Title is self explanatory.
I play gunnners a lot mostly because of the reinforcements skill and because I can support my team with nades or blasts and so play on. But the biggest weakness of mine is that my aim sucks. I do want to get better at it but it's hard for me to "practise" in Open matches when my team gets pasted (usually because of veteran players going sniper heros and/or good jedis) so is there any way I could get better outside of just playing the game?
i have wonderful aim (half the time), here's my tips:
1. Set cg_thirdpersontargetdamp and cg_thirdpersoncameradamp to 1. This makes your camera follow your crosshair and location very tightly, making your aiming environment more precise. Also: Play in third person, although playing in first person can be a good exercise too.
2. Get a good gaming mouse and a good mousepad. Have a good framerate, with VSync and any kind of mouse acceleration turned off. (edit: see below for me remembering that there's a potentially good kind of mouse acceleration. It's a special case. It's what I'm currently using, actually.)
3. Set your DPI/sens to something fairly low, for greater precision. This requires more desk space to work with tho. I have 800 DPI with the in-game sensitivity set to 2 ("sensitivity 2" in console), for an "effective DPI" of 1600.
4. Become mindful of where each gun "fires from", each gun has a different "firing spot," where the shots come from relative to your... camera position. Or relative to your player model, you could say, but that's not really true. You can get a sense of where each gun "fires from" by pressing your face against a wall and seeing where the dynamic crosshair ends up. E-11 and Pistol fire from a spot in the air above your right shoulder. Clone rifle fires from a spot closer to the center horizontally but still displaced to the right. A280, DLT-20a, Westar M5, and EE-3 all fire essentially from your forehead, very high up, which is where your first person camera is positioned. I think T-21 is like clone rifle, not sure. Being mindful of these firing locations as you aim will help a lot for aiming precisely at closer ranges; it's extremely important for flinching but also for any close range fight.
(Note that the dual pistol crosshair is inaccurate and needs to be fixed.)
(And note that descriptions like "above your right shoulder" are not consistent, because your player model will rotate in various ways as you strafe left and right, but the firing position will remain "constant" (relative to... something... Relative to your first person camera position.))
5. Maybe play with your crosshair turned off, temporarily, because this will require you to aim by actually paying attention to where your shots are going, which will make you a lot more conscious of how much you need to lead your shots (and perhaps more conscious of how each guns "firing position" affects how you aim). This helped me a bit.
6. Mentally, I find it helps to clear your mind by just looking clearly at what you're trying to hit (usually the enemy's head) and just... focusing on the image that you see. Just looking straight at it. And pointing wherever you need to point to hit it. Of course, knowing how far you need to lead your shot requires some practice, but my leading also gets way better if I calm down and just simplify the situation down to "just look at this object"
7. Download my "theoretically optimal crosshair" I made from scratch lol. It's got great visibility in all contexts. It replaces crosshair 3 I think.
Edit:
Also, be aware of the accuracy rules for each gun.
Accurate all the time:
Pistols (including dual pistols, although their crosshair is a bit fucked up)
Level 2 Westar M5
Scoped Westar M5 Sniper Fire WITH Dexterity 3
Clone rifle concussion/ion blobs, I guess? I don't think they have any spread ever.
Disruptor unscoped fire
Deka fire lol
Accurate while standing still, crouchwalking, or walking:
E-11 primary
Level 3 E-11 secondary
A280 primary mode (single-shot)
Level 1 Westar M5
Scoped Westar M5 Sniper Fire WITHOUT Dexterity 3
SBD fire
Accurate only while standing still:
T-21 (primary and secondary)
Clone Rifle fire DLT-20a (even though it's mostly an A280 reskin)
Projectile Rifle EE-3 Sniper mode (Note that if you let go of all WASD keys while jetpacking, you can fire accurately while jetpacking)
Can only be fired while standing still:
Disruptor scoped
If you really want to learn how to aim play another shooter game like quake. Playing mb2 will certainly improve your projectile aim but if you only play mb2 your hitscan aim will probably remain pretty bad, plus getting used to being in 3rd person all the time won't give you a shooter gaming sense as sharp as some of the mainstream FPS games (quake, csgo ? not sure what i can call mainstream).
