Yes. (Gaming)

by Kahzgul, Monday, July 10, 2017, 22:48 (2693 days ago) @ Vortech

My initial controller that came with my PS4 was broken when I got it. I had NO IDEA. Why? Because the way it was broken was... weird. It didn't fully register that you were pressing to the left. Does that make sense? No. It registered that it went left. For sure. In games that only needed a bit of fidelity when turning left, it was fully functional. Spelunky? Fine. Steamworld Dig? Perfect. Destiny? Nope. Not at all. When pressing the stick all the way to the left I turned at exactly 50% of the speed with which I turned to the right. This wasn't a gradual shift - if I was only adjusting a little left or a little right, it turned at exactly the same speed. Only at the extreme edge, the controller would fail to go all the way to 100.

At first I thought this was a problem with Destiny. The problem only happened in Destiny. Bungie said "no, this is a problem with the PS4 software." Well, that was wrong, but I had no way to prove that. Sony said "It only happens with destiny, so it's a problem with destiny." No one would fix it. And then one day my friend came over to loan me his pro controller, and I realized the problem wasn't software, because that controller worked fine. It was hardware. Well, shit. I was waaay outside the warranty issue for my controller. WAY outside.

For the record, I did, in fact, complete the first year of SRL racing with that busted controller. Turning left was basically impossible, so I had to do a boost turn for *every* *left* *turn*. Every single one. And I'd completed the first two raids with a busted controller. Turning hard left, it turns out, isn't really a required action in any raid encounter. Most of Destiny is played in the grey area between no turn and maximum turn. That's good design, I think, to force your players to have a little finesse.

It was, however, a problem in SRL. And, to a lesser degree, a problem in PvP. The change when I got my new controller was dramatic and immediate.

So yeah, the PS4 controller sucks. It's too small, it's fragile, and it's poorly made.

And it's not the Duke. #bestcontrollerever.