I didn't see the thread when it was posted, and I'm sorry to hear about your situation. I think that trying to change the way you hold a mouse would be a good way to go, and using a different mouse might help. I use a Microsoft wireless natural mouse, and I like it.

As for a controller, perhaps Valve's new controller will be helpful when it arrives. It's supposed to allow playing varied types of PC games, including those which require a mouse. It would be interesting to learn how that pans out.

You typically don't wish for things you can still do. My father has certainly taken a lot more to gaming (mainly solitaire card games) and watching TV since he retired. (You typically wish for things you wouldn't have done anyway. Meaningless regrets.)

Well, wouldn't switching to more "thinking" genres like puzzle games and adventures where you generall have to click less allow you to continue gaming with the PC?

Sorry to butt in, but it kind of begs the question: What is more important, playing games you like or playing on a PC?

Wearing cotton wristbands do actually help prevent Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, right?

https://www.google.gr/search?biw=1920&bih=935&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=Cotton+wristbands&btnG=

i've bought 4 recently (2 for my wrists and 2 to decrease friction between elbows and plastic chair) and i feel much better.

Sorry to hear that man, but i guess it's better to stop now before the situation worsens. CTS is a nightmare.

Well, of course, it is more important to play something you like. However, one can expand his vision, try out new things and also start liking them as well, right?

That's an interesting point, you start playing the game differently with the new controls (and that might be why I still find gamepad aiming so hard, as I try to aim similarly as with a mouse). I've noticed this difference already in GTA San Andreas: when I am running around as a pedestrian, I use different control method depending whether I am using a gamepad or keyboard+mouse at the time.

If it is keyboard + mouse, then I am most of the time just pressing W (run forward) all the time, and changing my heading with the mouse. But with the gamepad, I for some reason like to use the left thumbstick much more for moving around (which is equivalent to using WASD, instead of merely pressing W all the time), and much less use the right thumbstick (equivalent to using the mouse).

Maybe it is because with a gamepad I constantly need to use also the gamepad face-buttons with the right thumb, which restricts the usage of the right thumbstick...

It's less that I don't get how to aim with it and more that I don't like aiming with it, for the record.

It's not so much about knowing how to as it is about developing the same kind of muscle memory that allows us to play using WASD+mouse on a PC. Switching to that from arrow keys and to mouse+keyboard from keyboard-only involved similar adjustments in the 90s.

After a while you get an instinctive feel of how far to push the stick, how quickly, how long for, when to let go etc. etc. You won't even think about it eventually.

When I started playing on consoles again around 2008, I also had a clear dislike of joypad aiming. Nowadays I can do either with relative ease and it doesn't bother me. I don't really have a preference between the two, if I'm honest, unless one or the other is very poorly implemented in a certain game (for example, I prefer to play Crysis with a joypad, because its mouse control isn't great).

Still, mouse is more natural for mouse users. I know when mouse aiming started it was an epiphany. For me it's kind of like touch for games which require selection. It's just the natural thing to do. Of course using a mouse by itself takes some getting used to, but most people still use mice. Maybe some years down the road when touch is more common people will have a harder time getting used to mouse aiming.

I wouldn't call it similar at all. I think Duke3D was the first FPS game where I used mouse aim, and "WASD-like" movement (it might be I was using some other keys but WASD, but it doesn't matter). And I think I learned it up pretty much instantly.

Actually, I originally started playing Duke3D as I had played Doom 1-2 for a couple of years, with keyboard only, and when I eventually switched on mouseaim in Duke3D, I instantly felt a great relief, as in "Holy F, it's so much easier to play this with a mouse!". (I didn't get a similar feeling in Doom 1-2, probably related to it not allowing up/down aiming and generally having very heavy autoaim; and the default mouse setup was quite borked in Doom games (moving the mouse vertically moves you forward and backward... WTF?).

Also I know two kids who had no previous WASD+mouseaim experience (they were mostly console gamers before that, and playing mainly 3rd person view games like Spyro games etc.), and they seemed to pick up WASD+mouseaim quite fast for Minecraft.

However, playing FPS games with a gamepad feels like extra inconvenience. The main problem is that aiming with a analog stick feels like controlling a robotic arm, while mouse aiming is direct. Think of moving the mouse pointer on the Windows desktop with an analog stick instead of a mouse, basically the same thing. You can learn to live with it, but it is still a step down (at least for aiming; on the other hand gamepad can offer analog movement, which may be useful in many games, but IMHO they are mostly non-FPS games, e.g. Darkstalkers and such).

It goes beyond just aiming in some FPS games, though. Like in Halo 2 XBox version, you couldn't e.g. aim and jump at the same time, because both would be performed with the right thumb (either aiming with the right thumbstick, or pressing the jump button).

Or in GTA San Andreas I'm having hard time to even aim and shoot with the gamepad at the same time, as again right thumb is needed for both actions in the default gamepad configuration. I guess that could be fixed by moving the shooting action to one of the shoulder buttons, instead of the face buttons. Halo 2 didn't offer similar option to freely change the controls.

