There are just a few players left who play this game, those who play play it alone or are a high lvl so matchmaking is almost impossible.Yoeriman1

Fair enough guys.

Recently I was thinking about what would be the perfect controller and while pondering on that I had an idea. Personally I feel that the right analog stick is holding its user back, particularly when playing an FPS. The mouse + keyboard format is the tried and true format for most PC gamers but I think there's something else that's available on PC's which can be transferred over to the consoles: the trackpad. Now please bear with me here.

Obviously you can't properly implement the mouse into a controller, but how about replacing the right analog stick with a trackpad? Last year I tried a trackpad for the first time when I got a Macbook Pro and fell in love with it (the trackpad that is). It felt so intuitive and flexible, particularly for general use. But lately I've played a few basic shooters on my iPad which require the player to drag their thumb across any empty area of the screen to aim and I feel that should be the way to aim in FPS's in general. For me it seems like the most natural way for our thumbs to perform a task like aiming.

To illustrate what I'm talking about I edited a picture of a 360 controller on Paint and here's the link - http://postimage.org/image/cmhtitz5t/ Sorry for the poor editing but if you use a bit of imagination you could probably see what I'm talking about.

In fact where you're sitting right now rest the thumb of your right hand on top of your thigh with your palm flat against the right side of your leg. Now picture yourself playing a shooter and you're using the thumb on your right hand to aim by sliding it across the surface on top of your thigh in different directions, really visualise yourself making the same movements you would make with the right analog stick. Which feels more natural to you, your thumb on a flat surface (trackpad) or a thumbstick?

That would be the most logical way to implement it but it would have its drawbacks, I think.

Like right now with the basckstabs the main problem players have is that the backstab window is unclear. It seems to be around a 45 degree angle in both directions from the centre of your back and playing online - what with the input lag and delay between players' actions - sometimes makes it seem like the window is a full 90 degrees either side of the player's back.

This would transfer over to a situation where shields reduce damage when worn on your back and you take a normal hit on your back. Which angles would the shield protect against? And how do you implement that style and avoid the current problem with lagstabs? At the same time if FROM decided to make it so only a hit directly from behind would be blocked, you still have lag to deal with which will make it seem like the window is increased anyway. Personally I just can't see that being implemented in a consistent way that players could rely on.

But at least with it offering exclusive protection against backstabs you offer the player a fair chance even in the event of lag. It's perfectly balanced in that scenario in my opinion because you increase the protection to one side of your body while leaving the other side completely exposed. And no one can exploit it either because even though some heavy weapons offer decent damage reduction, their stability is really poor so turtling won't be an option. That can really increase the dynamism of the fights (as if they weren't dynamic enough as it is!).

I think it's a pretty good idea. It has balance which is the most crucial aspect needed. Then only question is what would happen when someone tries to BS you when you have your shield on your back? Does it go into a BS animation and show the BSer failing or does it avoid the animation and allow the person to strike normally for normal damage reduced according to the shield's damage reduction?

Personally I'd want a combination of those two. Let it go into the BS animation and allow them to BS normally but just reduce the damage according to the shields reduction capabilities regardless of the size of the shield. I think that's probably the best we could hope for without things getting too complicated. It's a simple and easy feature to implement.