In most 3rd person action-adventure and first person shooter games where players can freely look around, players should rarely have the remove their thumbs from their thumbstick in order to perform important actions that should be performed while moving their camera (ex: Jump, Melee, Zoom, etc.).
Unfortunately, we have seen many games in the past (Halo, Gears of War, LawBreakers, etc.) where players had to...
- Perform a melee attack with ''B'' button
- Roll with "A" button
- Jump with ''A'' button
- Use ability with "Y" button to throw a grenade
In order to perform all those actions, players are forced to remove their thumbs from their thumbstick; unable to aim at the same time. To avoid this, we need to understand how to optimize game controls for 3D action games.
The primary buttons of a game controller include the triggers, bumpers and thumbstick for a total of 8 actions.
In the following image I will show what type of action we should find on those primary buttons. At the same time, I will also show how designers can add even more actions by creating a shortcut.
In the past, many games have forced players to use "Y" button or the D-Pad to select weapons or gadgets. It is possible to use Right Bumper to open a Radial Menu and let players select their weapon with the right thumbstick. And once players have memorized where each weapons is, this method can be extremely fast. It is currently used for DOOM 2016 and Unreal Tournament Pre-Alpha on PC.
This method is also used in Spider-Man PS4 to quickly select gadgets.
Just remember, if you have assigned an action on X, Y, A or B that requires the player to aim at the same time, you are doing it wrong.