Long, short story:
Am bad-to-average FPS gamer, looking to improve. Saw an OSU! gamer flinging its “shots” left and right and tried my best to mimick the experience in an FPS. And it worked significantly – all of my shots felt more “secure”, even with my aiming being rusty beyond belief.
And the “trick” to do this is simply leaving your “aiming hand” to aim (ONLY) while leaving your “non-aiming hand” to shoot and everything else. That’s it.
It’s pretty common for hardcore FPS gamers to switch their right click (which is usually ADS) from a “press and hold” configuration to a “toggle” configuration, meaning you just click to ADS, and then click again to release it. The idea is that you shouldn’t be constantly pushing down on you mouse while aiming, it creates drag and makes aiming harder.
Are you talking about remapping your mouse buttons to keyboard buttons? Seems like it would be difficult, but it’s plausible.
P.S. ADS means “Aim Down Sights”
Are you talking about remapping your mouse buttons to keyboard buttons?
Exactly.
FPS players are beasts on their own next level where it comes to binds. They also rebind movement options like jump to mouse wheel and switch WASD to ESDF so there’s more surrounding keys and better pinkie access.
use vim layout and move with hjkl
I hadn’t seen ESDF in FPS, I personally used to use it in WoW.
But mousewheel scroll is actually a great jump bind for when you precisely need to input the next jump action to time it with the end of the last. This is less an FPS thing and more a movement thing. Spacebar (or other buttons) will only work if you hit it at the precise time, while mousewheel is a lot more forgiving, since it is multiple inputs in quick succession, kind of like the rapid-fire macros. Like I suck at bhopping for example, but I could do some easy bhop sequences in cs 1.6 with scrollwheel, there is no way I would be able to with spacebar.
Same ESDF is my go-to ever since Tribes but it stuck due to MMORPGs making it so much easier to use everything with it.
I never used it after wotlk as I quit wow after and when I came back in BfA i was fine with WASD, i just relied on shift and control layers more.
I never liked it fully because on my keyboards E is offset from SDF noticably more than W from ASD.
I’m crazy and use REFT to move and middle mouse to reload lol
When I play FPS, I bind movement to SDF, jump to A and forward to the right mouse button. That allows me to control aiming and forward movement with one hand and to squeeze the mouse with the whole hand when shooting to avoid jerking. WASD is a silly scheme in any case, I don’t understand why it is a default.
This is actually related to real marksmanship technique – you don’t literally want to pull the trigger with your trigger finger, you actually want to squeeze your whole hand, which indirectly results in pulling the trigger but with your hand applying tension in all directions instead of just backwards, reducing overall movement of the weapon during your shot
That is an interesting take, which (also) makes sense – each millimeter matters when you are using a weapon that demands the most precision in order to hit your targets. And multitasking with your “aiming hand” can mean the difference between being able to hit your target or not. Even so while burst firing.
The video is impressive but it’s basically a OSU pro player playing OSU with a gun.
I don’t know if the skill would transfer to a FPS e-sport, though. I wonder how the key mapping would look like with various movement, skills and what not.
Take this with a grain of salt, but a few years ago, I remember a discussion in /r/overwatch where someone said they practice sniping by playing osu.
Oh yes…don’t get me wrong. I think OSU can be a great tool to practice aiming. I’ve seen League of Legends players using it to farm better too.
It’s just that I don’t think one can play a FPS like they play OSU. They have more “dimensions”, I guess.
Its not that they have more dimensions, realistically they only have x and y, the third dimension just changes the size of the target.
Its really about having more inputs on the left hand, in osu iirc you only had two buttons.
They are not talking about physical dimensions here.
Yea, fair enough, I missed the quotes I think.
In my experience, while osu is a good warm up it’s not a substitute for a 3d aim trainer. Unless you are using mcosu with some modifications - using the fps mod and making the circle size smaller, among other things - the aim in osu doesn’t transfer one to one to shooters. While it certainly helps getting the hand movements like the flicks and such ready, 2d just isn’t the same as 3d since you can’t even map the sens to be the same, its kind of impossible actually.
