I think I'm like most people in that in past games I've always used the left mouse button for attack and the right mouse button for defense. Many games default you to that and don't even give you a choice to switch. When I started playing Skyrim, that recipe didn't work very well because of the independent left hand/right hand dynamic. Sure, if it was just a melee game, the old ways would work fine. But I think a lot of people realize that casting spells or doing other actions in Skyrim that require you to think in a true "right hand, left hand" fashion would become very confusing if we reversed it on the mouse buttons. And so, for me, and I think many others, we use the left button for the left hand and the right button for the right hand. Am I correct?

I like the arrangement. I've gotten used to it. It feels comfortable. UNTIL I play other games....

I've re-installed Warband and have been playing it for a couple days. And damn if I'm not confused. At first I set it up like Skyrim. My left button controlled the shield, my right button controlled the one-handed melee weapon. But it didn't feel right and I switched it back to the default. Since then, I've switched it back and forth several times, sometimes even in mid-battle, because NEITHER feels comfortable to me anymore.

I'm not really asking for opinions or help, because there's no help to be given, LOL. It's a matter of getting used to it. But I'm wondering if other people have experienced this? Have other people been using left for block and right for attack in Skyrim, and then found themselves confused or uncomfortable when playing other games?

From what I gather, most people actually use left mouse for right hand and right mouse for left hand. It really isn't that difficult if you just do it and don't think about it. Personally, I use the right mouse for jump. I have been doing this ever since the original Half-Life and it's become second nature so I'm not going to change now. I play with a game board that has a button right under my thumb so I use that for left hand/block.

At first it was a little strange.

I just had to remind myself that it was mainhand/offhand instead of left/right. After a very short time doing this I've gotten used to it and it hasn't bothered me since.

I've always used left-hand button for right-hand attack in every game I've ever played. In Oblivion I used my right-hand button to block. I have never experienced a problem doing it this way. It never ocurred to me to do it any other way.

Duel weilding feels awkward for this reason, but it doesn't matter because when duel wielding I only use my right hand anyways. Alternating makes the attack rate slow as hell, so I don't have any issues.

I agree with you on this.

Another one I don't like, companies that release games and don't have the WASD mode of moving and the mouse to turn - like Skyrim - (yeah I'm looking at you D3/Blizzard - it uses mouse key to move, and also both mouse keys with different spells.)

I also like the option of remapping keys in case you like another setup besides WSAD.

I made my left mouse button correspond to my left hand and right mouse button to my right hand. The default setting made my brain crack in half. But the way I have it now I like.

Nope ...

- Left Mouse Button: Right hand or two-handed attack
- Right Mouse Button: Move forward
- 3rd Mouse button: Block or left hand attack

I have been using this combination since the good old DOOM days for every game i play. Left mouse button for the main weapon, right mouse button for moving forward.

left=left, right=right. changed it after the first combat event at Helgen.

Me too.

I also changed tab to middle mouse button. Way more convenient. What happened to E to open, E to close? In my Morrowind, almost any key exits inventory.

And yes, it makes it awkward in other games.

I'm the same as most of the others here; LMB does my right hand and RMB does my left hand.

Most of the time I'm dual wielding spells, but I've had no problem with firing the wrong one. I find it quite smooth, dual wielding a spell to reanimate a dead corpse, then firing flames from the other hand at an enemy, they switching to have both hands fire a lightning bolt at the same enemy.

I think the only button adjusting I've done so far was to move shouts to the middle mouse button. I think "z" was the default and not very easy to get to in the heat of a battle when you're using your left hand for wasd.

I always see the left button as "main hand action" and right button as "secondary action"

It's that way with any kind of PC program. You click with left button, not the right (lefties will use right to click, but since it's reversed, the concept is the same)

I find Skyrim's setup to be standard enough against most other games

My hat's off to you and others like you. If my LMB controls my right hand and vice versa, my brain cracks in half and the universe implodes.

Same here. Fighting with sword and shield already was "wrong" in Oblivion (left button attacked with the sword which was on the right side, right button blocked with the shield which was on the left side), so I was accustomed to it from the beginning.

It's like the anologue sticks on controllers. I remember playing with inverted controls the last time I played on Xbox.

I was playing Crysis Warhead today, dual guns use left=left, right=right scheme. Game characters feel like one-armed guys for the most of the time. I think other games should somehow find a use for the left hand too. For example, throwing grenades for the left hand button. The use of left hand feels very immersive in Skyrim.

Yeah, I didn't reverse the settings. But, then, my first character was "typical".... weapon in right hand, shield in left. So it behaved exactly as in previous games. Now that I'm playing a mage, I once in awhile get mixed up. But it seems to be working fine.

Usually i have left MB as attack button, but in Skyrim i kept pressing the wrong button when having something equipped on both hands, so i had to change it to left=left and right=right. This arragenment hasn't cause issues in other games.

I'm going to really struggle with this when I finally get the PC version. I've always had problems when games have duel wielding because I'm so used to the left mouse button being my primary fire which is usually the right hand. It always seemed strange to use one hand to do both hands. That's why I'm really liking the controller for this aspect of combat. It feels so much more natural. But I'll have to figure it out at some point because eventually I'll have a new PC and will want to play around with the mods. Gonna be confusing for a bit.

LMB = right hand
RMB = left hand

It's perfectly natural, since the left half of the brain controls the right half of the body and vice versa.

way back in the 90's when i used to play doom and duke3d my brother, for some reason, had his mouse set up so LMB = move forward RMB = move back. and i've been using that set up ever since. i'm not sure if it was even common back then. my brother had the pc back then btw, i was on ps1.

I've been dual wielding since day one, and have had no problems witht the left mouse button being for the right hand and the right button being for the left hand. Since left mouse button is a default control in so many games, it was just kind of automatic for me to have right click be the secondary weapon/spell. Now one thing I did have problems with was the switching of jump to the space bar, and interact to the E button. That took me a little getting used to.

I found dual wielding a bit awkward. Maybe I'm just doing it wrong. Maybe you guys can help me. So If i'm wielding 2 swords, and then bring up healing on the left hand, what's the best way to go back to 2 swords again? So far the best I have found is to bring up the quick menu and manually right click on the second sword. Is there a better way of doing this?

There's no other solution. Bethesda seriously dropped the ball on dual wield. You should be able to hot key weapon sets or at least specify a hand but no....

Isn't space bar always been the button for jumping? I mean, even Half-Life used space bar for jumping. That was a 2000 game