NarfwakJoin Date: 2002-11-02Member: 5258Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS1 Playtester, Playtest Lead, Forum Moderators, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Supporter, Reinforced - Silver, Reinforced - Gold, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow, Subnautica PT Lead, NS2 Community Developer
Two things:
1) This sounds really stupid, but sitting up straight makes a huge difference. I find wearing shoes makes me sit up more and be more of a tryhard in general. It's silly, but it totally works.
2) From watching a lot of your videos, Hugh, I would recommend a lower sensitivity. You tend to over-adjust a lot especially in close quarters as both marine and alien.
I like to think I have good aim. In most FPS games the skill I've built up over 15 years of online FPS games translates really well and I often find myself (in purely frag based games) near the top of the score screen.
The number one issue that I find time and time again, whether it's trying to snipe a light assault flag carrier moving 270mph in tribes:ascent or trying to shotgun a skulk in NS2, is that players think aim is just about moving the mouse on the target and firing. The ability to quickly snap to a target (called 'twitch' aiming) and get a kill is probably the single hardest aspect to master and can only be relied upon after years and years of online FPS gaming.
Position and movement are so much more important than your ability to twitch aim, yet I see a lot of players in FPS games only try to twitch aim. You should always set yourself up for success and you can only do that by your positioning and movement. When you don't set yourself up for success, you rely on outskilling your opponent and put yourself at a much greater risk. Sometimes that risk is necessary; usually it's not.
If you're reading this and really want to improve your aim (as a marine) here are my 3 most helpful tips I could suggest in NS2:
1) Always have your crosshair pointed in a useful position. If you're in a room, protecting an RT, pick an entrance and aim there so you're ready to fire and don't need to adjust your aim to kill a skulk. If you're walking down a hallway, aim for the next door or vent.
2) Put the most possible distance between you and the enemy. Range is your friend, yet I see marines take paths down hallways that block their vision of the door, or needlessly stand in the middle of a room when they should be back against a wall.
3) Watch when you're firing. If you see a skulk, start shooting, and are missing you need stop shooting. You should only fire when your crosshair is over the enemy. As a skulk, I can bait about 2/3rds of a marine's clip when they have almost no chance of actually hitting me. Play a round of NS2 and be mindful of when you die as a marine; was your clip empty as the skulk was still closing distance? If so, you likely fired too much.
Obviously, every has their own personal style for their setup. I use a high sensitivity, I use all 5 fingers to move my mouse (my palm almost never touches the mouse), and I have no shoulder to elbow movement with almost no elbow to wrist movement. I find this isn't too common, but in the end, style is only about what makes you feel comfortable. I have high sensitivity so that I can rely on my twitch aim if I need to. As someone trying to improve, it's really important that you develop the ability to track targets. Most people find tracking targets easier on a lower sensitivity.
Hope some you found this helpful. Good aim is about everything you do in game, not just moving the mouse and firing.
people in SK in 2002-3 had better aim with ball mice or laser mice with tape on the bottom on ice mats at 640x480 resolution then what most players do nowadays in most games despite having 1920x1080 with 4k CPUs running 100 FPS with 4800 DPI mice.
This is a really good point that I forgot about. Some pro CS players, even in the newest CS:GO, still use 800x600 resolution. They do this because the targets are actually bigger at that resolution and they have less 'screen' to move over. It makes aiming a little easier. Obviously, it limits your field of view so there is some good with the bad but they've learned how to flick their screens to cover various areas. Personally, I use 1900x1200 because when I play games I'm not competing for money and it just looks better.
First thing you should do is definitely change from the default crosshair. Then just practice and practice more, preferably 1v1 or 2v2 combat without upgrades (resupply is good) with some good players.
Aim has always been something that perplexed me. Although I typically do quite well in FPS games, I personally feel that I have incredibly mediocre, if not bad, aim.
I personally feel that players frequently overemphasize the importance of plain, fast reaction, perfect tracking aim. Being able to spot a skulk on your screen in under 100ms and being able to stick your crosshair to anything you see moving can only get you so far. People who focus entirely on just this "form" of aiming are typically massively affected by vision obscuring effects, highly susceptible to ambushes, and can also get themselves into positions where they simply cannot win against the odds, regardless of how good their aim is.
It is for this reason that I personally preach awareness of your surroundings, and audio awareness, above aim.
For me, audio is the single most important sense I have in the game. I may, of course, have overstated that, as I am human and therefore rely mainly on sight, but the importance of being able to hear your opponent really cannot be overstated. The main benefit audio has with regards to aiming is simply facing you in the right direction to start with. A big part of aiming, in my opinion, is Fitts Law, which essentially stated that the time required to move the cursor to a target is proportional to the distance from the target and the size of the target. In a game like NS2, chances are that the time at which the distance to the target will be maximized is at the very start of an encounter, before you have even begun firing. Clever and detailed use of audio allows you to minimize this distance, even before you have visual contact with the target.
Next is spatial positioning and awareness of your surroundings. What would you prefer to be able to do: hit a celerity skulk leaping perpendicularly to you without fail, or have the tactical knowledge to ensure that you never have to? When targets move perpendicular to your line of sight, their positional change with regards to the 2D plain your crosshair lines on is at a maximum. This positional change increases the distance to target, and thus increases the time it take to acquire them accurately, so this is typically not a position you want to find yourself in. This can easily be experienced when a skulk is in melee range of you, and is running circles around you, moving perpendicularly to your vision. It can be very hard to shoot a skulk in this situation, and the best thing to do is jump away from the skulk, forcing him to move directly towards you, parallel to your vision. This can be used in general before a skulk has made it that close. Always try to funnel enemies directly towards you, give them little opportunity to move perpendicularly, and if they do begin to move in an untoward fashion, change your own trajectory to minimize the amount of ground they gain on you by doing so.
