They do have an edge, yes, but the edge a mouse gives over thumbsticks is insane. It's an entirely different game. You could try to balance it by removing aim magnetism when people use a mouse, but it's still be a pretty big difference in ease of accuracy.

I do agree that the edge is potentially great. But would this not be a problem with sbmm or ranked playlists? You wouldn't have an edge because you'd be up against people playing around your level.

Yeah, that's why I said that the highest-tiers of competitive play are all mouse and keyboard, because they blast through the ranks fairly quickly. Unfortunately, the SBMM-seque design resets every season, dumping those players back into the regular pool. On top of that, in games like CoD and Overwatch, there is no SBMM in all other playlists, so the average player will find himself coming up against mouse and keyboard players on a regular basis.

And the edge is indeed great. In Destiny, it makes airborne aiming extremely easy, which this Last Word player takes advantage of when he's not snap-sniping.

Jason Schreier (aka one of the few people in the industry that does actual journalism) reports that Destiny 2 is still on track for 2017. This is according to a slideshow from an Activision earnings call.

Also of interest:

If Bungie misses this year for Destiny 2, Activision is awarded a hefty chunk of the independent studio’s stock, according to two sources familiar with goings-on at Bungie.

This article references the supposed leaks that appeared on Reddit recently, and goes on to state that these rumors are false. Shreier is basing this on a tweet posted by Urk... and that seems to be about it.

However, I'm seeing lots of comments from people saying "yeah well Bungie denied the RoI leaks as well, and they turned out to be true"... but I'm having trouble finding the specific RoI leaks as well as Bungie's supposed denial of them.

All this means is that a denial from Urk might not mean anything at all... it might just be the required "dismissal" from an official source. I have no idea. As always, take all this stuff with a huge grain of salt.

The stock issue was just denied by Bungie. If what was printed was not true, this is good for the game, but bad for getting in in 2017.

They do have an edge, yes, but the edge a mouse gives over thumbsticks is insane. It's an entirely different game. You could try to balance it by removing aim magnetism when people use a mouse, but it's still be a pretty big difference in ease of accuracy.

I do agree that the edge is potentially great. But would this not be a problem with sbmm or ranked playlists? You wouldn't have an edge because you'd be up against people playing around your level.

I just don't think limiting people's options is a good thing for any reason.

In practice, there's no way to not limit someone's options.

Dude that is 100% wrong. People buy arcade sticks for their consoles for fighting games and shooters all the time. The controller is not a given ever, even on consoles.

Also a crappy example. A fight pad is just a different layout for a controller for comfort and ease of combos, input-wise, it is still a button/joystick design that doesn't give an overwhelming advantage over all other players. Heck, I've beaten folks who use fight pads with a controller, and I suck if I use fightpads. Even then, fighting game competitions have rules over which fight pads are allowed, even though they're all essentially the same, and some folks still compete with a controller, because of preference. If you use a fightpad that activates combos on its own, or blocks automatically, that's cheating, because you've changed the input.

Mouse and keyboard is a direct advantage. It is not "preference", or remotely like a fightpad. It is changing the input entirely. It makes it so that you can easily snap to enemies. It negates aim assist, sensitivity, acceleration, reaction time, and skill. And you paid to have an advantage over all other players who have to contend with that.

By your logic, You could argue that someone who pays for a PC that can get smoother frame rates, or someone who buys a bigger higher resolution monitor is likewise cheating since not everybody has the money. What about someone who pays a pro to tutor them?

That's not anything remotely resembling the logic I put forward, and is really a terrible example (players who ran R6:Siege in lower settings actually had an advantage over the players with more expensive builds that allowed higher settings, since lower settings didn't have shadows and glare, making it easier to bring down targets.

In console gaming, games are designed with a specific form of input in mind. Regardless of whether you have a cheap Mad Katz or the Elite Controller, it's the same input. If you pay to have an advantage over the people who play with "fully-inflated footballs", you're cheating.

Your definition of cheating is too broad. Money spent should not be a metric.

That's why money spent was not the main issue, although as has been pointed out, it is a form of pay-to-win. The issue is with buying a different input that goes against the intended design in order to get an advantage over every single player who does not pay for the input.

You aren't doing anything different from the people who buy software that helps them aim, or that causes other players to lag. You are deliberately impacting the playing field in order to give yourself an advantage by using means not available in an official capacity (even the keyboard advertised by Sony is a third-party product).

That said, because there aren't any specific rules, it's not cheating to the point where it violates the TOS, although developers (such as Blizzard) might take action and punish players who use M&S on console. Their game, their rules, and they've said that it's cheating (and they've got better data than you do).

Steam really is growing its Mac OS library. Maybe one can dream? :)

Games almost always perform significantly better under window than Mac OS. I used to play SC2 in windows even though it has a Mac version because the difference is so great. And, if you have a New Mac Pro, you can do crossfire in windows to use both graphics cards, whereas games can only use one under os x unless specifically programmed for it.

Your definition of cheating is too broad. Money spent should not be a metric.

On top of that, the advantage that you get in twitch shooters is real and undeniable (the highest-tier players in Overwatch's competitive mode are almost exclusively keyboard and mouse players). I have a friend who bought the adapter, and he's gone from average to having gold skins on a number of guns.

So it's essentially cheating to go out of your way to pay money for something that will give you an advantage over other players who play the game as intended... That said, the official Playstation site advertises a mouse and keyboard that lets you do this, so who knows...

Anyway, yeah, I think it's unfair to put mice and keyboards in the same playspace as controllers when it comes to FPS games as I feel that mice and keyboards are superior input methods in a head to head competition (though I prefer a controller, I recognize it is not as fine an instrument).