7 ms·

Can anyone share their experience enjoying the two pads they put on their controllers? I have a Steam Deck and love it, but the only experience I have with tho

Can anyone share their experience enjoying the two pads they put on their controllers? I have a Steam Deck and love it, but the only experience I have with those pads is “dammit I accidentally touched the pad again.” If I want a mouse, I just connect a Bluetooth mouse. I thought for sure everyone knew it was a flop and we’d never see it again, but obviously that’s not right since they are back. What am I missing?

LukaD 4mo ago
The touch pads work great for emulating a mouse in certain games. I've played many hours of Civ V and VI on the deck thanks to the touch pads. You can even configure them to act as a radial menu or touch menu where different areas of the touch pad emulate different keys.
- tylervigen 4mo ago
  Thanks. Is it not annoying to play Civ with a touchpad vs a mouse? Or is this just a convenience for situations where you can’t use a mouse?
radlad 4mo ago
Can't wait to use it as a mouse for my Windows-based couch gaming PC.
opan 4mo ago
Besides being a mouse, you can map it to a virtual menu with as many shortcuts as you want, the shortcuts being key presses/combos, allowing you to bind way more things than would otherwise fit on a controller. You can also set up mouse regions so that the trackpad only maps to a part of the screen and will instantly jump there, like for moving around an inventory window or minimap. For games without controller support or where KB+M has an advantage, the trackpads are a game changer. Imagine a hotbar like in Minecraft or Terraria, but instead of having to go left or right one at a time with your bumpers, you could spawn a radial menu with the touchpad and instantly flick to "8" or "5" or "1" to select those slots.
alanbernstein 4mo ago
In steam deck desktop mode, the touchpad-as-mouse makes it just bearable enough to use. I can't use desktop mode with a wireless Xbox controller with no touchpads. It's really the missing input type that makes the steam deck a complete tv-docked PC.
pprotas 4mo ago
Played Factorio for tens of hours using the Steam Deck touchpad Best usecase for them (according to me) is top down strategy/base building games Some people use them for radial menus, like selecting a weapon or pings or whatever
cpt_sobel 4mo ago
I've always been a M+KB player and especially for FPS games I've always found it impossible to aim with the sticks, so the trackpads really helped in this regard. Especially for older games that may not natively support joysticks it was a game changer (I recently played Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay)
- tejohnso 4mo ago
  It's hard to imagine quickly centering onto a headshot pixel (or group of maybe 12 pixels) with a trackpad. Especially if the target is moving. I'd like to see a video of someone demonstrating real in-game use of these trackpads on different types of games. None of the reviews I've seen so far go into any detail on it. EDIT: I found the trackpad usage detail I was looking for. But it's not using the new controller, just a steam deck. Looks a lot more accurate than I imagined. https://youtu.be/0BQEg3puMsc https://youtu.be/0BQEg3puMsc
  - ZeWaka 4mo ago
    I can play FPS games decently on controller using the Original Steam Controller's pads.
  - cpt_sobel 4mo ago
    > It's hard to imagine quickly centering onto a headshot pixel (or group of maybe 12 pixels) with a trackpad These days it's hard to imagine me doing it with a mouse even :) The gyro takes some getting used to but it can indeed be really precise
merpkz 4mo ago
I played through whole Half-Life 2 on steam deck with aiming and shooting using right touch pad and it was alright. Strongly suspect though the game should have a support for it properly otherwise it feels janky in everything else I tried with it. No idea what's the use case for left pad though - I sometimes play with it during loading screens due to nice sound it makes, that's about it

LukaD 4mo ago

The touch pads work great for emulating a mouse in certain games. I've played many hours of Civ V and VI on the deck thanks to the touch pads. You can even configure them to act as a radial menu or touch menu where different areas of the touch pad emulate different keys.

tylervigen 4mo ago
Thanks. Is it not annoying to play Civ with a touchpad vs a mouse? Or is this just a convenience for situations where you can’t use a mouse?

radlad 4mo ago

Can't wait to use it as a mouse for my Windows-based couch gaming PC.

opan 4mo ago

Besides being a mouse, you can map it to a virtual menu with as many shortcuts as you want, the shortcuts being key presses/combos, allowing you to bind way more things than would otherwise fit on a controller. You can also set up mouse regions so that the trackpad only maps to a part of the screen and will instantly jump there, like for moving around an inventory window or minimap. For games without controller support or where KB+M has an advantage, the trackpads are a game changer. Imagine a hotbar like in Minecraft or Terraria, but instead of having to go left or right one at a time with your bumpers, you could spawn a radial menu with the touchpad and instantly flick to "8" or "5" or "1" to select those slots.

alanbernstein 4mo ago

In steam deck desktop mode, the touchpad-as-mouse makes it just bearable enough to use. I can't use desktop mode with a wireless Xbox controller with no touchpads. It's really the missing input type that makes the steam deck a complete tv-docked PC.

pprotas 4mo ago

Played Factorio for tens of hours using the Steam Deck touchpad Best usecase for them (according to me) is top down strategy/base building games Some people use them for radial menus, like selecting a weapon or pings or whatever

cpt_sobel 4mo ago

I've always been a M+KB player and especially for FPS games I've always found it impossible to aim with the sticks, so the trackpads really helped in this regard. Especially for older games that may not natively support joysticks it was a game changer (I recently played Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay)

tejohnso 4mo ago
It's hard to imagine quickly centering onto a headshot pixel (or group of maybe 12 pixels) with a trackpad. Especially if the target is moving. I'd like to see a video of someone demonstrating real in-game use of these trackpads on different types of games. None of the reviews I've seen so far go into any detail on it. EDIT: I found the trackpad usage detail I was looking for. But it's not using the new controller, just a steam deck. Looks a lot more accurate than I imagined. https://youtu.be/0BQEg3puMsc https://youtu.be/0BQEg3puMsc
- ZeWaka 4mo ago
  I can play FPS games decently on controller using the Original Steam Controller's pads.
- cpt_sobel 4mo ago
  > It's hard to imagine quickly centering onto a headshot pixel (or group of maybe 12 pixels) with a trackpad These days it's hard to imagine me doing it with a mouse even :) The gyro takes some getting used to but it can indeed be really precise

merpkz 4mo ago

I played through whole Half-Life 2 on steam deck with aiming and shooting using right touch pad and it was alright. Strongly suspect though the game should have a support for it properly otherwise it feels janky in everything else I tried with it. No idea what's the use case for left pad though - I sometimes play with it during loading screens due to nice sound it makes, that's about it