Another thing is aiming upwards. As anyone who watched Star Wars knows, the higher ground gives quite an advantage. Aiming upwards is difficult. I think gamers generally have a much easier time aiming horizontally, as in side to side, than they do vertically, up and down. You can use this to your great advantage as a skulk when things aren't going to well in a fight, by simply running up a wall. Your opponents accuracy will immediately and drastically decrease, which means you can wait for them to run out of bullets. As for marines, this is a good time to stop shooting. Unless you are a wall crawler yourself, chances are the skulk isn't going to be able to bite you once hes running up a wall, so it may not be the best time to shoot every bullet you have in the clip hitting nothing but metal. If you identify the strategy early enough, you can take the time to reload, and potentially gain some ground on the skulk. The further away you are from a target travelling vertically, the less vertical distance it covers on your view.
Just my 2 (and potentially a bit more) cents. I personally do not value aim very highly in games, though many of the people I play with think I have very good aim. There are other ways to go about it.
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edit: just realized this "veteran" forum is actually just called "competitive". I am not a competitive player in any way, so take what I say with a grain of salt.
Looking at your more recent youtube stuff, I think you could work much more on being efficient and purposeful than the raw aiming capacity. You're often blasting away at low priority targets that you can't damage efficiently (cyst behind 3 friendly marines, enemy building far in the distance and ect) and so on.
Every time you're targetting something, your ability to react to actual incoming threats goes down. Leaving yourself open too much means that you're going to run into a lot of situations that require crazy aiming heroics.
A big thing that helps with practice is consistency. Go grab a ruler and measure how many cm it takes for your mouse to do a 360 degree turn in NS2. You've played NS2 enough that it should be your most comfortable sensitivity.
When that's done, adjust every game you have to that sensitivity. Nice thing about the ruler is that you can slap it down and measure it regardless of DPI, aspect ratio, or FOV and it will be your optimum sensitivity once you calibrate it. (With exception of games that utilize mouse acceleration and smoothing... you should always turn those off).
After that, it's just a matter of playing. There is no secret to it- I'd say about 800 hours is good enough to build decent twitch memory and tracking. You can speed this up if you pay attention on developing good habits (only fire when you are sure it will hit, for example).
1. Mouse. ofcourse. Allready discussed a lot.
2. Mouse-pad. Some people think their superlaser-x mouse doesn't need one. Get like a steelseries one they cost like $10-15. At my beginnnig days I played either without or with crapy mouspads. Now when I remove my steelseries QcK I feel like a paralised person (seriously so much difference).
3. Mouse accelerating. Besides the ingame settings win7 and win8 tend to fwuk with accelerating. Even if you disable it in the mouse settings. Check this link for a fix: http://donewmouseaccel.blogspot.nl/2010/03/markc-windows-7-mouse-acceleration-fix.html
At the beginning you'll be like this is sooo annoying but it will pay off in games very fast.
4. Monitor: There are various ways to go. Personally I have a 23" IPS full hd screen. Someone I know has a 27" ips version. We both prefere IPS over 120mhz (no affordable 120mhz ips yet). Escpecially with higher then full HD 23" + screens I believe it to be a good tradeof. But this is just personal preference I suppose.
5. Do the opposite (this one is rather hard). If a skulks is doing the carousel and hops around you in for example the left direction don't follow him but spin to your right. A skulk is verry fast so he out-carousels you( ) . Counter-spining his direction will get him on your crossair faster.
And 2 non-aim related tips:
-Burst. I know this is not a aming thing and takes some time to learn but bursting at the right moment is a huge improvement.
-Wait till a the enemy is close. If your mag is empty when he reaches you (and he's still not dead) you are gonna have a bad time .
But yeah, I would reinforce what Gliss said in the point that you should find that happy place between jittering and not being able to 180 effectively and when you're comfortable with that, just keep working it. It's helped me quite a bit in competitive rounds.
Being a competitive RTS player and not really fantastic in FPS games, this helped me massively.
We can sit here and argue about mouse, sensitivity, wrists, elbows, 360s and 180s but we all know that the most important thing is obviously how high you sit on your chair and at what angle the backrest is.
It's not just about aim, I think a lot of marines also need to learn not to spray 50 bullets with their LMG in one go. Learn to control your fire timing, it's much better to stop firing when the skulk is jumping all over and then start firing again when he is making a more predictable move. All this while you yourself are jumping around if the skulk is up close as well obviously.
I have found that the best gaming mice are just standard manufacture optical mice. I really love the black/grey dell optical mouse. They're about 5 bucks. Amazing control, amazing precision, and comfortable. You want middle of the road sensitivity though, because NS guns/biting don't have spread/recoil really. It just means that you have to be viable for all kinds of shooting whether it be small adjustments to snipe that hiding skulk or sweeping tracking of a leaping skulk.
Really good lerks are just impossible. Best solution is to just let go of your mouse and let him kill you. much less infuriating.
TL;DR: Patience. Don't move predictably. Use predictable movement to your advantage. Lower sens.
It's been many years since I've done any competitive gaming (I only ever played UT at a high tournament level), but I'd say the biggest things I notice less skilled players doing poorly have already been stated so I'll echo:
Be patient. Don't fire at everything that's on screen. Your accuracy/efficiency will go up immediately by firing less bullets. I train accuracy like I practice guitar. Start slow but accurate. Slowly build up to being good at higher speeds, it'll come slowly but surely. Hitting the right notes is ALL that matters. Work on firing less bullets and hitting more of them. Short bursts (CS players are probably already good at this) will help.
