I mentionee this elsewhere hours ago, but I used to have a mouse that served me so long, by the time it finally fully died, there was a BB sized hole worn through the plastic of the left button from my finger.
There’s not many objects that you use with the same regularity and intimacy as a mouse other than footwear and furniture. If they’re a bit off you get used to them to the point their flaws become part of their charm. I got my Microsoft Sculpt Mouse when they were brand new. It’s still going strong and I’ll be heartbroken when it eventually dies but, at the risk of jinxing it, it’s showing no signs.
I recently switched to a G502 hero, myself, after I had a Steelseries Rival 500 for the longest time. I miss the unique side-button layout on the Rival, but c’est la vie. Maybe I’ll find a similar, more ergonomic MMO mouse one day.
One of the last games I siege I played. Team mate something like ‘of course its hard when its a 4v5’. I checked, and yeah. 0 kills. 0 assists even. A death in every round.
Hahaha here I thought I’d just missed something in the beginning of the game. Turns out the game just doesn’t bother to teach its players how to play it.
I mean, I’m pretty sure. I guess maybe there may have been a pop-up message I never noticed, but Dom explaining these new guns with friggin chainsaws on them, like, with his words, woulda been nice. I did figure out it’s O or B eventually, but I keep running up to people, pressing the button while he fails to start it, or lock on, then get blasted.
This may have been a game that came out at the tail end of the instructional manual era, and missing a mechanic like this in the tutorial area would have been an oversight that they could live with.
Why would I be remiss to be confused as to why there is a tutorial, but not include any mention of the existence, let alone the use, of a basic weapon?
Further, yes, I expect all products to tell me about their features.
Damn, you should steer clear of Japanese action games then.
Further, yes, I expect all products to tell me about their features.
Oh, really? I should get my money back from 20th Century Fox… they didn't tell me Fight Club had the twist feature at the end. Thank you for pointing that out.
I cannot believe I had to discover it myself as I was watching the movie. Bizarre stuff.
Games should allow you to discover their features, they shouldn’t be telling you directly. That’s the cool part of figuring out a new combo in Mortal Kombat, etc.
They don’t give you a clippy tooltip that says “Press Up Up Down B A Down Down to rip this bitches head off!” – You figure out the combos on your own, or with friends.
This idea of every little thing having to be presented DIRECTLY to the user is laziness. There are ways to help a user discover things narratively.
Its a generational mindset. Because, remember, the game this is “reloading” came out in the late 00s
Back then? The idea was to teach you what is actually new in a given game. So the cover system, more or less. Shooting, aiming, and melee’ing were more or less bog standard by that point and players were mostly expected to understand it used the same controls as every other game or to take a quick visit to the controls page in the menu to see what the jump button was.
I forget if Gears actually teaches you the melee button or not. I want to say tapping melee is a rifle butt and you have to hold to chainsword? Which also lines up with games of the time. The charge and hold is mostly a humiliation kill you save for multiplayer and sizzle reels.
So to use… probably equally old nomenclature: it would be like teaching people how to do a no scope 360 during the tutorial.
Yes, amongst fights when I thought about it I tried and figured out the button. Then he wasn’t really locking on easily, and sometimes he just like, can’t start it after rolling or something, and then I get blasted. A few times doing that, and I got pissed and made this because everyone’s carrying the damn thing and I was just in prison. Why the holy fuck has no one daned to mention the goddamn chainsaw on everyone’s gun? So, really this is just a rant about design.
I would look for a mouse where the screws aren’t covered by the stick on feet. Less can be more, less buttons, less things to break = more stable. Its also good to look at the faulty market: buy a working mouse, and when it eventually breaks source replacement parts from faulty mice from eBay, if the market is stupidly priced or non existent you many need to do some research for which switches are used, this can be difficult to ID.
So stick with mainstream brands like Logitech, Corsair, Razor (not my first choice but there will be no end of faulty mice 😅) but if your up for IDing PCB components then any mouse can be fixable.
Thanks for the reply! I was thinking more along the lines of “open hardware” — either a mouse manufactured by a larger company so that it can be easily repaired, with the manufacturer happy to sell you spare parts (something like Framework laptops), or a mouse designed by an internet enthusiast that you can assemble yourself from off-the-shelf components and 3D-printed parts.
I once saw a build-it-yourself kit for an ultra-light mouse somewhere. I naively assume that such a mouse would be easy to repair. Alas, that kit would cost me my kidney.
Pretty much no manufacturer is going to sell you parts besides maybe replacement feet. But the only things that fail on mice are all jellybean components.
Left mouse button fails? Buy another from mouser. Middle button fails? Digikey. Side button? Some other components selling company.
Outside of those super light mice there’s nothing special about any of them other than the exact layout, and the case. And the cheaper the mouse usually the simpler they are on the inside, and the easier it is to solder. Most PCBs will be single sided with through hole components.
Find a mouse you like the shape of and look at comparable mice that have replaceable switches. Then do a quick check on aliexpress at the prices of those switches/wheels. Things have gotten better with mice.
If you can solder I’d say most mice are easily fixable. The most common defect for mice are the switches, which are usually quite simple to desolder, as there aren’t any components near them.
E.g. I don’t have much experience soldering and it took me under an hour replacing both switches on the G Pro Wireless as well as the battery. I’ve bought this mouse used about 5 years ago and I wouldn’t be surprised if it lasted another 5 years.
Edit: The annoying part is the screws being below the feet, so you have to replace them after opening the mouse. But it’s all screwed in.
In addition to that, for popular, “name brand” mice, there are often also tons of replacement parts available from China. You can basically re-build the complete mouse from parts.
Otherwise, as you’ve said, switches, wheel, the battery and maybe the cable, should always be replaceable (as long as you can solder).
Reddragon, and just pull parts from goodwill mice, they send you extra Teflon pads with the mouse so you can open it and keep the pads nice. Switches are just switches, they are standard sizes, and the cords usually use standard plugs, worst case you swap some pins around to match. Insanely easy to take apart, and cheap enough to not worry about breaking.
They are cheap as hell, but they have good tracking sensors and are really comfortable to use.
My Logitech MX500 (or might be MX510?) should be over 20 years old now. Still going strong. And it lasted through over 400 days of WoW played-time as well as thousands of hours of StarCraft and StarCraft 2.
wow, almost as old as my (combined) Microsoft trackball, that is about 26 yrs old. Where yours has a bald spot from your finget, my trackball has lost ALL texture, so smooth a slightly sweaty hand slides easily. I have no idea how many hours it has been (ab)used for, I was unemployed when I got it and spent most of the day on IRC and playing games, good times. Haven’t found a decent replacement yet, I think my time is running out
If you want any amount of discoverability, you will have to go to Youtube or Twich since those really are the only platforms that have any amount of viewers. And even then, discoverability is pretty terrible, good luck promoting a new channel from scratch.
If you just want to stream for the sake of streaming and don't mind having zero viewers, you can try PeerTube or Owncast. But do be aware that you will have zero viewers.
I feel like a growing solution would be to simulcast to Twitch as well as other platforms, and hopefully slowly encourage users to view via the other platforms.
Kudos to the OP - I stopped watching Twitch when Bezos went full Nazi, but couldn’t get YouTube off my list.
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Aktywne