Quick Questions XIV: A Question Reasked (Part 1)

astro bot, exception that proves the rule

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It’s kinda nice, albeit clumsy, on PC when you have to tweak something outside a game but don’t want to put down the controller. I could see using it to fit an Octodad-style clumsiness simulator into a normal game – fumbling to manipulate switches in a spacesuit or, like, with a dog’s nose.

having transformations hardbound to it actively makes gravity rush 2 worse. dark souls 2 insisting on having your start button on it is also a pain as somehow me pressing the right side sometimes reads as pressing the left side? if it reads at all?!

like, maybe it’s my hands, but it doesn’t work

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I wish that the gestures in Bloodborne weren’t bound to motions but to swipes on the pad, cause it was always frightening to accidentally bow and I just don’t think that would happen on the touchpad.

I was surprised they kept it on the PS5. It’s maybe a third larger, but… I don’t think that’s going to be enough to salvage the pointing functionality. They may have felt obligated to include it for backwards compatibility.

I think the best standardized use for it has been as an emote selector, where missed and incorrect inputs aren’t a big deal, but quick access to more options is an expressed need.

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my perspective is from a DS4 user who doesn’t have a PS4, so… maybe not relevant to most

from my pov, the touchpad is extremely obnoxious most of the time - the most useful i’ve found it is on the pstv where it can handle some of the missing touchscreen/pad functions - and the share and options buttons are worthless as replacements for start and select. it’s one of my few complaints with the DS4, which is otherwise a solid controller (battery life is one of the other quibbles)

I think that’s the same quibble. I suspect the touchpad continually drains the battery in a way buttons don’t.

Looking it up, the PS3 controller had a battery of half the size of the PS4’s, but I remember the PS3 battery lasting forever in comparison. It’s gotta be the bright LED and the touchpad accounting for it being much worse.

Looks like for the PS5 they solved the problem by just making the battery even bigger.

if this was the case i’d be end up curtsying a boss after blood vial because my fingers keep lightly touching it and activating stuff in games that use it

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Ahhh, I forgot about that. It doesn’t have crouch jumping (literally just checked) but it does indeed feature crouching!

The crouch animation only triggers when your feet are on the ground, so it’s faked in pretty much the same way as duke nukem

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nice.

lucasarts fps games being mildly ahead of the curve in most respects is like my one piece of video game trivia that always feels relevant

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grandpa… we are so happy to be with you as you pass from this realm, into the next… please, before you go, is there anything you want to tell us?

“Outlaws was a mediocre game but they implemented sophisticated alternate fire features for every weapon in the game, and the multiplayer deathmatch scene was surprisingly lively”

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is that the thing where the whole world is raised instead of the player lowering

i feel like i read about that

nah, just that its only changing two things: camera height and what size of openings you can pass through. Hitboxes remains the same (since there isn’t a real z axis)

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I remember Gamecube exclusives having analog click functionality shoehorned in everywhere, so I am very surprised that PS4 exclusives didn’t find a use for the touchpad. Especially with the more Nintendo-y ones like LBP and Dreams? Or even Square Enix games? Or, hell, didn’t Sony court a bunch of indies at the beginning of the PS4’s lifespan?

I’m glad PS5 has Astrobot because I bet if they didn’t have that then nobody would be talking about those triggers.

Did Sony itself develop many games in the PS4 era? Or was it just a bunch of exclusives?

the only good use of the touchpad is singing the edf song and various “yahoo” and “help me” variations

FarCry 4 (at leaast) had the weapon wheel on the touchpad.

As someone that watches a lot of movies on ps4 the disc based player loves to think i wanted to go forward or backward 15 seconds because I brushes the touchpad but trying to deliberately make it work is a failure.

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wait, you mean this wasn’t an Apple TV innovation after all?

Any time a new feature is added to a controller the main question you should ask to judge whether it will gain any adoption is “what does this add to shooting a gun?” because that’s 90% of video games.

Adaptive triggers and haptic feedback, on the other hand… the more I play Call of Duty the more I love those features. It adds a tactility to gunfire that keeps impressing me. Games can make shooting a gun feel good, and this is another layer that can make shooting a gun feel good (or really, really bad, I’m sure). I’ve also noticed more games are using the controller speakers at PS5 launch then PS4. I’m thinking Sony probably has some guidelines on how powerful sounds can be at selling the more robust but potentially subtle changes in the controller vibrations.

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even more, they explicitly instruct you to send waveforms as rumble input, and to treat it similar to a sound channel (older, spinning-weight-style rumble requires 100-200ms to respond to an intensity change)

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