Good aim is far more about prediction and movement than raw accuracy. Sometimes you don't need to move your mouse, you need to strafe with your target. Less so in a game with differing movement speeds, but still sound mechanically. I've played with gamers who averaged 40%+ hitscan(instant) and tracking aim, but who couldn't make it out of the round robins, and pros who rarely broke 35% and were regarded as the best in the world. The differences are tactics, experience and movement.
Move with purpose. Learn the maps, especially the sight lines. Always know why you're moving somewhere. Don't be predictable, and learn patterns in each player. Find their weaknesses and use it against them. You can identify players by their movement patterns. Do they always blink in, attack twice and blink twice away? Even if you die you should learn a lot from every encounter.
It can take a while to unlearn the bad habit of "high sens". Most will not find it fun to be rather useless for weeks or even months. You can be pro with high sens, but if you already are, you know it and don't need advice. You can make a lot of progress without adjusting sens, but might wish you had reduced it, especially for tracking aim. I can't recall a single tournament player who wowed me with tracking aim who used high sens. Hitscan, sure, but not tracking. Just sayin'
Your gear doesn't matter, so long as you're comfortable with it. Keep your gear clean and free from debris, and buy new gear when it's falling apart or mucked up.
My favorite silly reflex game site is: http://www.missionred.com/ I've played these games for years and I can't guarantee anything but it stands to reason this kind of training can help. And bosses might give you a pass for a quick game at work. NS, not so much.
Probably a TL;DR but ah well. Good advice in this thread, I appreciate it as much as anyone.
I don't really think about it at all. I have medium sensitivity, a magenta dot crosshair and a decent mouse. A lot of people advocate constant sensitivity, but I switch mine depending whether I play on marines or aliens (higher on aliens).
Aiming comes naturally after playing FPS games faster paced than NS2 for 15+ years. I regard my accuracy pretty high.
If you just want better aim, play some other game which is faster paced alongside with NS2, such as Quake Live. Practice that lightning gun and railgun snapshots, you'll be a rifle and shotgun pro in no time (a year or couple).
Overpriced mice don't do much for your actual aiming skill, it's purely placebo. If you gamed for 10 years with a microsoft intellimouse explorer, you'll be much better sticking with it.
Overpriced mice don't do much for your actual aiming skill, it's purely placebo. If you gamed for 10 years with a microsoft intellimouse explorer, you'll be much better sticking with it.
Use what's comfortable, in other words. I do find that large, flat, smooth surfaces (branded pads or just well-oiled desks) help tremendously. I remember the first time a friend of mine showed me his fancy new steelseries pad back at a LAN center in the early 2000's. I was super skeptical because it sounded really, really stupid (teflon feet? really?), but after using it I was rather blown away by how much better I played with the extra glide and flatter surface.
Lots of people prefer a course surface (fabric, for example) to a smooth glide surface, so to each their own. If you haven't tried one or the other, though, I definitely recommend trying to find one at a store or see if you can borrow one from a friend. You may be surprised at how much you like it! You may also hate it; I had a steelseries SX for a while, which is made out of anodized aluminum. In the winter... very cold. Very, very cold. So... try before you buy.
The three biggest helps for me have been positioning, trajectory prediction of the target, and burst firing. The first two take time to understand where you should be and where the most common place the skulk is going about go at any given time. Burst firing may be better done in 4-6 round bursts at first until your aim gets better and you can lenghten that as needed to kill things quicker.
Once I learned where to stand to give me the best chances and understood where the skulk is going (obviously not all the time drr) all i had to focus on was fine tuning mouse movements whether it be tracking or twitch style target acquisition as the game does require both.
I use a Logitech G400; I got it specifically so I could adjust the DPI on the mouse side. For NS2, it's set to 2000 dpi. In the game settings, Mouse Sensitivity is set to about 2/5 the way from the left (how's that for specific?). Mouse Acceleration is off, Acceleration amount is all the way to the left, and Raw Input is on. Camera animation is off as when you're firing full auto the screen bounciness made it hard for me to track targets.
That's what works for me and I got there by trial and error, slowly raising the DPI on the mouse as I got more comfortable. That said the thing that makes the most difference in terms of being able to hit targets is the dodging ability of the skulk. The more they bounce around in the up/down plane, the harder it is for me to hit.
High framerate is super important. Check map constantly to try and get an edge. Use sound to deduce where they are coming from. Know if they have leap, celerity, camo etc. Look for patterns in players and lifeforms. Just because you are a marine doesn't mean YOU can't ambush. Find popular points and camp just outside of them, behind a box or above an entrance. Be patient. Train yourself to fire your rifle in bursts. Don't drink too much when you're playing
Use the map to assume gameflow. If you know where they are headed or might be, you can narrow down surprises. Put their shoes on for a moment, try and figure out what they would do and how you would counter that. Eliminate dimensions from your fight. It's easier to aim at something traveling in one vector than two vectors.
Understand the lifeform youre fighting. Let Onos overcommit. Block doors after fades come in. Let lerks get comfortable before shooting them. Always assume theres a skulk in the room. Knowing where to aim, before you have to, eliminates a lot of reaction time. You can either aim where they will be going, or make them go where you are aiming. If you can find a way to discourage enemies from using areas as entrances or exits, you'll make your life easier and theirs much more expensive.
