I couldn’t get one myself. The battery issue is none for me. It’s not rare that battery replacement becomes (nearly) impossible for final users once it reaches its EOL, so I switched to gadgets that use standard size rechargeable batteries if possible.
I honestly wish the Dualsense took AAs. I’ve really grown to appreciate how Xbox controllers have always been two AA. Making a small investment in a bunch of Eneloop batteries and chargers is SO worth it.
I’ve owned one since the beginning, and the only major downside to the controller is that it requires relearning. No d pad, touch pads, back buttons are something not found on other controllers, so there is no familiarity you can bring to the device. As a result, you need to rethink and relearn how to use a controller. If you do end up learning it, it can bring a lot to the table because there is nothing like it in terms of customisability.
Sadly i never put in the time and only played simple games on it. I still bust it out for mario kart.
The other minor downside is its not exactly comfortable to use. The handles are angled upwards instead of down which feels unnatural to me… again, probably because no other cobtroller does ot that way.
I keep saying to myself if I ever boot up cities skylines on the TV, I’m waking up the steam controller for it.
Edit: Y'know what I'll properly expand on this. The Steam Controller failed because it tried to replace vital functionality people expect from a controller. The Steam Deck learned from this mistake and just supplemented that functionality.
TBH, the way I see it, the Steam Controller was designed for games I don't want to play on controller, while being bad for games I do want to play on controller.
They’ve made it too niche, basically just fps and rts pad. I loved mine for Rocket league but was really missing the right stick. And the shoulder buttons were super stiff. And you also absolutely had to set up controls because it was so different and the pads were atrocious replacements for dpad or sticks
For me it mostly excels in games that were designed exclusively for mouse and keyboard. Ime it’s pretty bad for fps games though, maybe if you used the gyro, but I haven’t tried that much personally. I love it for Rimworld, Dwarf Fortress, and lots of little indie games that don’t have gamepad support ootb.
That last paragraph is on point. That’s why I have two controllers at my desk, one regular and one Steam Controller! I love playing casual Civilization or XCOM on it and it’s surprisingly great with some FromSoftware games, especially Sekiro (for no reason in particular, it just felt good and the touchpad worked without any issues).
Honestly, IMO the lack of D-pad was less of an issue than the lack of a second analog stick. The lack of a second stick made the controller almost impossible to use in any game that was designed with 2 sticks in mind. For example Nier Automata 9S hacking minigame was a horrible experience with the Steam controller.
One tip that could make twin stick experience better on the touchpads is to bring down the range where the joystick does max output. That makes it much more responsive over default where twin joysticks do not need small granular movement. Ramblecan has video covering it. www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXC2f_dD0g0
The left touch zone is pressable, and four zones are four separate buttons. It’s a bit less convenient to use than a regular d-pad, it’s bigger and you need to reach slightly further, but other than that it works.
It’s actually the other way around, it’s a big d-pad with touchpad capabilities plastered over it. It’s the same physical mechanism as a d-pad, 4-way button, it’s just big.
D-pad for me, functionally, is a 4 directional buttons clustered together, oriented along the X-Y axis. To conserve parts, it’s quite often made not as 4 buttons but as a combined shifter, because you realistically wouldn’t be pressing the opposite buttons at the same time.
The left track area on the steam controller is that. The buttons are fuzed together (which is normal for D-pad) and big and harder to tell apart (which is less normal)
If the Steam Controller was designed the way lot of people wanted it than it wouldn’t have been a Steam Controller and just another Xbox or Playstation controller and added nothing new. Would have been more successful but in the end another generic twin joystick controller. So even if it didn’t succeed it brought new things to the table like touch activated gyro and touch pads that could be considered for other controllers in the future.
Agreed on it being a bad replacement for controller games. I got one around the time one of the FROMSOFT games came out (I think it was Sekiro?) and I tried using for that and it was just not usable for something like that. I haven’t really tried it for anything else since then because I don’t really play games away from my PC, so I don’t have a need for a worse but acceptable way to play M+KB games.
