Mouse Acceleration
SantaClaws
Denmark Join Date: 2012-07-31 Member: 154491Members, Reinforced - Shadow
Denmark Join Date: 2012-07-31 Member: 154491Members, Reinforced - Shadow
Oh boy. Last nights attack erased my thread. I'll attempt to recreate it.
This is an attempt at a serious discussion about the lack of good mouse acceleration in NS2.
The reason I bring it up, is because I noticed in the trello that they want to introduce team specific sensitivities from NS2+. As I mentioned in my original post, I remember when this was implemented in NS2+, in fact, I vaguely remember advocating for it and requesting it.
Before that, I was using a bind to change my sensitivity, because I needed a slightly faster sensitivity to land my alien bites against good strafejumping marines, specifically with lerk (one of my problems was I reached the end of my mousepad too often), but if I kept the same sense for marines, I noticed a significant drop in my tracking accuracy. So my solution back then was to have two separate sensitivities.
Well I recently just came back to NS2, from a long hiatus, where I started playing arena shooters, mainly Reflex and Warsow. In those games, they have advanced mouse acceleration options. What that means I'll explain below, but just let me assure you, that this is not what you guys might know from counter-strike or windows' "enhanced pointer precision". In the arena shooter genre, mouse acceleration is used by top players, and unlike cstrike and other games, it's not "shunned" at all.
When ever I bring this up, someone always says something of the effect:
This is what the mouse menu in Reflex looks like:
The graph shows my own personal sensitivity setting. Notice how it's not a simple linear graph or an exponention exponential (lol) graph or any of that sort. It's more like a step function. This is because I added a sensitivity cap of "4.22" (equivalent to 1.2 in ns2), which makes the ceiling on that graph constant after a while. This makes sure, that no matter how fast I flick my mouse, it never exceeds that sensitivity cap.
Notice how it also starts out flat. That is because I add an offset of "6". This basically just moves the graph a certain units to the right. So the bottom level is my standard sense of 3.5 (equivalent to 1.0 in ns2). This means that as long as I don't exceed a certain speed with my mouse, my sensitivity doesn't change. This is so I can track with a constant sensitivity, and only when I start flicking, does the mouse acceleration actually kick in.
In Reflex, this allows me to do rocket jumps and the odd flickshot a lot more easily, while not compromising my tracking accuracy with a sense that would otherwise be too high. And in NS2, it allows me to land my bites as alien, and perhaps the odd shotgun flickshots, much more consistently, without compromising my marine tracking accuracy.
You can actually try it with an external driver. Kovaak also has a good introduction to it here. But what I want is in-game support for it, like in Reflex and Warsow.
Lastly, as I did before the forum attack. I will end with this video by an excellent player called Mew. He uses the most strange mouse setting I've ever seen. Inverted input (this on its own is baffling to me), incredibly low sensitivity and a TON of mouse acceleration. This just goes to show you, how different our settings can legitimately be.
This is an attempt at a serious discussion about the lack of good mouse acceleration in NS2.
The reason I bring it up, is because I noticed in the trello that they want to introduce team specific sensitivities from NS2+. As I mentioned in my original post, I remember when this was implemented in NS2+, in fact, I vaguely remember advocating for it and requesting it.
Before that, I was using a bind to change my sensitivity, because I needed a slightly faster sensitivity to land my alien bites against good strafejumping marines, specifically with lerk (one of my problems was I reached the end of my mousepad too often), but if I kept the same sense for marines, I noticed a significant drop in my tracking accuracy. So my solution back then was to have two separate sensitivities.
Well I recently just came back to NS2, from a long hiatus, where I started playing arena shooters, mainly Reflex and Warsow. In those games, they have advanced mouse acceleration options. What that means I'll explain below, but just let me assure you, that this is not what you guys might know from counter-strike or windows' "enhanced pointer precision". In the arena shooter genre, mouse acceleration is used by top players, and unlike cstrike and other games, it's not "shunned" at all.
