basis before saying its accurate. Right now, i would say its playable, but with a lot of practice maybe somebody will come out and show this thing has potential. Too early to say much other than that though.

Could be helpful if one or both of you made a quick video demonstrating performance using same game. Could help to determine if
1: there is an actual issue
2: difference in perception in quality of controller
 
Youre moving the goalposts. We were talking about the Steam Controller versus the 360 controller, not competitive PC multiplayer.

The Steam controller is more accurate than the 360 controller, period. If you want to argue about kb/m in competitive shooters, that's another debate, one in which I would bring up the intention of this controller, which is to play on the couch.

No, i dont even find it more accurate than an Xbox controller, that is exactly what Im saying. I find it so far to be pretty bad for FPS games, and im not convinced that it is a settings issue. Ill continue to use it and see if i change my mind, but so far i agree with what Gamespot said and this thing is not good for games that needs precision.
 

scitek

Member
I hope I am setting it up wrong, because its inaccurate with FPS games, awkward to use in action/adventure, platformers, fighting games, and racing games. I dont see where this succeeds at other than emulating games with no controller support. It does a better job than Xpadder, but doesnt seem to be a great alternative for games that already has good controller support.

So you think the controller is good for exactly why it was made.

It wasn't supposed to be a replacement for existing games with controller support. Those were designed from the ground up around the dual analog scheme, of course they won't adapt well to the new, never-before-seen controller. It allows you to emulate the analog sticks with the trackpads in case you want to take the time to get used to playing that way, because that saves you the time of having to swap out controllers for different games. I don't think Valve once said "Get ready to throw out all of your old controllers!" when talking about their own solution, though, so I don't know why you expected that to be the case.

The biggest problem with FPS games is the size of the trackpads. If you want accuracy you will have to use a low enough sensitivity that you are constantly repositioning your thumb to swipe again just to make turns. And even with trackball inertia at it's lowest friction setting it still won't turn fast and long enough to make up for that fact. If you turn the sensitivity up to be more usable without constant repositioning, it is insanely twitchy and much too fast and sensitive. To the point where just your thumb sitting at what you would think is stationary on the pad would give you some unintentional cursor movement, and tracking a moving target leads to 'rolling' your thumb on the pad rather than actually aiming using the entire thing because it is just that sensitive.

How is this different from a mouse? Have you ever seen a professional CS player? My old roommate used to play religiously and used 0.5 sensitivity. If someone snuck up behind him, he was fucked. He'd jump and swipe three times to do a 180. It's just the nature of the beast, if you're going to want that kind of accuracy, you have to learn to deal with that.
 

Quote

Member
They really need to build in a filter/rating system for community controller configurations. I think it would be invaluable to know what configurations are popular and working for others.
 
They really need to build in a filter/rating system for community controller configurations. I think it would be invaluable to know what configurations are popular and working for others.

I was thinking the same thing earlier. Would be nice if I knew what was good settings and bad settings making it easier to find a good layout from the community.
 

scitek

Member
Yes, but it will still be compared in all genres and games, not just emulation. Ill post my full opinion in about two weeks after more time with it.

Keep your Xbox controller around. I'm keeping my Wii U Pro controller, which I use regularly. Both it and the Steam controller have 80 hours of battery life, which makes them an ideal pairing.
 

Tobor

Member
No, i dont even find it more accurate than an Xbox controller, that is exactly what Im saying. I find it so far to be pretty bad for FPS games, and im not convinced that it is a settings issue. Ill continue to use it and see if i change my mind, but so far i agree with what Gamespot said and this thing is not good for games that needs precision.

5 minutes in Borderlands 2 alone refutes your opinion.
 
They really need to build in a filter/rating system for community controller configurations. I think it would be invaluable to know what configurations are popular and working for others.

BPM already does that. The configurations are ordered by popularity.
 

TheRed

Member
CoJ Gunslinger! What a great idea. I completely forgot about that but it would make a great little test for aiming and working out a good binding set.


It really was , I was testing over and over in arcade mode until I improved from not getting past the first few enemies to getting 3 stars
with a big combo. But I tried spec ops too because I felt the slow mo while aiming in gunslinger was a handicap for me getting it just right for shooters. Spec ops is really fun and challenging on the hard difficulty, it has really satisfying headshots too. I've never played either of these games before but I'm excited to play through them now on this controller and they're perfect for helping me get comfortable with it. Maybe I'll record footage tonight to show it can be successful in shooters.
 
How is this different from a mouse? Have you ever seen a professional CS player? My old roommate used to play religiously and used 0.5 sensitivity. If someone snuck up behind him, he was fucked. He'd jump and swipe three times to do a 180. It's just the nature of the beast, if you're going to want that kind of accuracy, you have to learn to deal with that.

Because a mouse can use any surface area you decide. If you want to use a low sensitivity and have a large mouse surface you can easily still turn around in a split second. Go look at good CS players, the vast majority of them use lower sensitivities for precision but are still quick as hell because a mouse's range allows that. The small surface of the touchpads makes you decide if you want to be quick but imprecise or slow but precise.
 

metalhead79

Neo Member
So this is weird, the mouse touchpad stopped working in Grim Dawn but it still works fine in everything else (Sword Coast Legends, Pillars, etc....).
 

Mask

Member
So this is weird, the mouse touchpad stopped working in Grim Dawn but it still works fine in everything else (Sword Coast Legends, Pillars, etc....).

