Topic: How Do You Keyboard & Mouse Players Do It ??

I’m still new to PC gaming , only a month and a half in , and damn it’s so hard to adapt to a keyboard to play games and move the screen with a mouse ! it feels like i’m mentally dissecting my brain , and the buttons you’d think are the move buttons , etc , aren’t ! Is this why people say PC gamers are elite aside from the power , but also because you need a ***** masters degree in PC gaming controls ??

Pure M&K gamers often have just as many issues trying to adjust to game pads when playing on consoles. It's just a matter of familiarizing yourself with a control scheme. It's 100% worth it for shooters, though. A good way to do so is to start with less complex games and train your way up to ones with more advanced keyboard usage. Playing through the DOOM games is an almost perfect way to accomplish this, since it's only the later games in the series that map multiple actions other than physically moving your character to the keyboard.

Also, most PC games support key remapping. If WASD movement just isn't doing it for you, feel free to re-map the controls to your comfort. Customizability is one of the hallmarks of PC gaming. It's primarily consoles that force you to adapt to specific methods of playing.

You might try to game with M&K and find that you only enjoy using a controller, and... that's fine, too. I believe Steam fully supports the Dualsense controller, and the vast majority of PC games that aren't visual novels or RTS games support Xbox controllers.

@nomither6 When I was growing up, I spent an unhealthy amount of time playing DOOM, Wolfenstein 3D and Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II on the family computer, all with the arrow keys for walking and turning, Ctrl to shoot, Space to open doors, and PgUp and PgDn for camera control. Then I became a console gamer and didn't touch a PC game for decades, and it's only in the last couple of years that I've tried a few old favourites again. It was a nightmare adapting to a mouse for camera control, and for training my left hand to use WSAD for movement, but it eventually clicked (pun semi-intended).

It still doesn't feel 100% comfortable, and I guess it helps that I've only played single-player games on their easiest difficulty settings, so it doesn't matter if I slip and accidentally hit the wrong key in the middle of combat, but practice will make as near to perfect as you can get.

@RogerRoger I used to play Doom and Duke Nukem 3D in the same way. Plus the rest of the keyboard for typing in cheats 😀

Mouse was mainly used for Theme Hospital and SimCity 2000!

Fun fact: a lot of PC games will tell you shooters are “literally unplayable” with a controller.
I don’t play on PC anymore but back in the day it was just the way you played shooters (once they introduced significant verticality to them anyway).
BLACK on PS2 was the game that convinced me that playing with a controller could be just fine.

@ralphdibny Back when enemy A.I. was dumb enough to give you time to stop, stand in place, and slowly point your gun skyward as though cranking some kind of winch.

And yeah, I must've used a mouse for my Transport Tycoon demo, but that would've been it.

Despite becoming accustomed to modern mouse and keyboard controls, I did revert to a keyboard-only approach when I recently replayed Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, mainly because I still had incredibly strong muscle memory from my childhood. Being able to aim properly was just too weird!

@RogerRoger haha yeah. I poopoo'd cover mechanics around the time of Gears of Wars' release. Thought it was bare lame until I played many more games and got used to it.

Then I went back and played some of my old childhood games again and ended up using modern gaming skills and cover mechanics before I realised...

"Oooohhhh, that was why I needed cheats as a kid!"

I started out as a PC gamer mostly and I always sucked at mouse and keyboard games. Then in 2002 or something I started playing console games regularly over at a friend's house. Gaming with a controller gave me a sense of control mouse and keyboard were never able to. I saved up for a GameCube and never went back to PC.

(Just kidding, I still play exclusives on PC, though I try to avoid it)

Guess what I'm saying is that, yes, familiarizing yourself with a control scheme will make you grow to love it more. But some people might still have a preference for one over the other, that they can't unlearn.

It's all a matter of practice practice practice. I do agree it is difficult to adjust to a keyboard and mouse combo after so many years of controllers. I'm mostly okay in 1st-person shooters on PC with moving and shooting, but I have to stop and think if the game requires buttons for any secondary tasks. I bought an Xbox controller solely for PC gaming. Too many hoops to jump through to get a Dualshock working on older games.