I always rebind to ESDF if the game doesn’t do stupid things preventing it from being practical. The addition of the 1QAZ strip being available to the pinky is a killer feature all on its own. I typically use that for weapon switching, instead of having to stretch up to 1234 and take my fingers off the movement keys.
Tablets are better than mice at drawing, modelling, and photo editing. Mice are good for first person shooters. Game controllers are better for most other games. You can mouse in dired-mode i guess, if you’re a casual.
The problem is they generally use E and F for something, which results in a cascade of rebinding.
And yeah, tablets are better, but they’re also more expensive and don’t do other mice things. For how rarely I do 3D modeling and whatnot (pretty rare), making sure my mouse has a middle button is plenty.
And yeah, I much prefer controller, even for FPS since I don’t play competitively (even then, I’ve seen awesome videos about gyro aiming).
E and F is certainly is a problem, but developing your own custom key map is almost always part of a larger process of becoming more effective anyway. Typically I start by just moving all left-hand bindings right by one key.
I feel like the mouse is a good generalist, jack of all trades input device, but outside of fps, I feel that any task that quote requires unquote a mouse is done better with a tablet. They are of equivalent price, honestly. Mice are not cheap, tablets are not expensive.
Right now I am using voice dictation because it is better than typing on a phone, but oh my God it sucks so bad.
I generally don’t play the same game consistently and rarely spend more than 40 hours (usually 10-15) in a given game. For most of the games I spend more time in, it’s either mouse driven (most strategy games) or I use a controller (most third person/top down games). And for the few I play that use WASD, my kids also play on my computer (e.g. Minecraft).
So I just don’t edit keybindings very often. I actually sometimes avoid playing WASD games because fixing the keys is a pain, especially when some games don’t update the in-game hints or don’t warm when there’s a collision (silently unbinds the key). It’s annoying and I don’t understand why it was ever a thing.
