Teaching a new dog old tricks

Ladred · 08-13-2007, 03:12 PM

My significant other has finally come around to getting interested in my little hobbie. So I got her an account, plopped her down in queens colony and attempted to splain things. To my suprise, this was a frustratingly difficult task. Reason being is that she hasn't ever played a 3d game. She can use a mouse fine, but when I sat her in front of the game, the concept of left, right, up and down with the mouse completely went out the window. She was twisting the mouse to look around and getting really frustrated because she couldn't grasp the first person or third person controls. She insists on using the arrow keys instead of WASD, and I wasn't even going to attempt to explain doing quests until she could actually move around without looking like drunkard.

So, I've been working her slowly in to things that don't require any moving, like I load up her character with a bunch of recipe components and she does tradeskilling, which she absolutely loves btw.

Now though, she has grown bored of tradeskilling, as she is at the cap and I'm wanting to get her back in to the basics of moving around. From personal experience I learned how to move around in 3d games thanks to that old game named Descent, and yes I did hurl the first time I tried it. Anyhow, are there any games out there that you can suggest would be good to get her broken in for moving around, using WASD buttons and the mouse. I remember the original EQ1 disk shipped with an offline tutorial that helped back in the day, but that little tutorial doesn't seem to work anymore.

Loudness · 08-13-2007, 03:17 PM

halflife

Stoic · 08-13-2007, 03:20 PM

It might not be her cup of tea but alot of gamers got their WASD skills from First Person Shooters. They almost require that you use those keys to move around and the mouse movement will help train her. A good first person shooter to get for free that might help is "America's Army." It might not be her style but the intro training and first 2 or 3 missions will help her get a grasp of keys and how to place her fingers for a smoother movement and gameplay experiance.

Also something I have noticed that helps with movement is being Aware of your surroundings, point out obstacles in her path and have her move out of the way before she is on top of them. Its like teaching someone to drive. Once you got the basics down it becomes second nature and she will be well on her way to enjoying the game at whatever level she chooses.

LFG · 08-13-2007, 03:25 PM

Dude, EQ was my first game ever, and EQ2 my second. I just use the arrow keys with my right hand and cast everything with my left hand, I've never been able to adapt to WASD movement. I rarely use the mouse. I obviously raid, and this noob method of gaming navigation works just fine for me.

Silverfox · 08-13-2007, 03:26 PM

Well as a suggestion, have you thought about switching the mapping for the movement keys?

In every game I play, the first thing I do is switch from WASD, to ESDF respectively. Why? On almost every keyboard the F key has a little bump, and it's easy as hell to find with your index finger. I use it for the same reason it's there for typing, plus your hand natuarlly gravitates to that position if you've used a keyboard for any length of time, this also exposes more buttons to the left to be assigned for things for your other three fingers to use.

I'm also a lefty so I'm constantly using that hand for other stuff.
It may be a pain of you have to reset settings later on, but showing her how to do that might help her find ways to customize the game for herself.

Alania · 08-13-2007, 03:30 PM

I've never used WASD (in fact I unmap those because I hate moving when I don't mean to) and have always used my arrow keys, with the 0 on the keypad being my autorun (just tab it with my pinky as I run around. And I ABHOR using my mouse to move. You're right, I feel like a drunkard when I do that.

Just because you're used to WASD and only use the mouse doesn't mean its the only way to accomplish moving fluidly around in this game. I don't PVP, and I have no idea if you set her up on a PVP or PVE server, and I don't really play position-based characters anyway, so I've never had to use WASD or the mouse for that. If she is comfortable with the arrow keys, you can just teach her to move around like that. Maybe even use the keypad so you can key in things like strafing, zooming in and out, moving the camera angles and stuff without ever moving your hand around.

LFG · 08-13-2007, 03:30 PM

If you want an even worse admission, I only started playing in 3rd person for the first time when I got my MoA reward. Until then, I'd only ever played in first person. But that damn floaty graphic thing on the MoA reward drove me nuts, it was in front of my screen blocking my view all the time. So I learned to adapt, and now only play in 3rd person, which I agree is a far better way to play. It did take me a couple months before I got used to doing that and decided I finally liked it better; I hated 3rd person when I was first forced into it.

LFG · 08-13-2007, 03:32 PM

Oh, and since we are coming out of the closet about our gameplay, I strictly use the default UI. I've tried the fancier ones before and always switch back to default. I <3 simple.

Gaige · 08-13-2007, 03:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LFG

Dude, EQ was my first game ever, and EQ2 my second. I just use the arrow keys with my right hand and cast everything with my left hand, I've never been able to adapt to WASD movement. I rarely use the mouse. I obviously raid, and this noob method of gaming navigation works just fine for me.

I can't even get my head around how that is possible.

Snark · 08-13-2007, 03:36 PM

start her out with doom. seriously. wait a while for mouse look