this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2025
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Steam Deck
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As a big fan of the Steam Deck something I want to emphasize here is that even if you didn't want both the joysticks and the touchpads on the Steam Controller and wish they had picked one or the other, this kind of setup means the controller has essentially the same layout as the Steam Deck which is HUGE for ease of finding custom control schemes already uploaded by the community for complex games.
I prefer joysticks+gyro over touchpads for aiming and so for me the touchpads might seem superfluous, but in reality I heavily use them for virtual menus in all of my control schemes I make for complex games with lots of controls and inputs. The nice thing is that even though I am in the minority of people in that I prefer joysticks + gyro over touchpad for aiming, because the Steam Deck and Steam Controller both have two touchpads and two joysticks, somebody who is touchpad centric can use a control scheme I make pretty much right out of the box just by flip flopping the touchpad and joystick bindings so the virtual menus live on the joysticks instead.
I think this will be one of the subtle things people look back on and credit the Steam Deck and now new Steam Controller for having, it might seem silly and extraneous to have both touchpads and joysticks but it opens up a very wide range of capability and also makes it easier for touchpad and joystck focused players to share custom keybinding schemes with each other.
Who the fuck is complaining about having both? Thats such an insane take.
I thought I'd use the touch pads more but gyro is the first thing i set up in most games.
This is wild to me. Holding my arms perfectly still is practically impossible for me. The idea of a game using my pose and unconscious arm movements as input is positively gameplay-wrecking.
The joysticks on the steam deck are touch sensitive and can bet set as the gyro aim activation you can also set it to be a combination of that + another button so aim down sight and finger on aim joy could activate it if you want or some other combination. Its slick as shit
A bit how, most of the time in Breath of the Wild, the gyros don't do anything. They only activate while aiming a bow, using Magnesis or a few other context-sensitive moments. Because yeah, if it was constantly doing something like camera control that would get turned off immediately.
I have mine set so if I want it to stay still, I lift my thumb off the movement joystick, turning off the gyro control. If I still need to move, I nudge from the side where the sensor isn't
You use both thumbsticks for identical movement control?
One is lateral movement, the other is aiming. My deck's offline at the moment, so I'm going from memory... but now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure I have the right stick set to aim. Then I have the gyro set to only activate when my thumb is on the right stick. Big rapid changes in direction I use the stick and the fine adjustments don't much matter; then for fine control I hold the stick still, with thumb on top, and physically shift the deck to aim. Sometimes bracing my wrists on my knees or whatever's handy.
Then when I end up angled weird, I lift my thumb and settle back in. My play style tends to end up with me twisting around while I play anyway, this just lets me harness it a bit!
That sounds like too much cognitive load. Stick go left, guy go left.
Like I said, I tend to move like this regardless; this just lets it actually do something!
I play shooters and rts games with a gyro toggle, and I only toggle gyro off when I am putting my steam deck down or some other random thing. To each their own!
Super weird to me. I can't imagine playing DOOM like that.
I played through Doom Eternal like that on my Steam Controller where I mapped mouse to the touchpad for quick turns, gyro activated on touch, and mapped some of the weapons on the touchpad so I could swap to them when I clicked by setting up a dpad modeshift on right pad click with an inverted outer ring for center click.
Turned off aim assist and went my way.
It is very effective for me, I can play multiplayer fps games against mouse and keyboard players fine and honestly I enjoy it more than mouse and keyboard, probably because I grew up playing xbox/consoles (not that I find it difficult to use a mouse and keyboard, just not as fun) but also because it just feels like I am aiming so snap shots and such are wayyyy more satisfying to me than if I just moved a mouse to click on them.
In practice it isn't necessarily easy to tell I am using gyro except for when I do brief quick reaction shots just relying on gyro for aim, the rest of the time I don't ever think about using the gyro consciously, I just use the joysticks for rough aim and let my brain figure the rest out with the gyro. Recoil in FPS games is also way more fun to control with gyro, it is a more direct control relationship rather than dragging a mouse down a mousepad, at least for me.
I don't move the Steam Deck much though, it isn't like I am getting a work out whipping the Steam Deck around, the gyro is really just there to lock in broad joystick movements to be accurate and on target consistently thus avoiding the small aim adjustment problem that joystick deadzones create. Also once I got used to it, my brain automatically cancels unintended gyro movements with joystick movements and thus I don't have to hold the Steam Deck totally still in order not to have my aim utterly thrown off from a normal amount of arm shake/movement.
Sounds like lot more work than "move stick left, guy go left"
No I only use the gyro for aim, movement is just the left joystick like normal controller style FPS controls!
So what is the right stick for?
left joystick - movement
right joystick - broad aim adjustment
gyro - fine aim adjustment (toggleable off for menus and stuff)
So you leave gyro on all the time in game? That's what I do, and I don't even move my whole arm really, just my fingers. I still use both joysticks. Gyro's almost like aim assist, but instead of some algorithm doing the fine adjustments it's my own muscle memory.
Yeah with a toggle to turn it off briefly when I need to.
Same, I always have to disable it or greatly dial it back, for example in fallout nv I leave it on with low sensitivity while I'm holding the trigger to ads, so I can have the fun aiming experience when I want to, what I really can't stand is "thumb on joystick activates gyro" MF I leave my thumb on the thimbstick when I want to use it, why would I want to trigger gyro?
I use them both together, touchpds for quick movements and gyro for precision.
Yeah, this is something that I've been wanting for a while now too. I flip flop between my steam deck and a steam-machine-like desktop pc with an original steam controller for a while now, and not having my control mappings translate from one to another has been annoying (but in an understandable way). This is gonna be sweeeeeet.
You say that because you prefer joysticks, but imagine using touchpad for camera movements and then going for buttons. Hella uncomfortable, something that was a plus in the old steam controller. Basically a downgrade.
I think the easy solution here is release an identical controller except switch the location of the touchpad and joysticks. I think this would also be good for people with all different kinds of hand shapes as someone who likes joysticks but has small hands might prefer the same controller as someone who has large hands and prefers touchpads and equal and opposite for the other version.
Idk it is a weird idea I guess but I think it makes a lot of sense if you think about it.
I agree, no way in hell we are getting it though lol.
Probably not, but it might be suprisingly economical given you are making a product that simultaneously targets two niche ends of two markets at once (people who have larger hands and use touchpads and people who have smaller hands and use joysticks) and compliments the new steam controller perfectly as a sort of mirror image.
I am sure it would be more costly than just sticking to one controller design, but you wouldn't presumably have to change thatttt much about the controller production. It wouldn't really change keybinding stuff either just you would have to change the steam ui to reflect the changed position of the joysticks and touchpads.
My hope after seeing that the joysticks themselves look like they can be removed from the main board is that the touchpads can be relocated to the top without too much hassle and put into a 3D printed top shell made by the community. So if that were possible what I'd probably do is pop off the XYAB, dpad, and board holding the joystick so the touchpad can be moved up to make the touchpads comfortable for primary use.
And then I'd rely on the back buttons and set up a dpad modeshift on a right pad click to enable edge and center clicks, so I wouldn't miss the absence of the other inputs too much. I also use touchpad for movement where I'll often set outer ring to sprint and map crouch/slide/dash on touchpad click, so cuts down on needed inputs further.
So that's my hope that modifying the new Steam Controller for touchpad users will be as simple as 3d printing a shell and opening the controller and not require further things like soldering.