how much will a gaming mouse help?

E

erf

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jul 13, 2005
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right now im using an mx310...i love the mouse but i'm wondering if a gaming mouse is worth the purchase...and why?

i mainly play quake 4 and though i do fine with the mouse that i have if a gaming mouse would improve my frags then i'd lay the dough down.
 
it may help with very fine movements, higher DPI on the mouse will help with that, your mousepad itself may benefit from an upgrade as well
 
Keep your mouse, I went through 3 mouses and I still prefer what is now a broken Microsoft Walmart optical mouse :)

Blue optical MS mouse ( broken ) , then MX518 ( sold that ), now razer diamondback and now I think performance of a "gaming" mouse is pretty overrated except for the extra buttons and crap which I don't even use :)

I found the MX518 too bulky for my taste, the diamondback is pretty good comfort wise.
 
aZn_plyR said:
Keep your mouse, I went through 3 mouses and I still prefer what is now a broken Microsoft Walmart optical mouse :)

Blue optical MS mouse ( broken ) , then MX518 ( sold that ), now razer diamondback and now I think performance of a "gaming" mouse is pretty overrated except for the extra buttons and crap which I don't even use :)

I found the MX518 too bulky for my taste, the diamondback is pretty good comfort wise.
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agree. if higher dpi and latest technologies mattered, then the top gamers in the world would have stopped using the IE 3.0 Mouse a long time ago.
 
Here's my $0.02

The more you play games the more your accuracy increases, the better players turn up their mouse sensitivity so that they have to only move the mouse small distances over the mousemat. What you want to want to achieve is being able to to game for long periods of time without ever having to pick your mouse up of the mouse mat and re-position it, it's also much easier to do 180 degree spins with mouse with a higher sensitivity.

The problem is that as you turn up your mouses sensitivity it multiplies the input and this leads to the crosshair jumping multiple pixels at the same time, if it jumps too far each time you move the mouse then you start to find it hard to hit small targets.

The only way to have a high sensitivity and keep per pixel aiming is to have a high sensitivity mouse.

Now I play at roughly 2-3cm per 360 degrees (FYI if you want to express mouse sensitity the only true comparison is CM/360 degree turn) with this kind of sensitivity only a high DPI mouse will give me per pixel aiming at high resolutions.

It's a fairly easy sum to do actually, lets assume you're playing UT2004 @ 1024x768 resolution, to work out the most sensitive mouse aiming without losing per pixel aiming you have to know your FOV (field of view, measured in degrees) you have to know your horizontal resolution, and you have to know your mouses DPI rating.

Most FPS games (including UT2004) have a default FOV of 90 degrees, we want to measure our mouse sensitivity in distance mouse moved to perform a 360 degree turn

360/90 = 4

in other words there's 4 lots of 90 degrees in 360 degree turn, that means in 360 degrees we skip over 4x1024 pixels (4 multiplied by the horizontal resolution)

Thats 4096 pixels per 360 degrees, or 4096 discrete positions we can view the mouse in on the horizontal plane.

With a 2000 DPI mouse we have 2000 seperate inputs per one inch of movement, we need 4096 seperate inputs to rotate 360 degrees and have our crosshair on any pixel we wish, this means that we need (4096/2000 = 2.048) roughly 2 inches of movement to perform a 360 degree turn AND maintain per pixel aiming.

If you want to maintain per pixel aiming @ 1024 768 and you have a 2000 DPI mouse you have to use a 2inch per 360 degree movement, if you only have a 600 DPI mouse then (2000/600 = 3.333) 3.333 x 2 inches = 6.6 inches per 360 degrees

I dunno about you, but my icemat is approx 20cm across, thats nearly 17 cm per 360 degree spin with a 600 DPI mouse, you can bet I'll be picking my mouse up a lot and moveing it around, also my response doing a 360 degree turn is simply going to be longer, it takes longer to move the mouse that kind of distance.
 
Frosteh said:
Here's my $0.02

The more you play games the more your accuracy increases, the better players turn up their mouse sensitivity so that they have to only move the mouse small distances over the mousemat. What you want to want to achieve is being able to to game for long periods of time without ever having to pick your mouse up of the mouse mat and re-position it, it's also much easier to do 180 degree spins with mouse with a higher sensitivity.

The problem is that as you turn up your mouses sensitivity it multiplies the input and this leads to the crosshair jumping multiple pixels at the same time, if it jumps too far each time you move the mouse then you start to find it hard to hit small targets.