1. Set cg_thirdpersontargetdamp and cg_thirdpersoncameradamp to 1. This makes your camera follow your crosshair and location very tightly, making your aiming environment more precise.
This is the single most important thing you can do to improve your aim. By default the crosshair and camera lag slightly behind your character's movement, and this has a huge impact on aiming using the crosshair. I have no idea why such a strange default setting was chosen.
Don't confuse this with cg_dynamiccrosshair though, which some people like to set to 0. Setting it to 0 permanently locks your crosshair to the center of your screen, regardless of where your gun is actually pointing. Leaving this on 1 makes your crosshair predict where your shots will land. This is probably a personal preference thing, I prefer leaving this on 1.
I strongly suggest using single crosshairs for westar/arc pistols instead of the default dual crosshair thing, because the crosshair for is actually accurate... only for the right gun. The left hand gun will only match up with the dual crosshair at a specific distance. If you use the single crosshair, you'll always know where your right shots will be landing, but you'll just have to "get a feeling" for where your left shot is going to go.
3. Set your DPI/sens to something fairly low, for greater precision. This requires more desk space to work with tho. I have 800 DPI with the in-game sensitivity set to 2 ("sensitivity 2" in console), for an "effective DPI" of 1600.
I could be wrong because I'm not MLG, but I was under the impression that this is the opposite of what you want to be doing. Higher DPI is better because it makes your mouse more sensitive and accurate to fine hand movements, while lower in-game sensitivity is better because it means more hand movement equates to less crosshair movement. This means that even the slightest twitch of your hand will register, but you have to move your hand more to get around your screen. This lets you more easily make very fine "pixel perfect" adjustments in your aim.
Other things:
1. Bind your 1st person toggle key somewhere easily accessible. 3rd person provides a lot of advantages and should be what you're using most of the time, but 1st person has some niche uses. 1st person is extremely helpful when you get into a fight at point blank range, especially against jedi. It lets you aim without your character model getting in the way, and with cg_dynamiccrosshair 1 it keeps your crosshair closer to the true center of your screen.
2. As much as possible, stick to servers where you get the lowest ping. Because of MB2's slow bullet travel speeds, latency makes a huge difference in your ability to lead targets well. Low latency is also very important for things like timing shots to hit jedi mid swing. I have pretty good aim with 30-40 ping. My aim suffers quite a bit at 70-80 ping. Over 100 ping and trying to aim well feels like an exercise in futility to me.
3. Play around with cl_timenudge values. I don't know if I my understanding of this is completely accurate (so someone chime in if you've got a better description of how timenudge works), but I've found cl_timenudge -50 very helpful when playing on low ping and a steady connection. I'm not sure what the actual minimum value is, but -50 should clamp it to whatever the actual lowest is. This disables (or sets as low as it can go?) the built in lag compensation in the game. This results in other players' movement appearing slightly more jerky to you (assuming you have a stable connection, if not they might get significantly more jerky), but there's less delay between when your game receives info from the server to when it displays it on your screen. This can be very helpful for timing based things (again, like shooting jedi during swings). Setting timenudge to negative values probably isn't a good idea on higher pings though.
Higher DPI is better because it makes your mouse more sensitive and accurate to fine hand movements, while lower in-game sensitivity is better because it means more hand movement equates to less crosshair movement.
The main point I was making was just for your "eDPI" (effective DPI) to be something low, like 1600. This can be accomplished by having a DPI of 400 and a sensitivity of 4, or a DPI of 3200 and a sensitivity of 0.5. There is a youtube video out there showing how choosing the higher DPI lower sens option makes for greater fine-grained precision, but I think it's a moot point past a certain level...
And, more significantly, I've had some strange results sometimes with either high DPI or low sensitivity (1 or lower), like moving my mouse a long distance quickly and it registering as a much shorter distance. I haven't thoroughly investigated this matter, but 800x2 settings seem like the most solid recommendation. It's possible it was a problem with my mouse specifically
I agree about this. I have mousewheel-up set to first person and mousewheel-down set to third person (and various keys around my left hand set to specific guns/nades/melee).
Also definitely agree about the importance of playing low ping servers.
