Holding a button to perform a function.

Crawdaddy79

Radeon 8500
Rage3D Subscriber
I hate this. I think maybe Far Cry 4 was the first game I noticed with it. Hold F to open container. Hold R to modify weapon.

I don't care about chainguns. I understand they have to spin up. This is okay. I'm talking about basic functions that used to be single button presses.

As my arthritis moseys on closer, whistling happily like it's not an evil sonofabitch, I am dreading the pain that holding F to pay respects in future games will cause.

Everspace 2 has this in spades. Hold F to go faster (while your ship sits idle). Hold CTRL to jump, when it could be a tap, then a tap to cancel.

What are your thoughts?
 
Console zoomers are indecisive and need their hands held I say ban controllers on PC :masterrace:
 
It's annoying, it can make sense to use it in situations where two actions are bound to one button though, or to avoid accidentally deleting an item in the inventory, but now every simple action is suddenly hold x to do y.

I blame destiny.
 
I mean if it’s boobs, I can hold them buttons all night long…

But yeah, it is stupid but I get it when it is done in games to create tension. For example, in RE4 it is used to put you in a tight spot and open a crank wheel or some such.

But I don’t like it in Jedi Boner. The menus in that game were designed by Satan himself.
 
Don't a lot of games have accessibility options now where you can set these actions to just button taps instead of having to hold?
 
Isn't it the other way around, they let you use hold on actions that requires button mashing?
For quicktime events, sure. Or allowing you to complete them automatically. They also allow you to set it to hold or tap for interaction actions.
 
It's simple really, controllers don't have as many buttons as a keyboard so devs needed to find a way to map multiple functions to one button. For example in Souls games the dodge/roll and sprint are either press or hold. Souls games also being an example of it being a detriment, as you can't run into a roll even with mods.

Small price to pay for not being the primary target platform. Worse imo is where you have to button mash to fill a circle to perform an action, if you don't mash enough it fails. At least some games the accessibility lets you change that to a hold.
 
It's simple really, controllers don't have as many buttons as a keyboard so devs needed to find a way to map multiple functions to one button. For example in Souls games the dodge/roll and sprint are either press or hold. Souls games also being an example of it being a detriment, as you can't run into a roll even with mods.

Small price to pay for not being the primary target platform. Worse imo is where you have to button mash to fill a circle to perform an action, if you don't mash enough it fails. At least some games the accessibility lets you change that to a hold.

ehh.... if it were that simple, I probably wouldn't have made a thread about it. I'm talking specifically in situations where the button doesn't perform a different function to tap -vs- hold. One crystal clear apples to apples comparison I can give is pressing F to enable SETA in X3, you just tap it, and the ship gradually speeds up to your pre-configured Xx speed, where in Everspace to, you have to hold it until the circle fills up while tapping it just teases the circle.
 
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