Finally, sit upright. Have good ergonomics. Don't get flustered. THINK about what you're doing.
Wow, this is a really complex subject, but as a veteran gamer, I'll try to share some of what I've learned.
1) Gear
Having a super costly 'gaming gear' doesn't help as much as one would think. The most important thing is to have a mouse and pad that feel comfortable to you, don't strain your hand or produce any other unpleasant sensations during playing. They should be like an extension of your body, their presence unnoticeable. Another thing that may be important if you really want to improve, is getting a mouse without hardware acceleration. This will assure that the pointer will always move in the intended and predictable way, making it easier to develop good aim.
2) Grip
What mouse grip to use is a largely personal thing, it depends on the size of your hands and the mouse. However, you should generally try to use one gripping style at all times. This will help to develop muscle memory of certain movements, making them happen unconsciously and very quickly. This is essential for developing good aim.
3) Concentration
Being focused helps a lot with aiming and generally doing well in any game. Sitting straight and maintaining the right posture improves the blood-flow to your brain, improving concentration. Making short brakes every hour or so, getting up and moving a little, maybe making a few stretches, can work wonders. Generally speaking, if your body is in an active state, so is your brain.
4) Settings
The most important thing here is consistency. Try to find a sensitivity setting that seems to suit your grip and play style and stick with it. The longer you use that same setting, the more used to it your body will become and the faster your reactions will be. As for the values, its mostly personal preference. I like to set my mouse DPI resolution extremely high and the sensitivity pretty low, resulting in a medium pointer speed but smooth and accurate movement (even the tiniest movements are registered).
From my experience, high pointer speed is recommended in situations when movement prediction is more important than tracking. For example, when using a delayed impact weapon, like the rocket launcher in Quake. In this scenario you don't want to track the enemy model with your crosshair, but rather point it at their predicted location at the moment of rocket impact. You need to be able to point the right spot as soon as your brain calculates it, time is more important than precision here. This also applies to weapons with slow fire rate and damage spread, like the shotgun.
On the other hand, when using an accurate, instant hit weapon, I'd recommend a lower sensitivity. With weapons like the LMG, consistent target tracking is very important. Reducing sensitivity prevents the crosshair from erratic movements, it smooths the movements and increases precision. However, you still need to be fast enough to actually keep up with fast targets, so you can't go too low with your sensitivity.
Also remember, that the closer your target is to you, the larger your targeting adjustments will be (larger turn angles). Therefore, generally the shorter range weapons benefit from high sensitivity while the long range guns are better with low sens.
And always turn off pointer acceleration!
5) Movement and Positioning
A key aspect in aiming is your position relative to your target and their movement direction. You should always try to position yourself so that your target moves towards or away from you, thereby making its perceived position on your screen more or less static. The worst situation is when the target is moving from one side of your screen to the other, because this requires the biggest adjustments on your part. Also, remember that making vertical adjustments (aiming up or down) is usually harder than aiming horizontally (because of the hand and arm movements required). Furthermore, you should keep some distance from your target - the closer it gets, the faster its relative movements will become and it may even leave your field of view. Putting your crosshair near possible entry locations of targets helps to reduce the initial aim adjust.
6) Conclusion
Actually, this is mostly about physics and math calculations done subconsciously by your brain to predict the location of the moving target. Your conscious goal should be to make sure that the target on your screen is moving at the slowest perceived speed possible. Changing your position relative to the target can help to achieve that, because what you are seeing is a 2D projection of a 3D space. Understating the math behind this can help but is definitely not necessary. What is most important is repetition in a constant environment - same mouse, same grip, same posture, same settings. With time, the wonderful computer that you have in your head will teach itself how to do the rest.
i do want to point out that there are actual professional players (ie have sponsors that fly them around the world (ie nobody on this forum)) that use mouse acceleration. You get a low sensitivity with the ability to do pretty much instant 180's.
the reason acceleration gets such a bad wrap, I believe, is due to source's (old) awful implementation of it. It was based on FPS - so if you had 120 FPS and did a flick, it'd take you to a different place than, say, 80fps. I believe Valve fixed this, at least in TF2.
Whether or not it's viable on the Spark engine, though...
Oh cool they fixed the fps lock issue with fraps and the 4GB filesize problem? Awesome, I haven't used it in a while due to those issues.
Back on topic, I consider myself to have pretty good aim, not the best but definitely pretty good. So when it's quiet(actually tomorrow will be great opportunity) I'll put together a video showcasing my method of aiming in ns2. I'm terrible with the grenade launcher but I'll show off my rifle and shotgun skills.
For NS2, it's set to 2000 dpi. In the game settings, Mouse Sensitivity is set to about 2/5 the way from the left (how's that for specific?). Mouse Acceleration is off, Acceleration amount is all the way to the left, and Raw Input is on. Camera animation is off as when you're firing full auto the screen bounciness made it hard for me to track targets.
That sounds like you have a 2mm/360
That's what works for me and I got there by trial and error, slowly raising the DPI on the mouse as I got more comfortable. That said the thing that makes the most difference in terms of being able to hit targets is the dodging ability of the skulk. The more they bounce around in the up/down plane, the harder it is for me to hit.
You should do the opposite, slowly lower your sens as you get comfortable with it. The whole point of low sens is to make tracking a lot easier, even if the target is fast moving or close to you.