It didn’t fail because of a lack of a dpad but because of lack of two joysticks, but I’m glad the controller exists because I came to absolutely love the dual touchpads. And I wouldn’t trade the left touchpad a dpad, since I like using it for movement.
I wouldn’t trade the right touchpad for a joystick either, since I like using it to do quick 180s, quick swap between 5-10 inputs to bypass reloading in games like Doom Eternal by setting a dpad modeshift on a click, and touch activate gyro all on one touchpad.
Will probably be the last controller of its kind but I’m glad at least one did get made, since otherwise I’d still just be using a xbox or playstation controller like I did before getting Steam Controller.
It could but I prefer it over joystick because large touchpad makes it so its easier to not accidentally activate sprint on the outer edge.
But, the biggest part is being able to use the touchpad clicks for added move sets like dash, slide, crouch. Which lot of people wouldn’t even enjoy doing with joystick click.
Exactly, I’d rather lose a D-Pad than a joystick, and the Steam Controller lost both. That’s why my Steam Controller sits on my desk largely unused, while my PS4 controller gets all the love (I prefer XBox controllers, but PS4 has better Linux support).
I’d love to see the Steam Deck controller be made standalone, it’s super comfy and preserves both joysticks and the d-pad while having useful trackpads.
Sad thing is for me I don’t find the touchpads on the Deck useful, since unlike most users of the Deck I want to use them for movement and camera and quick input switching. And I haven’t found the Deck touchpads good for primary use in place of joysticks, so I end up ignoring the touchpads on the Deck for the joysticks despite using my Steam Controller for most games on the desktop.
I’m a controller player so it might be why I warmed up to it when it first came out, since I went from using Xbox controller on the PC to being blown away by touchpads moving as fast as a mouse without joystick speed limitation while being able to aim precisely with gyro without having to use aim assist.
So maybe an outlier as a PC gamer who preferred gamepads to mouse and keyboard, but wanted to find an improved method of using controller without reliance on aim assist.
I also prefer controllers (grew up playing Halo on controller), and gyro aim is sweet, but touchpads never felt good to me. I like physical buttons for d-pad style input (even a joystick is fine), and the right touchpad felt too much like a mouse to the point where I’d rather just use a mouse.
The Steam Deck strikes the right balance for me. The touchpads work when the mouse really is preferable, and they stay out of the way when I use the joysticks.
I like touchpads because I like being able to turn the camera as fast as I can swipe like a mouse while retaining X and Y axis control unlike stuff like the flick stick approach. And I like that I can also click up, down, left, right, center and also hold the left grip to set up chords for an additional 5 inputs for a total of 10 I can quickly change to without having to reach down to the facebuttons.
And that’s where the Deck fell short for me because I didn’t find it good for that type of functionality I want to use the trackpads for compared to users who primarily use the sticks.
Yea the only target audience for the Steam Controller seems to be people who want to play kbm games with a controller if they’re playing on a TV or something. But I reckon most PC gamers who get a controller use it to play on their usual PC setup for games that play better on a controller, they’ll just use kbm for their kbm games.
I agree that not including the D-Pad was a bad move, but if you play games that use the d-pad just for functions like map or switching of equipment, there was the option to use the trackpad like a weapon wheel where you could define i think 8 functions with OSD, and using one of the back buttons made that 16 functions you could define freely - you could replace the hotkeys of a game that used half the keyboard with this thing lol
i know that it’s configured as a D-pad by default, but it’s missing haptic feedback - there’s not enough of an indicator where on the touchpad your finger rests, and if you lose the central position, have fun finding it again without looking. i often tried it. but it’s simply inadequate as a D-pad.
It actually has d-pad, it’s just combined with one of the touch areas, you can press it like a button, and 4 zones behave like a d-pad. Granted, it’s a bit inconvenient so if you need it often, it’s not the best. But it’s there.
