I mean, I'd just go with the bog-standard Xbox One controller. It's solid, shouldn't be *too* expensive, and is the controller that I think devs would try to implement anyway.
I suppose you could also get the Xbox360 controller if you wanted to cheap out just a little bit, but I don't recommend cheapping out too much as then you tend to get *very, very* poor controller hardware, and you also might be missing out on features such as force-feedback and the ability to have a character walk faster the more you move a joystick (dunno what that's called).
By the way, good grammar, .
No, really. The only nit-picky thing I'd say is that, I don't think this is a question, so doesn't need a question mark, though I suppose you could just ask this in real life with a higher ed pitch at the end, which would warrant a question mark. I guess just a personal thing I wouldn't do, though, you know. I don't pretend to know literally everything about English grammar anyway!
Oh... and about talking too much? Well we haven't really in a while, so I suppose I'm inclined to disagree?
See? *That's* when I use question marks!

the 8Bitdo SF30 PRO is good if you want a tiny, wireless controller with a built in battery that will do multiple modes.
It just looks like a snes controller that's managed to sprout dual analogue sticks and a set of shoulder triggers. When you connect it up to windows it just acts as a standard xinput controller by default, but can be switched to dinput if you need to.
The down side is that because it's so small, rumble isn't particularly powerful on it and battery life is  shorter than an xbox controller running on AA batteries. It still beats a ps4 controller though.
This is assuming that the xbox controller falls into the unreasonably priced category, if it doesn't then it is the best controller and you should go for that one.

@NevEd, That, and you're missing out on force-feedback potentially, or the whole thing feels so light, cheap and plastic!
For an old one I tried, some of the plastic cuts felt especially cheap and sharp, and the face buttons needed to be pushed with so much force, it was almost impossible to press multiple comfortably!

Nothing with Xbox 1, plug it in or sync via bluetooth and you're good.

yep for wired controllers you will just need to plug it in. for the xbox wireless you can use bluetooth or a xbox adaptor if your pc does not have bluetooth.

You would have to map the sticks using an external program like JoyToKey. You could do it one of two ways. Make it map the stick to the turn keys - the shitty solution. Or make them map to the mouse - the awesome solution. You could also have your cake and eat it too by mapping the d-pad to snap left and right. Me personally, the left stick would be walk and straffe, and the right stick would be turn because that's how like every FPS does it and it feels natural to me by now.

I never found JoyToKey all that pleasant to use. I mean, it is technically usable, but like, I never figured out how to map the mouse and some of the options don't have explanations and they aren't really self-explanatory. Maybe others have had better luck or more more patience to try different things.

Is there anyway to configure rumble mode? For example, if I wanted it to vibrate slightly every time I fired, could I do that?

No vibration because the game would have to tell the controller to do it.

Even so, the game would have to tell the thing to vibrate. The information for that peripheral is very scarce, but in trying to establish what it did, looking into the questions section shows that it doesn't work with games that don't have rumble support. So buying this device for Swamp would be useless, since Swamp doesn't have controller support, much less vibration support.

Force feedback really doesn't exist anymore from what I can tell. It was a system that used motors to move the stick or steering wheel in question. It would simulate vibration under circumstances by cycling between force on opposite sides of the axis.

In a flight sim, this is great, because now you can simulate trim. Just trim until you don't feel the stick fighting you. In racing games, you feel the force of the turns. If you break traction, the wheel gets really loose.

Rumble and vibration are the same thing really. In most controllers these days, there are two motors, one smaller one and a larger one. The Xbox 1 controller supplements this further by having one in each trigger as well as the main ones. I think this one is more of a haptic thing than ever, because you really do get some precision out of them in games that support them.

Basically, you can adjust the amount of vibration given to each motor independently. You can even create patterns or waveforms that make you feel certain things. The smaller one is good for faster vibrations, the bigger one is more forceful. Combine the two and you can simulate different experiences.

The first iteration of this that I remember is the rumble pack for the N64 controller. You had to insert that into the slot on the back and it gave you just one motor, but it was good for its day. I think they came out on the PS2 and onward, and the original Xbox all the way up to the Xbox 1 had them. Same for the gamecube and wii I think had it with the nunchuck attachment. I can't remember if the original PS had it. I know the first controller didn't - the one with no D-pad. The first iteration of the DualShock might have though.

@20 thanks for that info. I never knew the status of vibration across controllers.
@21, yes, assuming your using a controller that supports it. I'm guessing you're referring to the Xbox One controller.