I've seen quite a few tweets on the topic of sensitivities by top-level pros and average Joes alike. So as someone who spends way too much time thinking and talking about aim, I want to tell you how to improve your aim through settings and peripherals. This will primarily look at gyro sensitivities, though some basics still apply to stick settings as well.
As for my credentials, I've been playing shooters for over 25 years now – I was 22 when Splatoon 1 came out! These years were spent playing around and researching all kinds of settings, peripherals, forcing myself to change habits etc. But what I write here comes not only from decades-long experience, but also from research and discouse:
I work as a PhD student in the game studies and, as a 'side gig,' I look into how one can improve accessibility for control settings though peripherals and settings in competitive games. Furthermore, I 'work' in aiming communities for a few years now as one of the most active and visible members on all the mouse accel discords. I talk to Kovaak himself semi-regularly, have discussed sensitivities and aim settings with game devs and have contributed to software and research that tries to find the 'scientifically correct' sensitivity. While most of this concerns the PC/Mouse spaces, much of it still applies to gyro aim.
I will divide this post into five main sections:
Immediately, I want to expose myself as a clickbait scammer and contradict this post's own title. Despite common beliefs that there is a perfect sensitivity for everyone and that you will become a cracked aimer once you find it, this is not the case. In fact, it is the opposite: it is better to become good at many sensitivities then sticking to one! Here's why:
In other words: We should not be looking for one perfect setting, but become good at changing our settings as needed!
There are some underappreciated benefits to changing your sensitivity regularly:
2. Do not worry about Muscle Memory
There is a lot of talk about how changing sensitivities would hurt your muscle memory; that, with new settings, you'd basically have to relearn aiming from scratch. But this could not be further from the truth.
Aim is not muscle memory. It's hand-eye-coordination.
That's what you improve at through regular play or with aim trainers. You can't hit people "with your eyes closed", no matter how much you train. There is no muscle memory to lose, and no inherent disadvantage to change. The opposite: the broader the spectrum of sensitivities you can use is, the better your hand control and hand-eye-coordination will become; and that is effectively what aiming is. And that hand-eye-coordination is pretty adaptable. The more sensitivities you try, the better you become at this, and the more adaptable (read: better) you become as an aimer.
Muscle memory is therefore really only relevant when it comes to more general approaches to game situations, and to highly repeatable acts of aiming like strict 180 turns. Thankfully, stick aim for gyro users takes care of that almost completely, so you can focus on improving hand-eye-coordination and proper setting choices through gyro alone!
Read the article here from Voltaic for more info: https://link.medium.com/wVSjDemrlab
And, while I was writing this, Viscose (a top-level aimer and Valorant player) posted a video on the same topic. If you prefer to learn in video format, give this a watch:
3. Finding the correct baseline sensitivity
This is by far the most subjective part of this post. But in the almost 11 years I've been using gyro aim and taught others how to use it, this approach has proven to be the most effective and workable by far. So here are my tips that should work for almost everyone:
The best way to think about gyro is to consider how you aim with a mouse. This depends on your sensitivity, of course, but generally mouse aim is divided into two parts: the stuff you do with your arm, and the stuff you do with your wrist.
4. Practicing your aim correctly
Let me start with the most important thing:
Look at this scene at 5:55. Despite having plenty of time to line up a shot with the Bamboozler, he needlessly flicks onto the target, misses, and then needlessly flicks off the target to flick onto it again. He has almost certainly learned this type of suboptimal aim by doing too many flicking exercises on the lobby dummies, which translates into bad habits and bad plays. Remember: The best aim is consistent, not flashy!
So what to do instead?
This is all I can think of for now. I will update this post if something new springs to mind, but feel free to ask any question or offer your own perspectives in the meantime!
As for my credentials, I've been playing shooters for over 25 years now – I was 22 when Splatoon 1 came out! These years were spent playing around and researching all kinds of settings, peripherals, forcing myself to change habits etc. But what I write here comes not only from decades-long experience, but also from research and discouse:
I work as a PhD student in the game studies and, as a 'side gig,' I look into how one can improve accessibility for control settings though peripherals and settings in competitive games. Furthermore, I 'work' in aiming communities for a few years now as one of the most active and visible members on all the mouse accel discords. I talk to Kovaak himself semi-regularly, have discussed sensitivities and aim settings with game devs and have contributed to software and research that tries to find the 'scientifically correct' sensitivity. While most of this concerns the PC/Mouse spaces, much of it still applies to gyro aim.
I will divide this post into five main sections:
- There is no “Perfect Sensitivity”
- Do not worry about Muscle Memory
- Finding the correct baseline sensitivity
- Practicing your aim correctly
Immediately, I want to expose myself as a clickbait scammer and contradict this post's own title. Despite common beliefs that there is a perfect sensitivity for everyone and that you will become a cracked aimer once you find it, this is not the case. In fact, it is the opposite: it is better to become good at many sensitivities then sticking to one! Here's why:
- You are not a perfectly consistent machine. Many factors will contribute to how you aim. For example:
- Maybe you are cold, and your wrists are more rigid than usual.
