this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2024
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The advantage that ESDF movement has (boo, WASD uses the wrong keys), is that you can stop movement by just not pushing any keys or buttons. With mouse-based movement there's rarely a "stop movement" button, you just have to click close to where you already are.
But, the bigger difference is that you can dedicate one hand to movement and the other hand to aiming. This is key when you're playing a ranged attacker. With a melee attacker clicking on an enemy is fine because you want to both attack it and move in that direction. But, if you want to stay away from the enemies and attack them from long range, a mouse-based movement system combined with a mouse-based aiming system means you're clicking on one side of the screen to aim and the opposite side to move. That's inefficient and imprecise.
ESDF movement does have its drawbacks though. The biggest drawback is that you can only move at one speed. That's especially bad for certain scenarios, like escort-type missions where you want to move at the same speed as whatever you're escorting, or stealth games / activities where the slower you move the more stealthy you are. But. for those, the mouse isn't any better. What's better is a joystick / thumbstick. With those you can move the stick very slightly to move very slowly.
Often I think the best of both worlds would be a mouse for aiming and a thumbstick for movement.
This is the first time I've ever heard of this. What's wrong with WASD?
It underutilizes the pinky, and it's not the home keys.
ESDF still lets you reach tab, caps lock, shift, ctrl and alt, but opens it up so your pinky can also use Q, A and Z. With WASD your pinky can only really hit the "big keys". Everything else can just get shifted over by one. Plus, if you're a touch typist your fingers are already good at finding the home keys so your ring finger is already used to being on "S". That means if you have to stretch to hit a special key, it's easier to get back to the right keys. Plus many keyboards have a nub on F and J so you can find them / verify you're on the right keys by touch.
My left pinkie doesn't have that kind of dexterity
So, you're unable to type with it? This kind of movement is no different from typing where you have to use the occasional word like "quick", "active" or "zygote".
I don't actually use it for z! Haha
Also, I feel like needing to hold ctrl or shift is a fairly common requirement in games. I think it'd be too uncomfortable to do that from one column further away
It's not, I don't have particularly big hands and it's easy.
The OP hasn't responded, but I'll hazard a guess that moving the movement keys one set to the right gives you more access to easily reachable keys to the left of the movement set that you can bind things to.
I guess if you want that left-hand pinkie workout! Haha