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@Sumez There is literally nothing wrong with adding control customization. I read through both of your posts, and it appears to me that you believe controller customization is a bad thing because developers use it as a handicap for bad default controls, but the thing is, I can't think of a single game with customizable controls where I've deviated from the default. There is no "unobjective best" control scheme anyway for the reasons given by others earlier, despite what you may think.

There's an assumption here that games that have customizable controls with bad defaults would be forced to have good controls if they had no customization.

But the thing is, no one sets out to make a game with bad controls. Games with bad controls play that way because their creators thought they were good enough, whether because of weird tastes in controls, not having the skill or experience to come up with something better, or simply not caring enough.

Having such devs remove customizable controls, far from resulting in a game with good controls, would just lead to a game with bad controls and no alternative.

On the one hand, WarioWare: DIY and Super Mario Maker. On the other, legal threats against game modders.


In both GoldenEye for Nintendo 64 and Geom Cube for PlayStation, I routinely change the controls.

I think part of the problem is overchoice. Non-technical users given too many choices may end up unable to make a choice at all. (See also the Wikipedia articles Overchoice, The Paradox of Choice, and Analysis paralysis, as well as "Choosing our Preferences" by Havoc Pennington.) Some users of another forum I'm on have trotted out overchoice as a reason to stick with consoles over PCs and to preserve the entry barrier to console game development, as the PC market gives players too many choices, with a greater fraction of them bad choices.

Think of it this way: With only 224x192 pixels within the title safe area of the options menu, which valuable pixels get used for each option?

If they aren't tied to anything else, you can use the shoulder buttons either as:

-optional attacks (they're more conveniently reached than A and X)
-shift/alt keys to remap the functions of your designated action button (less direct, but is sometimes useful if there's a lot of complexity).

in any case, i agree with espozo about the r-type comparison.

In case your game also has aiming:
Avoid (imo): aiming with the shoulder buttons (super metroid). This is like strong spirits. You might end up addicted to them, but it never had a good taste in the first place.
Better (imo): aim with d-pad. Have a (shoulder) button to hold-lock player position in case you want to aim freely without the player moving.

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I can't disagree with any of this, but keep in mind I'm not talking from the perspective of a video game player here, but as a developer.

What you aren't accounting for here are all the hundreds of games with great controls that don't offer customizations. A lot of care was put into deciding the correct controls for those games. In Super Mario Bros. you hold B to run and press A to jump, and that works great for that game. The game would be playable with the reverse button layout, but the anatomy of your thumb makes it more intuitive to play it the way it was designed. You could argue that the game wouldn't suffer from allowing the player to change that configuration, but if it works as it is, why should you?

Essentially what I'm getting at here, is design your entire game with a configuration in mind, and if you want to add configuration options, do it as a final addition that won't interfere with your game design.

The funny thing is that I actually like the default controls in Super Metroid (granted, I'm not a speedrunner):

A - Jump
X - Shoot
B - Run

What this does is it basically gives you two easily accessible buttons just to the left of the jump button. Super Mario Bros. had A to jump and B to run. NES Metroid had A to jump and B to shoot. Both have the action to the left of jump. Why not combine those two (without button cramming of course)?

For games that use the more common "B to jump, Y to run/shoot" scheme, I prefer having A as a tertiary/super. You won't hit it by accident but it's still within reach. Unless you need to use X for something, in which case it raises the likelihood of hitting A by accident.

In any case though, yes, please allow rebinding the controls.

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