The omission of the thumb touchpad the Deck has is a huge blow. A lot of PC games aren’t built for gamepads, and being restricted only to things that are (or to using an analog stick as a pointing device) is really limiting.
Also, that price point, holy shit. That’s like, high-end desktop PC price range. I guess there’s got to be people who are looking for this, but it’s like… the crowd who would be choosing between a $1500 gaming laptop or this; that’s not really the demographic I’d expect to be in the market for a handheld, but maybe I’m just wrong on that.
The touchpads, virtual menus, layers / action sets, and overall control customizability really make the Steam Deck shine. PC Games with complicated keyboard-centric control schemes can be adapted to the Steam Deck so easily.
A handheld without that is going to be a hard sell for me no matter how well it performs.
As a secondary device to a Gaming PC with a strong internet connection, cloud gaming makes my Deck handle whatever I can throw at it.
In what games do you actually use the touch pads and what configs do you use? I’ve literally never been happy with them and I’ve tried so so hard to like them.
I use the default config with the sensitivity turned up to 225% (which makes the touchpad’s left-right width equate to a bit more than the full screen width); that works fine for me. I play a lot of deckbuilders, point-and-click style games, isometric RPGs, tactics games, or just generally older / indie titles that don’t have good native controller support, and it’s been a lifesaver for those.
It doesn’t feel as good as a mouse, I won’t claim that it does, but it makes those games go from “unplayable” to “playable” and that’s the jump I was looking for.
Ahhh yeah that makes a lot of sense. I personally play games with super high dexterity demands for aim and whatnot, and the touchpads always felt like I wanted something better. Using it just to love a cursor reasonably at all is petty much ticking a necessary box.
I pretty much switch which games I play on the go vs at home with my mouse and keyboard.
The omission of the thumb touchpad the Deck has is a huge blow. A lot of PC games aren’t built for gamepads, and being restricted only to things that are (or to using an analog stick as a pointing device) is really limiting.
Also, that price point, holy shit. That’s like, high-end desktop PC price range. I guess there’s got to be people who are looking for this, but it’s like… the crowd who would be choosing between a $1500 gaming laptop or this; that’s not really the demographic I’d expect to be in the market for a handheld, but maybe I’m just wrong on that.
The touchpads, virtual menus, layers / action sets, and overall control customizability really make the Steam Deck shine. PC Games with complicated keyboard-centric control schemes can be adapted to the Steam Deck so easily.
A handheld without that is going to be a hard sell for me no matter how well it performs. As a secondary device to a Gaming PC with a strong internet connection, cloud gaming makes my Deck handle whatever I can throw at it.
In what games do you actually use the touch pads and what configs do you use? I’ve literally never been happy with them and I’ve tried so so hard to like them.
I’ve used them games that are more point and click (like strange horticulture).
I use the default config with the sensitivity turned up to 225% (which makes the touchpad’s left-right width equate to a bit more than the full screen width); that works fine for me. I play a lot of deckbuilders, point-and-click style games, isometric RPGs, tactics games, or just generally older / indie titles that don’t have good native controller support, and it’s been a lifesaver for those.
It doesn’t feel as good as a mouse, I won’t claim that it does, but it makes those games go from “unplayable” to “playable” and that’s the jump I was looking for.
Ahhh yeah that makes a lot of sense. I personally play games with super high dexterity demands for aim and whatnot, and the touchpads always felt like I wanted something better. Using it just to love a cursor reasonably at all is petty much ticking a necessary box.
I pretty much switch which games I play on the go vs at home with my mouse and keyboard.