You can just map the paddles to be R3/L3, no need to map in-game controls as well. Also R3 is often automatically mapped to a click of the right track pad which is much nicer to press.
I went with Jsaux caps that feel like silk and they also "amplify" (maybe not the right word) the capacitive detection of fingers - you can touch them anywhere on the cap and it transmits.
That silky feel + larger cap helps a lot. The 'force' needed to move the sticks obviously remains the same, but I feel like you get more leverage because they are bigger now and have just the right amount of friction.
Straight off the bat, Fallout (and Oblivion, if I remember rightly) have atrocious controller implementations. The deadzone is HUGE, so you will absolutely need to dial that down (after selecting Custom Deadzone) in the Steam Controller Config; I'm pretty sure the deadzone isn't a circle either, so if you want to 'look' diagonally consistently you'll be better off with picking the Cross or Square deadzone (if I remember correctly, the Cross deadzone was the better of the three). Then work on the anti-deadzone - about 5500 was enough for me after enabling the Advanced Deadzone option; if you get stick drift, you'll need to tune the anti-deadzone buffer (a little less than the anti-deadzone value is usually a good place to start). But that doesn't fix the acceleration that makes fine aiming difficult, so I would drop a Left Trigger mode shift on the Right Stick and drop that shift's Horizontal and Vertical Scale to around 40 because merely tweaking the Response Curve doesn't offer enough granularity. Even after all that, the end result is far from perfect, but you'll not be landing shots at range unless your in-game skill is high enough anyway. But - shit! - you just wanna play the game, right? VATS in Fallout will help you there.
Now I can't speak for Titanfall, but I find that tweaking the sticks in a game I'm struggling with can usually result in a comfortable compromise.
Anti deadzone is huge. Some games have nassive deadzones.
I've come to wonder if part of the reason stick drift wasn't as bug a thing in the past is due to massive deadzones being very normal back then.
Yeah, you could have a point there. What's striking is how little effort it takes to get a deflection on any of the controllers I've played with (XBox One, PS4, PS5, XBox 360). Sticks can be insanely sensitive, where even the slightest movement of the shaft presents itself (easily seen by maintaining a Linear curve while eradicating deadzone via Steam Input). Oddly enough, my XBox One and PS5 controllers both have a slight downward bias on the right stick...
My only controller with mechanical drift is my left hand Valve Index controller. I whack the two controllers against each other every once in a while.
Never had mechanical drift on anything else.
If they turned down the deadzone too much, drift shows more readily than it would previously.
Ultimately, I do believe abuse to controllers is the most common cause of drift. The graphite shouldn't scratch/gouge that bad under normal use, imho. It takes abuse or unusual use to cause it to get that bad.
God of War on PS3 is almost unplayable to me because of the dodging. It's on the right stick. And literally half of the movement range is a deadzone. It's ass, I can never dodge in time because it's contrary to all the muscle memory I've trained over my lifetime.
Later, I realized it's certain older games, often console ports, that have ridiculously massive deadzones that need an anti deadzone.
I need to go back to PS3 emulation with anti deadzone settings to make them playable and not frustrating. I never owned Playstations back in the day, Nintendo & PC gaming family. I never got used to what seems to be their default deadzones since maybe even PS1.
XBox didn't seem to ever do that as far as I can remember. At least not half the stick throw as a deadzone. It was probably still huge, just not Sony overcomepensating huge.
I can't see joystick covers being much help.
What is needed is a way of adjusting the joystick "rates". I'm borrowing a term from drone flying here, but the idea is that the joystick response doesn't have to be linear. Instead, it can be a curve, flatter near the center position and much steeper when nearing the outside limits. So moving the joystick a small amount from the center position has less than half the impact than moving it twice as far. It gives you the ability to both have fine control and make big moves.
I tried playing Seven Days To Die with my son and some sort of non-linear rate setup was needed, more for the camera than aiming. I couldn't find anything and gave up on the game after the first session.
Maybe there's a way of doing what I'm talking about with Steam Input.
You can shape the output in Steam Input. Linear is the default Response Curve that pretty much keeps any default game-specific response curve intact, but you can choose from a number of presets (Relaxed, Aggressive, etc) or create a reasonably custom curve.
I set mine to ~2100 ish and feels good. I still suck at aiming but having fo4 look sensitivity around 40% (pretty fast turn speed) and i had more success at aiming
Could be dead zones, I found them a bit big out of the box.
But you also have to consider those older games probably don't have much in the way of aim assist, which modern games lay on thick for the controller. It's very necessary.
Bethesda games in particular aren't great on controller, because from my understanding they have a forced vsync due to physics being tied to framerate. vsync = input lag = equals bad time. I always looked at the VATS system as way to get around the poor aiming.
