How to Dial In Your Controller for FPS Gaming

Are you a console player jumping into FPS, a PC player who is just flat out more comfortable on controller, or a PC player who’s looking to get those sweet aim assist advantages, but something just isn’t clicking yet? It’s easy to internalize the problem, assuming that you need more practice with your thumbs, but, you might be selling yourself short.

There’s this concept that controller is easier out the box, plug and play, but there’s just as much tweaking and customization in settings that goes into making your controller work for you. Plugging in or pairing the controller and jumping into the game sounds reasonable, hey, it’s what console players did for decades, but that approach leaves a lot on the table.

The controller market has been evolving very rapidly, matching some of the innovations and evolutions that we’ve seen in the keyboard and mouse space… In fact, they’re even using some similar technology, bringing similar performance over. With this guide, we’ll aim to do a deeper dive into the settings and customizations that you can use to dial that controller in for peak performance in your FPS games.

Deadzone

Let’s start by talking deadzone. The deadzone is the threshold on your sticks that you have to move before it registers your input. This exists to help account for “stick drift,” a side effect in which the hardware’s sensors begin to register thumbstick input even when you’re not actively using the controller. Quite frankly, stick drift sucks, and while more and more players have been upgrading to controllers with technology that prevents stick drift, there are still players who are dealing with it.

Now, the downside to deadzone is that it adds a bit of latency to your inputs. Since you’re having to clear that threshold before it interprets your manual input, you could notice that delay, even if it’s mostly a very minor amount. This is why it’s helpful to tweak and adjust your deadzone so that it feels the best for you.

A decent starting point for most controllers would be roughly 5%, even if your sticks are pretty worn in. If you’re at 5% and still seeing some stick drift, nudge that amount up incrementally until it’s gone. Alternatively, if 5% feels good to you, you can lower it slightly to see if you have a bit more room to work with. This seems fairly minor, but dialing this in can be more important than the average player would ever realize.

Response Curve

The response curve on your controller is what dictates how far you have to push the stick and how quickly the game responds to your input. Linear is going to be straight up one to one. Halfway will be about half speed on the stick, and all the way is full speed. Other curves will adjust that relationship, forcing the game to respond differently, depending on how much you’re manipulating the thumbstick.

We’d suggest starting with linear at first. This will be the closest to raw input, controlled by your thumbs rather than letting the curve do any lifting for you. Once you’re feeling comfortable and competent at aiming with the sticks, you can start experimenting with other curves to see which might better fit your playstyle.

Sensitivity

If you’re looking at Aimlabs content, sensitivity likely needs no introduction, but if you’re looking for a starting sens to use on your controller, we have an easy drill you can use. First, let’s start with the lower side of the sensitivity spectrum for the game you’re playing. It’s much easier to start lower and then incrementally raise the sens rather than starting out high and working backwards, as you’ll have more control initially.

Now, you will want to make sure your deadzone is dialed in first, because your sticks can feel way off before we’re even factoring that sensitivity in. Next, hop into a task or your game’s training range, find a target, and start moving around like you would in any battle. Snap onto the target, snap to one beside it, strafe around, and track it. If you feel as though your crosshair is just never over your target, and you’re having to snap back and correct it over and over, your sens is likely too high. If you feel like you’re making your thumb tired holding the stick in one direction as you impatiently wait for it to hit the target, you’re too low. Adjust, test, rinse and repeat.

Once your sens feels right, lock it in and start practicing or playing. Your aim will gradually adapt to these changes, but it can take weeks to really set in, so if you’re making adjustments every single session, you’re not giving yourself the time to adapt, you’re just changing things for the sake of changing them. Find what seems to work, and give it a legitimate try for a bit.

Aim Assist

Once you find yourself on the server or in a match, aim assist is officially in play. It likely doesn’t need too much explanation out of the gate, but aim assist is doing two things under the hood that players rarely talk about.

First, aim assist will use “aim slowdown.” This occurs when your crosshair gets near an enemy… Aim assist then quietly adjusts the game to lower your sens. You’re still moving your stick the same amount, but the crosshair slows down, giving you more opportunity to make accurate micro adjustments.

