Comment by Dove

I don't know how much of a problem this was in the rest of the FPS world, but in the Descent world in 96, 97, 98 - when keyboard only was a common choice, at least for beginners - there was trouble with keyboards detecting all the necessary combinations of keystrokes. You'd hold down an A and a W and it couldn't see D presses or releases at all. It varied a lot by the particular keys and the particular keyboard. I'd often react to getting a new keyboard by shifting my familiar config around until I found a spot where all the needed independent keys would register.

They still advertise 10 key rollover keyboards today. I feel like they're more common, but perhaps I have just always insisted on having one.

I've always wondered if it was a problem for other communities. I certainly think it was a contributing factor to why no default control scheme emerged in the Descent world, and even very top pilots used an astonishing array of very different methods.

A serious drawback of the standard WASD configuration for me is the need to move the middle finger to switch between forward and reverse. This adds latency, and can be a source of error. In games that rely a lot on accurate timing and quick reactions, I generally avoid this. There is a tradeoff, of course, but in the extreme case of a very simple and twitchy game, I like to map up/down/left/right to sit under pointer and middle finger on each hand. This seems like a lot of a geeky departure from intuitive arrow keys for a dubious benefit, and I don't often see others do it. But I can't help but wonder if FPS design and history is informed by better reactivity along that strafe axis. Or perhaps it really is the best design - you do tend to dodge perpendicular to where you're looking.