I loved it, but I rarely use it anymore these days. Often enough, trying to remap the inputs on it errors out in the Steam Input interface, and I’ve gotten tired of fighting with it. I also never used the left pad for anything and would have preferred an actual D-pad. The right trackpad, especially when paired with gyro controls, is so much better than a right stick for every function you could use a right stick for, and I’ve put it through its paces; but that only works when you can map an actual mouse. Often times, the game will explicitly switch between “controller mode” and “mouse and keyboard” mode, and I hate playing with a controller but seeing keyboard glyphs. Also, due to my preferences, and where the market has headed lately, there have been very few games coming out where I need to “aim”, which is where the Steam controller beat a traditional Xbox controller by the widest margin. So unfortunately, between the software being a pain and there not being a compelling reason to bother putting up with it, I haven’t been using my Steam controller lately.
I feel a right stick is more useful for games deliberately designed as twin stick shooters. Geometry Wars is a good example of this. Using a trackpad for aiming is fine, but that doesn’t really feel like an arcade experience.
The steam controller wasn’t for me (the lack of a 2nd stick and a d-pad to a lesser extent were dealbreakers for me), but I do hope valve releases a standalone steamdeck style controller :3 we had those leaks and whatnot a while back, and it certainly has everything I’d want
I love the touchpad as an auxiliary input, and in that regard it does a lot more than a d-pad, but for any games where you want it as a primary input it wasn’t optimal, yeah… currently I use a ds4 controller and having a touchbar on that is great with steam input tho, cause it can just do so much (looks at my 500 minecraft mods with all the keybinds), it can be annoying sometimes accidentally hitting the sticks cause of how it’s positioned tho (and also no paddles) so it would still be cool to see a steam deck type variant controller featuring the touchpads and all the other inputs you’d expect :3
Same here. The thing was neat and innovative, but missing the dpad and right stick really brought it down significantly imo. The steam deck got it right - the trackpads are incredibly useful when used as a supplementary feature, but rarely as a full replacement for traditional inputs. Plus the form factor. Dear god the thing was MASSIVE. Incredibly uncomfortable to use and such an awkward shape.
Here’s hoping the leaks come to fruition, because a 2.0 version based on the Deck would be 10/10.
The steam deck controller addresses all of these issues. I was literally an anti-controller (wasd gang) zealot and the steam deck controller converted me because I can literally play city skylines in bed now…
Yeah :3. The steam deck layout honestly looks really good, and if valve does release a controller featuring everything it has it’s probably gonna be a buy from me
At the moment most of the controllers on the market would require either giving up the features my current one has, shelling out hundreds of euros for a couple of extra buttons, or literally getting the same deal, a steam deck style controller would offer quite a bit more and it would hopefully be more reasonably priced than the “pro” controllers
Unfortunately for steam controller users the touchpads were an downgrade in size, shape, and location for those who liked using them as their main inputs. So even people like me who use dual touchpads on the Steam Controller opted for joysticks on the Deck, since they weren’t satisfied with the touchpad experience.
Which was unfortunate, since there’s lot of options for dual joystick controllers but I’m still searching for a Steam Controller upgrade.
I’m glad at least someone else here had that feeling. I ended up not liking mine at all and sending it back. I couldn’t get used to the pads at all even though I wanted to like it a lot, maybe it’s just my hands. I use my steam deck all the time, first an led and now an oled, and I can count the times I’ve used the trackpads on it effectively on one hand.
I agree, WAY ahead of its time. I have two but unfortunately they’re both stuck at my parent’s house for when the nephews come over and new (even used) ones are practically “unobtanium”.
3’s my least favorite numbered entry in the series, but the post-game of re:mind is pretty damn good.
I didn’t like how empty the world’s felt. Even though there’s barely any npc’s in 1, it felt the most alive. 2 was just corridors, but my god the combat feels good. 3 is an attempt to make the world’s bigger, ending up empty, and the combat is meh for the most part.
Singleplayer games with time-based farming simulator minigames you won’t complete without gaming the date\time in your system (easter eggs are welcome tho). Grindy platinum achievements well outside even a dedicated minority’s norms, just getting bigger numbers or save skamming for opposing endings. Button-mashers with an undisclosed randomization of a final result under the hood.
Toby Fox was forced to add trophies to the PlayStation release of undertale and deltarune, and made them oppressively annoying in protest, so I feel like there are exceptions to this
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