Second, rotational aim assist. This is the one that most players are completely oblivious to. If you’re moving, it will actively track an enemy target as they move. You have to be moving, though, so if you’re just standing still in the middle of a fight, you’re missing out completely. This is the aspect of rotational aim assist that causes players to overlook it, which is funny considering how powerful it is. Hey, strafing mid aim duel isn’t just for dodging, it’s also keeping your crosshair locked on.

One last thing for this section… You really can’t train raw stick control with aim assist, because it’s always there, operating to clean up behind you. It’s like trying to learn to spell with autocorrect enabled, it does the work for you. This is why we’ve opted not to feature aim assist in Aimlabs. We’re here for your training, and if you improve your overall fundamentals, then you’ll be that much more dangerous when you’re playing a game with aim assist enabled.

ADS Sensitivity

Any time you’re aiming down sights, or ADSing, your field of view narrows to zoom the world in. Unfortunately, your sensitivity typically doesn’t automatically account for this. The same sens that feels right when you’re shooting from the hip is going to feel significantly faster when you’re scoped in, leading to a lot of aiming errors that no one wants mid firefight.

This is why you’ll often see games feature a separate sensitivity for ADS or scopes, it’s there to help you adjust accordingly, or even tweak the values more to your liking and playstyle if you find that the default settings are too slow. Either way, this is an important one to double check as you’re learning a game, as having this customized to your needs won’t just make you feel more comfortable, it will help you be more precise and effective.

Stick Technique and the Live Zone

It’s pretty common for players to just jam the stick to the edges of the thumbstick ring while they’re aiming, which can be counterproductive, as that area offers the least precision. These players are basically throwing a difficulty modifier on their gameplay.

Instead, let’s familiarize ourselves with the concept of the live zone. This is the range between the deadzone and that ring around the thumbstick. This is where that precise, smooth aim actually lives. You should be doing all of your heavy lifting in this region, instead of redlining your thumbstick, so to speak, where you’re leaving yourself with less space to maneuver. This may be one of the more challenging disciplines to work on, but it’s going to be one of the most rewarding.

Hardware

We can tweak your settings top to bottom, but there are some unfortunate realities at play. Hardware can be a failure point, and you can’t always work around bad hardware, especially if we’re taking build quality into consideration. The truth is that bad hardware can legitimately hold your aim back. Deadzone settings can only do so much, but a controller with stick drift is still working against you.

The standard, out of the box controller is still likely using potentiometer sticks, which are susceptible to stick drift. It’s usually not a matter of if they will experience stick drift, but more of a when.

In recent years, we’ve seen the rise of TMR sticks, which, simply put, are more precise and much more durable, which helps your aim stay consistent with that controller. We also don’t want to sleep on Hall Effect triggers, as they’re more responsive and can offer customization such as reducing how much you need to pull the trigger to register your input. This can make a big difference in an aim duel, especially in games where first shot accuracy can decide fights.

Your hardware does make a difference, so as you’re shopping for a new controller, whether you opt to go with the GameSir x Aimlabs G7 Pro or something similar, make sure you’re looking for controllers that feature TMR sticks and Hall Effect triggers at minimum. You’ll likely end up upgrading to these features eventually, might as well start with them.

Hand Health

Finally, we want to touch on hand health. It may sound silly, but aim training puts repeated strain on your hands, even more so than you might experience from a regular gaming session. Training tends to feature less frequent downtime between gameplay, and that mileage can quickly add up on your hands.

The important thing is to remember to take regular breaks between your sessions, and we would suggest doing so during your normal gaming time, too. Breaks are good, breaks are healthy, and being healthy keeps you in the game, long term. Regularly stretch your wrists and fingers whenever you have the opportunity or when you step away for a moment. Also, take some time to strengthen your hands and forearms. You don’t need to hit the hand gym, but any effort helps. These will feel like small habits, but in the long run, the players who build them up are the ones who can keep training and gaming without aches or pains years down the line. Take care of yourself.