You can't possibly have any relation to how much mouse movement will affect crosshair movement with sens that high, and no amount of practice will fix that. If you have a 5mm 180 and move 7mm, something really really easy to do even with a lot of practice, you'll way overshoot where you want aim (by 60 degrees). If your 180 is 5" and you move 6" (much bigger mistake with mouse), you'll only be off by 30 degrees ingame. There's no benefit at all to higher sens
Regarding mouses, the G500 is a very bad idea, it's a fantastic mouse for everything, but not at all for gaming. The sensor is not centered, but the worst is: it has hardware mouse acceleration that you can't disable. Logitech knows the problem but can't (or didn't and probably never will) fix it.
I too use an MX518. While I don't play competitive really, I like to think I could. For me it's mostly about prediction. Which is guided by experience and memorization.
I try to set myself up in similar locations and watch what the skulks do. Every time you'll learn better what paths they tend to take and the probability of proper prediction goes up. Start with big rooms like tech points. Try defending a tech point for a while, don't push forward, just hold ground. Eventually you will see patterns. Over time work room to room. You wont need to memorize every room, cause after a while you'll be able to figure it out before it even happens. When you are a marine, think about what paths you would take if you were a skulk, (to attack your current position). More than anything, stay calm.
And for general survivability, always expect and plan for that second skulk.
First you have to react to when your enemy appears on your screen. Even if your aim is dead on the spot they are going to appear you still have to shoot in that instant, which can be up to .3 seconds for many people.
Second, any time your target changes direction in a manner you fail to predict you must again react before you can correct your aim, which can again take the same .3 seconds. Predicting which way your target will move and how far before they actually do it minimizes the effect of reactions, but no one predicts this perfectly.
Ultimately, I don't believe reaction time is trainable. It is variable to a certain extent, but the upper limits do not get better with practice. At best physical health, especially diet and exercise, can improve your reactions somewhat although they will still only deteriorate with age. While there is a great deal one can do to improve their abilities in a game even without being able to improve their reaction times, the bottom line is that they are going to be stuck on a lower plateau than those with naturally quicker reflexes. Pro reaction times can be lower than .1 seconds, but those people are very rare and no amount of training will get you there if you aren't already close.
i do want to point out that there are actual professional players (ie have sponsors that fly them around the world (ie nobody on this forum)) that use mouse acceleration. You get a low sensitivity with the ability to do pretty much instant 180's.
the reason acceleration gets such a bad wrap, I believe, is due to source's (old) awful implementation of it. It was based on FPS - so if you had 120 FPS and did a flick, it'd take you to a different place than, say, 80fps. I believe Valve fixed this, at least in TF2.
Whether or not it's viable on the Spark engine, though...
Yeah, the main problem with acceleration is the inconsistent and flawed implementation in most games. For example Goldscr used Windows acceleration, which made aiming absolutely impossible. The modern consolification hasn't exactly helped with the mouse setting finesse either.
The no accel is the safe way to go. I don't think it's a bad idea at all to experiment with the acceleration at some point, but I do think you're better off doing that once you roughly know how the no accel feels.
Comments
1) This sounds really stupid, but sitting up straight makes a huge difference. I find wearing shoes makes me sit up more and be more of a tryhard in general. It's silly, but it totally works.
2) From watching a lot of your videos, Hugh, I would recommend a lower sensitivity. You tend to over-adjust a lot especially in close quarters as both marine and alien.
The number one issue that I find time and time again, whether it's trying to snipe a light assault flag carrier moving 270mph in tribes:ascent or trying to shotgun a skulk in NS2, is that players think aim is just about moving the mouse on the target and firing. The ability to quickly snap to a target (called 'twitch' aiming) and get a kill is probably the single hardest aspect to master and can only be relied upon after years and years of online FPS gaming.
Position and movement are so much more important than your ability to twitch aim, yet I see a lot of players in FPS games only try to twitch aim. You should always set yourself up for success and you can only do that by your positioning and movement. When you don't set yourself up for success, you rely on outskilling your opponent and put yourself at a much greater risk. Sometimes that risk is necessary; usually it's not.
If you're reading this and really want to improve your aim (as a marine) here are my 3 most helpful tips I could suggest in NS2:
1) Always have your crosshair pointed in a useful position. If you're in a room, protecting an RT, pick an entrance and aim there so you're ready to fire and don't need to adjust your aim to kill a skulk. If you're walking down a hallway, aim for the next door or vent.
2) Put the most possible distance between you and the enemy. Range is your friend, yet I see marines take paths down hallways that block their vision of the door, or needlessly stand in the middle of a room when they should be back against a wall.
3) Watch when you're firing. If you see a skulk, start shooting, and are missing you need stop shooting. You should only fire when your crosshair is over the enemy. As a skulk, I can bait about 2/3rds of a marine's clip when they have almost no chance of actually hitting me. Play a round of NS2 and be mindful of when you die as a marine; was your clip empty as the skulk was still closing distance? If so, you likely fired too much.
Obviously, every has their own personal style for their setup. I use a high sensitivity, I use all 5 fingers to move my mouse (my palm almost never touches the mouse), and I have no shoulder to elbow movement with almost no elbow to wrist movement. I find this isn't too common, but in the end, style is only about what makes you feel comfortable. I have high sensitivity so that I can rely on my twitch aim if I need to. As someone trying to improve, it's really important that you develop the ability to track targets. Most people find tracking targets easier on a lower sensitivity.
Hope some you found this helpful. Good aim is about everything you do in game, not just moving the mouse and firing.
This is a really good point that I forgot about. Some pro CS players, even in the newest CS:GO, still use 800x600 resolution. They do this because the targets are actually bigger at that resolution and they have less 'screen' to move over. It makes aiming a little easier. Obviously, it limits your field of view so there is some good with the bad but they've learned how to flick their screens to cover various areas. Personally, I use 1900x1200 because when I play games I'm not competing for money and it just looks better.
