Frankie_Drums_ said:Developers aren't lazy, and if the issue was due to not wanting to create platform-specific control functionality, you'd see first-party exclusives like Spider-Man or God of War using the touchpad--and they didn't.
Well, we have seen first party games using touchpad for various purposes. Killzone had one for your drone control, Infamous Second Son had some (although those were mostly flavoured interact mechanic, but there were some cool examples of touchpad capabilities, with double presses, swipe and hold, etc). Gravity Rush 2 used swipes to switch your gravity mode. Let it Die had some inventory control with it (swipe to select item, press to use)
Some non-first party games use it for additional shortcuts, like swipe to open your map instantly, instead of going through extra menu screen (Witcher 3 had this), or some games use it for extra control mappings, so you get 4 extra assignments (Warframe does this, and I'm sure a couple extra games as well). I've seen plenty of additional cool swipe uses, that just free up some controls (for example in Invisible inc you could swipe left and right to turn camera, and considering that by default you could fit only turning your camera to one side, due to lack of buttons, it was a very welcome addition). In Child of Light you could control your spirit thingy with touchpad, and with that you could control it much more responsively and quickly than with your stick. Some games just had it split into two sides, so you basically have two buttons instead of one (I think Diablo and some others did this). also not a game, but Share Factory (the video editing software on PS4) uses swipes to scroll the video very quickly
So yeah, I do think that developers are mostly lazy, because I've seen quite a few examples of really good/helpful touchpad uses, that either give you extra control options or just simplify/speed up some interactions. Of course not every game can use touchpad and I understand that. Some games just don't have that many conrols in the first place, but there were plenty examples where I thought to myself "why the hell you can't do this with touchpad, instead of awkward controls". For example many games with radial selections of sorts could use touchpad for quick shortcut without even opening said radial menu, if you'd want to. Especially since most of those games on PC have plenty extra button shortcuts anyways, and we literally have a multipurpose pad that could be used for at least 4 extra shortcuts easily.
The problem is you don't have tactile response from a touchpad, which means you need to look at it to use it effectively--but since you don't want to take your eyes off the screen while you're playing, it becomes useless.
Um, not in a single game I've played that used touchpad one way or another, I had the need to look at it to use it. Sure you may or may not require some time to get used to swipes, memorize controls or whatever, but it's not really that different from pressing buttons really. You don't look at buttons to press them, and neither you have to find them with your fingers before you press them. Once you accumulate certain muscle memory, you just press the button that you want to press, or you swipe the command you want to swipe.
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