WASD= The better form of the left analog stick. Mouse= The better form of the right analog stick.

That is all

Okay since cars were mentioned above, think of this problem as Manual vs. Automatic (Actually the whole overreaching PC vs Console argument can be summed up by this). With the automatic you got your auto-aim, slower acceleration, and all that stuff. Now with manual you have all this control over your car that it's ridiculous. Generally speaking going from Automatic -> Manual is nearly impossible and very few people pull it off since many just give up and don't want to deal with the complexity, meanwhile going Manual -> Automatic is also very rarely done. I hate automatics, I hate how much control I lose, and ultimately whenever I drive an Automatic the driving is boring beyond belief. Manual makes driving extremely fun and interesting and you can do so much more with the car.

Now both have their advantages and disadvantages, but I don't think anyone out there will start telling me Automatic is better than Manual in any way other than the driver's lack of will of learning Manual. Sure the automatic has its advantages, especially in heavy traffic, but in the big grand overall picture it's no match for a manual. I'll race my crummy manual against any automatic car out there and I would probably still kick ass.

I think the problem with your comparison is that most people don't drive because they want to, they do it out of necessity. Gaming isn't a necessity. You're also taking this from the position of someone that likes to race cars. Most people don't do that or care to.

In my analogy the car racing is analogous to gaming in general. Most people don't do that or care to.

i don't really see the comparison then. I have seen people prefer analog sticks to K+M in FPSes but i've never in my life heard of someone that raced cars with an automatic. I think the problem is racing is always about speed and handling, amongst other things I'm sure so it always favors manual, but there can be any number of reasons to prefer a dual analog setup for FPS games.

I want a list of these reasons which are not made obsolete by the the KBD + M set up. Also just few weeks ago I saw a Viper with automatic, made me wonder why anyone would do such a thing ever. There are plenty of race type cars out there with manual and people do sometimes race in them, obviously they don't do too hot but it happens.

I'm going to give only reasons that apply to me:

1. I don't like how the keys are setup. I prefer the cross of a D-Pad or the 360 degree range of motion of an analog stick. Having the down key being wedged between the left and right keys just never felt right to me.

2. If I change the setup to other keys within the board, I sometimes lose my placing because I can never find four keys that are in the right place. The placement is always skewed to the left or right.

3. The other buttons used, like the numbered keys have no difference in feel, so unless you're really familiar with the keyboard, you can press the the wrong key. I enjoy on a controller the differences in shape the buttons have to help seperate them. When a gamepad finally started going towards the PC's hotkeys, it was a failure in terms of design (Atari Jaguar). I had one myself, so I can say form first hand experience, it was murder trying to get a hang of the hot keys because they all felt the same and there were like 16 of them.

4. I prefer and find it more comfortable to use either my thumb or the ball of my hand to move a character. The three finger approach cramps my fingers sometimes, especially the middle finger since it needs to move from the up key to the down key. This is my most important point, and why I feel even a D-Pad would be a better option, because I find it so much easier and comfortable using a thumb to move with than three seperate fingers.

I'm going to give only reasons that apply to me:

1. I don't like how the keys are setup. I prefer the cross of a D-Pad or the 360 degree range of motion of an analog stick. Having the down key being wedged between the left and right keys just never felt right to me.

2. If I change the setup to other keys within the board, I sometimes lose my placing because I can never find four keys that are in the right place. The placement is always skewed to the left or right.

3. The other buttons used, like the numbered keys have no difference in feel, so unless you're really familiar with the keyboard, you can press the the wrong key. I enjoy on a controller the differences in shape the buttons have to help seperate them. When a gamepad finally started going towards the PC's hotkeys, it was a failure in terms of design (Atari Jaguar). I had one myself, so I can say form first hand experience, it was murder trying to get a hang of the hot keys because they all felt the same and there were like 16 of them.

4. I prefer and find it more comfortable to use either my thumb or the ball of my hand to move a character. The three finger approach cramps my fingers sometimes, especially the middle finger since it needs to move from the up key to the down key. This is my most important point, and why I feel even a D-Pad would be a better option, because I find it so much easier and comfortable using a thumb to move with than three seperate fingers.

Well we'll just have to agree that the KBD isn't everyone's preference, but it seems to me that most of you rproblems and dislikes with the KBD would be fixed with a little work here and there. You also may want to examine how you are positipning your hand on the WASD if your middle finger gets cramped, but do it while you are in the heat of movement and force yourself to position it differently. I had the same problem back in the day when playing Quake II.

But for the sake of contiuing the analogy, what you jsut described is the exact reason so many people don't use Manual, they just find it inconvinient and a pain in the beginning to use when compared to an automatic, even if you are just driving on a normal road. At the same time I think we both agree that Manual is better when it comes to driving, whether you are racing or not, than Automatic. To this day I'm thankful I learned how to drive on manual and not automatic.