And yeah, what ET3D said. I do faintly recall some people who were using the mouse the first time (for Windows), and not e.g. figuring out that you can occasionally lift the mouse to reposition it. So they kept running out of desk space with the mouse. :) Maybe there will be a time when many people don't feel mouse so natural anymore, if.they've ever used only e.g. touch tablets.

How invested were you in the previous method of control? Because going the WASD route means splitting the movement between both hands and changing the combination of firing. Previously you generally had ctrl for fire, alt for strafe and space to open things. And the arrow keys for the actual movement. Meaning that you're using both hands more than you were previously and rather than just focusing on fire with the left hand, you're constantly using both hands for things.

But, with the WASD configuration, now you're adding the complication of aiming to that, and splitting the motion between the hands, which is going to require a bit of change to the brain to accommodate

Personally, I didn't care for it, because it meant completely relearning how to play games.. Well, that and the fact that it seemed to correspond to a point where developers were focusing more and more on multiplayer gaming rather than on single player campaigns with good AI. Well, that and them typically not spending much time and effort on level design or on making the challenge curve reasonable.

There were exceptions obviously, but the genre hit a series of potholes soon after that. ID refusing to have a singleplayer component in Quake 3, and ultimately Halo setting a new standard for how crappy the genre can be. There've been a few bright spots since then, but it's hard to come up with many games during the last 10 or so years that are actually worth playing in this genre.
That's certainly true as well. And it's a complete waste of time. I don't regret not climbing mount Everest. I regret not hitting on those women when I had the chance. Which was at least a possibility back then. Now, I find most women around here to be pretty shallow and generally self centered. But, overseas, the cultures seem to be a lot more reasonable in that regard.
Indeed, I remember making the switch to keyboard + mouse and it was miserable. Fortunately, the FPS genre hasn't been very good since then, so I'm not missing much.

There's also vertical mouses that are a bit easier on the wrist as you hold them from the side, they still function the same way, but because of the angle, they're less likely to apply pressure to the carpal tunnel region.

Maybe near two years playing almost exclusively Doom 1-2, with several user mods/levels. Doom 1-2, Duke3D and Quake (TeamFortress) were the reason I missed quite many other great games from those years.

That wasn't true for me with Doom games. This was my control setup (maybe a bit unorthodox, but there you have it; I just confirmed this by playing Doom a bit in DOSBox):

Left hand:

Z = move backwards (pinkie)
X = move forwards (ring finger)
C = strafe left (middle finger)
V = strafe right (index finger)
space = fire (thumb)
A = action (open doors etc.; pinkie)

(now that feels a bit cramped at least on a laptop keyboard, nowadays I would possibly change those buttons one row up, ASDFQ + space)

Right hand:

left arrow = turn left
right arrow = turn right

I am unsure if I used the right hand for anything else but turning, but it was still used all the time, if only for turning.

I used alt-strafe earlier with Wolfenstein 3D, because it didn't support anything else. But when Doom arrived, I found out quite fast that having two separate keys for strafe was much better, giving the option for circle-strafing etc. You can't really do that well with alt-strafe.

Later with e.g. Quake (and already Duke3D?) and such where I used mouse for aiming and shooting, the left hand was otherwise similar, except that space (thumb) was used for jumping. not firing like with Doom 1-2.

Apparently I skipped that altogether. :) I recall moving from Wolf3D control scheme (alt-strafe) to Doom wasn't hard at all either, I instantly considered two separate strafe keys far superior to alt-strafe which I had always used with Wolf3D for quite some time too.

It probably wasn't hard, but it was completely pointless. I guess if you'd moved to unorthodox control schemes in the middle, there would have been less investment. But, I never felt compelled to change the defaults for those games, because they just worked.

So, when I did have to change the controls drastically to accomodate mouse look and WASD, I was starting over, and quite honestly, with a couple of exceptions, there just wasn't much incentive to do so.

I think at that point, I'd put in about 5 years of game play into keyboard only play, which at that point was nearly a third of my life.

I'd advise you to get more than one opinion. I had a doctor tell me that a decade ago; in fact, he wanted to operate. Thankfully, I went and got a second opinion, paid for out of my own dime, who told me the first doctor was full of shit. What he explained to me was gamer's can get tendonitis in their wrists that mimics the symptoms of carpel tunnel but when the wrist is operated on it becomes clear that no carpel tunnel exists. He told me to stop using the computer for a month to let my tendons heal and then gave me a series of stretching exercises to do for my wrists. Never had a problem since.

I'm not saying that your first doctor is incorrect. But I am saying is that not every wrist problem that manifests itself as carpel tunnel is in fact carpel tunnel. Get another opinion.

BTW and FWIW my eye doctor loves the fact I am a gamer. He says that gamers have better eye health.

Right. I guess I just thought a month was enough time to feel comfortable with it. Also the snap-to aiming infuriates me, but the games are balanced for it, so it's hard to turn off.