this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2023
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Steam Deck

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Supposed Steam Deck killers are missing the point (www.notebookcheck.net)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 67 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

It's rather interesting to me how nobody puts any value on the Deck trackpads in comparisons like these, and yet they are basically essential if you want the device to be able to play anything but console-optimized games / games that are built for gamepads first.

Playing something like Skyrim on one of the alternative portables can certainly be done, but being able to comfortably play games like Against the Storm, Anno, Civilization, Dwarf Fortress, Factorio, Homeworld, Northgard, OpenTTD, Stellaris, etc is where the Deck really shines and where all the "alternatives" fall completely flat.

Edit: Not to mention that trying to run Windows without any kind of direct mouse input is really painful, and all the "alternatives" keep doing exactly that.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

games like Against the Storm, Anno, Civilization, Dwarf Fortress, Factorio, Homeworld, Northgard, OpenTTD, Stellaris, etc

Note that none of those games are "Steam Deck Verified". They are at most "Playable", and often the controls is not the only issue Valve warns about (many also have small text that's hard to read). So playing them, while technically possible, is not really that great of an experience.

The issue is that not everyone wants to fiddle with controller settings, and sadly there's very few games that do take advantage of the trackpad and actually have proper first-class support for the Deck, with seamless idiot-proof integration.

And I say that despite being a Steam Controller owner (and I'd love a SC 2). The experience with "Verified" titles is much more seamless than having to check your controller mappings to understand what you need to press (or having convoluted layers / combinations for the more keyboard heavy ones... like say, ToME).

It's a bit sad that the trackpad is not getting much love from game devs. I'd have hoped that at least some games started allowing simultaneous input for gamepad and mouse, just so that they can earn a "Verified" badge. But that's still a problem, though some engines handle it better than others.

[–] ABC123itsEASY 1 points 1 year ago

Eh I don't think being verified means all that much because in my experience there are games that are verified that just don't play well on a deck because the game doesn't lend itself well to deck controls and there are others where the control factors keeping them from being verified are trivial but not addressable given valves strict definitions of 'verified'. Example: Noita sucks on the deck and it's verified. It's like 10x more difficult to aim on the deck relative to a M+K setup and makes it feel clumsy as hell. Meanwhile, Against the Storm, Soulstone Survivors, Dwarf Fortress, and Civilization all have great experiences on the deck and I've happily played multiple hours of each chilling on my couch without a thought about the controls and none are verified.

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