Mousepad friction

[Seriouslyy]

Hello everyone

I started playing CS:GO about 8 months ago. In this period I have had consistent problems with "friction" on the mousepads. I have tried a number of mousepads (Zowie GTF-X, Razer Goliathus, QcK Heavy and more) along with two mice (EC2-A and Logitech G403 wired). Whatever combination I use the same problem occurs. Initially, the movement feels great and swift. After about one day of use, sometimes just a few hours, however, the part of the mousepad that I have used gets "gluey". It gets really hard to spray in particular, but all movements feel weird. This "glueyness" becomes worse the more I use that particular area of the mousepad. Now, I have thought of a million explanations for this. I do not sweat, so that is not the issue. I have tried washing the affected area; very gently without soap, gently with soap, were harsh with soap etc. I have considered if it could be dust, but my room is completely clean. I have changed mouse-feet several times. Hell, I even bought a new EC2-A, after which the same problem occured. 

I beg you, please help me solve this issue! 

[potato psoas]

Did you have something to say about mousepad friction?

[Seriouslyy]

17 hours ago, potato psoas said:

Did you have something to say about mousepad friction?

Sorry, I am an idiot with now knowledge on this matter. Please be nice to me.

[iBerggman]

I was going to suggest trying a faster pad or one of the hybrid pads that have plastic fibers woven into the cloth but seeing how you've already tried the GTF-X that's probably not going to solve it since that's supposedly a pretty fast pad already, comparable with the Artisan Hayate if I remember right. 

Could it be the mousefeet, you say you've switched them but are you still using stock ones? Personally I thought the ones that came with the G403 were some of, if not the worst, mousefeet I've ever tried. The feet on my EC1-A were alright at first but I think they kept getting noticeably slower as they wore down, can't say for sure though as I didn't change out to verify since that was incidentally around the time I switched to the G403. I would recommend giving Corepad feet a go if you haven't, they're in my opinion the best aftermarket feet available especially now that they also have rounded edges. Hyperglides would be the winner if it wasn't for the severely limited amount of mice they support, the glide is very different between some models as well.

Another thing is that if the humidity in your room is very high you're going to have a bad time with pretty much every cloth pad as far as I know, so that might be worth ruling out as well. I don't really know much about that though since the humidity here is always low so you'll have to research that on your own if you suspect that might be something.

[Seriouslyy]

Thank you so much for your response iBerggman! 

I am now convinced that the problem lies in the mouse feet. I tried "rubbing" my hand at a unused mousepad spot for about 30 minutes, and it was as good as new afterwards, so the feet should be the cause of the problem (I don't have high humidity in my room at all). I tried the corepad mousefeet as you suggested. The problem has been greatly decreased since I switched to these feet, but I still experience about 1/3 of the friction I experienced before. Still enough that it does not feel entirely smooth, but I can play at a decent level. Still, however, it frustrates me that I cannot perform at my highest level due to hardware issues.

I wonder if it is possible to get a mouse that has no mouse feet? Or one that has feet made of another material than teflon? I tried to google this, without much success.

[iBerggman]

Good to hear it helped! I don't know if it's the same for every model they make but I've found Corepads (Rival 310) tend to get a bit faster the first 1-2 weeks as they wear in, it's not a huge difference but definitely noticeable. You'll see the feet get shinier and the shinier they get the better they glide as opposed to some stock feet I felt were getting slower and slower the shinier they got.

And as for other materials I know there's some mice on the Asian market that use ceramic or metal feet but I haven't bother trying any of those out because for now I'm actually really satisfied with the mouse feeling I get with the Corepads on my Artisan FX Zero MID. The ceramic definitely sounds interesting though but I think it's one of those things that's a lot more difficult to manufacture and doesn't really offer any significant benefits compared to PTFE to warrant the extra cost.

[Zwei]

 

Honestly, I don't see a lot of talk about this, but I think the factor looking for is mousepad thickness.  The thicker the mousepad, the more likely when you can press the mouse into the mousepad, making it feel a little harder to move.  You'll notice this happens more often with spraying or track aiming.  You're pressing down on left click  (or left click AND right click in the case you're playing a game that has ADS) and there for you press the mouse into the pad.   There probably isn't a whole lot of talk about this cause I feel like its more noticeable with High Sens and there aren't a whole lot of professional competitive gamers that use high sens.  I have a range of about 4 to 6 inch 360 @ 103 FOV. 

