Maniaplanet Forum

I've been playing TM for quite sometime with a gamepad. After a few thousand races I can say I've quite the nimble thumb. Watching the replays of the greats & almost greats I got to thinking 'there's no way these guys are making these corners with a thumb stick' Am I correct? I recently picked up a flight stick & it's provided a small increase in better control of TMUF & TM2 vehicles. Will a racing wheel make the difference? I'd love to hear from those of you who use racing wheels & your thoughts on a gamepad thumb stick vs. a racing wheel.

wheel is the key to last place in this game.

There is good players that uses gamepad(xbox or logitech in majority), keyboard, and joystick. So I guess we can´t say one is better than another. It´s up to your taste.

the best players usually play with gamepad. and nobody plays with wheel indeed ^^

only very few people drive with wheel. most of the fastest people drive either with gamepad or joystick. myself, i drive with a joystick, since i got used to it quicker than my gamepad. in my team, most drive with joystick as well, but there are many other teams where most people drive with gamepad. it's mostly what you're used to - i know some people even who can keep up with most analog drivers with their keyboards. wheel is also an excellent device, but definitely not better than a joystick - it's more on the same level.

if you recently switched to a joystick, good for you. that would be my choice exactly.

I drive with gamepad, but my son is stil driving with up, down, left and right and he can keep up with the fasted drivers.
So it's what you like the best.

I have a momo racing wheel, but thats to slow reacting witn TM (tried it with TMN an again with TMNF, not with TM2), but that will be no difference.

The key for victory is to use the one that fits you the most, I use the gamepad because I am better with it, but there is people who are a lot better than me using the keyboard or whatever, so yeah the one that your more comfortable with = better results

TM has a very large player base. There's plenty of room for every level of ability & desire. I used the keyboard at first & noticed that there's 10-15 angles the wheels can point so I went out and purchased a $15-$20 logitech gamepad. I've used the gamepad for thousands of races. As I raised my SP scores into the 10,000s on tracks I can get my heart and mind around I began getting frustrated with a smooth controled arc through corners using most gamepads short stubby little control stick. I modded it a bit myself. I'm surprised nobody manufactures a more control friendly gamepad for racing. If there is I'd love to find it. My thinking with a flight stick was that with a greater range of motion on the input a smoother control arc could be achieved. It has given me a small increase in control at the expense of learning to use my wrists instead of my thumbs. I'm surprised to hear that Pacay says the MOMO racing wheel has a response time that's too slow for TM. Thinking through the basic mechanics of an analog wheel input I'd reason it would be superior. However, I've never used a racing wheel & the $150.00 + price tag gives me pause. If it's not decidedly better I'll stick with what I have. In the end I'm looking bring my SP scores up to the 100,000s. If I can do it I'd love to. This game is tons of fun. Anyone else out there have an opinion on the best input device? Those of us who speak English need all the help we can give each other. It wouldn't surprise me if the ppl speaking francais had a rule to not tell us about the best input. lol

1. Steering wheel - just for fun (Trackmania is a fast pace game with alot of action so you need to be quick)
try this; steer full to right and then to left as fast as you can for like 10 times (about 4 sec on gamepad)

2. Keybord is good overall (2 mode 100% and 0% -but you need feeling here to, how many times you should tap on the key and how fast, that is also a feeling.

3. Gamepad, give you an advantage i think, if you are a calm player in any situation. you hold the stick 10 % while a keyb player need to tap the key in a tempo (and tap a button is alot harder then just adjust your tumb a bit - even do i tap the stick many times instead of use it analogly ) so maybe its better with keyb for me to, but i am use to gp now so.

Be gentle on the stick is A and O and have feeling and know exactly when to start turning /turn

Steering wheel is fun experience but not for competetive online racing if you want to win, unless
you and a friend use steering wheel both then it meight be fun.

but the most important is to have fun and steering wheel is damn fun..
i remember i have a profile SPIDER with wheel on tmnf but i had not a chance, and i even tryied SPIDER with Mouse
and that was fun but there is hard to center the mouse anyway try beat gold with steering wheel in the campain
that was quite easy on A01 with wheel, but then again its easy to beat the gold with any control i guess.

It depends of the environment... and a bit the kind of maps. Also you should not forget non analogic pads (some of those using it will say they are using a pad ; and some other that they are using a keyboard, because it's the same kind of moves, but you can hit "keys" faster that on most keyboards)

- Wheel: is probably the best on rally, and (not drifting) island, many players will consider it very difficult on most other enviros. The worst for wheel is stadium.
- Joystick: surely not the best choice for stadium, but nearly as good as wheel on wheel's best enviro, and globally easier than wheel for all others. It's better than gamepad when a very good analogic feeling is useful, probably more difficult than gamepad one maps with many consecutive short curves. It's probably the best controler if you really take time to learn it and succeed to master it.
- Gamepad(using analogic stick): is the most adaptive one, can be nearly as good as the best one for each enviro. It's also the best for lazy players : it's clearly the less exhausting one to use ^^
- Keyboard(or numeric pad): just the reverse of the wheel, it's better on stadium and very very difficult on rally. Strangely it can be very efficient on coast.

Note that you will find some exceptions in all cases, anyway, seeing the total number of players using each, and how many of are the very top of best players, except if you play stadium only or rally only, the joystick is probably the one with the best ratio (but it can also just mean that several very good players have chosen the joystick).

It would be very interesting to see what controllers are used by the very best players of each enviro : for example i'm pretty sure that for rally more than 50% of the very very best players are using wheel or joystick (while wheel+joystick players are probably less than 1% of all tm players)... but of course don't think that wheel or joystick are that easy on rally: it's wrong ! If you are a very good rally driver and have a very good level on both gamepad and wheel, then using wheel on rally you will probably be able to drive just a little faster.


So...
- if you want the best efficiency/laziness ratio, use the pad
- if you don't play stadium only, are willing to work hard to learn it, trying the joystick is a nice option.
- if you want the fun to drive a car using a wheel... try a wheel
(and in any case, don't buy a 1st price wheel or jostick ! better choose a gamepad than a bad wheel or joystick...)

Thanks luftisbollentm2 & Slig for your insightful thoughts on the use and selection of an input device. Where's the endorsement by a top ten world player? ...I'm TrackMania Ace & I used the xyz wheel, the abc gamepad, & efg joystick for pro control & maximum fun. What wheel do you use luftisbollentm2? I was thinking about your 4 second left right test. What about a wheel with left & right maximum settings so the operator could narrow maximum angle to a small rotational distance?

I continue to be interested in players thoughts on input devices. Not so interested in the thoughts of the superbots (not that they have any lol). It is nice to know they exist.

I agree that sometimes ranking isn't a goal & having fun is. There's a few tracks I enjoy simply for a good meditation.

Man, I've been out of the game for quite some time & I'm lucky to pick up a 1000 SP on Canyon lol. I like the mechanics, but gee whiz a thousand shades of brown is kinda depressing. The only color in the game is cars & adverts.