[jff]

You used to use the keyboard for all actions in FPS's. The first Quake is an example of this. And it was goddamn terrible, which is why everyone started playing shooters with mice as soon as possible.

Wasn't it back around that same time period that some people also tried playing FPS games with a joystick? Probably would have worked ok for Doom, but I can't see it working as well with anything that allows vertical aiming.

[rapind]

The controls from the original Quake is not what I'm suggesting. Controlling your movement and aim via keybaord right now IS terrible and I'm not disputing that.

What I'd like to see as an experiment is having a much finer grained control over your keyboard sensitivity.

As an example, let's say you have "a" mapped as your left turn (not strafe) key. So pressing and holding "a" gives you the standard movement speed you've come to expect. Pretty terrible.

Now let's say holding shift and pressing "a" gives you a turn speed that's twice as fast. Already this is a pretty significant improvement and offers you some control over you turn speed using only the keyboard.

Now let's add a couple more modifiers; crtl/cmd for 3x speed, alt/opt for 4x speed. Let's also add some new keys for turn 90 degrees, turn 180 degrees, turn 270 degrees, and these are all instant, just like a fast mouse turn.

A mouse still allows for much more granular control when it comes to aiming etc. but for someone who spends to time to really adapt these keys it would close the gap significantly and may even make keyboard aiming / turning a viable option.

I could be completely wrong though and it might just feel terrible, but I'd love to test it out to see.