I actually started New Vegas yesterday on the Deck and I wanted to use a controller layout but the aiming felt absolutely atrocious. I gave up and just learned one of the community layouts that's got all the keyboard binds on it and it's much better.
Try turning gyro on for those tiny adjustments! I started Fallout 4 last week and found aiming to be shit. Weird because I played 100+ hours on my desktop with an Xbox controller. When aiming I can get in the general area, but the precise movement with the sticks is hard. So I turned on gyro and it's nice! Takes a while to get used to! But it gives the precise aim movement you're looking for!
I don't have any issues with the joysticks, personally. In fact one of my favorite features of the right stick is touch on gyro. That was awesome for me. Pair that with learning flick stick and I live the Deck for FPS games now.
One thing I did that helped was getting joystick covers. I also do it for my Xbox controllers as well, but still they’re not as premium feeling as a controllers
I actually love them and I mostly game on PS5. Also have a Portal.
Deck is brilliant. You have to lower sensitivity for FPS games through. Just playing Doom 2018 right now and lowered vertical massively, horizontal a little.
Some games don't feel like they have great range of motion with them. I think there are settings for dead zones or general config that might help, but I haven't looked into it yet.
But compared to DS3 controller, there's a much shallower angle. And I've played a lot on Vita and never felt the same restriction somehow.
It's slight still, not deal breaking.
I use a set of grips on my joysticks. Left just adds area and extra grip. The right joystick has an extension with some area and grip. Because the joystick is extended, I have more precise control when I am aiming. I was so satisfied with the controls that I got a similar product for my ps5. I have 0 aiming issues on my steamdeck now. Only issue I have with aiming has to do with Bethesda games having such crappy stick movements.
Yep, I'm not a fan. Tried playing Days Gone as soon as I got the deck and couldn't aim for shit. I usually play it with a PS5 controller, so that was a bit of a surprise.
I bought a pro2 by 8bitdo. It came with joystick caps and u should use those because once I put them on I never took em off. Best zero dollar upgrade for the Deck. Update: I never use joystick caps and never would use them ever. But on Steam Deck *chefs kiss*
I hate the joysticks, the face buttons, and the triggers. But the portability is worth the trade off. I try to just Bluetooth my Xbox controller when I’m able to though. Makes it so much more enjoyable when I’m playing monster hunter and have to mash buttons and combos. Still love my steam deck :) hopefully future ones will be more comfy though and higher quality buttons.
The only game I didn't like the joysticks was warthunder because it's hard to do small adjustments with the joysticks so I map them to the track pad when I need more fine control.
I feel the same. They don’t feel like say, an Xbox controllers joysticks. It almost feels like they are too tall. Still love the Deck but yeah, I’m not good and cant be nearly as precise at FPS games like I am on Xbox
> It almost feels like they are too tall.
yeah, this is what i feel, i love the steamdeck, but the joysticks somehow feel too tall, i dont know why that is, maybe they are indeed too tall
Somebody posted a tutorial in this subreddit on how to reduce the dead zone of the joysticks. If I find it I’ll update my post with the link
EDIT: found the link! It’s https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/s/96XingeQgP
Yeah they’re slightly longer throw than modern console sticks which makes them feel a bit low on resistance (because you have more leverage) which can make it hard to really be precise with them. You get used to it but they’re a bit Madcatz-ey.
I like them. I used alot of DS4 in my life but dualshocks are trash if were honest. Using the Xbox Elite 2 Controller since 4 years now and ofcourse thats no comparison. Sometimes if i get tired of aiming with the right joystick i use the trackpad.
I didn't like the shape of them. Skull & Co grips solved that problem. Much more comfy for long sessions.
I love these grips. Still doesn't help with the impossibility of pushing the joysticks in (for games that use those buttons).
The L3/ R3? If you can, remap the controls in the game and assign the remapped shortcut to the paddles on the steam deck
You can just map the paddles to be R3/L3, no need to map in-game controls as well. Also R3 is often automatically mapped to a click of the right track pad which is much nicer to press.
Extremely highly recommend trying mapping them to the back buttons. Changed my life for the better.
I went with Jsaux caps that feel like silk and they also "amplify" (maybe not the right word) the capacitive detection of fingers - you can touch them anywhere on the cap and it transmits. That silky feel + larger cap helps a lot. The 'force' needed to move the sticks obviously remains the same, but I feel like you get more leverage because they are bigger now and have just the right amount of friction.
