Transitioning From PS4 To PC: Any Tips?

So for over two years I've been playing this game on PS4 using a controller. Several months back I put together my own PC and now I finally picked up the Windows game license over the weekend while the sale was going on. Downloaded and installed the game, and I got to login for a little bit to try things out, but as I expected there's quite a bit I'll need to adjust to, particularly with using the keyboard/mouse controls. I've never really done much PC gaming, so I'm not entirely used to trying to move and fight simultaneously that way. I know I could just use a controller here as well, but I'd like to learn to use keyboard/mouse since I've been told countless times that it's supposed to be less clunky and more efficient.

So far, I've decided to finally make an alt character so that I can try to get used to playing on the keyboard as I level up, and I also ordered a Logitech G600 MMO mouse that I saw was pretty well-recommended, which should be shipping out soon. I know practice makes perfect, but does anyone have any good tricks or tips that might help make the transition over go more smoothly? Some advice with keybinds would be very helpful, and I could probably also do with some thoughts on organizing the UI, since I'll likely need to accommodate a bit of a different setup than on the PS4 since the hotbars will be working differently. Thanks in advance!

The Keyboard/mouse vs controller debate is largely subjective. You can use either input method on both the PS4 and PC, which is what SE does during Fanfest events. (THere are PCs with keyboards and controllers and other areas usually used PS4s with dual shock controllers and mouse/keyboard plugged in too).

A mouse does make some things easier (UI elements), but I wouldn't consider a keyboard to be any more efficient than a controller in this game. Especially if you have to weffectively relearn how to interact with the interface and hotkeys all over. Mix and match for your own comfort/efficiency.

If you are interested in making that switch over, you can upload your settings to thel obby server and download them on the other device as well. So I'd recommend setting things up the way you like it on PS4 or PC, and then sync them to the other for consistency.

If your going for an MMO Mouse with buttons on the side of the mouse, make good use of them and use WASD to move in its place but still make use of Shift/CTRL/ALT Modifiers on extra hotbars to get full use out of every button on it. Example being my basic rotation and short CDs are bound to 1 - = which is my 1 - 12 on my mouse buttons, I use Shift for AoE rotation and Higher CDs, and CTRL for Major CDs that way I'm not hitting wrong things, but still can happen usually if my hands shifts from sneezing or something that causes me to move it more then usual.

As for your mouse hand, it comes down to muscle memory from practicing. Best thing to get that down better is to go to a dummy of some sort and practice just doing basics on it without the need of being in battle for at least 30mins to warm up before doing Dungeons or Raids, but if your just going to be out Questing during those times, then you'll be fine cause you'll build hand coordination between the 2 hands.

Biggest thing, don't give up even if it seems hard, I started out in 09 playing WoW as a clicker and I was so slow and bad but I didn't know cause it was easier back then, in 2012 I made the transition cause I wanted to PVP better and after a few months of practicing, learning macro making, it became second nature and now I can do the same thing with any game on the PC.

Another thing to practice for the keyboard is Homekeys. Learning how to type will let you have less down time typing out messages, and more time doing stuff. It might not seem significate but it's a big deal for quick effective communication when you have limited time. There are great tools out there like Typing of the Dead, and other things. Just do a google search and you'll find lots of things. I went to school for computer stuff and my GWAM was 50 which is above average, but not something extremely special either just really helps out and with lots of use you'll get it down with practice.

With Mouse, your Normal Camera will be Left click which won't move you, and Right click will be your movement facing. It becomes easier to turn that way, don't rely on the A&D keys for turning, it's too slow, and easier to get killed that way when you need to face another way. You'll be able to set your DPI with that logitech mouse, find one that fits your hand grip, arm length, and mousepad size. The lower the DPI the more it takes to turn, the Higher the less it takes to turn. The way to find the perfect medium is pick a number, then from the center of your mousepad, pan your camera to either left or right, if it makes a perfect 360 from center to edge then that is the best one to use, if it takes less or more then adjust the number up or down as needed.

Everything in the end comes down to practice, picking what works for you, and over time you'll develop a bind system that works for you. I keep similar buttons on the same keys. (Ex. Stun, Silence, Limit Break, Etc...)

