Games designed for the gamepad do work nicely on a gamepad, but they achieve this by slowing down the FPS gameplay so thoroughly that they functionally exist within their own genre, as well as providing substantial auto-aim. The PC-style of FPS gaming, which is substantially faster-paced than the console-style, is dependent on having a pointing-device for aiming.
Experiments in allowing gamepad and mouse players to compete directly have proven absurd to balance, since you either give the joystick players aim-bots or let them be crippled. Joysticks are meant to provide you with good control over a vector - you can comfortably select and gradually alter the velocity of something with a joystick.
Pointing devices are meant to control a position, not a vector. "facing", from a user perspective, is best expressed as a position. The player is thinking "I want to face this way" not "I want to turn this fast".
The main reason Halo and GoW feel bad on mouse+keyboard is that they feel glacially, frustratingly slow on a system where the conventions tend to be far faster-paced (because the interface allows for it) and because the games used heavy auto-aim to compensate for the difficulty in making precise movements on a gamepad.
Which is fine, I'm no snob. But at this point you've created a substantially different game with a substantially different experience.
edit: to take it further, notice the huge difference in the DOTA and RTS genres between PCs and consoles - places where auto-aim won't really fix the game. The interface has to be so fundamentally altered that they're a whole new genre.
Interesting point, but I think you don't mean to say vector, but something more like 'velocity', 'momentum', or better yet, joysticks are meant to control a rate of change.
Sorry, busy today and didn't see this. Velocity is a vector, but so is position, and direction, and a whole bunch of things. Anything you can express as a fixed length, ordered, group of numbers is a vector (I guess they don't even have to be numbers). The point is that the distinguishing thing here is not the vectoral nature, but the fact that the mouse directly modifies the absolute 'direction vector' while a joystick directly modifies the rate of change of that 'direction vector'.
Experiments in allowing gamepad and mouse players to compete directly have proven absurd to balance, since you either give the joystick players aim-bots or let them be crippled. Joysticks are meant to provide you with good control over a vector - you can comfortably select and gradually alter the velocity of something with a joystick.
Pointing devices are meant to control a position, not a vector. "facing", from a user perspective, is best expressed as a position. The player is thinking "I want to face this way" not "I want to turn this fast".
The main reason Halo and GoW feel bad on mouse+keyboard is that they feel glacially, frustratingly slow on a system where the conventions tend to be far faster-paced (because the interface allows for it) and because the games used heavy auto-aim to compensate for the difficulty in making precise movements on a gamepad.
Which is fine, I'm no snob. But at this point you've created a substantially different game with a substantially different experience.
edit: to take it further, notice the huge difference in the DOTA and RTS genres between PCs and consoles - places where auto-aim won't really fix the game. The interface has to be so fundamentally altered that they're a whole new genre.