Aim-Assist

[zalfy]

So I was watching the Starcraft MLG tournament not to long ago, and I noticed a Halo tournament going on. And something caught my eye while I watched some of their matches, They were using Aim-Assist! I don't know, it bugs me that if your're going to play a game competitively, you should turn stuff like that off? You know, to show skill and not let the game play for you.....thoughts?



Not hating on Halo, just a mechanic I know Halo's a great game.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Aim assist comes in many flavors and serves to help reduce the obvious deficiency that using a joystick for camera control entails. More specifically, the problem is that players using a joystick and be fast or they can be accurate. Minor amounts of bullet correction and mild sticky aiming help mitigate the problems of precision and you'll be hard pressed to find a console FPS that does not feature some level of aim assistance.

 

[CCCPIronCurtain]

Aim assist is needed on console gaming. If you would like an example as to why, load up Halo and have you and a friend try to team kill each other with just guns. It's really difficult without a slight amount of aim assist, for the reasons detailed in the post above mine.

 

[Meggiepants]

There was an article in GI a couple months back all about the many types of aim assist in games that we don't even see. The article certainly made it sound like pretty much every game had it, and usually it's not something you would notice, things like the subtle slowing down of the reticle as you pass over a target, I think they called this something like targeting friction. Actually, it was a really interesting article. I should see if I can find it online.

As to your question, really, if everyone is using it, then they are all given this advantage, and the competition is still the same. As long as everyone has the same tools to work with, then it's fair.

 

[AnAngryMoose]

I'm primarily a console gamer and personally I can't stand aim assist. Aim assist isn't that necessary and it takes away the challenge in games. It's least obvious in Halo than some other games (CoD). However, as far as I can tell there isn't any aim assist in Bad Company 2, which is a good thing.

 

[Wuggy]

I'm fine with aim assist on consoles. However I don't play FPS on console but rather on PC and on PC I will not use it and if it's forced you can have your game and shove it up your bum.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well if everyone has it on it's all good, but it does lower the skill level requirement to participate.

 

[Lawnmooer]

Aim assist is usually on consoles, and even stays on when using to option to disable it.

It's due to the whole "People suck with joysticks so we need to make it easier" thing that console game developers seem to have stuck into their head... As if they don't realise that people can actually get good with aiming quickly and accurately with the joysticks.

The biggest offender to this is the CoD series. In single player and with it disabled it is just mildly annoying. But online it is enabled which screws up headshots a lot (It auto-aims to the chest most of the time) and makes it so that bad players can play well without needing to learn to aim.

 

[Chibz]

I refuse to play games (for the most part) where aim assist cannot be turned off.

Aim assist is stupid.

 

[Gregg Lonsdale]

Consoles are inherently handicapped when it comes to FPS's, and aim assist is one way of getting around this without resorting to a locking-on system like that used in the Metroid Prime games, which made things a bit too easy (though it barely compares to the massive amounts of hand-holding Nintendo does these days). It's fine to have it in singleplayer, because that should be accessible to the layman who hasn't got much experience with the game (perhaps disabled in some cases in line with the tiered-difficulty system). Though competitive multiplayer is meant to be a test of skill and finesse, so should be disabled.

 

[Son of Makuta]

I normally turn it off on PC so it doesn't mess up 'placed' shots (headshots for instance), or cause me to aim directly at someone instead of around/behind them by mistake, but on consoles I think of it as a bit of a necessary evil, to be honest. There's nothing wrong with developers being helpful and including it as an option, at least.