When ever I bring this up, someone always says something of the effect:
It doesn't. What does scream inconsistency is having two separate sensitivities based on class or faction!John Watson wrote:Mouse acceleration is bad, because it gives you inconsistent sensitivity
This is what the mouse menu in Reflex looks like:
Notice how it also starts out flat. That is because I add an offset of "6". This basically just moves the graph a certain units to the right. So the bottom level is my standard sense of 3.5 (equivalent to 1.0 in ns2). This means that as long as I don't exceed a certain speed with my mouse, my sensitivity doesn't change. This is so I can track with a constant sensitivity, and only when I start flicking, does the mouse acceleration actually kick in.
In Reflex, this allows me to do rocket jumps and the odd flickshot a lot more easily, while not compromising my tracking accuracy with a sense that would otherwise be too high. And in NS2, it allows me to land my bites as alien, and perhaps the odd shotgun flickshots, much more consistently, without compromising my marine tracking accuracy.
You can actually try it with an external driver. Kovaak also has a good introduction to it here. But what I want is in-game support for it, like in Reflex and Warsow.
Lastly, as I did before the forum attack. I will end with this video by an excellent player called Mew. He uses the most strange mouse setting I've ever seen. Inverted input (this on its own is baffling to me), incredibly low sensitivity and a TON of mouse acceleration. This just goes to show you, how different our settings can legitimately be.
Comments
Interesting, because I've always felt my mouse is way too slow for short-range and way too fast for long-range, but I'd rather play blindfolded than with default mouse acceleration.
I will add this real quick. I used to play with high sense back when I played 1.6, it wasn't until I discovered NS2, that I really started working on my tracking aim and I had to lower my sense.
When ever I had to adjust to a new sensitivity, it took me weeks, some times up to a month to adjust. And that was back when I could play a lot.. But for some reason, mouse acceleration takes minutes to adjust to. You should really feel it right away if your setting is off or on the spot.
My problem with CS:Go is and always was that you NEED a low sense there.
And cause i am a mid to high sense player i simply cant play this game for this reason.
Back in the Quake3 days my "mousepad" was the armrest oft this chair:
Back to topic:
There is no "good" mouse acceleration.
You need much more time to learn at what speed the mouse moves how far instead simply training your muscle memory.
I'm sorry, I have to go lay down for a moment -- clear my head.
But seriously though, if you're looking to get really good at this game, I recommend you get a good optical mouse (I use a Logitech G400s), and adjust your sensitivity until it feels "right."
What I do to make my sensitivity feel right is I stand still, find a spot on a wall or somewhere that is recognizable, then find another spot just about 180 degrees behind me from that point. Then close your eyes, move the mouse so you're looking back at the original position, open, and see how close you got. Do it a few times at different speeds, and after moving the mouse off the pad a few times (so you're not just going by where your hand was), and if you're consistently overshooting, you might need to turn down your sensitivity, but if you're under-shooting, you need to turn it up slightly. If there's no real pattern, then it sounds like you just need more practice.
The above test doesn't work with mouse acceleration, and therefore your aim movements are only reacting to what's on screen, rather than being able to aim by "feel".
At least that's how it was with me before I turned off mouse acceleration.
As for that video... Wow... I don't know how that guy plays with so much arm movement... I'd be worn out after half a minute of that. When I play, it's pretty much only my wrist that moves.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sLkE9ZMI5cn0K4T0DLVJUr8jdNml0F-UV6Z1W04wMrU/edit#gid=0
There are also two "schools" of how to move your mouse. Aiming with the arm, and aiming with the wrist. If you aim with your arm, like Fnatic Krimz, or Mew, a much lower sensitivity is used. This school is often prefered where extreeme accuracy is needed, such as in fps. Aiming with your wrist has a high sensitivity, but is inherintly less accurate - thus you often see RTS players use the wrist only, rather than the arm.
My personal application of this is a more arm orientated marine aim, and a more wrist orientated alien aim.
Using an accel which is consistent is something you can get used to just like using a higher/lower sensitivity... The big part of that is a 'consistent accel'. Most people remember back to using mouse accel fixes to turn of Windows' varying amount of accel in older games, which has just given it a bad name overall.
How did you read the original post in its entirety and you still only came up with a "mouse acceleration sucks, here's how it's done" reply?
