A lot of it is going to be game-specific, and spending time tweaking the control settings until you find what feels responsive to you.

The rest of it is going to be technique, and a lot of trial and error to find out what works best for your play style. For instance, I can’t do fast-paced, twitchy movements on a controller (even things that are technically possible to do on a controller; I just don’t have the dexterity anymore), so I have to adopt a different play style when using a controller. I usually will go for a more support-based role, if possible; opting for long-range weapons/abilities, and playing a more patient, campy game. I play slower and more methodically this way, and try to position myself so that I don’t ever get into the situations where I need to react to somebody closing the gap on me in the first place.

For me, it’s an entire mindset shift. If I play the same game on M/K, I’ll be playing with a much faster, reaction-centric style instead of one where my movements are more premeditated.

Some other tips will be learning to do things like using your left stick for fine-tuning your aim (you can get very precise horizontal micro-adjustments by leveraging your player’s position, which can be useful for getting your shot off before the other guy does), experimenting with gyro controls if that’s an option for you, or trying joystick extenders (small gadgets that clip onto your sticks to extend their effective length, which may make aiming easier).

As far as what to practice in, I don’t know of any aim trainers that are designed for controller, so I’d say you should just practice with a game that you either don’t care about or where it doesn’t matter if you lose a bunch. I’d recommend The Finals; it’s free to play, the default quickplay mode is active and puts you into a match quickly, and it’s super low-stakes so you don’t have to feel bad about experimenting during a live match. Your teammates don’t have loot drops or anything hinging on your success, so if you play badly, nobody cares. And it’s got pretty robust customization options for the controller settings (dead zones, acceleration curves, etc), which can help you figure out what settings you respond best to and what to look out for in the settings of other games. It has a huge variety in movement/weapon options, so you’ll end up developing skills/habits that will transfer over to other games quite easily.

I didn’t mean to weirdly steer this into becoming an ad for The Finals. But it’s a very controller-friendly FPS that I think will be beneficial to practice with. I think it’s also pretty fun, but that’s subjective.

Lot of life long controller users aren’t good at aiming using only joysticks either with increasingly stronger aim assist over the years doing the bulk of the carrying which has led to some players saying a games controls are bad if the aim assist is weaker than ones they do well in.

Then add in how different the dead zone and acceleration curves are for joysticks from game to game and it makes carrying over muscle memory difficult even if you master joystick in one game. It’s like how acceleration can throw off mouse users.

But, gyro helps a lot if native gyro is mouse like or you opt to bind mouse to gyro, since the sensitivity is something that can be replicated from game to game like people do with regular mice. This video might be a good starting point. One quirk of gyro is that some games you can just bind mouse to gyro and start playing, but other games may not support simultaneous gamepad + mouse so having to opt for mouse and keyboard binds on the controls. Some people bind joystick to gyro but that introduces unwanted negative acceleration.

I recommend Portal for starting out and getting used to gyro. Then once you are used to aiming with gyro something like Left 4 Dead 2 which has good Steam Input support.

For me the way has been using gyro aiming. It provides a mouse-like precision for aiming, which is really good for FPS games. It is supported on Steam nowadays. Of course on Steam Deck it may be not the best option in terms of playing experience, as turning the console also turns the screen.

There are a lot of good suggestions here, that you can take advantage of, so I’ll come at it from another perspective.

With mouse and keyboard, positioning is a snippet of what we use when playing and is more of a tactical spacing. With controller, it is a necessity. This means that as you are playing first person shooters (or third person with controller), your characters movement will be 75% of what you’re actually aiming with.

On a mouse and keyboard, if you’re slightly off center with a sniper, it’s a simple adjustment to move to the left. Move 1cm.

On a controller, if you’re slightly off center, suddenly it isn’t as simple, because the joystick is overly sensitive and so to move 1cm is a lighting fast action input, meaning that you’re almost guaranteed to overshoot it, unless your joystick sensitivity is super low. Or, on the opposite end of it, if you try and move the control stick very gently (more on this later), it’s not necessarily a consistent input. This is where aim assist would come in, as aiming down your sights would center it on the enemy, but I think it’s a bunch of bullshit and so we’ll ignore that. Instead of moving the joystick a micron of a second to properly position yourself, moving your characters body (WASD/left analog) is almost always much slower and fine tuned.

What this means is that as you’re playing games, instead of holding W and maneuvering with A, S, D for counter balance or strafing or whatever, the joystick instead is 60% of the time holding forward, 20% of the time slowly moving in a direction to position yourself better for aiming, and 10% staying still (letting go).

Another element here is the concept of analog itself. When you’re holding W, it’s always 100%. When you push forward, (game depending) it ramps up from 0% towards 100%, which means that if you turn left or right, chances are that your character might slow down too, because you may be pulling down as you move. What you can take advantage of here is utilizing slow movement to always keep your character moving, which will help prevent being hit and will get you more used to fine-tuning your aim through your movements.

When I play games on controller, I always try and use gyro, I always keep the gameplay focused on the movement first and foremost, and the analog stick at that point almost purely becomes a look/view stick over a “this is my main form of getting headshots”, where your look inputs are based on getting into the center of the general area you want to aim at as quickly as possible, while letting the gyro and the characters body finish it off.

Finally – PLAY. Not the game, PLAY with it. Feeling weird? Move your character in circles while bunny hopping to get the feeling of the mechanics for the game, then be silly with the aiming and wiggle the joystick around to familiarize yourself with aiming with the movement wobble. Whether it’s Max Payne, Smash Bros, Doom, Vanquish, Fortnite, all of these games can be manipulated by playing with the weird quirks of their engine.