Grim Dawn can be a little finicky sometimes, especially if you go in and out of the BPM controller editor in-game. I've also had the mouse touchpad stop responding in a few other games too.

edit - Oho, I see you edited my layout a little? That's what it's there for!
 

FireFly

Member
No, i dont even find it more accurate than an Xbox controller, that is exactly what Im saying. I find it so far to be pretty bad for FPS games, and im not convinced that it is a settings issue. Ill continue to use it and see if i change my mind, but so far i agree with what Gamespot said and this thing is not good for games that needs precision.
I haven't used the controller, but my understanding is that it can be set to work like a trackball, where the velocity of the movement depends on the velocity of your swipe. Hence there is an inherently more fine grained control of the speed at which your crosshair moves.

Whether this controller is going to be more accurate for you depends on your ability to adjust to this completely new control scheme. It's understandable that some people will struggle.

But that doesn't mean that the controller itself doesn't have the potential for higher precision.
 
Yea it reuploads. If you change the name it makes another one. It's fine because if someone uses it they save a copy locally so your upload won't effect their old copy unless they go online again and redownload it.

I'm kind of determined to make the best profile for each game I try rather than use others. I do like using others peoples as a starting template though

This is pretty much what I do. It's so disappointing to see a config that seems well flushed-out, but then you try to play the game and it's totally broken because it's either based on a custom keybinding or they outright left in incorrect Valve default bindings. :/
 

Foxyone

Member
I've used it with WoW and wildstar and found it a lot more playable than using Xbox controller with software like pinnacle.

Playable enough for a WoW dungeon? If I had to manage healing a group of people, do you think the controller would be able to handle it?
 

Qassim

Member
Do we have a list of games that natively support the Steam controller (and I don't just mean official bindings), I'm talking about games that seemingly have support built into the game like Portal 2, complete with Steam button prompts and all.

Also, anyone noticed the framerate drop on The Witcher 3 when using the High precision 'official' setting? The game doesn't seem to like using both control schemes simulatnously and results in a noticeable framerate drop, it's not severe, but it bad enough that I don't want to play it with that.
 
A few games i cant get to run at all using the steam controller including Metal Gear Solid V and Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon. Blood Dragon's right analog wouldnt work yesterday, today it wouldnt even allow me to press the A button. MGSV's right analog is wonky and only works when i move.

Alien Isolation will not allow you to mimic both gamepad and mouse at the same time, intsead you have to do only one or the other.

The more I sample games the less impressed i am with the Valve Controller.
Why the heck are you trying to use gamepad plus mouse in FPS games? There's your problem right there. Just use all key+mouse bindings.
 
So this guy in the video seems to know exactly what he's doing. Do we have any way of finding his bindings and applying them? I'm not sure how the community bindings are "ranked" and how we search for specific ones.

His Steam name is John SteemOS. I don't know if you can specifially search for people's bindings. They're ranked based on popularity. The more people use x binding, the more popular it becomes. So, try to scroll down in the games he has shown (Like Doom3:BFG Edition and I don't know which Borderlands he has shown. 2 or TPS. I might ask him which shooters he did.) or shooters you own and see if his name pops up.
 

Nzyme32

Member
Will check that out, you put me on the right track with this yesterday. Those initial settings plus these should be really close now. Thanks.

Glad that stuffs been helpful. The more I use the Steam Controller, the more I'm confident it will be my main gamepad controller.

I also worked out the dpad issues I've been having. It's mostly down to the shape of my thumb and the contact it has with the pad. Understanding that has been the game changer. For me, I have to have my thumb tip-most area brushing along the top right edge of the dpad outline for the remaining thumb area to be perfectly on the centre. If I set the haptics high and have the deadzone to around 7 notches above the line, it works perfectly without any mistakes. It still feels weird, but more and more often I find myself just losing myself in the game rather than think about what to do. So I'm sure in time that is going to work out really well.
 

metalhead79

Neo Member
Grim Dawn can be a little finicky sometimes, especially if you go in and out of the BPM controller editor in-game. I've also had the mouse touchpad stop responding in a few other games too.

edit - Oho, I see you edited my layout a little? That's what it's there for!

I like being able to take a good base and then refine it for what I like. Much easier than building from scratch.

Why the heck are you trying to use gamepad plus mouse in FPS games? There's your problem right there. Just use all key+mouse bindings.

If he's like me, he doesn't want to deal with 'Press E' when 'E' has been mapped to 'Y'. Gamepad + mouse is nerdvana to me, too bad I don't have any games that seem to support it
 

charpunk

Member
Playable enough for a WoW dungeon? If I had to manage healing a group of people, do you think the controller would be able to handle it?

Can't see it working too well as a healer in wow. Healing in wildstar would probably work with how the healing system is setup there.
 
Why the heck are you trying to use gamepad plus mouse in FPS games? There's your problem right there. Just use all key+mouse bindings.

Same reason people keep publishing them in the community. Easy to read face buttons for the controller and camera with the speed and precision of a mouse. Regardless Ive used all controller and all keyboard bindings too.
 

Markitron

Is currently staging a hunger strike outside Gearbox HQ while trying to hate them to death
Not sure if this is the appropriate thread but I have a question if someone doesn't mind answering.

Is there much point in getting a steam link if my PC isn't too far from my TV? I mostly want one for convenience so I don't have to mess around with dual screening on my PC.
 
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