Hello. I have always been wondering about the right setup for doing sniping at all ranges. I realise that sniping is a varied skill in terms of which range it is done at, and I have tried to improve my own performance purely through practice, which worked to a point. After I got more into it and started doing things more instinctively and confident (and started playing at closer ranges), I quickly started feeling that my soft pad was getting in the way. It is by no means dirty or overly worn, but I have started to notice that the initial friction and the resistance which I had to overcome to get the mouse moving meant that I could not perform micro-adjustments from a completely inert position, or only through painstaking restraint. For sniping at various ranges, would you say that friction is a blessing or a curse? I instinctively dislike friction and gravitate towards light mice with little friction and momentum, but that is not to say that that is preferable. What is your opinion? Furthermore, I had always thought of myself as using a claw grip, but recently I have come to question whether it is. I hold the mouse as much with my fingers curled into a claw as the lower part of my palm, in the direction of my wrist, making adjustments with both my fingers, wrist and arm. I guess this would be some kind of hybrid grip or something, not sure. Is this desirable or something to be 'unlearned' as a bad habit? As for ingame settings, I imagine most people who snipe will have a fairly low to medium effective dpi for precision drag shots. Am I correct in this assumption? Is this what you do and play on? Also, I was further thinking about toggle/hold to take aim/zoom. I prefer to toggle, but I understand that this is a lazy/negative habit I have developed in response to mice with high actuation resistance and poor clicking technique. I do believe this is something to correct, but I am just wondering if there is anyone who has had significant success with using toggle on RMB? Sorry for the wall of text. Also, I realise that this is all very particular and most people will just think or say 'Just play the game and have fun.' I am having fun when I do things in an optimal way that makes me effective at something, so as odd as it may sound, this is me having fun. I guess.
I like the Razer Mantis. Use a logitech mx518 and it is very smooth. Very low resistance. Other than that, I'd just play the game and consider what happens when you shoot moving targets vs stationary. Do you find yourself overshooting your targets? Is it tough to keep targets centered? Then adjust sens and whatever which works for you. Also, find one scope you like and get used to using the mildots for that scope. Personally I mostly stick to the default 6x. Then it all comes down to leading targets and learn things by doing. There really isn't a need to fiddle around with settings during game since this isn't exactly ArmA.
I ordered the DeathAdder - it seems sufficiently simple and responsive if the reviews are anything to go by. Other than that, I have switched over to a hard pad which, instinctively, feels better. Granted, I realise that most competitive fps players seem to like soft pads, but I hate the friction for small movements and minor adjustments. I initially found that acquisition times were low when using a low optics BASR, but this has to a degree been alleviated by switching to a hard pad. As the glide is that much greater, I can make bolder movements on the pad without the initial jitter of the resistance being overcome. I could, of course, improve on it a deal. I don't actually have that much trouble shooting moving targets using automatic weapons outside of very close ranges where I tend to just try to quick knife anyway. I guess my sensitivity is too low for hectic cqc without wide swings with the mouse, but I think that's something I'll have to get used to. I actually like to use three scopes on most weapons. 4x crosshairs when sniping at short/medium ranges, 6x default when I know I won't have to play at short ranges and 12x to countersnipe and to focus on the very backline. I'm quite comfortable with those optics, so that's not really a problem and I use reflex sights for automatics anyway, so I reserve that for a completely different skillset. One thing I have found is that since I like to switch optics as per the requirements of the fight (and I will redeploy if I find that the fight has shifted drastically and I need to change my range of engagement), I rarely find myself having to adjust by an entire mildot. It's also to do with the fact, I imagine, that I like to switch between low and high optics rifles as well, so I don't really need to calibrate for bullet drop all that frequently (that and I play Vanu, and the reworked Phaseshift is a real workhorse, so no bullet drop in that regard). Leading moving targets is difficult, but I guess that's just something that only extensive practice can solve.
I can help with mouse and pad suggestions as well as sniping optimizations but I have a few questions. What is your current mouse and mousepad+size? What dpi and poll rate are you using? What are your game sensitivities? Please list all from your useroptions.ini including vehicle, joystick , gamepad etc? I use zoom toggle. Off would be preferred but I can't change now. I do wonder what my sniping would look like if I always played with it off. In case you never bother to reply: I recommend the 4x scope (never the chevron version) on TSAR-42/Ghost/SAS-R for all ranges up to 750m.
Couple weeks' thread necro, but oh well. I've been sniping in games since the early 2000's and can give you a bit of advice on this, I believe. Quality cloth pads are preferred to a hard pad since they resist movement and allow you to be more stable while tracking something with the crosshairs; if it feels like the mouse is dragging too much then your sensitivity likely isn't low enough. The Deathadder you bought is ideally a low-sens mouse (360° turn in 10+ inches), and it does not like to be run at anything other than 500hz polling rate for stability's sake. Most 'pro' players are playing in the range of 400-800 DPI with 360° turns in excess of 12 inches; a cloth pad makes it far easier to 'flick' the mouse across the pad and come to a complete stop to rest on top of your intended target. I'd advise you to lower your sensitivity and DPI, then spend some time in the VR taking a headshot on one target and then snap to another one, trying to land your crosshair on its head before you've chambered another round. Keep in mind, however, you want to be able to make a 180° hipfire rotation from your normal point without lifting the mouse; this will still allow you to rapidly turn around and shoot someone approaching from behind.