I personally feel that players frequently overemphasize the importance of plain, fast reaction, perfect tracking aim. Being able to spot a skulk on your screen in under 100ms and being able to stick your crosshair to anything you see moving can only get you so far. People who focus entirely on just this "form" of aiming are typically massively affected by vision obscuring effects, highly susceptible to ambushes, and can also get themselves into positions where they simply cannot win against the odds, regardless of how good their aim is.
It is for this reason that I personally preach awareness of your surroundings, and audio awareness, above aim.
For me, audio is the single most important sense I have in the game. I may, of course, have overstated that, as I am human and therefore rely mainly on sight, but the importance of being able to hear your opponent really cannot be overstated. The main benefit audio has with regards to aiming is simply facing you in the right direction to start with. A big part of aiming, in my opinion, is Fitts Law, which essentially stated that the time required to move the cursor to a target is proportional to the distance from the target and the size of the target. In a game like NS2, chances are that the time at which the distance to the target will be maximized is at the very start of an encounter, before you have even begun firing. Clever and detailed use of audio allows you to minimize this distance, even before you have visual contact with the target.
Next is spatial positioning and awareness of your surroundings. What would you prefer to be able to do: hit a celerity skulk leaping perpendicularly to you without fail, or have the tactical knowledge to ensure that you never have to? When targets move perpendicular to your line of sight, their positional change with regards to the 2D plain your crosshair lines on is at a maximum. This positional change increases the distance to target, and thus increases the time it take to acquire them accurately, so this is typically not a position you want to find yourself in. This can easily be experienced when a skulk is in melee range of you, and is running circles around you, moving perpendicularly to your vision. It can be very hard to shoot a skulk in this situation, and the best thing to do is jump away from the skulk, forcing him to move directly towards you, parallel to your vision. This can be used in general before a skulk has made it that close. Always try to funnel enemies directly towards you, give them little opportunity to move perpendicularly, and if they do begin to move in an untoward fashion, change your own trajectory to minimize the amount of ground they gain on you by doing so.
Another thing is aiming upwards. As anyone who watched Star Wars knows, the higher ground gives quite an advantage. Aiming upwards is difficult. I think gamers generally have a much easier time aiming horizontally, as in side to side, than they do vertically, up and down. You can use this to your great advantage as a skulk when things aren't going to well in a fight, by simply running up a wall. Your opponents accuracy will immediately and drastically decrease, which means you can wait for them to run out of bullets. As for marines, this is a good time to stop shooting. Unless you are a wall crawler yourself, chances are the skulk isn't going to be able to bite you once hes running up a wall, so it may not be the best time to shoot every bullet you have in the clip hitting nothing but metal. If you identify the strategy early enough, you can take the time to reload, and potentially gain some ground on the skulk. The further away you are from a target travelling vertically, the less vertical distance it covers on your view.
Just my 2 (and potentially a bit more) cents. I personally do not value aim very highly in games, though many of the people I play with think I have very good aim. There are other ways to go about it.
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edit: just realized this "veteran" forum is actually just called "competitive". I am not a competitive player in any way, so take what I say with a grain of salt.
Every time you're targetting something, your ability to react to actual incoming threats goes down. Leaving yourself open too much means that you're going to run into a lot of situations that require crazy aiming heroics.
A big thing that helps with practice is consistency. Go grab a ruler and measure how many cm it takes for your mouse to do a 360 degree turn in NS2. You've played NS2 enough that it should be your most comfortable sensitivity.
When that's done, adjust every game you have to that sensitivity. Nice thing about the ruler is that you can slap it down and measure it regardless of DPI, aspect ratio, or FOV and it will be your optimum sensitivity once you calibrate it. (With exception of games that utilize mouse acceleration and smoothing... you should always turn those off).
After that, it's just a matter of playing. There is no secret to it- I'd say about 800 hours is good enough to build decent twitch memory and tracking. You can speed this up if you pay attention on developing good habits (only fire when you are sure it will hit, for example).
Also, keep in mind that certain monitors can affect your reaction speed. Check out this reaction timing test: http://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime/
On my 120hz monitor, I consistently score 180ms reaction time. On a plain 60hz monitor I score 230ms... I wonder why?
2. Mouse-pad. Some people think their superlaser-x mouse doesn't need one. Get like a steelseries one they cost like $10-15. At my beginnnig days I played either without or with crapy mouspads. Now when I remove my steelseries QcK I feel like a paralised person (seriously so much difference).
3. Mouse accelerating. Besides the ingame settings win7 and win8 tend to fwuk with accelerating. Even if you disable it in the mouse settings. Check this link for a fix:
http://donewmouseaccel.blogspot.nl/2010/03/markc-windows-7-mouse-acceleration-fix.html
At the beginning you'll be like this is sooo annoying but it will pay off in games very fast.
4. Monitor: There are various ways to go. Personally I have a 23" IPS full hd screen. Someone I know has a 27" ips version. We both prefere IPS over 120mhz (no affordable 120mhz ips yet). Escpecially with higher then full HD 23" + screens I believe it to be a good tradeof. But this is just personal preference I suppose.
5. Do the opposite (this one is rather hard). If a skulks is doing the carousel and hops around you in for example the left direction don't follow him but spin to your right. A skulk is verry fast so he out-carousels you(
And 2 non-aim related tips:
-Burst. I know this is not a aming thing and takes some time to learn but bursting at the right moment is a huge improvement.
