[quote][b]Posted by:[/b] sdnomdE In this hypothetical example, does it matter what differences the games had to begin with?[/quote]Yes. Yes it would, actually. What other things could this game have that would cause it to have a higher skill ceiling than that of Quake/Unreal Tournament/Counter-Strike so much so that even with slower movement speeds/aim assist it has just as much skill as those games? [quote]I've seen no evidence that it's easy for anyone to rise to great heights of controller-use proficiency*.[/quote]I never said it was [i]easy[/i] to reach great heights of proficiency with controllers. All I said is that it's easier. With things such as aim assist and slower movement speeds purposely nerfing the difficulty of the games to seem more playable towards newer users so they will actually buy the product/continue playing, it causes it to be easier (Not saying easy, just easier) to hit the skill ceiling. For me it didn't take very long at all until I was getting 3 shot kills with the Pistol on Halo: Combat Evolved very often. In fact I was 8 and it was only within a few weeks. On the other hand it took years for me to become proficient in landing headshots in games like Unreal Tournament even though I like the feeling of a keyboard and mouse much more. [quote]No, I only agreed that it has a tendency to decrease the skill gap. I also argued, however, that it's entirely possible for games operated from gamepad to have high skill gaps*, and that some amount of aim assist can make them more practical and reasonable to play while still maintaining more than sufficiently high skill gaps for competitive play.[/quote]My point is that they shouldn't have made the software of the game more practical/reasonable for FPS gaming. It would have been far more ideal if they could have designed a controller or a more comfortable form of a mouse/keyboard for this instead. That way you can have the best instead of being sufficient. Water is sufficient, but a drink of your choice is the best. [quote]*Perhaps I should clarify this point that I use in these spots. Consider this: The theoretical performance ceiling of gamepads with respect to shooting in FPS games is almost as high as that of K&M, that ceiling being "perfect aim." However, as it is harder to squeeze precision out of a gamepad, the practical performance floor with a gamepad is actually far lower. Hence, the possible performance [i]range[/i] for users of a gamepad seems to me to be, if anything, far larger than that for users of K&M.[/quote]Actually, with aim assist, it's not hard at all to squeeze precision out of a controller. It's quite easy to pull off headshots on the Xbox Halo games when compared to PC shooters such as Unreal Tournament. Even to someone who is above average in both which I consider myself to be. It [i]would[/i] be larger if people moved faster and the aim assist was dropped. Then again it goes back to it being more interesting if you have people with better equipment for the job instead of people trying as hard as they can to use inferior equipment. [quote]And by my earlier point, if this range is sufficiently large, reducing it to make a game playable might result in a range that is still reasonably large.[/quote]It would still be smaller. Why would I want my game to be "reasonably large" when I could have it much larger? Why waste my time decreasing the skill gap to use worse equipment? (By the way, it is worse equipment. That's the entire reason it exists. You don't see Mouse/Keyboards having software in games developed with them in mind to make them as sufficient as a controller.) [Edited on 12.29.2011 10:38 PM PST]