Need advice on which gamepads to buy

[T08Y]

Soon there will be my b-day and i want to buy 3 or 4 gamepads to play with up to 3 friends using 3 gamepads+keyboard and mouse or 4 gamepads. I am wondering should i buy 3-4 steam controllers or 3-4 xbox pads or 1 steam controller and 2-3 xbox pads for the games i want to play coop with friends on 1 computer which are; Helldivers, Street fighter x tekken, Castle Crashers, Kung-fu strike, Forced, Magicka 2, Brawlhalla, Divinity original sin 1 and 2, Towerfall, Trine 2, Monaco, Spelunky, Gauntlet, Samurai Gunn, Lovers In A Dangerous Spacetime and many more titles i forgot or titles that will come in the future. I had gamepads before but they were poor quality because i could only choose 8 directions with joystick which made games like helldivers unplayable where you have to aim in many more directions. I also remember some games require xbox gamepad to play and won't read other controllers. Does steam controller counts as an xbox controller in games that requires it? Are there any good gamepads other than xbox and steam controllers which allow to aim with joystick in more than 8 directions and are cheaper?

[Supafly]

Cheapest option would proably finding some used xbox 360 wired controllers. Or if you friends have their own controller just ave them bring theirs and set them up instead of purchasing some.

[T08Y]

Most of my friends do not have a controller and i want to treat myself on b-day by spending some money to have ready set-up when i'm doing a party and i want to play some games with my mates

[Supafly]

Like I said cheapest option would proably used wired 360 controllers. There dirt cheap used and won't require any fiddling, wireless adaptors, charging or driver issues or third party software.

[Aliquis Freedom & Ethnopluralism]

I'd advice you to get all Xbox whatever controllers or all except one and then one Steam controller.

I did some testing earlier with old Nvidia controller, DS4 and Xbox One controller and for whatever reason I felt the analog sticks of the Xbox One was worse I guess, possibly a stronger zeroing in (or a weaker one?) I tested mostly in shoot em ups and it was about being able to finely navigate. At-least I think I had that impression where DS4 + Shield was better than One. I also feel the buttons especially on the DS4 is easier to mash fast. Size/grip wise I liked the Shield one the most but it's directional controller is the worst, I think rumble was the worst and the quality impression is the worst.
I let a friend take the One controller since he bought an Xbox One and I was too slow to return that one and the Shield one because I decided for the DS4 simply because I felt it was fastest and I had the best accuracy there even though poorer quality feeling and battery life and all that.
I wouldn't recommend that Shield controller since it's Nvidia only and the directional pad is bad but now there's a new one and it may be improved upon.
I don't really like my DS4 either because it makes noises and feel spongy and I know the battery is ♥♥♥♥ and built in (one still can replace it) and it is supposed to have latency than at-least old One controller. I feel the Xbox One controller is superior in quality and using normal batteries and better battery life. Another flaw is that many games assume you have Xbox buttons and colors so you may not get Sony buttons in games and in like Helldivers both Steam and Helldivers support that controller so unless you turn your controller off in Steam you get TWO characters to control with one controller ...

Actually it's the One S I especially would suggest since that one uses bluetooth or whatever so it will also work with Android devices and such. I don't know if that increase latency there too hopefully not.

By now I also own a Steam controller but I haven't used it much. Haven't used any of them much. I don't the touch pads was a good idea and it's lighter and may be worse in quality than the Xbox controllers. ~All games made for a controller are designed for something like the Xbox controller whereas games not made for a controller aren't made for a controller so why use one? Because of that I think the Xbox controller is the best one. Because everything works and looks right and quality and battery life is awesome. It's fine to get one Steam controller for you if you want to mess around with it or use it for games which otherwise lack controller support or use tilting for sniperscooping, control point & click games with the touch pad or what not.

3x Xbox One S + 1x Steam controller.

New Nvidia Shield controller may support bluetooth and not necessarily need Nvidia drivers any longer.

There's also the SteelSeries Stratus XL which looks like an Xbox controller but seem like some people have had problems with quality there and that they think the One S is better.

[T08Y]

Yeah that's what i thought would be the best option 3 xbox and 1 steam controllers. But does the steam controller pretends to be xbox controller in games like Cryptark which specifically requires xbox controller to play coop on 1 pc?