Quote:Just wondering something, will a gaming mouse with a high dpi help me aim better in addition to practice?
You asked two different questions there.
1. Will a higher dpi help you aim better?
Yes and no. Mostly no. Higher dpi is basically higher sensitivity, just on the hardware side. It doesn't really improve your aim, it just allows you to move your aim faster.
What I do is leave the sensitivity alone in the game settings and adjust my mouse dpi instead (you can also adjust the windows mouse pointer sensitivity, which applies to all applications, but I don't do that, I just leave it at the default value). This is because I have found that for the majority of games the default sensitivity values are similar or the same. Therefore if I adjust my mouse dpi and get used to it my changes will apply to all games equally and I'll have good aim in all of my games. But if I leave my mouse dpi alone and adjust the game sensitivity instead other games are going to be way off and require lots of fine tuning and practice for me to mimic the same feeling that I'm used to. For me I have found that the ideal range is from 1,000 to 1,200 dpi. Anything higher than that is too fast for me to be precise and anything lower than that is too slow for me to aim fast. For most pro gamers the ideal number is slightly higher, 1,200 to 1,600 seems to be the norm for them. Nobody goes over 1,600 without cranking the sensitivity way down in windows and/or the game.
Mouse acceleration is another issue. Everyone seems to hate it, I don't, I love it. This is a personal preference. I have been unable to get used to the feeling of mouse acceleration off, it's enabled by default in some games, in some games you can't turn it off, and I find the lack of space on my mousepad/desk to be a serious issue with mouse acceleration off which forces me to raise the sensitivity higher than I would like. But this is personal preference. The majority of online gamers prefer it off and say that once you get used to it off it's better since it provides a more predictable response and therefore your brain can better optimize your hand-eye coordination (which still takes time/practice obviously) than it can if acceleration is on. This makes sense, and the data seems to support it. Plus pretty much all pro gamers have it off so that tells you something right there. With mouse acceleration turned off you will need to increase your dpi or it will feel really weird. Even after increasing your dpi it will take awhile to get used to. Negative mouse acceleration is a major issue with some games, as is double mouse acceleration (windows adding mouse acceleration + the game adding additional mouse acceleration for a compounding effect). Both of those problems are mostly found in half assed console ports. Some games use negative mouse acceleration to balance out windows positive mouse acceleration. And some games ignore windows mouse acceleration completely by disabling it while the application is open. Sometimes games don't support mouse acceleration at all. And sometimes they support it and don't provide a way to turn it off. It all depends on the game.
Then there is smooth mouse (called many other things in different games). Which is supposed to produce more fluid mouse movement by collecting acceleration/movement data over multiple frames (usually 2) and averaging it. This is personal preference, I usually just leave it on which is usually the default.
And then finally raw input. Another personal preference. Raw input grabs the input directly from the mouse and bypasses windows. So the pointer speed and "enhance pointer precision" (what windows calls mouse acceleration) won't effect the input. The driver settings will still effect the input though. This is a pretty rare option in PC games unfortunately.
Mouse sensitivity can be adjusted at the OS level (pointer speed), driver level (dpi), and application level (mouse sensitivity). Mouse acceleration can also be enabled/disabled and adjusted at the OS level, driver level, and application level as well. If something is adjusted at the OS or driver level it will effect all applications while application settings will only effect that specific application. This is with the except of raw input which prevents the OS settings from effecting the application input.
By default mouse acceleration is enabled in the OS, disabled in the drivers, and as for application settings it varies from one application to another.
2. Will a gaming mouse help you aim better?
Yes. In my experience high budget gaming mice really do make a big difference for some reason. And I forgot to mention the usb polling rate (an option for the mouse drivers). My mouse produces noticeably smoother movement with a higher polling rate (as you would expect).
Quote:Also Y NO ONE PLAY on the server I set up.
Because there is no one to play with. It's an interesting conundrum.