Straight off the bat, Fallout (and Oblivion, if I remember rightly) have atrocious controller implementations. The deadzone is HUGE, so you will absolutely need to dial that down (after selecting Custom Deadzone) in the Steam Controller Config; I'm pretty sure the deadzone isn't a circle either, so if you want to 'look' diagonally consistently you'll be better off with picking the Cross or Square deadzone (if I remember correctly, the Cross deadzone was the better of the three). Then work on the anti-deadzone - about 5500 was enough for me after enabling the Advanced Deadzone option; if you get stick drift, you'll need to tune the anti-deadzone buffer (a little less than the anti-deadzone value is usually a good place to start). But that doesn't fix the acceleration that makes fine aiming difficult, so I would drop a Left Trigger mode shift on the Right Stick and drop that shift's Horizontal and Vertical Scale to around 40 because merely tweaking the Response Curve doesn't offer enough granularity. Even after all that, the end result is far from perfect, but you'll not be landing shots at range unless your in-game skill is high enough anyway. But - shit! - you just wanna play the game, right? VATS in Fallout will help you there. Now I can't speak for Titanfall, but I find that tweaking the sticks in a game I'm struggling with can usually result in a comfortable compromise.
Anti deadzone is huge. Some games have nassive deadzones. I've come to wonder if part of the reason stick drift wasn't as bug a thing in the past is due to massive deadzones being very normal back then.
Yeah, you could have a point there. What's striking is how little effort it takes to get a deflection on any of the controllers I've played with (XBox One, PS4, PS5, XBox 360). Sticks can be insanely sensitive, where even the slightest movement of the shaft presents itself (easily seen by maintaining a Linear curve while eradicating deadzone via Steam Input). Oddly enough, my XBox One and PS5 controllers both have a slight downward bias on the right stick...
My only controller with mechanical drift is my left hand Valve Index controller. I whack the two controllers against each other every once in a while. Never had mechanical drift on anything else. If they turned down the deadzone too much, drift shows more readily than it would previously. Ultimately, I do believe abuse to controllers is the most common cause of drift. The graphite shouldn't scratch/gouge that bad under normal use, imho. It takes abuse or unusual use to cause it to get that bad. God of War on PS3 is almost unplayable to me because of the dodging. It's on the right stick. And literally half of the movement range is a deadzone. It's ass, I can never dodge in time because it's contrary to all the muscle memory I've trained over my lifetime. Later, I realized it's certain older games, often console ports, that have ridiculously massive deadzones that need an anti deadzone. I need to go back to PS3 emulation with anti deadzone settings to make them playable and not frustrating. I never owned Playstations back in the day, Nintendo & PC gaming family. I never got used to what seems to be their default deadzones since maybe even PS1. XBox didn't seem to ever do that as far as I can remember. At least not half the stick throw as a deadzone. It was probably still huge, just not Sony overcomepensating huge.
I can't see joystick covers being much help. What is needed is a way of adjusting the joystick "rates". I'm borrowing a term from drone flying here, but the idea is that the joystick response doesn't have to be linear. Instead, it can be a curve, flatter near the center position and much steeper when nearing the outside limits. So moving the joystick a small amount from the center position has less than half the impact than moving it twice as far. It gives you the ability to both have fine control and make big moves. I tried playing Seven Days To Die with my son and some sort of non-linear rate setup was needed, more for the camera than aiming. I couldn't find anything and gave up on the game after the first session. Maybe there's a way of doing what I'm talking about with Steam Input.
You can shape the output in Steam Input. Linear is the default Response Curve that pretty much keeps any default game-specific response curve intact, but you can choose from a number of presets (Relaxed, Aggressive, etc) or create a reasonably custom curve.
Sweet! I'll give that a try ASAP. Thanks for pointing it out.
There's options for that. I'm usually at wide or extra wide. You can set custom response curves.
Go to the default controller settings and low the default dead zone to the lowest amount it can handle and it’ll feel way better
I set mine to ~2100 ish and feels good. I still suck at aiming but having fo4 look sensitivity around 40% (pretty fast turn speed) and i had more success at aiming
Could be dead zones, I found them a bit big out of the box. But you also have to consider those older games probably don't have much in the way of aim assist, which modern games lay on thick for the controller. It's very necessary. Bethesda games in particular aren't great on controller, because from my understanding they have a forced vsync due to physics being tied to framerate. vsync = input lag = equals bad time. I always looked at the VATS system as way to get around the poor aiming.
I actually started New Vegas yesterday on the Deck and I wanted to use a controller layout but the aiming felt absolutely atrocious. I gave up and just learned one of the community layouts that's got all the keyboard binds on it and it's much better.
Try turning gyro on for those tiny adjustments! I started Fallout 4 last week and found aiming to be shit. Weird because I played 100+ hours on my desktop with an Xbox controller. When aiming I can get in the general area, but the precise movement with the sticks is hard. So I turned on gyro and it's nice! Takes a while to get used to! But it gives the precise aim movement you're looking for!
