Players using keyboard & mouse

[reiichi]

To those who play well with this, my hat is off to you. I usually play with a controller and keyboard, but lately I've had to RAP into my gaming PC from my Mac. Learning how others play has been insightful. Flying around, what a pain. Adjusting for pitch is so difficult.

Which software are you using? Something like Parsec or Rainway should still work with a controller so long as your Mac can pass the device. And I believe macOS supports most controllers out of the box unless it's really weird or like, a bad knockoff. May be an option if you like your current setup.

[Angus]

Which software are you using? Something like Parsec or Rainway should still work with a controller so long as your Mac can pass the device. And I believe macOS supports most controllers out of the box unless it's really weird or like, a bad knockoff. May be an option if you like your current setup.

I'm on a Mac mini 2014. Even in Bootcamp, it runs slow. And it's easier to keep monitoring other programs while using RAP (Microsoft Remote Desktop) to my gaming PC.

As for using a controller, it's like Street Fighter 2, you learn the combos and it becomes reflex. Guess it helps being here since 1.0 beta.

[reiichi]

I'm on a Mac mini 2014. Even in Bootcamp, it runs slow. And it's easier to keep monitoring other programs while using RAP (Microsoft Remote Desktop) to my gaming PC.

As for using a controller, it's like Street Fighter 2, you learn the combos and it becomes reflex. Guess it helps being here since 1.0 beta.

Ah, I hadn't mentioned in my post, but I also use a controller. Specifically, a DS4 whether I'm in front of my computer or streaming on the go using a tablet or getting away with it at work.

Part of your latency is probably from using RDP in general. It absolutely sucks for games and I'm assuming you're probably either keeping FFXIV running before you leave or playing in DX9 mode because Remote Desktop will not let you launch the game in DX11 mode if your experiences are the same as mine. I used to do the exact same thing using a Surface RT instead of paying attention in class, and then with other portable devices when away from my desktop.

If your host computer can encode a video in realtime (pretty much anything that can play FFXIV decently) and your client computer can decode a video (including something of like, Chromebook tier) you'd probably benefit from using one of the streaming programs instead because they're a lot lower latency. While there are a handful of options, I'm personally a fan of Parsec because I can get my full desktop experience. I've basically replaced using RDP for everything in that sense, and the added controller wrapping is handy. Compare to like, the PS4 streaming experience where you do some set up o the gaming device, login to an account, and then you get your full experience.

Meanwhile I'm out here completely unable to wrap my head around how anyone could play an MMO with a controller. It's nuts to me lol, I can't imagine playing this with anything but mouse and keyboard.

I'd venture to say most of the PC people using controllers are still using their mouse and keyboard quite a bit, like me. The controller is used for actively playing the game. Then you set it down to type or do other UI stuff as needed. I still switch back to keyboard controls for crafting usually, as I can stack more bars for easy skill/macro access without switch hotbars/crossbars.