WASD? Try ESDF!

I was reading through the latest edition of PC Gamer a week or so ago and I read a letter sent into the editor from a man and his son who complained about WASD being the default configuration for games, stating that he thought by moving it over to ESDF it gave you more access to keys among other things. It definitely got my curiosity up so I decided to remap the game I was currently playing, which was battlefield bad company 2. So here's the default layout for bad company 2:

Playing this way is typically fine, the one key that has always given me problems is the Crouch key. It's fairly far away from the A key (maybe I have girly hands) so what I usually do is remap it to Z so it's closer. As you see by the picture above though, you're bending your pinky beyond your ring finger to make that happen, so not an ideal configuration. So I remapped all of my keys (the hardest part of this experiment) and this is what I have now:

The big changes were I moved crouch up to A and I actually switched my grenade throwing and melee keys as I'm also a big Halo gamer and melee was always F in Halo (or in this new configuration G).

It may seem confusing looking at it, but if you're familiar with the keyboard layout already then it's not like you're going to look down a lot, so it should feel natural to move your index finger up a button to enter vehicles, to move it over slightly to reload, etc. Also, your fingers naturally fit onto A, S, D and F from typing so it feels comfortable. I moved my crouch up to A since I crouch more than I sprint, and I now have easier access to the Q and Z if I want to use them for something.

I've been using this layout for I guess about a week so far. It *does* feel more comfortable but I played the game long enough on the old configuration I still find myself throwing grenades when I try to melee from time to time. Try it out in your games and let me know what you think!

(Side Note: I do have an FPS controller that would resolve this issue all together, that would be my first suggestion if you're feeling the need to change. However, I have very little desk space so I've opted for now to just use the keyboard, partially for that and partially for just plain lazyness! :P )