mouse pad is just as important as the mouse if you care about accuracy

By the way - there is no such thing as a gaming mouse. There are mice that you are comfortable with and ones you are not - that's pretty much it. ;-)

Yeah, just don't use an apple mouse, those are just fucked up big time.

I really do not understand why people still use mouse mats. Mouse mats were invented to give traction to old ball-style mice and were obviously necessary in the past, but now that mice are optical they make no sense. Unless you buy a shoddy mouse the optical system will track perfectly on just about any surface. Having a mouse pad just delineates the amount of usable space you have to move the mouse about in. Why would you want to do that?

I really do not understand why people still use mouse mats. Mouse mats were invented to give traction to old ball-style mice and were obviously necessary in the past, but now that mice are optical they make no sense. Unless you buy a shoddy mouse the optical system will track perfectly on just about any surface. Having a mouse pad just delineates the amount of usable space you have to move the mouse about in. Why would you want to do that?

By the way - there is no such thing as a gaming mouse. There are mice that you are comfortable with and ones you are not - that's pretty much it.

I really do not understand why people still use mouse mats. Mouse mats were invented to give traction to old ball-style mice and were obviously necessary in the past, but now that mice are optical they make no sense. Unless you buy a shoddy mouse the optical system will track perfectly on just about any surface. Having a mouse pad just delineates the amount of usable space you have to move the mouse about in. Why would you want to do that?

I disagree, there are mice which are good quality and mice which are bad quality, generally the 'gaming' mice are good quality with good sensors. I tried to play tf2 on a £5 mouse and the thing was just awful. You can be comfortable with a mouse which gives you worse results than a different mouse, just due to getting used to it. You might not notice the problems it is causing (it is pretty hard to tell whether there is acceleration or smoothing without specifically looking for it). The first mouse I suggested is not a 'gaming' mouse, but it is one of the best mice around in tracking.

I was extremely comfortable with my Logitech G9 on the worst mouse mat possible, because of this I thought that I was playing the best I possibly could. When it started breaking I bought a DA 3.5G and a good mouse mat and it felt awful. After a while of adjusting I was amazed I managed to play on my previous set up...

It is the same kind of thing when people say that net settings (interp and the like) and smoothing make no difference in game...
Tracking is better, you notice a huge difference between a decent mouse mat and a table. Whether that is just because the mouse glides better on the mouse mat rather than the sensor making errors makes no difference to how much of an advantage it gives you. Mouse mats can come in sizes like 1000x500mm so it's hardly like you can't get one big enough.

As sonny says, if you are spending money on a decent mouse, you might as well keep the glides from wearing down so much, which is another advantage of a mouse mat.

tl;dr get a good mouse and mouse mat and you will like it!

Mousehandling is much smoother than on the blank table. And the "mousefeet" (I think they are called like that), those small parts that actually touch the surface u are playing on, dont wear off.

Hey all,

My Razor Deathadder has decided to stop working!!!! And I am now stuck with my old crappy wireless piece of junk!!! Can anyone recomend a decent gaming mouse please?

Cheers

Scouse

I disagree, there are mice which are good quality and mice which are bad quality, generally the 'gaming' mice are good quality with good sensors. I tried to play tf2 on a £5 mouse and the thing was just awful. You can be comfortable with a mouse which gives you worse results than a different mouse, just due to getting used to it. You might not notice the problems it is causing (it is pretty hard to tell whether there is acceleration or smoothing without specifically looking for it). The first mouse I suggested is not a 'gaming' mouse, but it is one of the best mice around in tracking.

I was extremely comfortable with my Logitech G9 on the worst mouse mat possible, because of this I thought that I was playing the best I possibly could. When it started breaking I bought a DA 3.5G and a good mouse mat and it felt awful. After a while of adjusting I was amazed I managed to play on my previous set up...

It is the same kind of thing when people say that net settings (interp and the like) and smoothing make no difference in game...

We are not talking about quality here. Of course quality matters. I just said that all the mice being advertised as "gaming" mice aren't necessarily the best mice for a particular person. They are very often overpriced and offer gimmicks instead of sensible features. People ejaculate about high and adjustable sensor resolution for instance because that has become the flagship parameter for "precision" without even checking the sensor or most important of all USB polling rates and so on.

Speaking of "high quality" - I think I told my story about the Razer Diamondback already. Left mouse button started locking up after like 3 weeks, the silicon lined sides started wearing off shortly after - clearly superior build quality. My Icemat Syberia headphones broke (I mean, the plastic, the still worked after some gluing after falling from a height of around 1m...
That's why for instance any Sennheiser headphones will be better "gaming" products than ones actually advertised as "gaming" products.

So again - buy GOOD quality stuff but stay away from anything that is being marketed specifically to gamers (in most cases) because it mostly focuses on gimmicks and "progamers'" needs to compare dick sizes ("Duuuude, my mouse has over 9000 dpi!").

P.S. Acceleration and smoothing are performed software-wise i.e. with drivers and don't have anything to do with the hardware. Even if a mouse has shitty drivers (incidentally the worst drivers I've ever seen and wrote about as well were Razer drivers there are ways around it.

Probably cost a bomb though, way too cool to be cheap!