Poll: The Auto-Aim feature...
- Thread starter The Maddest March Hare
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Crackdown = Yes, auto-aim is good.
Grand Theft Auto = Yes, you can use either so it can save a lot of annoyance, third person trend much?
THE PSP. The only shooters, I have played on the psp and actually enjoyed had auto aim. It's too much work to try to shoot first/third person with one stick.
For instance, SOCOM on the psp = fun, that terrible first person shooter where you're in a simulation (can't remember the name), that was one of the first psp games, was awful.
Grand Theft Auto = Yes, you can use either so it can save a lot of annoyance, third person trend much?
THE PSP. The only shooters, I have played on the psp and actually enjoyed had auto aim. It's too much work to try to shoot first/third person with one stick.
For instance, SOCOM on the psp = fun, that terrible first person shooter where you're in a simulation (can't remember the name), that was one of the first psp games, was awful.
Ok, if you are really interested in the whole PC vs. Console, Mouse vs. Gamepad, Auto aim off vs. Auto aim on design debate you should look at Goldeneye 007 on the N64 (or Perfect Dark on the N64) both developed by Rare. They nailed it.The Maddest March Hare said:
What happens is that you have auto-aim on for general running and gunning. It seems to seek out the nearest target like a magnet. However, whenever I played that game I would make use of the Left Shoulder button which put you into a "rooted to the spot" aim mode with a free-floating cross-hairs. In this mode the D-pad no longer controlled movement, but leaning and crouching.
So, typically I would run (and gun on auto aim) to cover. Hold in the Left Shoulder button to enter the aim Quasi-mode, lean out from cover whilst displacing the look stick (which moved the cross-hairs directly to any given point on the screen without turning you - you only turned when the cross-hairs hit the edge of the screen (enabling moving target pursuit without having to exit the Quasi-mode to explicitly turn) -and then make the headshot. It was just as quick as a mouse and, in my opinion, more comfortable for the hand controlling the movement - as I don't particularly care for WASD or its variants as they cause me to get cramp.
Ok, a bit of a complicated explanation and interestingly a lot of people didn't even use this advanced aim Quasi-mode.
It has never been bettered as a control scheme, in my opinion. Even Timesplitters messed up by having the cross-hairs float by default - something that made the game nausea-inducing and less tactical. It is a good thing that you can't move when you aim as you are getting a fair trade-off for the enormous increase in your precision.
It is a shame other console games didn't adopt this.
EDIT: I may have meant to say 'aim assist' for general running and gunning, rather than 'auto aim' if the latter means the kind of "push a button to cycle between available targets" that you get in many 3rd person p.o.v. games; which I don't much care for. By the way, I think it may have been Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory that had an over the shoulder first-person aim-look whilst placing the figure you controlled in 3rd person either left or right of screen depending on a thumb-stick toggle, or I may have confused this with G.R.A.W.
I don't think that auto aim is really necessary. I do fine without it in console games. I also don't see how the mouse gives you more control than the analog stick. I play on both and can't see much real difference.
Depends on the game. In a "hardcore" first person shooter (i.e. a game where shooting is pretty much the entire game), I won't use it, since it saps the entire challenge out of the game. I can't remember if Call of Duty 4 has auto-aim, but that's the kind of game in which I would not use such a feature.
In a game like GTA IV or Bioshock, however, I'll use an auto-aim or aim-assist feature, since shooting is only one component of the game, and I don't want my so-so aiming skills to distract me from the rest of the experience.
In a game like GTA IV or Bioshock, however, I'll use an auto-aim or aim-assist feature, since shooting is only one component of the game, and I don't want my so-so aiming skills to distract me from the rest of the experience.
I remember reading somewhere (I can't recall the source) that Microsoft has a policy against making a mouse for the X-box, because they don't want to give a handful of players an advantage in online gaming.Skeleon said:
I don't use auto aim, but aim assist, which works better. However, the difference between aim assist on and off is miniscule, but it helps streamline the gameplay and make it easie to snipe and hit moving targets.
Auto aim takes the sense of control away. If I point at something I want to point EXACTLY there. I don't want it to move even an inch. Maybe it is to lead the target, making sniping far easier and more efficient. Some people may like it but those are most likely no hardcore gamers.
When I play shooters on PC, no I don't use auto-aim. For consoles, I have the feature on. This is because all thumbsticks have a "dead-zone".
