I have really been loving my steam deck lately. I’ve now played through Fallout 3, New Vegas, all of their respective DLCs, and am about 100hrs into 4 right now.
Normally I play indie games since that’s where my interests are and I grow tired of the AAA jackassery.
I mention that to illustrate that I do use and live the deck. But I guess I’m not creative enough to use the back buttons at all. So to the title question:
-
What games do you play that make the most use of the back buttons?
-
What functions are mapped to those buttons?
-
Or are you like me and just never use them?
In first-person games, I always rebind the jump to one of the back buttons. Coming from kbm, it weels weird that looking around and jumping at the same time is not possible.
Yeah, ideal for any games where you don’t want to take your thumb off the right stick to press A/B/X/Y
Or games where you don’t want to take your finger off the left stick to hit a direction bound to some action on the D-Pad.
I pretty much never use them, don’t have the right hand shape and grip for it.
I initially tried pressing the bit that’s not flat against the back by squeezing it and it really wasn’t comfortable for my hand, but pressing the bit that is flat against the back is way easier
I’ll try this.
Yeah, I turn them off in a lot of games. Otherwise I accidentally hit them and trigger some weird effect.
I get a lot of joint pain from specific or repetitive movements (especially in my hands) and these are just slightly too stiff and in a hard enough to press place that using them for more than very occasional use will hurt. I bought some rubber things that make them a bit easier to press, but they still are difficult for me.
Some games have button layouts that make certain actions a pain. Two examples.
Horizon Zero Dawn - Healing is by default done by hitting dpad up. You generally want to press this button whenever you take damage to essentially trigger health regen, but doing so requires taking your thumb off the left stick, which means you can’t simultaneously avoid even more damage. Bind to back button, problem solved.
BallisticNG - Weapons are bound to X, discard weapons is bound to B, and accelerate is on A. So when you pick up a weapon, to discard/use it you either have to drop thrust (bad, never do that) or awkwardly shimmy your thumb to either hit X or B without letting go of A. Bind X and B to back buttons, problems solved.
BallisticNG
Hey fellow WipEout junkie 👋
Thanks for connecting these two dots. BallisticNG never crossed my radar.
I set up !ballisticng@sopuli.xyz as I’ve seen the game mentioned all over lemmy now.
Hoping to eventually organize some online tournaments, but we’re gonna need players :D
Best “Classic WipEout” homage I ever played.
Put it in 2280 mode and it’s the best “Modern WipEout” homage there is, too.
It’s literally the “get yourself a girl that does both” of WipEout games.
god I wish omega was on PC
Vita3k + WipEout 2048 + HD DLC + Fury DLC = almost Omega Collection on PC 🤣
Runs great on Steam Deck too.
Oh I have to try that.
I set up !ballisticng@sopuli.xyz as I’ve seen the game mentioned all over lemmy now.
Hoping to eventually organize some online tournaments, but we’re gonna need players :D
I use them in WoW for tricky keybinds. and in terraria they’re pretty useful as well
I’ve been thinking about playing WoW with a controller recently. How well do you find it works on the deck? Last time I tried was a decade ago and that was a less-than-good experience but it worked. I know there have been a lot of improvements since then though. Is it fully playable without KB+m?
There’s good controller support in the game itself, and the add-on ConsolePort makes it more like FFXIV (a model all controller MMOs should take after). The movement scheme being forced backpedal is less great for controller use, but that can be overcome with muscle memory.
Sweet, will check it out! I’ve just started playing a bit of mop: remix so this will help with that.
Yeah, this was the only thing I could think of as well. But I haven’t played an MMO since City of Heroes, or SW: Galaxies, whichever was most recent. Don’t recall atm.
I use the back buttons for all sorts of stuff. But the most common use is remapping ABXY to them. That way, I dont have to lift my thumb off the joysticks as much.
Also some games have easier menu navigation with a mouse, so I’ll map left and right click to r1 and l1 and use a track pad to navigate menus.
I use them in place of the bumpers so my fingers can stay on the triggers.
Not much. On one hand, I don’t want to get too used to something that isn’t available anywhere else (controllers with back buttons are usually just able to be used as double for the face ones) and on the other hand… my main use is, as I found out, better to be avoided on the Deck. American Truck Simulator. Right now I don’t remember what I set them to, but I certainly have some cruise control options there. But the problem is that, if I’m tired at all, using the Deck if I end up doing a delivery at night, I fall asleep lmao. Learned that I am in fact not capable of shrugging off drowsiness while driving, glad I found out with a game…
In WR:SR (a Industrial City-Building Economy and Transport Simulator), there are different placing and overlay modes, like Snap-to-Grid (L4), Elevation (R4) and Underground view (R5), but I still need the first two buttons for zooming/radius(L1,R1), placing(R2)/removal(R2) confirm and the small buttons for placement elevation (for road/rails (and their bridges), pipes/cables) (X,B), mirroring (Y). (I forgot what A was for).
Basically every time you need more than two keys on the keyboard and the mouse simultanously, for the equivalent on the SD, the lower backbuttons come in handy.
I have a game that I was afraid of figuring out the controls yet; it is Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead. In this game I will likely need every available button twice or something.
I’ve been playing a lot of Ziggurat 2 which is a roguelite fantasy-themed FPS with 4 categories of weapons. Instead of spamming Y to cycle through weapons, I can select my weapon directly with the back buttons.
Ok that game actually looks pretty sick. Never heard of it before.
In a visual novel, as another “advance text” button. In Crosscode, I have the “switch elements” arrow keys on the back buttons (you need to flip it on the fly a lot). In some games, I’ll put the B-button action on R4 (particularly when it’s a dodge-roll). If a game needs a random keyboard key out of the blue, I’ll bind it on a paddle.
Oh…Crosscode, first game mentioned so far that I actually play. Interesting. I’ll have to try that out. Thanks!
Heh, I actually started my replay on the Deck yesterday. Bind guard (b iirc) to a back button so you can do it while shooting without accidentally dashing all the time.
I’m playing through New Vegas right now. I have one of the back buttons assigned to quicksave. I also changed the default camera button to one of the back buttons, because I don’t use it often enough to warrant it being on the bumpers. And I have just assigned one to toggle collision, because sometimes you need that when playing something built in the Gamebryo engine.
So far the only games I’ve ever played on Deck that require them would be Portal 2 alongside the Portal 2 mod Revolution (or something along those lines). I think jump and maybe 1 other function is tied to the back buttons. Otherwise, I haven’t messed around with controls enough to find a use for them.
Nothing yet but this thread is giving me ideas :)
Same
Going back.
I use the back buttons with Eurotruck simulator/ATS, and for whatever extra functions i want with other games. Also use them with Firefox on the desktop for paging forward or backward.