In many action games with a third person view, joystick controls typically map the left joystick for player movement and the right joystick for camera movement (or more precisely camera's direction towards the character). With first-person games, mapping to mouse/keyboard is easy because the camera is directly influenced by the player's movement. The player has to be able to look at any direction to point where he should go. Here is where the mouse comes in to provide this movement.
But the challenge I see is having separate camera and player controls with this setup. With a mouse/keyboard setup, it seems like I have to settle with a compromise, because the mouse is usually the only source for analog-like movement, whereas modern game pads have two sources, as separate joysticks.
One control scheme I had in mind is using A and D to change the player's heading as he travels through the world, leaving W and S to move forward/backward and the mouse free to move the camera. This still has a disadvantage, because you lack some degree to control how fast to change heading with the keyboard, unless you momentarily punch at the keys instead of holding them.
Is it possible to map the mouse and keyboard controls more intuitively for independent third person player and camera control?