Hello everyone, it’s VT Matty. In this video, we’re going to discuss the concept of stabilization in aim training, and I’m going to explain how to resolve a very common issue that is observed in many of the smooth tracking VODs that I review on stream.
To start us off, let’s talk about Smoothbot. When you see somebody’s gameplay and they struggle to stay on the target, constantly jittering off, some might be quick to say that the gameplay isn’t smooth or that the players might be using excess tension. Well, in half of these cases you’re correct if you think that. Too much tension can definitely be the cause of extra shakiness or the exaggeration of jitters, but there’s also a problem if you’re using too little tension.
The Tension Sweet Spot
Tension is a balance, and using none of it can be just as bad as using too much of it.
Basically, you need it to maintain continuity in tracking. This is the quality of your motion that the term “smoothness” is really describing. How continuous is your motion? Can you visually make out the segmentation of a sweeping track? Does it appear as one singular motion, or is it broken up into several individual pieces strung together?
This is the thought process behind speed matching, or maintaining synchronization in speed between the target’s movement on screen and your own mouse motion, which results in a clean, singular tracking motion, and tension management is at the center of how to do this properly.
First off, how do you stabilize using the tension in your hand? The initial component is being able to acclimate yourself to target speeds, which you must visually decipher on the fly by reading changes in strafe acceleration.
Reading
In most games, these speed changes are rather hard-coded; you can learn how fast all of the characters move in a game like Overwatch and even memorize the patterns of movement abilities for which you can apply the exact same mouse motions in response.
In aim trainers, we can separate differing speeds across scenarios. Obviously, the first step of figuring out how fast the target is moving visually is relatively simple. The next step, which we would consider the hardest part, is working out the tension balancing.
Diagnosing Tension Issues
I first want to describe what it looks like when you are using too much overall tension. This essentially means you are gripping the mouse very tightly in order to maintain continuity in your tracking. This tightness causes your movements to aggressively skip forwards ahead of the target or even travel off-course. The jitters in your hand are directed forwards. This is what most players suffer from.
Now I need to describe what it looks like when you are using too little tension. We often talk about tension management in a way that makes it seem like we shouldn’t be using any tension at all, but I want to emphasize here, with this video, that to remain stable on target, you always need to utilize some amount of tension, supplying a firm grip on the mouse. If you use too little or almost no tension at all, we get stops or breaks instead of aggressive, forward skips. Instead of shaking ahead of the target or off-course, our motion just seems to lag behind.
So a grip that is too tight causes visually sharper, jerky motions with a lot more overcorrection, and a grip that is too loose causes motion that appears sluggish or lagged. This demonstration is to emphasize that you definitely need to be using some tension in aiming and to help you diagnose whether you’re using too little or too much of it. The right balance is actually going to vary in feel person by person, so it is up to you to experiment on many scenarios and eventually find what works best for you.
Blending Muscle Groups
In scenarios that have very wide sweeping motions, like centering or raw smoothness variants, smoothbot variants, or PGTI, another important thing to consider in stabilizing yourself is to minimize the changes in your tension during long strafes or critical tracking motions. Changes in tension, whether it be how much you’re using or where you’re using it, will coincide with changes in your smoothness and continuity. The way you want to think of this is…
How can I effectively balance out tension between my fingertip, wrist, and forearm without disrupting my current tracking motion?
When a player like Scucchi bends his wrist back over his pivot point in the middle of the track, that is the smoothest point and more precise part of his aim. It’s because he doesn’t need to make any changes in tension here. His motion is stable, whereas at the bounds of his motion, or when the target changes direction, he needs to transfer tension into his wrist to make up for a fast micro correction and then restabilize. Therefore, it is important that you keep in mind when the target gives you a long strafe or an opportunity to get a lot of time on target, you keep your tension constant so as to not introduce jitters.
Tension Directionality
Lastly, I want to mention that the direction of the tension force also matters in aiming. Lots of players decide to push downwards with their mouse into the mousepad, effectively applying the force vertically. In this sense, these players are using the friction between the mouse skates and the mousepad to help them stabilize. This is NOT how you want to be doing this. Relying on the mousepad friction to stabilize your motion will cause your tracking to become sticky.
While this depends on the speed of the pad itself, it makes it more difficult to glide with targets or dynamically remove yourself from the tracking motion, such as when you need to react to a change in the target’s direction or even switch to a new target like in evasive switching. Lateral pressure, or squeezing into the mouse, allows you to rely more on your own ability to stabilize and allows you to be more fluid across aiming situations.
In real games, it can be a lot harder to get a clean speed match on targets. Most often, it will depend on the way that you acquire the target first way more than the mechanics of the actual track.
Being able to speed match cleanly will rely on your ability to ascertain the target’s movement direction and acceleration, which can be given away by animation cues or movement abilities, and smoothly acquiring the target, easing into the tracking motion.
This is why it feels so jarring to have to smoothly track a target when you flick very quickly to one. Remember that you need to keep your tension relatively low and smoothly adjust onto the target instead of abruptly flicking. Doing this properly gets you really clean sequences.
And that’s it for today’s video. I hope you guys enjoyed and hopefully learned something new about smooth tracking. Use this advice to get better scores in aim trainers and satisfying tracking moments in FPS games. Follow my Twitch for aim training streams and VOD reviews featuring this kind of information, and as always, happy dot clicking!