So, I have come to a dilemma. A sad, sad dilemma.

I’ve always played FFXI with a controller, all of my macros (books of them) are written to take advantage of a controller, and I just enjoy sitting back and playing the game with a controller. It’s easier on my tiny hands than using the keyboard, having to reach to hit macros, all of that jazz.

During my last hiatus from the game, hubby talked me into getting one of these bad boys for other games:

Belkin Nostromo 52te

And I love it!

It’s fairly easy to program, and the only two things I take issue with are that the d-pad doesn’t work very well, and even adjusted for a smaller hand size, it’s still a little large. Other than that though, it has seriously improved my response times, and has allowed me to become a much more efficient healer (not to mention other classes) in the other game that I play.

I figured that I wouldn’t really be able to use this for FFXI, since FFXI is configured to make the best use out of a controller since the PC version is just a port from the console. I still had my good old Logitech USB controller though, so wasn’t too concerned.

However, now that I’m playing FFXI a bit more,  I’ve run into a bit of a problem. There seems to be a conflict between the Nostromo and my Logitech controller. I’ve scoured the web searching for a fix, but it doesn’t seem like many FFXI players use gamepads like this. It’s frustrating, because if I want to play with the Logitech, I have to completely uninstall the Nostromo, make sure all of my macros are backed up, etc, then reinstall it when it’s time to play my other games.

I’ve just about resigned myself to the fact that I’m going to have to learn how to use the Nostromo for FFXI. If I have a choice, I’d rather just leave it installed so that I can play my other games as well, without hassle. Since people don’t generally use gamepads with FFXI, it’s been difficult to get a sense of just HOW people use them. Do they just create single key macros? Multi-line smorgasbords of programming godliness?

It’ll be interesting, I’m sure. It does make me wish that SE would update the UI for the game though. *sigh*