I finally found a well-built comfortable mouse that has tons of wacky RGB effects and just a few extra buttons in a surprisingly useable layout.
The one I ended up with was the Roccat Kone XP. The best part is that I rarely notice the extra buttons until I need to use them and otherwise just feels like a normal mouse most of the time.
Totally not everyone’s cup of tea, but you can in fact get a feature mouse that also is well built. They do exist!
I had gone through probably half a dozen mice before it in the 5 years before this one, but this one has lasted around 2 years without a single complaint.
Wow. I’m honestly shocked. My Oculus CV1 still has support. I had been considering the Quest 3 for a while, but the attachment to Meta was my hesitation. I had already decided to go with the Index by this point, but this just further confirms it’s the right way to go. Obviously a much more expensive option, but if it means I don’t have a paperweight in a few years, it’s worth it in the end.
I just want to be able to buy something like an Oculus CV1 without Oculus software/proprietary hardware and a nicer screen. I’m still rocking the same unit I got several years ago and it’s still plenty fine for most things.
All of the fancy things like wireless and no-tower tracking are nice, but I imagine a lot of players are going to be seated and just want the immersion. Why not have a $300-400 offering that does this?
I honestly believe a HUD minimap is one of the worst game UI elements a game can have. There is rarely a canonical explanation to begin with as to why your character magically knows the layout of rooms they haven’t entered and even worse that they know the position of enemies.
Even further, in the rare case that it does make canonical sense, you find yourself staring at this little 2D representation of the map that frankly looks terrible in comparison to the game world, yet you are forced to use it for navigation.
The most egregious example of this is GTA V and RDR2. In GTA, you could maybe explain that there is a GPS, but why isn’t this mended with the phone your character has? And in RDR2? No explanation at all. It’s near impossible to get from A to B in RDR without missing a turn because I’m usually trying to pay attention to the environment. This absolutely does not foster exploration. It becomes a checklist of locations to visit and naturally finding elements in the game world rarely happens.
An example of this being done well is something like Watch Dogs or Assassin’s Creed where you could argue in Watch Dogs that their augmented reality tech makes sense to be able to get the drop on enemies and building layout. AC has the whole simulation aspect.
Another example is something like The Crew where you can reliably disable the map entirely with the overhead GPS line that guides the player. More games would benefit from this by keeping your eyes on the world.
I’d love to see more games where disabling the map doesn’t ruin gameplay. In AC and Watch Dogs, they were mostly made for this and a large portion of the game can be played almost entirely HUD-less.
One last thought to leave on is that of you feel you absolutely must guide the player by map, why not make the map in-engine like many journals in games. Hell, RDR2 has an in-world journal that feels super life-like. Why not extend this to the map?