The only way to have a high sensitivity and keep per pixel aiming is to have a high sensitivity mouse.

Now I play at roughly 2-3cm per 360 degrees (FYI if you want to express mouse sensitity the only true comparison is CM/360 degree turn) with this kind of sensitivity only a high DPI mouse will give me per pixel aiming at high resolutions.

It's a fairly easy sum to do actually, lets assume you're playing UT2004 @ 1024x768 resolution, to work out the most sensitive mouse aiming without losing per pixel aiming you have to know your FOV (field of view, measured in degrees) you have to know your horizontal resolution, and you have to know your mouses DPI rating.

Most FPS games (including UT2004) have a default FOV of 90 degrees, we want to measure our mouse sensitivity in distance mouse moved to perform a 360 degree turn

360/90 = 4

in other words there's 4 lots of 90 degrees in 360 degree turn, that means in 360 degrees we skip over 4x1024 pixels (4 multiplied by the horizontal resolution)

Thats 4096 pixels per 360 degrees, or 4096 discrete positions we can view the mouse in on the horizontal plane.

With a 2000 DPI mouse we have 2000 seperate inputs per one inch of movement, we need 4096 seperate inputs to rotate 360 degrees and have our crosshair on any pixel we wish, this means that we need (4096/2000 = 2.048) roughly 2 inches of movement to perform a 360 degree turn AND maintain per pixel aiming.

If you want to maintain per pixel aiming @ 1024 768 and you have a 2000 DPI mouse you have to use a 2inch per 360 degree movement, if you only have a 600 DPI mouse then (2000/600 = 3.333) 3.333 x 2 inches = 6.6 inches per 360 degrees

I dunno about you, but my icemat is approx 20cm across, thats nearly 17 cm per 360 degree spin with a 600 DPI mouse, you can bet I'll be picking my mouse up a lot and moveing it around, also my response doing a 360 degree turn is simply going to be longer, it takes longer to move the mouse that kind of distance.
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jeebus christ dude.....your post scares me...are you good at fps's?
 
erf said:
jeebus christ dude.....your post scares me...are you good at fps's?
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Yeah pretty good :)

I'd say top 5% of any FPS game I've played for a while.
 
Frosteh said:
Yeah pretty good :)

I'd say top 5% of any FPS game I've played for a while.
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i want to get good at fps's and am trying to get every advantage i can...i've mainly been playing q4 and am usually in the top 1 or 2 spots with the group of guys i've been playing with. oddly there isn't really an active online community for q4. what fps has an active/competetive online community? bar bf2 and any other team oriented fps.
 
Anything popular will have an active community.

You can find forums, websites and chatrooms for almost all FPS games, just goto the website and find the forums, from there you can search and find all the good IRC channels and find clans etc.

I tend to find a decent community I like by finding a good clan server thats popular and then going to the clan website, joining in with the forums and IRC channels and try and play exclusivly on their servers.

If you want to get better fast then play against people a lot better than you, it's the best way to learn, you might get crappy scores but on the other hand beating n00bs all the time doesn't really teach you anything.
 
erf said:
right now im using an mx310...i love the mouse but i'm wondering if a gaming mouse is worth the purchase...and why?

i mainly play quake 4 and though i do fine with the mouse that i have if a gaming mouse would improve my frags then i'd lay the dough down.
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More "pro" Quake4 players in the world use 400dpi MS optical mice than any "gamer" marketed mouse. These players also happen to be mid to low sensitivity though, so they're probably not going to see any benefit of the extra DPI. At the top level of play in Quake, high-sensitivity play has more or less gone the way of the dodo. Though even the high sensitivity players never really bothered with fancy gamer mice either. Zero4 actually was still using a 400dpi MS *ball* mouse as little as a couple years ago, and he was #1 in Q3 for quite a while, and used quite a high sensitivity. So *shrug* - it's mostly marketing towards enthusiasts/gamers whom like the idea of having 'powerful' hardware.

If you feel comfy with the shape of your current mouse, and have no major complaints about how it tracks (if you don't feel like the mouse is limiting your ability in any way) then don't change your mouse. But nothing is wrong with going to the store and holding the mice to see if the shape might suit you better.
 
Paid off more for photoshop then gaming if you ask me about the copperhead.
 
