Mouse Sensitivity & Your Accuracy

[OldSoul]

Welcome...

Protip: Your mouse sensitivity may be holding you back. (Here's why)

Im no pro (yet), but I know that all the research & trials Iv done with my mouse sensitivity have helped me alot, and Id like to pass along what Iv learned on my own, if youll allow me. This may be very very very helpful to you so if you're curious please read through...

When we refer to our true mouse sensitivity there is only one way to express it so that everyone can understand regardless of game settings and mouse dpi. This way is a measurement, and this measurement is called your cm or Inches/360!

W*F IS THIS I SAY?!

...Your Inches or Centimeters/360 describes how many inches you must move your mouse horizonally (left or right) to do a full 360degree turn in game. To measure your own In/360 all youll need is a ruler and your wits. While ingame (any game) target an object or a wall corner, place your ruler below your mouse, then slide your mouse horizontally across your table untill youve done a full 360degree turn ingame. Now read the distance your mouse had to travel along your ruler and Vwalla thats your inches per 360.

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT DUDE?!

...Ill tell you why; because having just decided to start taking multiplayer FPS seriously and being the ripe old age of 27years with no time to pick my nose with noobies I needed to know one thing... What are the pros doing? They must know something about being good at this wonderful FPS thing.

So I reasearched...

...and what I found was that professional FPS players across the board play with three levels of mouse sensitivity: Low, Lower, and Reeeealy f*ckn Low in comparison to your average FPS player. Im talkin 9..... 11..... 13....... 15............ 19 inches per 360, and thats just for quake live, forget counterstrike, some of those pro-bros are using the full width of their 17" steelseries mouse pads (of which u might consider buying) to do a 180degree turn ingame. Strenx (youtube it) arguably Quake 3s finest, plays at 19in/360.

BUT WHY DUDE WHY? I DONT UNDSTAND?!

Professional players play at these low sensitivities for one reason, Accuracy. With less sensitivity, the determining factor of weather or not you place your shots where you want them to go (anytime every time ) doesn't rely on a poop turd knee jerk reaction, but rather a more conscious and calculated slide of your mouse, using not just your fingertips or just your wrist, but a little elbow too. It will take some getting used to, but this is way of manipulating your sights is less stressful and more physical and pleasurable once you get the hang of it. Plus I find it much much much easier to get those Rail Gun shots on target at long rang, and track targets at medium range with the LG (Lightning Gun) without having to rely on moving myself in pace with my opponent's footsteps.

IDK DUDE SOUNDS G*Y... HOW DO I KNOW IF I BELIEVE YOo

Ok so I know its been a long journey so far, but here's the last of this post... Like I said before I am no pro, and Iv only been playing for 2months, but I am glad to say I have done allot of experimentation with mouse sensitivity and I am now ready to live out the rest of my days knowing: Its not about how High you can go comfortably, but how Looow you can go comfortably. I myself am proud to say after incrementally lowering my mouse sensitivity in quake live from 3inches per 360 to 4inches to 6inches to 9inches; so far Iv settled on 11in/360 and I'm very happy with it. Its low enough to slice off Rail shots at long range without relying on foot movement, and its high enough to chain rocket jumps from wall to wall to ceiling if I have to.

Anyways this is Oldsoul signing out &...
GL Noobs Ill see you on the otherside

[OldSoul]

P.s. Please BUMP if you find this at all helpful or interesting enough to pass along. Thankyooooou

[*LizzyLizardface]

This is more a matter of personal preference than you're making it out to be.
How you hold the mouse dictates how effective ultra-low sensitivity is going to be, if you rest the back of your palm on the mat and move the mouse with the wrist and fingers only you'll find that the very low sensitivity is more trouble than it's worth.
I make larger movements with my wrist and smaller ones with my fingers, meaning that higher sensitivity is not an issue due to me making much smaller movements than the whole-arm sweeps used by people using very low sensitivity.
I've given low sensitivity a go in the last week or so, and found it to be good for certain things, like duels and Instagib, but terrible for FFA, and as I mostly play FFA that matters.
So it's not a cut-and-dried case of "low sensitivity is always better" because it isn't, it depends on the gametype you play, the mouse you use and your own physiology, not to mention your experience.
If you've always played at a relatively high sensitivity then switching to low will not give you a magic accuracy bonus, it will severely degrade your performance for a significant amount of time! The best bet is to try to increment your sensitivity downwards over time, each time you tweak it down you'll notice an accuracy improvement once you're used to it.
Eventually though, you'll reach a point where tweaking it down any further does not improve your accuracy because you start to lose the ability to track targets quickly enough or have versatility of movement, at this point, stop tweaking, go back to the previous settings before you started to lose performance, and stick with them.
After a time you'll probably start feeling like you could benefit from lower sensitivity again, so start tweaking it down again in the same manner, stopping once it doesn't improve.
In the end you'll get to a point where any lower degrades performance straight away, at which point you've hit the perfect sensitivity for you.

The important point about the pro players isn't that they use low sensitivities, it's that they use the low end of their sensitivity range, we should all be looking to use the low end of our ranges because this game is suited to it, but trying to use a lower sensitivity than you're comfortable adjusting to is futile.

[Cat]

Why, this information is revolutionary!

[infntnub]

If you're getting your entire arm involved in moving your mouse you should really consider increasing your sensitivity a little bit.... that's extreme even by my standards and my sensitivity is @ .68 with a 3200 DPI optical mouse. :s

Other than that, as Lizard stated, this topic heavily boils down to personal preference but I'd agree to stay on the lower end of the sensitivity spectrum in order to achieve higher precision. Just keep in mind there's such thing as having your sensitivity TOO LOW.

[JustLOL]

I don't think that low-sens is inherently better than mid/high sens, it's just a matter of comfort, preference, personal style.

That's why you can see such a diverse range of mouse settings at a pro level; strenx's 50cm/360 vs agent's 8cm/360, av3k's 45cm/360 + 0.2 accel vs latrommi's 12cm + 2.0 accel (@400cpi).

I'm sure strenx wasn't that comfortable with his sens in the first few weeks, but it suited his play style, it worked for him, the way he plays the game, so he stuck with it. Same for Agent. 8cm/360 is surely crippling his raw aim, but he's perfectly comfortable with it, and it doesn't seem to hurt him that much when confronted with some of the best aimers in QL. All because there's much more to Quake than just raw (mouse) aim, and the pro players have mastered these other elements (movement, dodging, positioning, timing, battle skills, strategy, etc).

So the optimal sensitivity considers all these aspects of Quake that are not present in other FPS games, where mouse is used only for aiming, and where having the best aim wins you the game.

[OldSoul]

Valid points brohammers, keep hammer'n.

[MajkiFajki]

I play on mid sens, 9inches/360, and I sometimes, when I play CA and die, I spec all those ppl with 6000000 sensitivity setting. It's giving me nausea

[CPTcman]

I've settled down to about 20 in/360°, but I use .15 mouseaccel. So a 180° is just a quick flick of the wrist and a 360° is two flicks. Works great for me. I like using a lot of wrist and arm movement.

[OldSoul]

I've settled down to about 20 in/360°, but I use .15 mouseaccel. So a 180° is just a quick flick of the wrist and a 360° is two flicks. Works great for me. I like using a lot of wrist and arm movement.

Idk about accel. Iv never tried it. I just imagine it being helpful in some ways, but also a hindrance when it comes to making and accurate snap shot to the corner of your screen. Not sure, if this is true or not, cuz the mind is excellent at adapting. However I just feel more comfortable playing all my fps's with no accel.