this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2025
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Steam Deck

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A place to discuss and support all things Steam Deck.

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Optionally, what would you have wanted to know before you bought one?

Thanks!

Edit: Hey, thank you all very very much for your comments and suggestions, I really appreciate. I will most likely save up more and get the 1TB OLED model rather than the LCD model I was initially planning on. A couple of reasons for that, one, I am not good with electronics and I'd probably screw something up putting a new storage drive in. And two this thing will most likely be a permanent replacement for my old gaming laptop, which at this point is more than 10 years old, and seems to be on its last legs (I installed Linux on it, which was a struggle, but that is probably on me rather than Linux or the computer being at fault).

Anyway, I appreciate everyone's responses and thanks for helping a gal out!

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[–] Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Usually you use them to enable gyro, and automatically disable it when you aren't touching one of the sticks. Part of this is it lets you set the deck down without the gyro going crazy from movement, but the biggest part is it lets you "reset" your position. When using gyro aiming it's easy to get the deck turned in an uncomfortable position, and all you have to do is lift your thumbs off the stick for a moment, reposition, and go back to playing.

In comparison, when using gyro aiming on systems without capacitive sticks, you usually need a camera reset button (like Splatoon) or need to make gyro aiming only available when holding down an "aim" button (like LT).

You could also use capacitive sticks to change other controls. Some games have awkward menu controls, especially when using steam input to simulate keyboard keys. In games like this, you can have the controls normal for playing when touching the left thumbstick, but when you swap your thumb to the dpad instead it switches to "menu mode" with different binds to navigate menus easier.

[–] Quibblekrust@thelemmy.club 1 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (1 children)

Thanks. I understand better, but I feel like I would just use one of the rear buttons as "disable gyro" if I were to use that kind of setup.

Your last idea is interesting, but again, there are back buttons for thing like that. Also, how are you even hitting the D-pad when your thumb is on the left stick? I don't see why you would need to change what the D-Pad does based on whether or not your thumb is on the left stick because to hit the D-pad, your thumb is always not on the left stick.

When I played Horizon Zero Dawn, I had gyro activate on left trigger, like you are saying, and it was very nice. I was so used to playing BotW that I couldn't play any other way.

[–] Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz 1 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

The dpad wouldn't need to change based on whether I was touching the stick, it would be more about changing the abxy buttons. If I'm simulating wasd controls for a game, when touching the left stick I would usually want the A button to be space and B to e key, but when navigating menus I want A to be enter and B to be esc.

[–] Quibblekrust@thelemmy.club 1 points 5 hours ago