I personally have found this guide very useful in the past: http://www.eliteownage.com/mouseguide.html There is also a Iridar guide for more PS2 related stuffs here: http://iridar.net/planetside-2-mouse-sensitivity-guide/ I think the general consensus is that HIGH DPI + LOW SENSITIVITY is the best way to generate your required cm / 360 in PS2. In terms of hardware, most gaming mice are pretty good now-a-days. I personally prefer a hard mouse surface (currently sporting the Logitech G440). I always modify the "feet" on my mouse as well. You can get these (shown for my mouse G700s): https://www.amazon.co.uk/COREPAD-Skatez-for-Logitech-G700/dp/B0058CI52K They are basically a lower friction PTFE foot. They work REALLY well, but do wear down faster than your normal plastic feet. Well worth a try if harder mats are your thing. Hope this helps.
Thank you very much for your reply. I apologise for the delay, but I haven't checked back in a long time because after a while I had just assumed that the discussion had run its course and people lost interest in it - I did not anticipate further comments. I ended up using a QcK XXL, a DeathAdder and using 400 dpi at 500 polling rate. I can't recall my ingame sensitivity - not at home -, but it is in the range of 0.33-38, not sure now. I used to use zoom toggle. For several days, I was struggling to adjust and I would often end up landing unscoped shots based on muscle memory which I developed throughout my entire gaming lifetime as a toggler, to say nothing of the initially excessive force exerted over the mouse holding the right button. Now I couldn't play using toggle. Once I grew accustomed to holding right click for the duration of scoping, my reactions immediately improved noticeably in quality. Yeah, I use the 4x scope on all low optics BASRs. Amusingly, before even reading your comment, I ended up switching to the cloth pad and 500hz polling rate and 400dpi and my gameplay drastically improved. Goes to show that they are good settings for the job. I did a lot of VR practice when I changed my sensitivity, but once I developed the rudimentary muscle memory within the right ranges of movement, and still a high margin of error, I just took it to the battlefield. Granted, I was slaughtered a lot at first, but once I realised that this was twitch gameplay at its apex, I just stopped consciously aiming and using the crosshairs for constant feedback on very close targets. Sometimes even more distant ones. I have read through all that content, and iridar's guide was very helpful. I am quite content with the DeathAdder as well - I have switched to a palm grip (I still switch back to claw for rts, mobas, etc) and I am now comfortable with broad and rapid swipes with the mouse to do drag shots and other twitch actions. A few remarks of my own on the topic, to anyone who is in the same shoes as I was. There are some helpful guides on CQC sniping in Planetside, but they either assume a high level of technical knowledge, prior sniping experience or that the candidate will figure things out along the way. The assumption is not wrong, it will happen, but it might turn out to be a needlessly lengthy process. Hardware setup absolutely matters. Since I made the post, I have opted for a better mouse, a more suitable mouse pad, changed to a 144hz, 1ms monitor and switched to potato settings to increase my fps. The greatest changes were brought on by the change in monitor. I found that cqc bolt action sniping involved a lot of actual mid and even some long range work. There is no exclusive cqc sniping just as there is no exclusive cqc anything outside of non-slug shotguns. A lot of the time, when there is low hanging fruit, the prospect of an easy kill or an enemy which can keep you at bay and away from your preferred mid to close range, you will just have to give and rely on a greater degree of biological motion tracking and movement prediction to lead your targets appropriately. A 144hz, 1ms monitor is a godsend in those situations. Just as there is a cadence to adad bursting, there is a definite cadence to cqc sniping too. Almost every action is an action of purely muscle memory and the actions need to be performed in a near-perfect sequence and rhythmically for prolonged periods of time. Initially, I tried making sense of what was happening and why I was making certain movements, but my performance only started to improve after I gave up on trying to envisage every shot and relied on instinctive snapshots the situation to approximate the distance and angle of the centre-point of my screen and the target. Also, building on the snapshot thing above, I realised that I like to think of the cqc BASR as hitscan within very close ranged. Obviously, this is a fiction in reality, but within those ranges, the enemies generally can't muster enough movement to overcome the near instant travel times, so the weapon acts as hitscan if only by approximation. That is where snapping to the target's head helps a lot. All in all, while I don't think I'm anywhere near the upper echelons of sniping in PS2, I am thinking of making a learners' guide to low optics sniping, precisely because I have been through the beginners phase a short while ago, and only now have I stopped acquiring the rudiments of the techniques, in favour of now spending all of my time on perfecting muscle memory. Also, I do tend to think about the way mechanics work and I have tried to produce a logical explanation for what I do when sniping, rather than just give it a numeric skill quotient.