- How much sleep you got and how awake you are affects your attentiveness and mobility.
- Your food and level of hydration will impact your aim – more caffeine and sugar might make you shaky, being hungry or dehydrated can and will affect your ability to react.
- How you sit in your chair/on your couch will change the angle at which you are aiming, and therefore the mechanics of aim themselves.
- Your controllers are not perfect, affecting your aim in uncontrollable ways:
- There is variation between gyro modules in controllers, meaning the same sens setting will feel different between controllers.
- Deadzones between sticks are different and will change with use, which affects your stick aim.
In other words: We should not be looking for one perfect setting, but become good at changing our settings as needed!
There are some underappreciated benefits to changing your sensitivity regularly:
- You are forced to learn different styles of approaching a situation, since your deeply ingrained habits might not work as well anymore. This will, over time, improve your game sense and awareness, positioning, and aim.
- There is a “honeymoon period” after changing your sens where you pay more attention to your aim than usual. This renewed focus will almost immediately improve your aim.
- You will get a better understanding of your mechanical habits, strengths, and weaknesses; in turn, you can better identify what you need to work on and how.
2. Do not worry about Muscle Memory
There is a lot of talk about how changing sensitivities would hurt your muscle memory; that, with new settings, you'd basically have to relearn aiming from scratch. But this could not be further from the truth.
Aim is not muscle memory. It's hand-eye-coordination.
That's what you improve at through regular play or with aim trainers. You can't hit people "with your eyes closed", no matter how much you train. There is no muscle memory to lose, and no inherent disadvantage to change. The opposite: the broader the spectrum of sensitivities you can use is, the better your hand control and hand-eye-coordination will become; and that is effectively what aiming is. And that hand-eye-coordination is pretty adaptable. The more sensitivities you try, the better you become at this, and the more adaptable (read: better) you become as an aimer.
Muscle memory is therefore really only relevant when it comes to more general approaches to game situations, and to highly repeatable acts of aiming like strict 180 turns. Thankfully, stick aim for gyro users takes care of that almost completely, so you can focus on improving hand-eye-coordination and proper setting choices through gyro alone!
Read the article here from Voltaic for more info: https://link.medium.com/wVSjDemrlab
And, while I was writing this, Viscose (a top-level aimer and Valorant player) posted a video on the same topic. If you prefer to learn in video format, give this a watch:
3. Finding the correct baseline sensitivity
This is by far the most subjective part of this post. But in the almost 11 years I've been using gyro aim and taught others how to use it, this approach has proven to be the most effective and workable by far. So here are my tips that should work for almost everyone:
The best way to think about gyro is to consider how you aim with a mouse. This depends on your sensitivity, of course, but generally mouse aim is divided into two parts: the stuff you do with your arm, and the stuff you do with your wrist.
- Arm aim is used for big motions, like 180 turns, or for slow, steady, predictable tracking.
- Wrist aim is where you do most of your effective aim; where you track strafing targets or quickly snap to opponents
- Set your stick sens to a setting that allows you to quickly and consistently turn 180 degrees (from experience, this is between +3 and +5 for most people)
- Set your gyro to a sensitivity that allows you to cover about 90 degrees to the left and right from any position without straining your wrists at all(so a 180 degree cone in front of you.)
- Try to think of your wrists as a limiting factor that decides when your stick gets used. Just get a feeling for “past this point it's uncomfortable, so here I use the stick for turns”.
- For really fast motions, you want to use both stick and gyro in unison, with about 50% effort for each. This is a matter of practice and will come automatically, just keep in mind that speed trumps precision for certain moves.
- If everything is set up correctly, you should now be able to effortlessly move the cursor to anything inside and slightly outside your field of view. At the same time, moving your controller quickly and to the usable maximum of your wrist's range of motion should result in a pretty clean and reliable 180 flick.
4. Practicing your aim correctly
Let me start with the most important thing:
- The targets in the lobby are bad for aim training!
- They are mostly static targets in fixed locations, and even the moving targets move in a completely predictable speed and direction.
- Doing aiming routines vs. them will only practice one thing: Hitting those specific targets. No real player will stand perfectly still in the same positions those target dummies are.
- The lobby targets are therefore only good for warming up, and to practice the proper spacing and (re-)learning projectile speeds.
Look at this scene at 5:55. Despite having plenty of time to line up a shot with the Bamboozler, he needlessly flicks onto the target, misses, and then needlessly flicks off the target to flick onto it again. He has almost certainly learned this type of suboptimal aim by doing too many flicking exercises on the lobby dummies, which translates into bad habits and bad plays. Remember: The best aim is consistent, not flashy!
So what to do instead?
- The best practice comes from playing real matches, against real people. Go into an Open match, or find a group of people on SendouQ for this specific purpose, and just practice by looking for fights.
- If you want a dedicated aim trainer for Splatoon and don't want to mess with setting up gyro controls in Aim Labs or whatever, you can try Vespher's free game, Squid Aimer: https://vespher.itch.io/squid-aimer
This is all I can think of for now. I will update this post if something new springs to mind, but feel free to ask any question or offer your own perspectives in the meantime!
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