No comment about the timenudge. Haven't played with it myself.
i have wonderful aim (half the time), here's my tips:
1. Set cg_thirdpersontargetdamp and cg_thirdpersoncameradamp to 1. This makes your camera follow your crosshair and location very tightly, making your aiming environment more precise. Also: Play in third person, although playing in first person can be a good exercise too
Another common tip to help with aiming consistency for any game would be to disable mouse acceleration (in windows mouse options, dunno about other operating systems). As was said it's "generally" preferable to use lower sensitivity to better learn precision (being able to rotate about 360° with a single swipe of the maximum length possible on your mousepad should be a decent reference), but that's a matter of personal preference in the end. One thing that is almost absolutely necessary is a gaming mouse, even the cheapest available, but a gaming one; because non-gaming mouses (always ?) have a technical limitation where past a certain mouse swiping speed they won't register the movement correctly so your crosshair on the screen will only move at a certain limit speed, not following your mouse movement correctly (although if you never move the mouse too fast, even non-gaming mouses will be pretty accurate).
my dpi is 2400 and like a sliver of the sensitivity slider. no idea what number thatd be . but yeah higher dpi really help when you get used to it. gradually increase your speed until you can 180 with a little flick and still be precise enough
I mean, your statement really doesn't mean much of anything if you don't state your eDPI (effective DPI). Your eDPI determines the overall "speed" of your movement as you move your mouse, your DPI itself only determines whether or not extremely precise movements are picked up, and above 400 DPI i think the difference doesn't really matter.
Note: Higher eDPI is probably better for saberists, because they benefit from being able to do extremely fast turns constantly. Lower eDPI is better for gunners, who are concerned with aiming precisely at heads. But in this game gunners do need to be able to turn quickly, which is why I recommend 1600 eDPI instead of 800 eDPI (the CSGO pro standard lol).
Of the two best (NA) gunners I think I've seen in this game, one used 1600 eDPI and the other used this "good mouse acceleration" driver (to have a mix of precision and potential speed).
Also: I just checked and 2 sensitivity is the far left edge of the Sensitivity bar in controls, so with a "tiny sliver" and 2400 DPI, you're probably at around 5000 eDPI. Which is certainly possible to play well with, especially as saberist, but I'd still recommend a lower eDPI (and larger desk space) for achieving Really Great Gunner Aim. Having a "slower" mouse speed makes the size of your target relatively "larger" and the task of clicking on it much "smoother."
ALSO: Lower eDPI saberists do exist. Possibly SeV? I remember watching a dueling vid or spectating a duelist or something, where they had really smooth, calm movements, indicative of low eDPI.
Honestly, when it comes to precise aiming it is a absolute requirement that you have mouse acceleration turned off as this will make you inconsistent. Also a lower estimated dpi is quite necessary for more precision. Now by lower I don't mean something insane like 400 dpi on 1 sensitivity. I mean if you are out here using 3500 dpi on 5 sensitivity (what I use to use) it won't be beneficial to your aim at all.
I recommend lowering your edpi slowly until you find a range that is very comfortable for you. Because if you try to switch from a high edpi to a much lower one the process to adjust will be much harder. There is no secret sensitivity or any recommended one it is actually largely genetic because some people aim better with a low edpi or a higher one.
Now in the process of doing this make sure that you do it like this
Honestly, when it comes to precise aiming it is a absolute requirement that you have mouse acceleration turned off as this will make you inconsistent. Also a lower estimated dpi is quite necessary for more precision. Now by lower I don't mean something insane like 400 dpi on 1 sensitivity. I mean if you are out here using 3500 dpi on 5 sensitivity (what I use to use) it's not gonna workout no matter if you try as hard as you can. It just won't work to practice with a higher edpi. I recommend lowering your edpi slowly until you find a range that is very comfortable for you. Because if you try to switch from a high edpi to a much lower one the process to adjust will be much harder. There is no secret sensitivity or any recommended one it is actually largely genetic because some people aim better with a low edpi or a higher one.
Now in the process of doing this make sure that you do it like this
- if you overshoot targets lower the edpi
- if you can't quite make it to aim at somebody or it is really hard raise the edpi
This guy right here is one of the two people I alluded to as being the best gunners I've met. And hey there mr. mooch, the other gunner (Cat/Orin) really does have seriously great aim with her mouse acceleration driver, and it's seriously consistent, and it's definitely partly because of the specialized driver.