He has a video of him playing Apex Legends: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvezoGUtTTg
Well, I tried this idea with Planetside 2 (Which is a very “messy” game where it can easily use more than 10 hotkeys at a time) and it started to feel “natural” after 30 minutes - 1 hour of gaming. And can’t really give you a key mapping that will work for you “just like that” but try placing your “non-aiming” hand at the keyboard (right over your commonly used movement keys) and pay attention to where your finger(s) are and change your shooting hotkey to where one of your “non-occupied” fingers are. Then test it for a while, and see if it “feels right”. If it doesn’t, then switch to something else.
As for me, left shift felt more “natural” since I use WASD and my left hand (when relaxed) lands exactly to where the left shift key is.
Just to see if I got that right: you basically set the fire button key on the keyboard instead of a mouse click and it made it easier to aim? Is this a common technique among pro players?
That makes sense. “Trigger control” is hard so moving the trigger to another hand guarantees you won’t click with too much pressure adding unwanted movement to the mouse.
Yes. Like left shift instead of left mouse click.
And I honestly don’t know.
i feel like this set up would be best in a game that is very spammy with mouse clicks, say Minecraft 1.8 pvp. i don’t know how those people do it, but given 2 keys to press on my left hand rather than 1 on my mouse, i could maybe stand a chance with the clicks per second.
Indeed. Theres also burst firing, which can get significantly easier/more “natural”. Or when you are an old chap like me who panicks all the time, lessening the effect quite significantly as well.
It’s not common. Most use the default config if shootinh with leftclick.
Shooting on space or another keyboard key i only saw with arena shooter players and it was single digit amount of people.
What is osu?
A crazy hard (imo) mouse music game, it’s like DDR kinda and helps train your mouse accuracy and speed.
Ah thank you.
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GustavoM your name sounds familiar, did you play Planetside? I was (technically still am) in one of the leetfits and we would have some of the aim gods try to share their knowledge and it boiled down to something similar. Don’t tense your hand (click to fire naturally tenses your hand so you have to learn to reduce that), prioritize a relaxed posture, and learn your mouse grip (try them all out!). I’ve heard OSU is very good for those that want to improve their hand eye coordination (and get comfortable with their mouse). I’ve also heard of using spacebar to shoot but only when you want to isolate aim from shooting. But you should train both together as well.
Yep. And I still play from time to time, despise getting my arse served by most players. And I’ve got to admit that hand tension is exactly -THE- “main” problem for me, despise trying to be as relaxed as possible with drinks and the like. I do have lots of “Why my crosshair isn’t moving to where I want it to go?” moments due to it.
…and I… (kind of) given up, honestly. I’m about to be a 40 year old geezer, so eh.
Older games used to have this by default. I remember playing Quake II with fire bound to CTRL alongside with mouse look enabled.
Time to try this out.
Have fun.
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I’ve no idea. But yeah, it does work wonders.
Oh I’m old and have been playing most FPS games on consoles for nearly 20 years. I’m terrible on PC but want to get better and seriously think it has to do with my death grip on my mouse. I still can’t use Keyboard as I’ve got bad carpal tunnel in my left hand and it’s near infinite pain after 10 minutes. So I use a mouse and a PlayStation Navi controller for WASD.
Check out Azeron products, they’re specifically made for this type of problem. Incidentally they’d also work great for moving over your shooting buttons to your non-aiming hand.
Oh man I haven’t seen these before. I’ll definitely check it out. Gonna be expensive but it might just be worth it! Thanks!
Heh, I’m also a old fart – 40 years old. Still, anxiety can also be a problem since it makes you anticipate your shots or freak out easily.
So the best way to play would be using Voice Attack and making every FPS into one of these bad boys? 🤔
