Warframe, Gamepads, And You: Some Minor Suggestions On Improving Laptop Gaming.

[TheNecrow]

As the title says, playing on a laptop can sometimes result in not having an optimal surface for attaching a mouse, and many of those that play on a laptop may have experienced touch-pad degradation, where the pad and its buttons are not as receptive as they should be, not to mention it can be a little bit awkward for those without a full keyboard on their laptop, bringing up the problem of space being cramped and trying to figure out how to best place their hands to make the most of it. So what options does that leave us? Reach for our controllers and play as best we can, right?

One of the more prominent issues that come up with playing on a gamepad are camera controls. I know that you can edit settings to lower the movement speed of the camera, but that doesn't change the fact that whenever you attempt to melee an enemy, they will often end up outside the aiming reticle, and the range of your melee weapon altogether. Since most of us (I hope) lack a digit in between thumb and index, we have to resort to either flicking the thumb between the stick and the buttons hoping for the enemy to stay on camera long enough to land hits, or use the Claw where you have your thumb on the analog stick, your index finger furiously thrashing away at the buttons (like a fat man trying to get at the speck of food on his cheek just out of reach of his tongue) and the middle and ring fingers manning the shoulder buttons.

Horrible mental images aside, the first method is annoying, and the second can be awkward for those not accustomed to it. What I propose is thus:

-A soft target-tracking where the cursor follows the general direction of the enemy closest to you in melee range instead of hard-snapping towards them, allowing the player to make up for the rest of the work and manually center the aiming reticle on the enemy; or

-An auto-aim function which is far less accurate and switches between enemies at range, but allows gamepad users to get snap-shots off in hopes of hitting something.

The second suggestion is just icing on the cake, since aiming down the sights on a controller is fairly easy, but no reason not to throw it out there.

The main reason for this post is, again, that I'm assuming those of you on laptops are playing on the go or in college, and mainly on surfaces that don't really give an option to just slap in a mouse and use it.

[ArcSynder]

Try a trackball. 

 

...no seriously. I've played shooters with my laptop in my lap and my trackball on the side of my leg before. It works just as well as on a desk. 

 

(As for the actual performance of controllers within warframe, I have yet to try one so I can't really comment one way or another. I would like to try to avoid adding aim assist if at all possible though.)

[Neamento]

As someone struggling to play this currently for those exact reasons this post is a god send of an idea. I really think I could get into this game, but I can't get past the fact that every time I try to aim on my laptop I'm sent wheeling into another direction.

[rhoenix]

I use a wireless mouse and keyboard, or mouse and Wolfking Warrior gamepad. Both serve well, but the gamepad is somewhat better.

[Neamento]

As an additional idea to this idea ( Not that I have any right to throw idea's onto other people's idea's... ) to make it fair for the people who are legitimately good at FPS and are able to use the hardware they have, perhaps this 'lock on' feature would have a fixed penalty in game, so certain achievements wouldn't be attainable or perhaps it would lower the amount of XP points gained. Just so that people like me, who suck with FPS and have no way of playing this effectively at the moment with the gamepad, wouldn't have an unfair advantage against people who have skills.

[Whackhat]

about the melee issue, my gamepad (that i use for emulators, not shooters) has bumpers and triggers, such that a melee button could be mapped to it, or the analog stick down-press. Its a logitech F710, and works quite well. I just dont use gamepads because of their inaccurate nature.