Gaming Gear or Equipment is one of the most underestimated factors among casual and competitive gamers. With over 35 years of experience in gaming, including over 20 years in competitive gaming, I have seen many situations where equipment has made the difference between winning and losing and the satisfaction of a player or an entire team.
In this post, we’ll talk about which components of your gear have more or less an impact on your performance. How much does hardware like a mouse, keyboard, headset, etc., affect you?
As a general rule, good equipment keeps possible negative technical influences as low as possible and supports the player’s performance in the best possible way. Technical deficiencies distract players from the game or hurt the use of skills.
Every gamer who has ever had a mouse, keyboard, or headset suddenly break knows that strange feeling when a new or borrowed device causes their performance to drop several notches.
Aside from personal comfort with the equipment used, performance changes can also be due to the quality of the gear used.
As always, we need to separate the majority of casual gamers from the minority of competitive gamers. In the end, however, both points of view come to the same conclusion.
Note: This article was written in English. Translations into other languages may not provide the same linguistic quality. We apologize for grammatical and semantic errors.
What is Gaming Gear?
Just so we’re talking about the same terminology, here’s a brief definition of Gaming Gear.
Gaming Gear, also called Gaming Equipment, refers to all equipment that is not part of the core system.
This includes:
– Monitor
– Mouse
– Mousepad
– Mouse Bungee
– Keyboard or keypad
– Controller
– Headset, headphones, or earbuds
– Microphone
– Arm Sleeves
– Chair
– Desk
Does Better Gaming Gear make a Difference for Casual Gaming?
In general, higher-quality equipment increases fun in gaming with better sound, vision, and feedback. Better equipment for gaming directly affects the experience in casual gaming and influences the performance of a player or team.
Choosing better gear for gaming as a casual gamer is less about the possible performance as a player. It’s about the gaming experience itself. The graphics, the feedback to the eyes, hands, or ears is much more important to a casual gamer than a few percentage points improvement in the headshot rate.
A better controller, monitor, or wireless headset with good sound quality can make for a much more excellent gaming experience.
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Does Better Gaming Gear make a Difference in Esports?
In general, higher-quality equipment with better sound, vision, and feedback increases the perception and supports the mechanical skills of a competitive player. Better equipment for gaming directly affects the experience in casual gaming and influences the performance of a player or team.
Choosing better gear for gaming as a pro gamer is really about gaining an advantage over the rest of the scene.
Arm sleeves prevent greater friction on the tabletop. Mouse bungees raise the mouse’s cable and avoid annoying friction of the cable that could negatively affect mouse movements. Better headsets let the player hear opponents’ footsteps sooner. A better keyboard allows for faster and more precise keystrokes.
And so it goes on forever.
With all peripherals, a pro gamer needs to find the best equipment to realize their full potential.
Sometimes it’s a matter of latency differences in the millisecond range or the individual pressure points of the hand on the mouse case.
Pro gamers continuously measure their performance with statistics tools, Aim Trainers, and their own experience. Better gaming gear can tip the scales in competitions.
Will Expensive Gaming Gear Make You a Better Gamer?
In general, more expensive equipment increases a player’s performance as long as the quality increases in parallel. The better equipment ensures that the player can fully concentrate on his game and supports exploiting one’s skill potential.
Conversely, this means that overpriced equipment, where costs and benefits are disproportionate, will not bring you any advantage.
Let me give you a negative example. You can buy the most expensive gaming mouse on the market. However, if the ergonomics mean that you don’t feel the optimal pressure point on a button, you’ll play just as well or worse than with a cheaper mouse.
Now for a positive example. Suppose the mouse costs more because you can regulate your personal feeling and thus the precision of the mouse movements via weights. In that case, the additional costs also have a positive effect on your performance.
I think you’ve got the idea.
Many products are not more expensive because of better quality, but because the design or only the logo comes from a brand manufacturer. Others have useless or optical new gimmicks that are guaranteed not to affect your performance, but new is new and more expensive.
How Do I Recognize Good Gaming Gear?
You have two ways to assess the quality of gaming equipment.
On the one hand, you can test it yourself. Go to a store and look at all available keyboards, monitors, or mice. Of course, this is very tedious, and the Internet is much closer.
But before you rely on fake Amazon reviews or statements in any gamer forums, check out the Gaming Elite. What do pro gamers use?
An excellent place to start is the site Prosettings.net, where you can see the gear of the top players for many games.
Gaming gear from pro gamers can’t be bad. Of course, one or the other mouse will come from the sponsor, but as a rule, it is not in the sponsor’s interest and not the player to deliberately play with inferior equipment.
You can’t go wrong if you choose equipment that most of the pro scene uses.
You’ll see that pro gamer don’t always use the most expensive equipment. And that’s okay. Be sure that these players have tried many devices until they decide which equipment they trust for their career success.
For example, I must have tried 30 different mice over a long period of time until I found the perfect mouse for me. You can read more about it here:
I wrote about the process how to find the perfect mouse in this post:
Right at the moment, I am using the Logitech G Pro X Superlight:
Final Thoughts
You can get relatively far with an old mouse, a 60Hz monitor, and a carpet as a mouse pad, but for casual gamers as well as for pro gamers, gaming is simply three times more fun when the equipment fits qualitatively.
As a casual gamer, you want to experience a game as best as possible. As a pro gamer, you don’t want the technology to limit your abilities.
Price, brand, and technical gimmicks are not at all decisive for gaming enjoyment and performance. Quality and your personal gut feeling determine whether you will be annoyed with your purchase decision at the decisive moment.
If you have a question about the post or pro gaming in general, write to us: contact@raiseyourskillz.com
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Masakari – moep, moep and out!
