At least in regards to the Ultimate controller, a firmware update released recently allows you to connect directly via bluetooth if you want. There may be some caveats involved; I tested it out a bit while ago trying to configure the back buttons (unfortunately, I don't have a Windows PC and eventually gave up). I haven't played docked in a couple months, and even then only spent a bit of time setting it all up, so I may misremember certain details.
Playing this myself in anticipation of the upcoming expansion adding skill customization.
Plays well on the Deck, plus mods are great to help make some of the grind even better (I'm loving the lazy writ crafting mod).
Everyone who is so inclined to back this project, please do so.
However, I'd highly encourage you to do your due diligence first if you've never backed a crowd funded project before, and especially so if you've never backed a video game crowd funded project. Even more especially if you'd only back a project due to extra platforms "unlocked" through stretch goals.
There's a lot that can go wrong in these kinds of endeavors (even when they're started with the best of intentions), and it's easy to end up feeling cheated by how it plays out (even in cases where something is delivered in the end).
Mods can help a lot!
For example, there's a mod to increase the text size: https://www.nexusmods.com/eldenring/mods/650 (It hasn't been updated for awhile, so I don't know how well it'd work for recent patches)
If the game is just too difficult, there are also mods to help with that. Mods can adjust the difficulty, add FP regen, unlock summoning, etc., or completely overhaul the game (I had a lot of fun with the Convergence mod last year)
The flashlight is already bound to LB; holding it for a second vs tapping one of the back buttons doesn't really seem like a worthwhile use to, same for the map (which can be opened directly by long pressing "start"; or "select" if you haven't reversed their mapping in Steam input to get the correct button prompts).
Honestly, I've yet to find a good use for the back buttons in Starfield; I'm considering mapping one of them to F5 for quick save, but that's generally just a double tap of start and one tap of A, so it's not inconvenient enough for me to have gone with the button mapping.
Some of it can be, I agree. Some is really easy. It really depends on the game (I can't speak for Witcher 3).
Sometimes it's as easy as creating a mods folder in the game directory then downloading the mod and moving into that folder.
For Bethesda games, I've used rockerbacon's mo2 script and it works well. For other games, I just follow the install instructions manually, however I have encountered some limitations here. Mods that require a program to modify files (eg, texture replacers for the Dark Souls games or to merge mods that alter game_main.arc in Dragon's Dogma) have been a no-go for me so far. There have been convenient work-arounds for some instances (Dragon's Dogma has some mod-packs that include all or most of the individual mods I would've wanted, so I just install that).
And I've definitely encountered a number of mods that require a launch parameter for dinput8.dll (and I think one mod required a parameter for some other dll, although I can't recall for certain); finding this out the first time I encountered it was a huge pain and I only found the answer by reading the forums for another mod on another game. Now that I know about that particular issue, it isn't too bad but it absolutely made the first time modding on the Deck more complicated than I had expected.