You could still play on controller, i did that i moved from console to PC and i still play on controller.

Just plug in your DS4 with USB stick to your PC and thats basically it, it works straight out of the box in ffxiv.

I use an Xbox One controller when playing relaxed content and keyboard+mouse when I need peak performance. Recently I've also acquired a foot-operated controller which I use for movement, reducing the need of finger acrobatics for my left hand in complex raid situations. So now it's pretty much feet = movement, left hand (keyboard) = abilities, right hand (mouse) = camera and occasional targeting.

On the keyboard I find that number keys past 6 are too far from the left side where my hand usually is, which makes them difficult to hit accurately. So I've remapped the movement keys from WASD to ESDF and made the hotbar shortcuts go around that cluster as ZAQ123456TGB. This gives me 12 hotkeys that are in easy reach of my fingers at all times, and another 12 when used with the control key. I've also mapped the side buttons of my mouse to a few extra hotbar slots.

You don't need hotkeys for absolutely everything. It's fine to activate out-of-combat abilities such as mounts, teleport or emotes by clicking. Two hotbars (24 slots) seems to be enough for the combat abilities of most classes.

I find that changing the movement mode to legacy (camera-based) makes it easier to move around quickly using the keyboard. You'll no longer have to worry about which way your character is facing. If you need to dodge to the left on your screen, you simply press the left movement key. The only "drawback" is that you won't be able to walk backwards (since your character turns to face the direction of movement), but this is almost never an issue.

I use a DS4 on my PC. I have a license on PS4 but I rarely use my PS4 now.

I personally prefer to use the dualshock just because it makes movement combat much easier. Find rotations easier to do on it too.

Worst part is setting up ALL your hotbars again...

You can still play the game with your PS4 controller. It's basically just plug and play. I would honestly suggest doing just that.

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Originally Posted by TwiibieTwuu

I personally prefer to use the dualshock just because it makes movement combat much easier. Find rotations easier to do on it too.

Worst part is setting up ALL your hotbars again...

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Thankfully, our hotbars can be transferred from one place to another with the character data backup feature. All one needs to do is upload them from one system and download them onto another.

Continue using controller

I done this last week and decided to stick to controller. Muscle memory and what I’m used to. Didn’t like hotbars on screen like pc has. Didn’t feel right lol
Hardest thing after that is resetting hotbars and gear sets and ui displays which don’t carry over (also lost my retainer character data and obv pa4 screenings I’d take )

I play on PC and I use a ps4 controller, I found out a mouse is easier to click on other players who are not in your party who needs healing and messing with the UI

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Originally Posted by Rhus

I done this last week and decided to stick to controller. Muscle memory and what I’m used to. Didn’t like hotbars on screen like pc has. Didn’t feel right lol

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Uh, doesn't PS4 have a hotbar on the screen too? It's just a different shape and instead of having multiple bars visible at once you choose which one is active. You can do that with the PC-style hotbars too btw - by default it's bound to shift+number keys. It's probably more awkward than the controller variant though.

There isn't much difference - Square Enix did a REALLY good job of making both versions of the game essentially the same. You can use a USB mouse and keyboard with the PS4 version (even ones with remapping support, as long as they use onboard memory) and controllers with the PC version.

If you just want to play on PC hardware but don't want to ditch the controller, then keep in mind that even though Wal-mart and Target want you to believe that wired PS4 controllers don't exist, they actually do. If you want to avoid the headaches that wireless controllers sometimes cause people on PC, get a USB PS4 controller.

If you want to use a mouse and keyboard, however, I would recommend that you get a serious MMO mouse. It is by no means a requirement, but having to switch back and forth between WASD and ability keys can be frustrating for many people (like myself).

Like a lot of people said, unless you really want to transition to mouse/KB, just continue in controller mode. Personally for me, controller movement is a lot easier since the movement while adjusting the camera is something I'm way used to even after 10+ years on FFXI mouse/KB. Hell I've managed to play a fully functional SCH/SMN since 2013 before the button bloat was addressed using just a controller.