The mousepads that you have listed are 4mm to 5mm in thickness.  On Amazon, the Steel Series Classic QCK small/medium/large is 2mm (my old go-to mousepad).  Same with the "Amazon Basics" mousepad which seems to be a rebranded QCK 2mm lol. Give that a shot.   The mousepad I landed on was the  "Reflex Lab Pro 9" which is 3mm but it seems denser and feels like a QCK 2mm imo.  Be warned tho, the Pro 9 is small.  I'm a  high sens aimer, so I don't need a lot of room.  The other option is to change habits; try not to press hard on the mouse when tracking. 

[potato psoas]

2 hours ago, Zwei said:

Honestly, I don't see a lot of talk about this, but I think the factor looking for is mousepad thickness.  The thicker the mousepad, the more likely when you can press the mouse into the mousepad, making it feel a little harder to move.  You'll notice this happens more often with spraying or track aiming.  You're pressing down on left click  (or left click AND right click in the case you're playing a game that has ADS) and there for you press the mouse into the pad.   There probably isn't a whole lot of talk about this cause I feel like its more noticeable with High Sens and there aren't a whole lot of professional competitive gamers that use high sens.  I have a range of about 4 to 6 inch 360 @ 103 FOV. 

The mousepads that you have listed are 4mm to 5mm in thickness.  On Amazon, the Steel Series Classic QCK small/medium/large is 2mm (my old go-to mousepad).  Same with the "Amazon Basics" mousepad which seems to be a rebranded QCK 2mm lol. Give that a shot.   The mousepad I landed on was the  "Reflex Lab Pro 9" which is 3mm but it seems denser and feels like a QCK 2mm imo.  Be warned tho, the Pro 9 is small.  I'm a  high sens aimer, so I don't need a lot of room.  The other option is to change habits; try not to press hard on the mouse when tracking. 

This is pretty solid advice. The best mousepads are the ones with the least of amount of friction. Otherwise, if you have a habit of pressing hard on the mouse pad it makes it hard to track because you stutter as you move. This is why I hate hard plastic mousepads because they have so much friction when connected to my hand, whereas cloth mousepads you can dig into and still move around.

As an example, I used to use the Razer Goliathus Speed a long time ago, which is adequate to say the least, but compared to the QCK+ it has way more friction and makes tracking targets smoothly so much harder. But I still feel like there has gotta be a mousepad that's even smoother than my QCK+. Or maybe there is some kind of wax you can add to it to get the same effect. It's a pretty absorbant mousepad and gets very dirty easily.

[Skidushe]

On 12/10/2018 at 11:06 PM, potato psoas said:

This is pretty solid advice. The best mousepads are the ones with the least of amount of friction. Otherwise, if you have a habit of pressing hard on the mouse pad it makes it hard to track because you stutter as you move. This is why I hate hard plastic mousepads because they have so much friction when connected to my hand, whereas cloth mousepads you can dig into and still move around.

As an example, I used to use the Razer Goliathus Speed a long time ago, which is adequate to say the least, but compared to the QCK+ it has way more friction and makes tracking targets smoothly so much harder. But I still feel like there has gotta be a mousepad that's even smoother than my QCK+. Or maybe there is some kind of wax you can add to it to get the same effect. It's a pretty absorbant mousepad and gets very dirty easily.

Out of curiosity, do you buy into any of the 'control' type mats. My brain 4 years ago when I bought my mat said I like sniping so I went with the goliathus control mat which I like, but I've never had a feel of anything different. Do you think you can be more accurate with a faster mat?

[potato psoas]

6 hours ago, Skidushe said:

Out of curiosity, do you buy into any of the 'control' type mats. My brain 4 years ago when I bought my mat said I like sniping so I went with the goliathus control mat which I like, but I've never had a feel of anything different. Do you think you can be more accurate with a faster mat?

Well by definition if it has more control it has more friction. But it does need to have balance. You can't be sliding on moist ice or you will never be stable. But most mousepads are never going to be that frictionless so there is always going to be enough control.

Control mousepads are probably better for higher sensitivities since you aren't going to need to move your mouse much to track, but less friction is better for low sensitivities because you need to move your mouse a greater distance while tracking, and if you stutter even a little bit, that will mess with your aim. Just try digging your fingers into the pad while trying to smoothly rotate back and forth at either wrist or elbow. That's why I absolutely hate playing on plastic pads - there is so much friction that you can't track at all.