What I mean by "dead-zone" is that little small area around where the thumbstick resets to when you release your thumb from it which doesn't have sensitivity. That dead-zone is detrimental to me, because sometimes I need that little tiny bit of movement to get a shot. When the thumbstick is moved out of that area, it's suddenly too much movement.
Regardless of your resolution; sometimes I need to turn this much to get a shot: I I. Thumbsticks don't give me that ability.
I also need to release the thumbstick before the crosshairs line up with my target, because information is still being sent until the thumbstick returns to the centre. It's something I haven't gotten used to, even after playing CoD4 on the PS3 since it's release.
On the plus side, the thumbstick lets me turn continuously, and move at a variety of speeds. Though I can adjust the sensitivity of the mouse, I can only move the mouse as much as my wrist, mousepad, or surface allows me. With the keyboard, I only have the option to stop, walk, jog, or sprint. With the thumbstick, I can move at 1 to 100% of the jogging speed; it's useful for those times when I want to peak around corners, or crawl through the grass undetected.
What I mean by "dead-zone" is that little small area around where the thumbstick resets to when you release your thumb from it which doesn't have sensitivity. That dead-zone is detrimental to me, because sometimes I need that little tiny bit of movement to get a shot. When the thumbstick is moved out of that area, it's suddenly too much movement.
Regardless of your resolution; sometimes I need to turn this much to get a shot: I I. Thumbsticks don't give me that ability.
I also need to release the thumbstick before the crosshairs line up with my target, because information is still being sent until the thumbstick returns to the centre. It's something I haven't gotten used to, even after playing CoD4 on the PS3 since it's release.
On the plus side, the thumbstick lets me turn continuously, and move at a variety of speeds. Though I can adjust the sensitivity of the mouse, I can only move the mouse as much as my wrist, mousepad, or surface allows me. With the keyboard, I only have the option to stop, walk, jog, or sprint. With the thumbstick, I can move at 1 to 100% of the jogging speed; it's useful for those times when I want to peak around corners, or crawl through the grass undetected.
it depends on the situation entirely, in something like star wars battlefront it was a godsend for me, there are lots of enemies and I was constantly moving and straffing, and only having to vaugly point my blaster rifle towards the enemy and letting AI shoot each individual enemy was very usefull. In games like call of duty I can't stand it, when you are trying to go for headshots and kill quickly and effieicently you end up wasteing too much time and amunition putting shots where the computor thinks they should go and not yourself. It also depends a bit on which gun I'm using, if its a spray and pray smg or heavy machine gun then i like having auto aim, but with a prescision rifle i can't stand it.
Metal Gear Online has an auto-aim feature that you can turn on or off at a whim, via pressing square. Used situationally, it's very effective.
In the Metal Gear Online International competition (last year I think?), the Japanese team RAPED the American team in the final. Wanna know why? The Jap's used Auto-Aim, and the American's didn't. There was this snobbery involved as well from the American's, that somehow, using a game mechanic to win in a competition is either "noobish" or "cheap". And anyone who knows about the limited range on the auto aim in MGO will know that it's hardly noobish at all, especially when combined with regular aiming, it requires a certain amount of skill.
Play to win. End of. Put your silly conceptions of whats "noob" and what isn't aside.
In the Metal Gear Online International competition (last year I think?), the Japanese team RAPED the American team in the final. Wanna know why? The Jap's used Auto-Aim, and the American's didn't. There was this snobbery involved as well from the American's, that somehow, using a game mechanic to win in a competition is either "noobish" or "cheap". And anyone who knows about the limited range on the auto aim in MGO will know that it's hardly noobish at all, especially when combined with regular aiming, it requires a certain amount of skill.
Play to win. End of. Put your silly conceptions of whats "noob" and what isn't aside.
The only game I play right now on xbox is TF2 which has no auto aim feature. On the PC I am currently playing BF Heroes and I don't even think there is an auto aim option..
After having two many instances of an annoying auto aim drag taking my cross hair off of the bloke who was shooting at me to someone else running behind him I turned mine off. It took a little adjustment but I prefer playing without.
I sometimes still play the Combat Simulator Deathmatch mode for Perfect Dark on a N64 on a Standard Defintion CRT TV. Without the auto-aim you simply can't see where your crosshair is, and it needs to be there.