Tl;dr: use what your second nature is most comfortable with unless you want to learn more.

Thanks for all the input so far! I admit, I'm rather surprised so many of you vouched for the controllers but it is nice to know that they do actually hold up compared to the KBM controls. I'll still at least give it a try and see how things go, and if it turns out I still favor the controller then at least getting that mouse isn't a total bust either (got that on sale too and I've been wanting to replace the crappy mouse I'm currently using anyway. The extra utility could still be useful for something else). It's also good to know I can apparently sync some of my configurations over from the PS4.

turn legacy type on

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Originally Posted by lulunami

I play this game with a regular FPS mouse and use keyboard Shift and Alt modifiers in addition to ZXCVB. An MMO mouse is not necessary. Although if you are very used to DualShock 4 controller, you can just stick with it on PC. A few of my friends are really good players even with game pad, so do not feel pressured to change if it is more intuitive to you.

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I feel the only disadvantage to game pad these days is the slow look speed and the inability to instantly zoom in and out. This is just from watching other ppl play (my S.O). Literally makes me feel claustrophobic. My S.O on the other hand has tried my character on my PC and they hate it, "Too twitchy!". To be clear they have zero issues "keeping up" there's some real advantages to gamepad party targeting when flinging squishy healies around

It's also slightly slower to select abilities from other than the active hotbar using a controller since you have to press two button combinations (first to switch hotbars, then to select the ability) compared to a keyboard with enough buttons to bind two or three hotbars worth of shortcuts. This can somewhat be mitigated by arranging abilities in logical sets. For instance on DPS and tank classes I typically have single target and AoE hotbars, on healers I have a damage-oriented hotbar and pure heals hotbar. Selecting targets also takes a few more button presses on controller compared to keyboard. I can raid with either, but I feel that on keyboard I can react to unexpected situations a little bit faster.

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Originally Posted by tdb

It's also slightly slower to select abilities from other than the active hotbar using a controller since you have to press two button combinations (first to switch hotbars, then to select the ability) compared to a keyboard with enough buttons to bind two or three hotbars worth of shortcuts. This can somewhat be mitigated by arranging abilities in logical sets. For instance on DPS and tank classes I typically have single target and AoE hotbars, on healers I have a damage-oriented hotbar and pure heals hotbar. Selecting targets also takes a few more button presses on controller compared to keyboard. I can raid with either, but I feel that on keyboard I can react to unexpected situations a little bit faster.

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You can also use the wide and expanded crossbars to mitigate this. One has you use both tiggers and the other has you double tap a trigger. It adds another 2 full crossbars worth of icons so you don't need to swap hotbars.

The best thing about KB is the keybinds!

As someone who doesn't use WASD to move around in xiv and only uses the mouse, I have the first 6 actions on my second hotbars set to QWERTY. For me its faster and easier than ctrl or alt and it fits all the actions I commonly use in combat.
So for instance on whm, healing is on 1,2,3,etc and dps are Q,W,E,etc. Makes bouncing between them super easy. RDM my basic magic and physical rotations are 1,2,3,etc and my aoes are Q,W,E,etc

F-keys I have set to mounts and sprint. F1 sprint, F2 Legacy Chocobo F3 Kirin and so on...

I also keybound everything I use even semi regularly and changed others to more comfortable positions. Even have a key to mute my game, which I used more often than I ever thought I would. Every key on my numpad is even bound to something, from switching jobs to deciding which UI elements are displayed at any given time. I love that with 1 click 80% of my UI disappears.

Just go all out, there is no limit to KB usage. I honestly have no idea how anyone plays some of these games on a controller, its so restrictive. RDR2....massively better with a KB for instance. FFXIV I could not imagine the nightmare a controller would be with as many buttons as I use.

You should stick to controller if you are used to it. There is no real disadvantage for you and, as someone on page one stated, the debate is very old and unnecessary (not the question of you, but the upcoming "X is better than Z"). My uncle played Tomb Raider with two hands using the right ALT, CTRL and shift and the arrow keys. Everyone looked at his fingers cramped on 20% of the keyboard space and went like "how can you play like that?". He did just fine. And that's what matters.