-Wait till a the enemy is close. If your mag is empty when he reaches you (and he's still not dead) you are gonna have a bad time
But yeah, I would reinforce what Gliss said in the point that you should find that happy place between jittering and not being able to 180 effectively and when you're comfortable with that, just keep working it. It's helped me quite a bit in competitive rounds.
Being a competitive RTS player and not really fantastic in FPS games, this helped me massively.
Really good lerks are just impossible. Best solution is to just let go of your mouse and let him kill you. much less infuriating.
It's been many years since I've done any competitive gaming (I only ever played UT at a high tournament level), but I'd say the biggest things I notice less skilled players doing poorly have already been stated so I'll echo:
Be patient. Don't fire at everything that's on screen. Your accuracy/efficiency will go up immediately by firing less bullets. I train accuracy like I practice guitar. Start slow but accurate. Slowly build up to being good at higher speeds, it'll come slowly but surely. Hitting the right notes is ALL that matters. Work on firing less bullets and hitting more of them. Short bursts (CS players are probably already good at this) will help.
Good aim is far more about prediction and movement than raw accuracy. Sometimes you don't need to move your mouse, you need to strafe with your target. Less so in a game with differing movement speeds, but still sound mechanically. I've played with gamers who averaged 40%+ hitscan(instant) and tracking aim, but who couldn't make it out of the round robins, and pros who rarely broke 35% and were regarded as the best in the world. The differences are tactics, experience and movement.
Move with purpose. Learn the maps, especially the sight lines. Always know why you're moving somewhere. Don't be predictable, and learn patterns in each player. Find their weaknesses and use it against them. You can identify players by their movement patterns. Do they always blink in, attack twice and blink twice away? Even if you die you should learn a lot from every encounter.
It can take a while to unlearn the bad habit of "high sens". Most will not find it fun to be rather useless for weeks or even months. You can be pro with high sens, but if you already are, you know it and don't need advice. You can make a lot of progress without adjusting sens, but might wish you had reduced it, especially for tracking aim. I can't recall a single tournament player who wowed me with tracking aim who used high sens. Hitscan, sure, but not tracking. Just sayin'
Your gear doesn't matter, so long as you're comfortable with it. Keep your gear clean and free from debris, and buy new gear when it's falling apart or mucked up.
My favorite silly reflex game site is: http://www.missionred.com/ I've played these games for years and I can't guarantee anything but it stands to reason this kind of training can help. And bosses might give you a pass for a quick game at work. NS, not so much.
Probably a TL;DR but ah well. Good advice in this thread, I appreciate it as much as anyone.
Aiming comes naturally after playing FPS games faster paced than NS2 for 15+ years. I regard my accuracy pretty high.
If you just want better aim, play some other game which is faster paced alongside with NS2, such as Quake Live. Practice that lightning gun and railgun snapshots, you'll be a rifle and shotgun pro in no time (a year or couple).
Lots of people prefer a course surface (fabric, for example) to a smooth glide surface, so to each their own. If you haven't tried one or the other, though, I definitely recommend trying to find one at a store or see if you can borrow one from a friend. You may be surprised at how much you like it! You may also hate it; I had a steelseries SX for a while, which is made out of anodized aluminum. In the winter... very cold. Very, very cold. So... try before you buy.
Once I learned where to stand to give me the best chances and understood where the skulk is going (obviously not all the time drr) all i had to focus on was fine tuning mouse movements whether it be tracking or twitch style target acquisition as the game does require both.
That's what works for me and I got there by trial and error, slowly raising the DPI on the mouse as I got more comfortable. That said the thing that makes the most difference in terms of being able to hit targets is the dodging ability of the skulk. The more they bounce around in the up/down plane, the harder it is for me to hit.
Corepad Deskpad: http://www.amazon.com/Corepad-CORE-CP11016-CP11016-Deskpad-XXXXL/dp/B006EKXZJ8
MX500
High framerate is super important. Check map constantly to try and get an edge. Use sound to deduce where they are coming from. Know if they have leap, celerity, camo etc. Look for patterns in players and lifeforms. Just because you are a marine doesn't mean YOU can't ambush. Find popular points and camp just outside of them, behind a box or above an entrance. Be patient. Train yourself to fire your rifle in bursts. Don't drink too much when you're playing
Use the map to assume gameflow. If you know where they are headed or might be, you can narrow down surprises. Put their shoes on for a moment, try and figure out what they would do and how you would counter that. Eliminate dimensions from your fight. It's easier to aim at something traveling in one vector than two vectors.
Understand the lifeform youre fighting. Let Onos overcommit. Block doors after fades come in. Let lerks get comfortable before shooting them. Always assume theres a skulk in the room. Knowing where to aim, before you have to, eliminates a lot of reaction time. You can either aim where they will be going, or make them go where you are aiming. If you can find a way to discourage enemies from using areas as entrances or exits, you'll make your life easier and theirs much more expensive.
Finally, sit upright. Have good ergonomics. Don't get flustered. THINK about what you're doing.
1) Gear
Having a super costly 'gaming gear' doesn't help as much as one would think. The most important thing is to have a mouse and pad that feel comfortable to you, don't strain your hand or produce any other unpleasant sensations during playing. They should be like an extension of your body, their presence unnoticeable. Another thing that may be important if you really want to improve, is getting a mouse without hardware acceleration. This will assure that the pointer will always move in the intended and predictable way, making it easier to develop good aim.
2) Grip
What mouse grip to use is a largely personal thing, it depends on the size of your hands and the mouse. However, you should generally try to use one gripping style at all times. This will help to develop muscle memory of certain movements, making them happen unconsciously and very quickly. This is essential for developing good aim.
