Internet, I have a question for you: is it OK to implement "look around" in a 3D game by having the player drag with the right mouse button held down?

Now to be clear, I'm not asking whether this works as a control scheme. I already know it works. But it might still not be OK. Let me explain why…

I'm a great believer in playtesting. An important principle of good playtesting is that if a playtester raises something as a problem, then there is a problem. King Machine has been in development for a long time now and been through many control schemes, but one thing playtesters have quite often asked at the start of their very first play is "Why isn't mouse look always on?". So I explain that it's not always on because you need a mouse cursor. Why? For manipulating objects. For interacting with menus. "Why not lock the mouse cursor to the centre of the screen and get rid of the menus?" is usually the followup question. Well, if the bot turns at a reasonable speed that makes the cursor move uncomfortably fast for object manipulation. Also, some object actions look weird with the camera moving about. Also, the menus are a good way to control… blah, blah, blah…

But here's the thing: no matter what my reasons are for the design they won't stop every single new player potentially feeling the same way, which is a problem.

"New player"? Well yes, because here's the thing: after a player has been playing for a while, the problem goes away. How long this takes varies with (I suspect) how accustomed they are to FPS controls. The control scheme works pretty well using right mouse.

So here's why I'm posting this: I'm getting towards the later stages of development now and I really need to stop changing the controls and focus on finishing the levels and suchlike. Also, it's really hard to write the help system when the controls keep changing! The question is, what should I do with mouse look?

* Change it so that mouse look is always on. Effectively sacrificing quality of control for accessibility (and possibly ease of use in some cases).
* Leave it unchanged, trusting players to settle into the controls rather than giving up 30 seconds in.
* Have both schemes available, with a toggle in the options somewhere (which still leaves the question of which should be default).
* Some other solution, such as having mouse look toggle on/off with a key.

Votes and opinions encouraged! Of course, the natural response to that is "I'd have to play it and see how it feels". Reasonable… but actually wrong. The thing is, even by reading this post you already know too much! Most players won't have read this post and won't be thinking about the same issues at all as they play for the first time. And of course, as with anything, nobody reads the instructions!