I used left touchpad as a touch menu when I was using the left joystick. After moving to the left touchpad I prefer it over joystick due to being able to rely on a sprint hold mapping it on the outer edge without accidentally triggering it like I would on the joystick. And I’ve come to love mapping stuff like crouch, slide, or dash to it too so combining movement actions to touchpad clicks. Frees me to use back buttons for other stuff and further reduce my need to lift my thumbs away from movement and camera controls.

That’s my experience as left joystick and left touchpad user.

Some functionality that keeps me using the Steam Controller has been touchpads for movement, quick gadget swapping with touchpads, quick 180s/gyro activation with touchpads.

I use it to play games like Doom Eternal, Left 4 Dead 2, Spin Rhythm XD, The Finals, etc.

Sadly I don’t find myself doing the same on the Steam Deck opting for the joysticks instead, since I don’t find the placement, smaller size, square versus circle, and flat surface versus concave offering the type of consistency that I use the touchpads for on the Steam Controller. It feels more a touchpad appropriate for slow paced games or just desktop navigation than optimal for the way I use the touchpads on the Steam Controller. And I don’t see Valve delivering on the touchpad end that I would like with the next Steam Controller with all the inputs it would be fitting in.

Not an issue for most players who will be using joysticks as their primary, but sucks for Steam Controller dual touchpad users who’ve been waiting years hoping for a Steam Controller with updated gyro, better bumpers, and 2 more back buttons.

It is still the best controller I’ve used despite having come from a console background so dual joystick controllers being my most used controller prior to it. I loved being freed of the reliance on aim assists and weapon/item wheels.

Nothing has come close to replicating the functionality of the dual touchpads which I use for movement, quick gadget swapping, quick 180s/gyro activation.

And I use it to play games like Doom Eternal, Left 4 Dead 2, Spin Rhythm XD, The Finals, etc.

I’ll try Doom though. I saw a couple of Doom 1-inspired games this year. I can try those.

Gyro works great with Doom. I played through Doom Eternal on nightmare difficulty without aim assist. Gyro is the closest to mouse like precision on a controller if you aren’t using aim assist.

Lot of life long controller users aren’t good at aiming using only joysticks either with increasingly stronger aim assist over the years doing the bulk of the carrying which has led to some players saying a games controls are bad if the aim assist is weaker than ones they do well in.

Then add in how different the dead zone and acceleration curves are for joysticks from game to game and it makes carrying over muscle memory difficult even if you master joystick in one game. It’s like how acceleration can throw off mouse users.

But, gyro helps a lot if native gyro is mouse like or you opt to bind mouse to gyro, since the sensitivity is something that can be replicated from game to game like people do with regular mice. This video might be a good starting point. One quirk of gyro is that some games you can just bind mouse to gyro and start playing, but other games may not support simultaneous gamepad + mouse so having to opt for mouse and keyboard binds on the controls. Some people bind joystick to gyro but that introduces unwanted negative acceleration.

I recommend Portal for starting out and getting used to gyro. Then once you are used to aiming with gyro something like Left 4 Dead 2 which has good Steam Input support.