In circles of shooter fans, the small Steam game Oblivity is making the rounds. This aim trainer intends to go one step further than Kovaak’s or Aim Lab: it promises to find the perfect mouse settings for you. How does that work, and can the game deliver on its promises? MeinMMO’s shooter expert Marko Jevtic breaks it down for you.
The perhaps most important aspect for good shooter gameplay is the speed at which you move your crosshair across the screen – the so-called mouse sensitivity for PC shooters.
Because if you find a setting that fits your aiming habits perfectly, you can automatically land more headshots in your favorite shooters.
The new Steam game Oblivity is a shooter with an extra promise that sounds very interesting: it wants to determine the perfect mouse sensitivity for you, so you can improve in all other shooters.
As a moderator of Discord and Reddit communities, he helps PC newcomers, streamers, and e-sports pros to get better at shooters and find the right settings. He is also in almost daily contact with former Quake pro Kovaak (from the popular aim trainer of the same name).
But does it actually work? And is the price of €7.99 for Oblivity (via Steam) worth it? I want to explain that to you here.
Check out the trailer for Oblivity – Find Your Perfect Sensitivity:
Oblivity is a shooter that you only play for other shooters
Anyone who plays shooters at a high level knows how important good settings and peripherals can be. After a years-long search for the perfect mousepad, I ended up with a glass pad, and I also want to perfectly equip my expensive Xbox controller.
The question of the right mouse sensitivity for each player has occupied me for years. How do you best find something so important – especially when every player has different habits and plays different games? Oblivity aims to answer this question playfully.
Oblivity is also an aim trainer, like the free Aim Labs or the established Kovaak’s. Here, players can work on their shooter skills in a virtual shooting range and immortalize themselves with high scores.
However, Oblivity has a completely different focus, as the full title of the game reveals: “Oblivity – Find your Perfect Sensitivity”.
Instead of simply offering various shooting ranges, the game aims to find the perfect mouse settings for you using mathematical algorithms and regulated training scenarios. You ideally play Oblivity only to get better at playing other shooters.
When you start the game, you must first create a player profile. This is not about the appearance of an avatar, but about your own aiming habits in shooters. To figure this out correctly, you need to answer a few questions for the game.
Here are some of those questions:
- What shooters do you play?
- What settings do you use in those shooters?
- How do you move your mouse – just with your wrist, with your whole arm, or a mix of both?
- How much space do you have on your mousepad?
- How good do you rate yourself in shooters?
- How long do you want to play until Oblivity reveals the “perfect setting”?
Once you have answered these questions, you select a playlist of various shooting range scenarios that fit your favorite game. Sometimes you must accurately track moving targets, other times quickly switch between multiple targets.
So far, this sounds like the usual aim trainers, but Oblivity uses a trick: it continually changes your mouse speed and lets you try the same scenarios with the new settings.
With a fixed number of repetitions each day, you should be able to try many different mouse sensitivities. The game then calculates in the background which one you hit best with. In the end, it presents you with the “perfect” setting.
Depending on how you answered the question “How much time do you have?”, you will have to repeat this differently often and for different lengths. Here are your options:
- 1 day with 120 exercises.
- 3 days with a total of 225 exercises, 50 per day.
- 4 days with a total of 325 exercises, 50 per day.
- 7 days with a total of 630 exercises, 75 per day.
The more often and longer you do these exercises, the better the result should be, says Oblivity.
This sounds like a lot of work and the nerd equivalent of a tough workout program in the gym. But does it actually bring results?
“Find your perfect sensitivity” – Is that actually possible?
As important as I find it to consider the settings used when trying to get better – the idea of “perfect settings” is, in my opinion, nonsense. It’s snake oil for people looking for a quick fix to fundamental, complex problems.
Because precise shooting in shooters does not happen when you find just the right number or when you adequately train and stimulate “muscle memory.” Aiming is nothing more than good hand-eye coordination and quick reaction – and there are no “perfect settings” for that. It is instead simply a matter of practice, habit, and adaptability.
I use a completely different setting for almost every shooter, and I change it daily – if I’m feeling sluggish, for example, I set the mouse speed a few percentage points higher than the day before. That doesn’t hurt me; quite the opposite.
If I can handle several, sometimes drastically different mouse speeds, I overall improve my skills in moving the mouse. This directly means that I can shoot more accurately – regardless of all settings and game situations. I believe that experimenting with many different settings is therefore the quickest and best way to improve in shooters.
This is what experts like Kovaak say about Oblivity
As a “quack product”, I won’t label Oblivity. Because the basic approach of this program is completely fine.
The game automates what I recommend to all interested newcomers: Test many different settings and see which feels best.
I also asked Kovaak in one of my conversations with him about his opinion on Oblivity. While it is, in a way, a competitor to his own aim trainer, I have not met him as a person who disparages alternative approaches.
Kovaak’s response was that the game has a very good foundation as an aim trainer, but the idea of a perfect sensitivity is problematic:
I am not a fan of the concept of “perfect sensitivity.” You can find optimal hand, wrist, and arm movements that work well and allow for perfect control, but the implementation in the game is a function of the distance to the target and the mouse speed. As long as you don’t have a static distance to the target, there is no such thing as perfect sensitivity.
Kovaak on Oblivity
A program that automatically varies sensitivity and tracks and analyzes your performance is not only considered a great idea by me. Oblivity can really shine here.
However, the promise of “perfection” is deceptive marketing, which unfortunately sells exactly the wrong and misleading ideas that Kovaak and I warn about.
Furthermore, the game has another fundamental problem in its logic. It ignores that you generally get better with more playtime in the digital shooting range – even with settings you haven’t tried for a long time.
The algorithm of the training program fails to account for the training effect. The result will therefore be distorted. This highlights how misguided the search for objectively perfect settings is.
So if you want to get Oblivity to find the perfect setting, I would advise against the program on principle. However, if you want a simple method to test several settings in a solid digital training environment, Oblivity is definitely worth a look.
You can also just as well try this in the game of your choice by simply changing the settings over and over again.
By the way, if you want to know what I think will be the best shooter of 2022, I have an article for you:
Forget Steam or PS5 – The best shooter 2022 is coming to Switch
