PC Gaming - Mouse/Keyboard or Controller?

[Moonface]

When it comes to playing PC games, do you play them with mouse + keyboard or do you stick to using a controller? Does it depend on the game, or do you exclusively stick with one input option over the other?


For me, it depends on the game but the majority of stuff I play on my PC is with the mouse and keyboard except for these games:

• BallisticNG
  I don't even want to imagine trying to play this game on a mouse and keyboard. While I'm sure steering could be doable, I don't see how air braking would work well with keyboard/mouse when you can't vary the strength of your air braking with inputs that are only going to be on/off, compared to the pressure sensitive triggers on modern controllers.
  
  
• Stardew Valley
  This would probably be a mouse/keyboard only game for me had I not originally played the game a lot on Switch. I did try mouse/keyboard, but it means having to re-learn all of the control inputs and also some stuff like movement doesn't feel as good; on the other hand, menus and inventory/hot bar management is far better on mouse/keyboard than controller, so both have their pros and cons. Currently I've taken to actually using controller and mouse/keyboard for this game, where I use the controller for most things and then switch to the mouse to navigate menus and inventory screens just because it's more efficient.
  

[Dragon Lord]

Depends on the game.

Shooters or anything that requires precise aiming will be with mouse and keyboard. Any games that have lots of short cuts for item usage (Skyrim for example) will also be with mouse and keyboard. Any rhythm games I'd play would also be with keyboard.

Everything else is controller. Especially since I play a lot of actions games (Souls-like, Metroidvanias).

[Moonface]

@Dragon Lord: I'm curious; do you play Phasmophobia on controller?

[Dragon Lord]

No, absolutely not. I can't imagine playing that game with controller because it'd be so much slower to pick up and move items with it. Mouse/keyboard are definitely the way to go for Phasmo.

[Moonface]

No, absolutely not. I can't imagine playing that game with controller because it'd be so much slower to pick up and move items with it. Mouse/keyboard are definitely the way to go for Phasmo.

Ah, good point. At the time I was only thinking about how movement is simple and you're just looking at stuff in a way that doesn't require fast/precise movement that a mouse provides, and overlooked that placing/retrieving items is a thing. Probably because usually when I play I rarely juggle items on my person and bring things that can be ditched once I know if they provide evidence or not (i.e. EMF Reader, DOTS, etc.)


Unless I'm just simply not aware of it, I'm surprised consoles don't just support mouse/keyboard nowadays with the increase in cross play between console and PC. Heck, it would give the console manufacturers another set of peripherals to offer by making keyboards and/or mice that have features designed to work for what a console provides, such as a keyboard having a pad to replicate the one on DualSense controllers.

[Dragon Lord]

It's not really about juggling items, but rather that you constantly need to move thing around, like the writing book, depending on where the ghost is. You need those items to be as close to the ghost as possible to increase the chance of it interacting with it, and if you have a ghost in a large room, that might mean you need to kind of follow the ghost with the book. Same thing if you're trying to get the ghost to blow out a candle. In some situations you might find yourself just having to re-position items a lot and that would be super annoying to do on a controller I think.

As for why Kb/m isn't usable on consoles, who knows. With how popular a game like Final Fantasy XIV is on PS4/PS5, you would think that PlayStation might at least want the functionality on their console. I mean, you can use a keyboard to type messages on PlayStation consoles (I'm assuming Xbox as well), but yeah, would be nice if they'd allow full use of kb/m on them as well, at least in certain games types if nothing else.

[Moonface]

It's not really about juggling items, but rather that you constantly need to move thing around, like the writing book, depending on where the ghost is. You need those items to be as close to the ghost as possible to increase the chance of it interacting with it, and if you have a ghost in a large room, that might mean you need to kind of follow the ghost with the book. Same thing if you're trying to get the ghost to blow out a candle. In some situations you might find yourself just having to re-position items a lot and that would be super annoying to do on a controller I think.

Huh, I always thought as long as the ghost is within the circle that gets displayed when placing things like books and crucifixes that it doesn't make any difference to the likelihood of it interacting with the item.

As for why Kb/m isn't usable on consoles, who knows. With how popular a game like Final Fantasy XIV is on PS4/PS5, you would think that PlayStation might at least want the functionality on their console. I mean, you can use a keyboard to type messages on PlayStation consoles (I'm assuming Xbox as well), but yeah, would be nice if they'd allow full use of kb/m on them as well, at least in certain games types if nothing else.

I'd expect Microsoft to have a stronger case of doing it than Sony, only because Xbox's thing nowadays is having games release on both it and PC at the same time, as well as focusing on having games playable in as many ways as possible. It wouldn't even require extra effort because they're already setting up kb/m for PC versions.

[Dragon Lord]

It's not really about juggling items, but rather that you constantly need to move thing around, like the writing book, depending on where the ghost is. You need those items to be as close to the ghost as possible to increase the chance of it interacting with it, and if you have a ghost in a large room, that might mean you need to kind of follow the ghost with the book. Same thing if you're trying to get the ghost to blow out a candle. In some situations you might find yourself just having to re-position items a lot and that would be super annoying to do on a controller I think.

Huh, I always thought as long as the ghost is within the circle that gets displayed when placing things like books and crucifixes that it doesn't make any difference to the likelihood of it interacting with the item.

That is how it works, yes, but depending on the tier of the item, the range can be extremely small (in the case of tier 1 items) and if your ghost is in a large room, you may end up needing to follow the ghost around the room with the book to try and increase your chances of it writing in it. Like if you're on one side of the room and the ghost interacts with something on the far other side of the room, you typically want to pick up the book and bring it to that side of the room since you know that's where the ghost currently is. Small rooms don't make too much of a difference, but there's a lot of situations where quickly relocating an item can be the difference between getting your evidence or waiting another 30 minutes for the ghost to write in the book.

Using mouse/keyboard makes that whole process much faster than trying to use a controller, which is the main reason why I'd never play Phas with a controller (unless I decide to get it on PS5 when the console versions finally release to get the trophies).