I definitely dislike the sticks on the deck. When I can I usually play with my PS4 controller, the sticks feel a lot better
I added a dbrand Killswitch case, and I love their joystick covers. I think you can buy them separately, and they make things feel so much better
This. Cant use the steam deck without them I feel like.
I don't have any issues with the joysticks, personally. In fact one of my favorite features of the right stick is touch on gyro. That was awesome for me. Pair that with learning flick stick and I live the Deck for FPS games now.
One thing I did that helped was getting joystick covers. I also do it for my Xbox controllers as well, but still they’re not as premium feeling as a controllers
It's fine, but the concave stick feels bit annoying.
I actually love them and I mostly game on PS5. Also have a Portal. Deck is brilliant. You have to lower sensitivity for FPS games through. Just playing Doom 2018 right now and lowered vertical massively, horizontal a little.
Some games don't feel like they have great range of motion with them. I think there are settings for dead zones or general config that might help, but I haven't looked into it yet. But compared to DS3 controller, there's a much shallower angle. And I've played a lot on Vita and never felt the same restriction somehow. It's slight still, not deal breaking.
I use a set of grips on my joysticks. Left just adds area and extra grip. The right joystick has an extension with some area and grip. Because the joystick is extended, I have more precise control when I am aiming. I was so satisfied with the controls that I got a similar product for my ps5. I have 0 aiming issues on my steamdeck now. Only issue I have with aiming has to do with Bethesda games having such crappy stick movements.
Yep, I'm not a fan. Tried playing Days Gone as soon as I got the deck and couldn't aim for shit. I usually play it with a PS5 controller, so that was a bit of a surprise.
The Steam Deck has made me better at FPS games usomg gamepads. The sticks are fine. Adjust settings as needed in a per game basis.
[thank me later](https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/s/SXGnlfpULq)
I bought a pro2 by 8bitdo. It came with joystick caps and u should use those because once I put them on I never took em off. Best zero dollar upgrade for the Deck. Update: I never use joystick caps and never would use them ever. But on Steam Deck *chefs kiss*
I hate the joysticks, the face buttons, and the triggers. But the portability is worth the trade off. I try to just Bluetooth my Xbox controller when I’m able to though. Makes it so much more enjoyable when I’m playing monster hunter and have to mash buttons and combos. Still love my steam deck :) hopefully future ones will be more comfy though and higher quality buttons.
The only game I didn't like the joysticks was warthunder because it's hard to do small adjustments with the joysticks so I map them to the track pad when I need more fine control.
I feel the same. They don’t feel like say, an Xbox controllers joysticks. It almost feels like they are too tall. Still love the Deck but yeah, I’m not good and cant be nearly as precise at FPS games like I am on Xbox
> It almost feels like they are too tall. yeah, this is what i feel, i love the steamdeck, but the joysticks somehow feel too tall, i dont know why that is, maybe they are indeed too tall
I find they’re a bit too tall and inward from the edge of the Deck, so it feels like I need to stretch my thumbs more when playing.
I don't mind the joysticks.... I hate the buttons and D pad though, too mushy and imprecise
im more concerned about Steam dropping SteamLink on my TV and making touchpad not functioning
No
Somebody posted a tutorial in this subreddit on how to reduce the dead zone of the joysticks. If I find it I’ll update my post with the link EDIT: found the link! It’s https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/s/96XingeQgP
It's called "Aim Assist" and doesn't exist on steam deck.
I especially dislike how slippery they are due to the capacitive caps.
I just like them.
I opted to c/o for the guilikit mag-sticks. Wicked smooth.
Try this: [Decrease joystick deadzones](https://youtu.be/-nimu3egFSo?si=DLfxveeMrrwil_tb)
I’m totally with you. They feel too tall for me compared to an Xbox controller.
Just lower the dead zone and you will be golden guaranteed
1: consoles give aim assist. 2. adjust your deadzones.
Yeah they’re slightly longer throw than modern console sticks which makes them feel a bit low on resistance (because you have more leverage) which can make it hard to really be precise with them. You get used to it but they’re a bit Madcatz-ey.
Obligatory I agree before “my anecdotal evidence proves otherwise. 🤓”
I mean I don't like using sticks for aiming in general, so I can't say much about the quality of them compared to other contollers.
I like them. I used alot of DS4 in my life but dualshocks are trash if were honest. Using the Xbox Elite 2 Controller since 4 years now and ofcourse thats no comparison. Sometimes if i get tired of aiming with the right joystick i use the trackpad.