For or Against, the Wii U pad.

[Arius Dion]

noname2200 said:

Rogerioandrade said:
noname2200 14 hours ago
1) There was nothing simple about the Wiimote, although it did (by design) appear that way from the user's perspective.
2) The fact that they've gone from a product whose appeal and possibilities are clear and obvious to a product whose appeal needs to be explained and understood is a glaring sign that it's a large step backwards.


Now, now, this is really confusing.

With the Wiimote people just had to point at the screen and press one or two buttons, and sometimes no button at all. How can it not be simple ? Even Kinect takes a certain time to get used to the menus and lack of buttons. Wiimote was just about pick and play, it was very intuitive.

As for the gamepad, you´re implying then that coming from a simple concept to a most comprehensive and advanced one was a bad move. So advancing and implementing new things is a bad thing at all. I really think gamers should think the opposite

There's nothing confusing about it, you're just misunderstanding my point. 

The brilliance of the Wiimote, and well-executed motion controls in general, is that they allow the player to execute complex actions without having to worry about complex controllers. They are, as you say, "pick up and play." When I go through the motions of bowling, the controller is doing several complex calculations to translate my input into onscreen action. I myself don't notice it - I just swung my arm as if I was bowling - but it's happening behind the scenes nonetheless. In other words, the controller is doing all the work, not me. By contrast, the traditional dual analogue controller is extremely basic: Each button is a specific input, and certain combinations of input lead to preprogrammed result. There's nothing else going on behind the scenes. In contrast to the Wiimote, the burden of executing what you want is on the player, not the controller.

 

Let me give you a real life example. Compare Rockstar's Table Tennis on the XBox to the table tennis game in Wii Sports Resort. In the latter, if I want to knock the ball back with some top spin with moderate power, I use the Wiimote as if it was a paddle and angle it in such a way and with such force as to knock the ball back with some top spin with moderate power. Nothing can be easier. To do the same in Rockstar's game, I have to use the left thumbstick, keep it at the angle I want, then remember which of the face buttons is top spin, and decide whether I want to use the focus feature and, if so, which bumper I should use as a result. Sure, with an hour or two of practice it'll become second nature (until you don't play the game for a few weeks and forget, that is), but that's an issue that will simply never come up in Wii Sports Resort, because the controller takes care of all that boring stuff for you.

Of course, it's not always that easy: because the Wiimote is much more advanced than the old dual analogue controller, programming for it takes more work than most developers are apparently willing to put in. Let's stick with Rockstar's Table Tennis. The Wii version of the game...sucked. The developers were lazy, and simply slapped the digital button controls of the Xbox version onto their closest motion equivalent. So instead of Resort's complexity, you get a simplistic motion game where waving in X direction was basically like pressing X on a controller. Lame.

 

So no, I am not implying that going back to the dual-analogue model embraced by the Gamepad is a bad idea. I am emphatically stating it. Dual analogue controllers are nothing more than needlessly simplistic controls that rely upon complicated layouts and combinations to execute anything more than running and jumping. They place the additional burden of memorizing convoluted control schemes on the player, something which is now unnecessary. They're a turn off for much of the masses. Saying gaming should stick to that scheme is akin to saying modern Operating Systems should be abolished and replaced with DOS.

(Clap, Clap, Clap)

I agree wholeheartedly.