Finally finally – I also have a harder time with FPS games on the Steam Deck compared to other methods. Doom 2016 on my Switch was fine to get used to, but on the Steam Deck some did feel odd about it. I don’t have the other modern consoles and their joysticks aren’t super familiar to me, but I think it may be that the Steam Deck’s analog sticks feel like they have a larger travel distance (particularly compared to the Switch of course). Something you might consider trying is the Flick Stick input for the Trackpads, although I personally really, really enjoy low-friction trackball mouse input. Swipe+Tap to aim is just so good and being able to move the view, let go and have it keep moving based on the intertia I input is just perfect.

Try experimenting with gyro aiming. It feels weird at first but becomes natural soon after.

The problem on PC is that many games don’t offer an aim assist like on console.

For more precision you should use the trackpad and gyro for aiming. It’s still not as good as a mouse but much closer.

I played Superhot first on the Deck. Since time only moves (much) when you’re moving, you have lots of time to practice aiming and getting used to track pads/stick + gyro controls. It requires precise aiming, and there are occasional times where speed helps, so it was a good “training” game for me.

It’s still not as natural as KB+mouse, but I’ve been enjoying Ziggurat 2 a lot (on normal difficulty). I won’t push into hard modes, like I would on PC, but it’s working well for me.

Play all the fallout games. V.A.T.S. doesn’t care if you suck at aiming.

Only half joking. I played all but the 1, 2, and Tactics on steam deck and it worked out decently. Didn’t even bother using the touchpad aiming because it felt worse to me than the analog stick.

There’s definitely a learning curve to it but if you put the time and effort into it the trackpads can become second nature. I don’t really care for gyro but your mileage may vary. Take some time playing with the different setting adjustments to figure out what works best and then try to stick with those settings across different gamesto build up your muscle memory. Personally I find 175% sensitivity, trackball friction high, haptics off to be most comfortable. I started practicing with Amid Evil since its controls are quite basic, and moved up from there. Now I don’t even think about the controls and I recently enjoyed a full playthrough of Doom 2016 with no gyro or aim assist. Another approach that might help your coordination and fluency could be to spend time playing something highly mouse-centric like Torchlight, Titan Quest, FTL, etc. It’ll feel really clumsy trying to click around at first but after several hours it’ll probably start to feel more natural. As for the rest of your movement, I recommend setting up the back buttons for jump/crouch/walk/sprint so you don’t have to take your thumbs off the sticks/pads.

If you are having a hard time with fine adjustments try out using gyro aim in combination with a joystick or track pad for the larger movements

Moving a joystick is fundamentally different to moving a mouse. With a joystick there is a spring constantly acting to center it - no equivalent force when using a mouse. So you need to get a feel for estimating that force and accurately counteracting it in various gameplay scenarios. That’s a completely different “muscle” to have a memory of vs. using a mouse I think

Also, modern controller joysticks generally are not great. Most have medium to large deadzones in the center by default. I’d recommend reducing them for more responsiveness. It comes with the tradeoff of being more susceptible to stick drift. But that isn’t something you should be afraid of. It’s a physical impossibility for their design to not wear over time. I’d recommend recalibrating and adjusting settings regularly. At the end of the day, replacing joystick modules only requires screws (no soldering) so it’s cheap and relatively easy.

If you’re really serious you could get some hall effect joystick modules. That way you wouldn’t need to recalibrate often and could keep a consistently small deadzone setting without encountering drift. i.e. default settings from like dualshock 2, when stick drift was just as apparent but people hadn’t gone crazy over it yet.

Minecraft would be fine for learning fps movement in a relaxed setting.

It’s like coming from gamepad to arcade sticks, when playing fighting games. There is nothing else you can do, other than train and play and git gud. Try the original DOOM, and I mean the first DOOM from the 90s. You don’t have to aim up or down, only left and right and its not precise as todays shooters. Maybe play that on a lower difficulty and see if you can get used to it.

Overwatch 2, which is Free To Play, has a training area and courses for heroes you can try. Take the simple Soldier, which is your average FPS character, and maybe you can get used to the controls. You don’t have to play online, just try it out against bots and do these training courses. Maybe that helps.

If you play such a shooter every day, DOOM, and others, than you will get used to it and build up muscle memory. Actually I find it exciting to learn new stuff like this and am a little bit jealous. ^^ Reminds me back when I came from console to PC and had to learn how to play shooters with mouse and keyboard.

Edit: Your age 30 is fine. Age is always an excuse, but mostly not true. I’m also from the 80s and grew up with 8-bit and 16-bit. Yet I learned how to play with arcade sticks and mouse and keyboard in addition to controllers. I’m 42 now (and proud of it). My biggest advice is, play every sort of game, not only you are comfortable with. And do it every day. git gud is the only way.

Stick with mouse and keyboard… steam deck has usb ports doesn’t it?

L2P n00b! /J

In seriousness though, I find the trackpads to be very useful for precision. Unfortunately, you have to build up the skill, like anything else. Work at it over time and you should get there. For practice, really depends on what you want to play. I’d suggest something that has a good system for criticals/headshots. Looks like Aim Lab might work on the deck, so maybe try that?

Earth Defense Force 4 or 5 can be good “training” games. They’re 3rd person shooters, you’ll spend more time moving around than aiming, since your targets will be giant insects, giant spiders, giant aliens and giant alien ships. Even playing online with randos is fine and fun, and I say that as a similar 30+ yo dude.

It’s a grindy game tho and, much like Dynasty Warriors, you should NOT let your pride dictate that you should “start with hard”. Go with medium and, if shit gets too hard, drop down to easy, get better weapons and more health, then come back with a vengeance