IMO a good mouse is one that fits you and allows you play for hours. I had a cheap $10 microsoft basic optical mouse for a long long time..from CS 1.6-BF1942-BF2-CS:S-2142demo....until it finally cracked and stopped working on me. The mouse would jump around the screen so one minute I'd be sniping someone the next minute i'm looking at the sky :eek: so I shopped around a bit for a mouse that suited me...I ended up with a nice MX510...specificly for the extra buttons and I got it on ebay for a good price too. Sure its not the latest or the "best" but yenno, it fits me well and it has really nice settings and support.
 
mota does his gaming with a Kensington trackball. ;)

And talley, if you really want something that pays off in Photoshop, get a Wacom tablet. They can't be beat. :)
 
It really depends on what you have now. I used to have an AOpen optical mouse and it was impossible to draw a straight line.

I don't really care about the stuff that they advertise, like the DPI, polling rate, laser sensor, etc. As long as you can draw a straight line, you probably won't notice much difference.
 
I bought a Logitech G5 or whatever, and honestly, I don't see the point. It was..what.. $50?

It's a nice mouse.. And I was using some piece of shit roller mouse I stole from work before.. but I don't sit down and go.. AH... MOUSE!

Now keyboard.. I love my Logitech keyboard.
 
i have a mx1000 mouse and what helped for me was i got the Func Archtype 1030 MBA pad
it made a huge diffrence in the way i play. i have more control a better feel and better accuracy i use to not even use a mouse pad just my desktop
 
If your current mouse is a piece of shit, it will help immensely. If it's something modern it won't help at all. In your case it won't help.
 
hughJ said:
More "pro" Quake4 players in the world use 400dpi MS optical mice than any "gamer" marketed mouse. These players also happen to be mid to low sensitivity though, so they're probably not going to see any benefit of the extra DPI. At the top level of play in Quake, high-sensitivity play has more or less gone the way of the dodo. Though even the high sensitivity players never really bothered with fancy gamer mice either. Zero4 actually was still using a 400dpi MS *ball* mouse as little as a couple years ago, and he was #1 in Q3 for quite a while, and used quite a high sensitivity. So *shrug* - it's mostly marketing towards enthusiasts/gamers whom like the idea of having 'powerful' hardware.

If you feel comfy with the shape of your current mouse, and have no major complaints about how it tracks (if you don't feel like the mouse is limiting your ability in any way) then don't change your mouse. But nothing is wrong with going to the store and holding the mice to see if the shape might suit you better.
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Games where twitch aiming and spam are the name of the game like all the classic quake and UT games generally don't need high accuracy in the first place.

Now if you're playing counter strike where headshots are the name of the gaem and you're quite often fighting at long range with rifles, then precise aiming is essential.

So no, you probably don't need a high DPI mouse for close range fights with rocket launchers which do splash damage.

Most of the worlds best gamers are that good because they have a naturally small reaction time, your natural reaction time is nothing you can improve with gaming and therefore most of the worlds top gamers have a natural advantage, obviously they play a lot which helps them grasp the dynamics of the game but in a lot of online competative games, raction time is paramount, especially in fast paced games like quake/ut
 
Erf going from a generic miscrosoft mouse to a MX518 / accutrack mousepad I did see and notice a difference, big enough to justify the cost.
I play CS:S the most and it has definitely improved my accuracy, as I play with a high sensitivity.

I always used to be one of those guys who said 'wtf pay 50 bucks for a mouse ? lol thats retarded' - but now that I've seen the light I'm never going back to a normal generic mouse.
 
My first optical mouse was the MS inteli one and I loved it, but with low resolution mice such as these when trying to aim long range in counter strike it would just jump too many pixels in one movement and sometimes when enemys were long range you could either aim left of them or right of them but not actually on them.

I've been using 2000 DPI mice ever since the original Razer Boomslang because anything less just holds me back.

Gaming mice aren't by any means essential for the casual gamer, only if you're tring to get good and/or you play a lot should you bother.

Also if you're going to splash out on a gaming mouse, make sure you get a good gaming surface as well, if theres any unecessary friction with your gaming surface then the accuracy of the mouse wont mean a thing, it needs to glide smoothly. Personally I use the Icemat orininal, I've not tried anything thats smoother.
 
im using a logi g5 and a laser gaming mousepad.... i say get a new mousepad before the mouse..... but i do love the new combo as its really smooth and very accurate... and the extra buttons are nice
 
would a normal wooden desk be ok? the wood if of the highest quality and its very very smooth but its not reflective...im using a 800dpi at the minute and i wanna go to a mx518 probably would i see a big difference?
 
