[quote]Using a mouse/keyboard does not automatically gain you higher precision. As many people have stated in the past, it's difficult to learn to use the keyboard/mouse. It's something you have to work towards and it's a skill that has a high skill ceiling in its self. Just because someone has a mouse/keyboard doesn't mean they'll ever be able to pull off amazing shots like in that montage I linked earlier.[/quote] I'm fully aware of this. If you want me to use obnoxiously precise terminology (which I'm going to have to ratchet up a bit with this post in general to get this discussion to actually go anywhere), here goes: Someone with a given level of experience and skill with M&K will typically aim far more precisely than someone with comparable levels of experience and skill with a gamepad. [quote]The way Quake was developed to suit Mouse/Keyboard playing was in the pace of the movement. Players can go at much higher speeds and lots of the guns require extreme precision to hit someone. When creating a game with the thoughts of gamepads in mind they have to slow down the movement speeds which makes it far easier to get a hit on someone.[/quote] Okay. So, to compensate for the difficulty with gamepad aiming, they have to slow the game down (or do other stuff) to compensate. So far we're on the same page. However, why do you immediately jump to the conclusion that this necessarily makes it easier to hit someone than with an M&K-based faster-paced game? If we acknowledge that it's a compensation mechanism for a game which would otherwise be [i]more difficult than our basepoint[/i], why do you claim that there can't be a point along that compensation curve where it is [i]similar to our basepoint[/i], as opposed to always making games [i]easier than that basepoint[/i]? Which also ties into this: [quote]It brings out the full possibilities for skill gaps in First-Person Shooting.[/quote] But if a gamepad makes it more difficult to be precise, than wouldn't a game like Quake, if played on a gamepad, actually tend to have a higher skill gap than if played on M&K? Which means that even if aim assist and movement speed difficulty compensation decrease the skill gap, couldn't a hypothetical game be envisioned which, using a gamepad, could have both some aim assist and somewhat slower movement than Quake yet still have just as large a skill gap as vanilla Quake? Look, this is the basic thing that you need to justify. We both acknowledge that a gamepad is hard to be precise with compared to a keyboard+mouse (which implies that it's harder to hit enemies with), and we both acknowledge that compensation mechanisms like slower games and aim assist decrease the skill gap by making it easier to hit enemies. Your argument that console games with slower movement and aim assist will always necessarily have lower skill gaps, then, relies on the notion that there if no combination of movement speed and aim assist that still leaves it as hard to hit enemies as an assist-free M&K game. And this you have still not justified (Though on the plus side, we're zeroing in on, or at least viewing other angles of, the core issue! That's good, and it's a lot more than most internet discussions accomplish.). //===================== [quote]Would you rather watch a sport where everyone has handicapped equipment that causes the game to not show its full potential versus a sport where the game is to its absolute potential with the best equipment they can get? Would you rather watch the Special Olympics or would you rather watch the Olympics? Would you rather watch a race consisting of lawn mowers or a race consisting of super cars like Lamborghinis? (Ironically, Lamborghini was started as a Lawn Mower manufacturer. I didn't even think about that while first typing this out xD)[/quote] I don't really care, actually*. Most sports systems actually have bans for the highest-performance equipment, and I'm not just talking about performance-enhancing drugs and stuff. Even Formula One racing has limitations on stuff like engine RPMs, swimmers are limited in how much of their bodies can be covered by their suits, baseball players have limitations on what bats they can use, and so on and so forth. *As long as we ignore that "causes the game to not show its full potential" clause. [Edited on 12.23.2011 11:09 PM PST]