I've been playing online FPSs for years now, but I've always been absolutely terrible at them. I can maybe get a 1:1 K:D ratio on a good round, but my average is probably closer to 1:3 or 1:4. This has been pretty consistent in every FPS I've played over the years. I'm not sure what I'm really doing wrong. I use cover. I try to flank with my teammates. I throw grenades to flush enemies out of cover. But somehow it always seems like they're faster, more accurate, better able to get the drop on me.
Is it just because I only play them for a few weeks or months before moving on? Is this something that gets better with practice, or do I have some kind of undiagnosed motor deficiency?
Basic things to help you get better are your mouse settings. A good starting point for your mouse sensitivity should be doing a 180 in game by moving your mouse from starting position to right (or left for left handed) edge of your mousepad, assuming you don’t have one of those giant ones. Then you fine tune it from there to wherever feels comfortable. Also watching pro players on YouTube/twitch helps somewhat.
Also posture plays a role in your aim. Sit up in your chair so you aren’t adding extra force to your forearm by dragging it across the table.
Also one thing that I noticed that helped my aim is actively thinking. I have adhd pretty bad and it’ll be impossible to focus sometimes, and in those times I usually try to actively think through what I’m doing, like “oh my crosshair should be pre aimed over here” or “oh I’m in a pretty bad spot and should move” like I’m actively saying this in my head.
The mouse sens thing was 100% my problem for the longest time.
A friend of mine used to be a semi-pro CS player, he was spectating me play Apex and asked "You've never considered your DPI or sensitivity have you?" He walked me though this process mentioned. Before I could do a 360 by moving my mouse a tiny tiny bit, and through the process it became a whole arm movement. The difference was night and day, my aim was significantly better immediately.
Here is a decent guide.
I turned my mouse tuning waaaaaaay down when I started playing Hunt Showdown and it's mde a big difference.
Honestly the TLDR version of this advice is basically "keep turning down your sensitivity until you can't enjoy the game anymore."
deleted by creator
Alas, I pretty much entirely play from my wrist out of necessity. As soon as my arm gets involved, my precision goes waaay way down. It's a life long pathological thing that affects many areas of my life. :( In FPSes I usually rely on positioning and tactics to get ok scores. Weirdly, the one game in which I was unreasonably good at shooting was Battlefield 1. Absolutely no idea, did nothing particularly different. Just me and my open sights SMLE III routinely getting long ranged headshots or quick aim close ranged kills. It just clicked with me.
I remember in TF2 I played pyro and had a mouse sensitivity of 12, compared to my sniper friend's 0.7 (who used his whole arm and mousepad area).
Whatever is comfortable and works for you is also really all that matters in terms of aim. That being said, being a pyro on 12 sens is such a pyro thing
Quite a hit of nostalgia. I download TF2 maybe once every couple of years to faff about for a bit.