So not to start the whole controller vs keyboard war, but I have found after gaming with mouse and keyboard for about 3 years now one thing I am continually missing from my console peasant days is a joystick for movement.
Keyboards are great, but WASD as the buttons for movement i still find inefficient compared to a joytick on say an xbox controller where instead of tying up 3 fingers you just use your thumb. Not to mention being able to control movement acceleration (being able to creep) and being able to move fluidly while using other keys (for example: trying to strafe right+forward and use G to cook/throw a grenade on a keyboard is ridiculous)
I have been looking at gamepads like the Logitech G13 and Razer Orbweaver, I love the idea of having a joystick for my thumb and keys for the rest of my hand while still maintaining a mouse for aiming. The problem seems to be every gamepad I have found the joystick is not a full on joystick but just a 4-8 way direction pad and they still expect you to use WASD for movement.
Are there any gamepads that have a full on joystick intended for movement like I am looking for?
As a old PC gamer, my brain still can't coordinate my thumbs to both work at the same time. I tried Dark Souls with 360 controller and I have to stop moving to rotate the camera... Just can't coordinate my thumbs. I have a 360 controller. It is just sitting on top of my case, waiting for me to play some psp game to finally have some use of it. Emulated psp games is the only use for it. I just can't.
As someone who uses a G-13 I have to admit I almost never use the joystick (although I do map the buttons around the joystick) I find the thumb control to be lacking for fine movements and actually prefer using the WASD keys for movement, to me the program-ability of the G-13 keys more than makes up for the lack of joystick fine control, but it comes down to what you want or become use to using as a controller kinda' like some folks like headphones and others like speakers for their audio while gaming.
I used both G13 and old razer nostromo when I played mmos,I hated G13 keys, awful feeling when somebody is using mechanical keyboards for a long time.It was a great tool when I got used to and thumb joystick ( better have reasonably long thumb , otherwise its useless or difficult to operate if you have small hands.,thats my opinion tho) was handy as one could bind WASD to it , leaving four fingers for macro bound keys. Nostromo on other hand had better keys IMO but joystick was rubbish. Made of cheap plastic, nothing like proper joy.No proper click . I would like to try out RAZER ORBWEAVER but dont have a need for it yet.