This is all another reason why I use a gaming sleeve. I rest my arm on the desk, but I don't want that to cause too much friction so I have a silk/spandex sleeve all the way down my arm. Sometimes even the jumper I'm wearing works well enough and my arm slides within my jumper.

Some other things to consider - in Winter you need a jumper but your hand is frozen so you're not going to play very well, yet in Summer if you have a sleeve on you sweat like crazy and can't grip the mouse...

[DNAMTE]

On 12/11/2018 at 6:49 AM, Zwei said:

 

Honestly, I don't see a lot of talk about this, but I think the factor looking for is mousepad thickness.  The thicker the mousepad, the more likely when you can press the mouse into the mousepad, making it feel a little harder to move.  You'll notice this happens more often with spraying or track aiming.  You're pressing down on left click  (or left click AND right click in the case you're playing a game that has ADS) and there for you press the mouse into the pad.   There probably isn't a whole lot of talk about this cause I feel like its more noticeable with High Sens and there aren't a whole lot of professional competitive gamers that use high sens.  I have a range of about 4 to 6 inch 360 @ 103 FOV. 

The mousepads that you have listed are 4mm to 5mm in thickness.  On Amazon, the Steel Series Classic QCK small/medium/large is 2mm (my old go-to mousepad).  Same with the "Amazon Basics" mousepad which seems to be a rebranded QCK 2mm lol. Give that a shot.   The mousepad I landed on was the  "Reflex Lab Pro 9" which is 3mm but it seems denser and feels like a QCK 2mm imo.  Be warned tho, the Pro 9 is small.  I'm a  high sens aimer, so I don't need a lot of room.  The other option is to change habits; try not to press hard on the mouse when tracking. 

Thickness or more specifically the density of the pad is something to consider, we talked more about it in this thread;

page 5 talks about one of the softer pads and the issues they can bring more clearly to view.

[Seriouslyy]

Hi guys, thanks for the responses!

I have recently tested some more mice, in particular Steelseries Rival 310 and Zowie EC2-A with corepad feet, and the Logitech G440 mousepad (hardpad). On this hardpad, these mice also start to "stick" to the mousepad after a little use. I can get it back to normal by rubbing the mouse feet with "wet wipes" or by rubbing my fingers on the feet for a few seconds. However, 5 minutes later the problem returns.

It would thus appear that, for whatever reason, teflon feet become sticky for me. I have been looking for mice with other types of feet, but I have only been able to find a 150 gram mouse with metal feet from a questionable brand. Do you guys know of any good mouse that does not use teflon feet? Or do you have other suggestions for me?

[iBerggman]

5 hours ago, Seriouslyy said:

Hi guys, thanks for the responses!

I have recently tested some more mice, in particular Steelseries Rival 310 and Zowie EC2-A with corepad feet, and the Logitech G440 mousepad (hardpad). On this hardpad, these mice also start to "stick" to the mousepad after a little use. I can get it back to normal by rubbing the mouse feet with "wet wipes" or by rubbing my fingers on the feet for a few seconds. However, 5 minutes later the problem returns.

It would thus appear that, for whatever reason, teflon feet become sticky for me. I have been looking for mice with other types of feet, but I have only been able to find a 150 gram mouse with metal feet from a questionable brand. Do you guys know of any good mouse that does not use teflon feet? Or do you have other suggestions for me?

Honestly I'd have to recommend sticking to finding a PTFE mousefeet + mousepad combo that works for you just because it's (a lot) easier to maintain in the long run. The few metal feet there are have no rounded edges so they're most likely more scratchy than corepads and hyperglides with their rounded edges, additionally both metal and ceramic feet only come in odd or large shapes so you severely limit your options with those. That being said the ceramic ones seem to be circular as well as have rounded edges so those are probably the better choice if you still wanted to try something other than teflon. 

Your best bet would probably be these manufacturers:

A4Tech Bloody - Metal

Sharkoon / Gigabyte - Ceramic

 

[DNAMTE]

I don't think metal feet would provide anything better than PTFE.

Did you get some mr sheen like i suggested in pm?

One spray, every day and your mousepad will feel like new.

https://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/officeworks/p/mr-sheen-original-surface-polish-400g-bust007631

 

Edited December 16, 2018 by DNAMTE