I would say the most important aspect of any mouse is being comfortable using it. I have had the same MS Intellimouse 1.0a for about 6 years now and I do great with it in any game.

However, I have to get a new mouse now since the left mouse button on my Intellimouse is going dead, it can't register click+hold anymore.

I have been looking at the LogiTech G7, has anyone had good experience with this mouse and a func pad or anything similar?
 
I never saw a movement inmporvement, but I did see a difference with the surface area increase--allowing lower sensitivity.
 
TrashBear said:
I would say the most important aspect of any mouse is being comfortable using it. I have had the same MS Intellimouse 1.0a for about 6 years now and I do great with it in any game.

However, I have to get a new mouse now since the left mouse button on my Intellimouse is going dead, it can't register click+hold anymore.

I have been looking at the LogiTech G7, has anyone had good experience with this mouse and a func pad or anything similar?
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i had the 1.1A for while and got soo used to it that i found the logitech mice way too bulky for my taste, i say juss go for the 3.0 ;)
 
Being comfy with your mouse is actually very important, however given a few weeks you'll get used to the shape and feel of any mouse. Many people changing don't give themselfs long enough to get used to the new mouse.
 
Frosteh said:
Now if you're playing counter strike where headshots are the name of the gaem and you're quite often fighting at long range with rifles, then precise aiming is essential.
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CS is a bad example - as the MS Explorer 3.0 is probably more common among the top than any other model of mouse. But again, most play with low sensitivity and at 800x600.
 
If you got the money, go for it. My mousepad+mouse made me happier then upgrading to a 7800GT did lol.
 
Rofl-Mic-Lofl said:
If you got the money, go for it. My mousepad+mouse made me happier then upgrading to a 7800GT did lol.
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lol if you 'upgraded' from a x1800xt or above i could understand ;)
 
hughJ said:
CS is a bad example - as the MS Explorer 3.0 is probably more common among the top than any other model of mouse. But again, most play with low sensitivity and at 800x600.
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Any CS player with a mouse like that is either playing with an incredibly low mouse sensitivity or is skipping massive amounts of pixels as they rotate.

In my opinion both are hinderences to the player.
 
At 800x600 (which seems to be a sweet-spot for CS) 400dpi is plenty at low-mid (edit)sensitivities.
 
I buy the mouse with the most buttons on it (and yes, I use every single last one).
 
hughJ said:
At 800x600 (which seems to be a sweet-spot for CS) 400dpi is plenty at low-mid (edit)sensitivities.
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you think so? 800x600 is very small
 
It'll help you if you're a middle of the road player, but if you're really good or really bad I doubt it'll do much.
Like others have mentioned, most CS pros are using "old" MS optical mice and running at a relatively low res (for twitch aiming purposes).
If you like to run it in high res and you're good, but not great...you'll likely do better. It's nice to have the higher DPI for high res, but you're not going to suddenly become a lot better.
The main thing is that it'll likely make doing things you want to do easier. I think that's more important that actually being better. Even if I'm lousy, I'd rather have it be because of my skill than because my mouse isn't working the way I want.
 
Frosteh said:
Here's my $0.02

The more you play games the more your accuracy increases, the better players turn up their mouse sensitivity so that they have to only move the mouse small distances over the mousemat. What you want to want to achieve is being able to to game for long periods of time without ever having to pick your mouse up of the mouse mat and re-position it, it's also much easier to do 180 degree spins with mouse with a higher sensitivity.
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i've been playing wow for a while but when I was competative in CS (Cal-o/ cal-i) i'm pretty sure lower sensitivity was the name of the game.. not higher.
 
Gongo said:
i've been playing wow for a while but when I was competative in CS (Cal-o/ cal-i) i'm pretty sure lower sensitivity was the name of the game.. not higher.
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Yup - in the competetive world, lower's the name of the game. Higher makes twitch shots a make or break affair. It's fine for high resolutions and playing for fun, but most of the truly expert players are using a lower res/low sensitivity combo. It's not the most visually appealing way to play, but when you play for keeps - it's what works. When your sensitivity is cranked, everything is yay or nay. If it's lower, there are vary degrees of success and it's easier to dial into a perfect headshot...aka it's less jerky.
 
Mayhs said:
would a normal wooden desk be ok? the wood if of the highest quality and its very very smooth but its not reflective...im using a 800dpi at the minute and i wanna go to a mx518 probably would i see a big difference?
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I use mine on my desk. It worked better than any of the mouspads I had. It's also bigger than a mosepad.
 
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