That said, I think you're the reason I switched from Cat's 2400 DPI mouse accel configuration back to your more classic 800x2 configuration. And I do think it worked out better for me. But again, Orin's really fucking good and uses (special) mouse accel. Most mouse accel is absolutely garbage yes. That specialized driver's linear, non-framerate-dependent mouse accel is absolutely different from most mouse accel, and has real merits in the context of MB2 (tight control at long ranges and potential for quick spins at close ranges).
And this type of mouse accel is/was used by Quake Pros, and Quake is an extremely aim-demanding game.
Here's the post on that driver's site about why other mouse accel sucks and why this kind of mouse accel doesn't suck. It is absolutely 100% an extremely viable option with significant merits. Orin's got amazing aim and Quake Pros have amazing aim. If we held an NA 1v1 P3 tournament (and we should), I have very little doubt that Orin would make it to the finals. With mouse acceleration.
This guy right here is one of the two people I alluded to as being the best gunners I've met. And hey there mr. mooch, the other gunner (Cat/Orin) really does have seriously great aim with her mouse acceleration driver, and it's seriously consistent, and it's definitely partly because of the specialized driver.
That said, I think you're the reason I switched from Cat's 2400 DPI mouse accel configuration back to your more classic 800x2 configuration. And I do think it worked out better for me. But again, Orin's really fucking good and uses (special) mouse accel. Most mouse accel is absolutely garbage yes. That specialized driver's linear, non-framerate-dependent mouse accel is absolutely different from most mouse accel, and has real merits in the context of MB2 (tight control at long ranges and potential for quick spins at close ranges).
And this type of mouse accel is/was used by Quake Pros, and Quake is an extremely aim-demanding game.
Here's the post on that driver's site about why other mouse accel sucks and why this kind of mouse accel doesn't suck. It is absolutely 100% an extremely viable option with significant merits. Orin's got amazing aim and Quake Pros have amazing aim. If we held an NA 1v1 P3 tournament (and we should), I have very little doubt that Orin would make it to the finals. With mouse acceleration.
I still think that mouse acceleration is one of the worst things you can use. I read up on that article and it brought up some decent points and I won't argue that they are wrong but in certain situations it's still not reliable. Ex: you see someone to the very far right and you get a reflex to flick really fast at their head you will overshoot your target more often than not. It's just not reliable for most fps games where you will be flicking your mouse really fast a lot. I could see how that supposedly perfect mouse acceleration software would be okay in some situations, but if you want the most consistent aim and extreme precision I would still say mouse acceleration off.
I hear you, and yet, from my perspective of having seen Cat's aim, I maintain my disagreement. The evidence points towards it being entirely possible to reach even the highest levels of muscle memory skill using (that specific kind of) mouse acceleration. That kind of mouse acceleration is designed to work consistently on flicks.
I would accept the notion that mouse acceleration might have a higher skill floor, though, as in: No-Acceleration is probably easier to learn. And I won't claim that Acceleration is more accurate or anything, absolutely not, simply that evidence suggests it's possible to be as accurate while also having advantages of both High eDPI (speed) and Low eDPI (precision).
this is making me curious to set up a Best Of 20 P3 Fight between you and Orin, just to see, although I'm probably significantly more interested in that than either of you are, so I won't press the idea.
I hear you, and yet, from my perspective of having seen Cat's aim, I maintain my disagreement. The evidence points towards it being entirely possible to reach even the highest levels of muscle memory skill using (that specific kind of) mouse acceleration. That kind of mouse acceleration is designed to work consistently on flicks.
I would accept the notion that mouse acceleration might have a higher skill floor, though, as in: No-Acceleration is probably easier to learn. And I won't claim that Acceleration is more accurate or anything, absolutely not, simply that evidence suggests it's possible to be as accurate while also having advantages of both High eDPI (speed) and Low eDPI (precision).
this is making me curious to set up a Best Of 20 P3 Fight between you and Orin, just to see, although I'm probably significantly more interested in that than either of you are, so I won't press the idea.
along with mouse accel, i would turn off smooth mouse in MB2 settings. It seems to predict what you want to do instead of using raw data input. also lessen im offended you called me a saberist.