3) Concentration
Being focused helps a lot with aiming and generally doing well in any game. Sitting straight and maintaining the right posture improves the blood-flow to your brain, improving concentration. Making short brakes every hour or so, getting up and moving a little, maybe making a few stretches, can work wonders. Generally speaking, if your body is in an active state, so is your brain.
4) Settings
The most important thing here is consistency. Try to find a sensitivity setting that seems to suit your grip and play style and stick with it. The longer you use that same setting, the more used to it your body will become and the faster your reactions will be. As for the values, its mostly personal preference. I like to set my mouse DPI resolution extremely high and the sensitivity pretty low, resulting in a medium pointer speed but smooth and accurate movement (even the tiniest movements are registered).
From my experience, high pointer speed is recommended in situations when movement prediction is more important than tracking. For example, when using a delayed impact weapon, like the rocket launcher in Quake. In this scenario you don't want to track the enemy model with your crosshair, but rather point it at their predicted location at the moment of rocket impact. You need to be able to point the right spot as soon as your brain calculates it, time is more important than precision here. This also applies to weapons with slow fire rate and damage spread, like the shotgun.
On the other hand, when using an accurate, instant hit weapon, I'd recommend a lower sensitivity. With weapons like the LMG, consistent target tracking is very important. Reducing sensitivity prevents the crosshair from erratic movements, it smooths the movements and increases precision. However, you still need to be fast enough to actually keep up with fast targets, so you can't go too low with your sensitivity.
Also remember, that the closer your target is to you, the larger your targeting adjustments will be (larger turn angles). Therefore, generally the shorter range weapons benefit from high sensitivity while the long range guns are better with low sens.
And always turn off pointer acceleration!
5) Movement and Positioning
A key aspect in aiming is your position relative to your target and their movement direction. You should always try to position yourself so that your target moves towards or away from you, thereby making its perceived position on your screen more or less static. The worst situation is when the target is moving from one side of your screen to the other, because this requires the biggest adjustments on your part. Also, remember that making vertical adjustments (aiming up or down) is usually harder than aiming horizontally (because of the hand and arm movements required). Furthermore, you should keep some distance from your target - the closer it gets, the faster its relative movements will become and it may even leave your field of view. Putting your crosshair near possible entry locations of targets helps to reduce the initial aim adjust.
6) Conclusion
Actually, this is mostly about physics and math calculations done subconsciously by your brain to predict the location of the moving target. Your conscious goal should be to make sure that the target on your screen is moving at the slowest perceived speed possible. Changing your position relative to the target can help to achieve that, because what you are seeing is a 2D projection of a 3D space. Understating the math behind this can help but is definitely not necessary. What is most important is repetition in a constant environment - same mouse, same grip, same posture, same settings. With time, the wonderful computer that you have in your head will teach itself how to do the rest.
the reason acceleration gets such a bad wrap, I believe, is due to source's (old) awful implementation of it. It was based on FPS - so if you had 120 FPS and did a flick, it'd take you to a different place than, say, 80fps. I believe Valve fixed this, at least in TF2.
Whether or not it's viable on the Spark engine, though...
Back on topic, I consider myself to have pretty good aim, not the best but definitely pretty good. So when it's quiet(actually tomorrow will be great opportunity) I'll put together a video showcasing my method of aiming in ns2. I'm terrible with the grenade launcher but I'll show off my rifle and shotgun skills.
That sounds like you have a 2mm/360
You should do the opposite, slowly lower your sens as you get comfortable with it. The whole point of low sens is to make tracking a lot easier, even if the target is fast moving or close to you.
You can't possibly have any relation to how much mouse movement will affect crosshair movement with sens that high, and no amount of practice will fix that. If you have a 5mm 180 and move 7mm, something really really easy to do even with a lot of practice, you'll way overshoot where you want aim (by 60 degrees). If your 180 is 5" and you move 6" (much bigger mistake with mouse), you'll only be off by 30 degrees ingame. There's no benefit at all to higher sens
I try to set myself up in similar locations and watch what the skulks do. Every time you'll learn better what paths they tend to take and the probability of proper prediction goes up. Start with big rooms like tech points. Try defending a tech point for a while, don't push forward, just hold ground. Eventually you will see patterns. Over time work room to room. You wont need to memorize every room, cause after a while you'll be able to figure it out before it even happens. When you are a marine, think about what paths you would take if you were a skulk, (to attack your current position). More than anything, stay calm.
And for general survivability, always expect and plan for that second skulk.
First you have to react to when your enemy appears on your screen. Even if your aim is dead on the spot they are going to appear you still have to shoot in that instant, which can be up to .3 seconds for many people.
Second, any time your target changes direction in a manner you fail to predict you must again react before you can correct your aim, which can again take the same .3 seconds. Predicting which way your target will move and how far before they actually do it minimizes the effect of reactions, but no one predicts this perfectly.
Ultimately, I don't believe reaction time is trainable. It is variable to a certain extent, but the upper limits do not get better with practice. At best physical health, especially diet and exercise, can improve your reactions somewhat although they will still only deteriorate with age. While there is a great deal one can do to improve their abilities in a game even without being able to improve their reaction times, the bottom line is that they are going to be stuck on a lower plateau than those with naturally quicker reflexes. Pro reaction times can be lower than .1 seconds, but those people are very rare and no amount of training will get you there if you aren't already close.
The no accel is the safe way to go. I don't think it's a bad idea at all to experiment with the acceleration at some point, but I do think you're better off doing that once you roughly know how the no accel feels.