As I understood it, the whole point of this kind of mouse acceleration is to basically play with two sensitivities at the same time: one for when you move your mouse slowly, and one for when you move your mouse quickly, mostly triggered by flicks. I haven't tried it yet because I'm at work, but I imagine muscle memory for twitch shots (which is the only time it plays a role in mouse movement) is exactly the same, only you're able to track better.
iirc accel in NS2 (just like source until relatively recently) is tied to your FPS, so naturally it's awful due to inconsistency.
You're trading 1:1 movement familiarity with something that IS variable, and the brain needs time to adjust to this.
That being said, I don't see why it couldn't be included in some advanced mouse options section.
It seems its working good for aliens, especial lerks and fades but on marine side it feels too inconsistent to me.
There is a reason why i play high sens and while the idea is interesting to have an mix between low sens for better tracking and normal high sens for twitch shooting i had to move my mouse much more than normal.
So in the end i have lost comfort and my arm is still hurting from 2 hrs playing with this driver while im writing this.
My accuracy was also lower than normal.
Maybe i try it later again with other settings.
And thats another issue with this implementation, you need to invest time to find good values.
So you want a feature like this in a game where people dont want to invest some minutes for an tutorial?
But the same people are willing to invest the needed time to find there best values?
Dont think so.
You say that you had to move your mouse much more than normal. Eh, then it sounds to me that you had the wrong settings, why would it cause you to move your mouse more?
If I understand you correctly, what you did is lower your baseline sensitivity? Well duh, then yes you have to move your mouse more
Here's the settings that I used.
Before:
marine 1.0
alien 1.2
After:
Baseline 1.0 , offset 4 (this does not really need much finetuning), sensitivity cap 1.2.
So I never went below my original baseline, and I never went above my alien sense, when I added mouse accel. I think that's the mistake you did from what I can gather?
Thanks. I'll take a look at it, anyway. Maybe I can get used to larger flick movements.
I think this sums up most of it.
I'd like to think games like Quake and NS type games are where mouse accell is most useful. You're often quickly spinning around the whole 360 sector for various reasons and some people are likely to struggle with the amount of mouse movement needed there.
I think my only question is whether mouse drivers can handle the acceleration or if there is some bigger benefit in doing this in NS2 itself? Personally I haven't been using accel, so I've got very little idea of different implementations.
I tried those drivers last night and can absolutely NOT confirm this. I really liked it, mostly because I've always felt I needed something like this in theory, but it's going to take me AGES to find the right settings.
For me, it's between 1.0 and 1.2 (in-game sense). That's a very subtle difference in sensitivity already. So you shouldn't expect acceleration to make a difference of ie. 1.0 and 2.0. I think that would be really difficult to adjust to. I use mouse acceleration to adjust for small changes, not big ones.
As long as the difference is subtle, like a few decimal points, it should not take ages to adjust if you do it like that.
Ideally, with these drivers, I'd like to find a sweet spot that feels right for both tracking and twitching, so something where my old baseline would be right in between. I realise this essentially means having to get used to TWO new sensitivities AND the mouse acceleration, but it might just pay off.
I love that mouse so much i have an unopened boxed one ready to use when my current G400s starts taking a shit.
Seriously though, I really love my mouse's dpi switch. It lets me keep my sensitivity at a good level (which I can already aim good with regardless), and makes tracking in some situations easier. Especially useful in certain sniping scenarios.
I agree. I use my desktop sensitivity (2000dpi) as commander and 8000dpi on the field. It takes roughly a second to switch profiles, which wouldn't work in combat. There's also a quick switch thingy that lets you aim with different dpi while you keep it pressed, but that seems cumbersome to use, since I already use both my thumb buttons for voice chat. (Ingame and out of game.)
Then again, my mouse is a piece of garbage that doesn't work well with spark...
Long ago in the past I learnt somewhere that you should use high dpi + low sensitivity because it's more accurate or something. I don't know if it's true. It's what I'm used to now, though, so I'm sticking to it.
Doing a 360° turn ingame is maybe 5, 6cm on my mousepad. (Rough guess, I didn't check.) I prefer to use wrist movements.
Brother!