What is a real difference might be some perks. I, for example, love to rotate my camera quickly in combination with the "rear mirror" (look-behind-you) button and as Lalafell, the swift zoom levels a mousewheel brings are something you can't reproduce on an controller. Also, I like the direct view and access to my skills in comparison to those weird alway-changing menus, which looks like a Wario Ware minigame in itself. Pressing C-level tier skills directly and have all cooldowns on-screen is nice, and with the high resolutions a PC brings to the table, it does even takes less screen space.

But all of that does not beat muscle memory! I am a PC gamer with an XBOX controller via USB and I can't play Splinter Cell, Dishonored or Styx at all on controller, but FFXIV is a nightmare when I tried it out of curiosity. Same with those overloaded mice. My trustworthy 8€ mouse is doing probably a better job because it's so reliable and simple :)

Sincerely,
https://imgur.com/9mjol58.png

First of all, I wanted to congratulate you. What you're doing is very brave, and there are some who wouldn't understand your decision to make this transition, and might shun you or even become downright hostile.

But luckily we are in a time where acceptance of this kind of thing is becoming much more widespread. I wish you best of luck!

^
this tbh

you hav emy full support fam
best thing about transitioning is you can explore new things and do things in a different way with a different set of tools
its like finding your self once again and it will be fab

Id recommend buying a Bluetooth USB dongle to avoid potential issues down the line. From personal experience, my USB cord eventually would become sensitive to any movement and disconnect and in one instance, I had the charging port on a controller just outright break.

I have a lot of programmable inputs on my PC. My mouse is the Logitech MMO mouse with 12 programmable side buttons I can press with my thumb. My keyboard is the Logitech 910 orion spark which has extra programmable keys. I also had a game pad that recently broke and I replaced with a Razer Orbweaver which I use for primary input and movement on this game after programming the stick to movement and using the keys on it for skill and interaction input. I think the only game I've actually used a controller for on my PC was PSO2 because the game was literally built around using a controller on a console. Or at least it felt that way.

Biggest keyboard/mouse tip i can give; use legacy controls.

The default controls are like resident evil tank controls. They're clunky and awful, i cant believe SE even has them as the default and not legacy X(

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Originally Posted by ChaoticCrimson

So for over two years I've been playing this game on PS4 using a controller. Several months back I put together my own PC and now I finally picked up the Windows game license over the weekend while the sale was going on. Downloaded and installed the game, and I got to login for a little bit to try things out, but as I expected there's quite a bit I'll need to adjust to, particularly with using the keyboard/mouse controls. I've never really done much PC gaming, so I'm not entirely used to trying to move and fight simultaneously that way. I know I could just use a controller here as well, but I'd like to learn to use keyboard/mouse since I've been told countless times that it's supposed to be less clunky and more efficient.

So far, I've decided to finally make an alt character so that I can try to get used to playing on the keyboard as I level up, and I also ordered a Logitech G600 MMO mouse that I saw was pretty well-recommended, which should be shipping out soon. I know practice makes perfect, but does anyone have any good tricks or tips that might help make the transition over go more smoothly? Some advice with keybinds would be very helpful, and I could probably also do with some thoughts on organizing the UI, since I'll likely need to accommodate a bit of a different setup than on the PS4 since the hotbars will be working differently. Thanks in advance!

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Tip: Bind your mouse wheel sideways press actions to strafe left / right. It's quite natural, and frees up two close-in keys for other actions.

I'd recommend breaking away from your comfort zone if you are dead set on moving over to PC and practicing using keyboard+mouse. The Logitech G600 is a decent mouse to use to get started. One way that worked for me personally is to bind your entire rotation for any job only to your 1-12 side buttons on your mouse and learn how to do your entire rotation by memory with just those buttons. Once you have that memorized it becomes much easier navigating towards using Shift/Alt/Ctrl Modifiers on your keyboard.

This will take time getting used to, took me about 2 weeks going from console games to K/M but once you get it down, you'll see that it was worth it. It looks more daunting than it really is. Plus, It will benefit you more if you play other MMO's or other online games on your PC.