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[FyreWulff]

Quick question, so why do they add the heavy aim assist in a lot of FPS games? Lower skill gap? Or is it to offset things like lag?

I'm only asking because a while ago, someone showed this rudimentary FPS gameplay and guys like Cliffy B said it's the future of shooters.

In it, each bullet and person was independently moving. No animations or anything.

To compensate for the controller's joysticks and speed.

Autoaim or aim assist is usually used to describe your reticule following the target

Aim friction is your reticule slowing down when it passes over a target. In Halo this usually, but not always, happens once your reticule turns red while holding a gun.

Bullet magnetism is bullets being skewed towards the target you are aiming at. This is another part of helping the player and also cleans up the networking a bit. For an extreme example of this, take an 85% Bloom NR in Reach and aim it at the completely empty space next to their head, or aim it at their waist. The NR bullets will magnetise to the target's head, even though none of the reticule is actually on the head.


The first two are usually the ones people have issue with, they're also the reason somebody can 'grab' your reticule and move it by walking in front of you. Bungie actually had a simple AI in Reach that would prioritize what target to apply friction and assistance to based on distance and what weapon they are holding, if you had two in front of you. Someone dashing in front of you with a pistol is supposed to have less influence on the aiming system than the bit-farther guy with a sniper rifle or rocket.

The last one was actually slightly bugged in Reach's beta and raised a lot of complaints, because people were actually shooting someone in the neck but thought they were getting headshots, so Bungie made the 'magnetise to head' area a bit bigger vertically to make neckshots get magnetized to the head.

 

[Booshka]

You guys are dumbasses

Just make aim assist a perk and be done with it

Smartlink Costs $2000 in Shadowrun, only scrublords and Terminator Dwarf builds use it.

Having a ton of auto aim and lock on actually makes you worse overall because you can't headshot as consistently, and you're character is getting whipped around when it locks on to players. Luckily you can deactivate it at anytime to solve that problem, but it's still a waste for the most part, especially since it costs money and fills up an ability slot.

I think most Console shooters should have aim assist, but they should be toned down to a minimum. No auto aim whatsoever is usually an exercise in frustration, but in certain games, it works pretty well. Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Counter-Strike on Xbox worked well with no auto aim because the quick time to kill and the amount of bullets you were spewing out with automatic weapons. With, single shot precision weapons where you would need to land at least 3-4, and headshots, it would take immense practice to get consistent at it. Even if you were a savant at no auto aim on console, it would still equate to the skills of a mediocre M+KB player.

Aim assist is designed to help replicate the ability to have fine motor control with the gross movement of an analog stick. You only get two thumbs on analog sticks on a controller, compared to an entire arm and two full hands on M+KB.

 

[Ozzy Onya A2Z]

Halo CE was an immense struggle for most people when they first started out. They spent months "wrangling" the controller before they were comfortable with just the basics. That didn't stop it from launching one of the most successful FPS series of all time. Why is that? It certainly wasn't because the aiming was easy for people.

Many would argue Halo CE was the first console FPS to "nail the controls" perfectly so you could pick up and play an FPS with a controller over mouse and keyboard.

I agree with them.

HL2 for me tops the most overrated list by a high margin. Still struggling through playing it again on Orange Box, will play Ep1 and 2 at some point.

Me too, tried playing HL2 when it released and bought the orange box last year to try again plus have a go at TF2. I don't like either games at all, I can't even play more than 10 minutes before I want to switch them off.

 

[NobleGundam]

You guys are dumbasses

Just make aim assist a perk and be done with it

That's too OP. Make it an Armor Ability.
Ship it.

 

[Ghazi]

lol there's a perk in CoD that makes you snap onto zombies' heads when ADS'ing. Dead shot Daiquiri.

I expect thats coming to MP in Ghosts, for the small fee of 400 Microsoft points.

 

[xxjuicesxx]

Didnt CS Go for 360 have no auto aim?

Also need to keep trying my Xim for Xbox that lets me use Mouse + Keyboard. Need to get me some XBL time first I guess.

 

[Ghazi]

Didnt CS Go for 360 have no auto aim?

Also need to keep trying my Xim for Xbox that lets me use Mouse + Keyboard. Need to get me some XBL time first I guess.

Actually, I think so, yes. It'd explain why I have so much damn trouble aiming on that game.

 

[FUNKNOWN iXi]

Not if I was playing against other people who didn't have it. I excel at games with a high aiming skill gap because I have very good aim. I used to play Halo PC with a controller and did fine.

Halo 2 was the death of many great Halo players for that very reason. It's a concept that's rarely understood or even acknowledged because most people either started or put most of their time into Halo 2 or 3.

Halo 1 was a special case because once Halo 2 came out, the Halo 1 community fizzled away.. never able to be experienced in its full glory ever again. Halo 2 was on XBL for a long time, as was Halo 3, so combining that with the explosion of public attention Halo was receiving you'll see why Halo 1 fans have been dying to see it with XBL multiplayer.

RIP 2001-2004. 3 Years. Never to be seen from again.

Exactly, and that was in a game that wasn't designed for no aim assists. Encounters become much more interesting, strategic and varied when there is a large aiming skill gap. Hence my point about Halo 4 being a much better game with no aim assists than it is in its current state. Plus, people would become quite adept at playing with no aim assists if they put a little bit of time into it.

I remember PDZ having little to no aim assist and I thought that felt rewarding. Landing shots with those weapons was a challenge and unlike many other FPS games this generation. I know the game gets a lot of crap, but with a group of friends eager for their first next gen experiences together any game can be amazing. The multiplayer could be pretty damn fun once you gave into how slow the game felt.

 

[Karl2177]

"Encounters become more varied and strategic"

lol. You're going to have to link me to some videos of this then. Thanks to working on my eventual sandbox post, I've watched hours of "high-level" CE gameplay and there's not as much strategy so much as predicting where someone will be and killing them with either a pistol, sniper, rocket, or grenade. You know, just like every other Halo game or FPS for that matter.

 

[FUNKNOWN iXi]

Oh wow, a whole bunch of hours watched. You must know what you're talking about.

 

[xxjuicesxx]

Oh wow, a whole bunch of hours watched. You must know what you're talking about.

He might, we knew Halo 4 would have shitty features before it came out just by watching and hearing stuff.

 

[User 73706]

Oh wow, a whole bunch of hours watched. You must know what you're talking about.

LOL

 

[Speedy Blue Dude]

I went back to look at the stats 343 gave for Halo 4's playtime in the first 5 days.

Over four million people played Halo 4 on Xbox LIVE in the first five days.

13.5 million hours were spent playing Campaign in the first five days.

1.9 million hours were spent playing Spartan Ops in the first five days.

16 million hours were spent playing War Games in the first five days.

31.4 million hours were spent playing Halo 4 in the first five days.

1,116,882 people completed the Campaign in the first five days.

6% of total players completed the Campaign on Legendary in the first five days.

43,335,060 achievements were unlocked in the first five days.

2,675,140,836 kills were earned in Campaign in the first five days.

505,250,095 kills were earned in Spartan Ops in the first five days.

1,410,025,354 kills were earned in War Games in the first five days.

4,590,416,285 kills were earned playing Halo 4 on Xbox LIVE in the first five days.

I honestly forgot that Halo is probably the only shooter where people actually play the campaign.

Those stats are so impressive, except for Spartan Ops, seriously Spartan Ops is such a terrible failure, I hope 343 looks at the stats and just trashes Spartan Ops and gives us Firefight back.

 

[Steelyuhas]

I went back to look at the stats 343 gave for Halo 4's playtime in the first 5 days.

I honestly forgot that Halo is probably the only shooter where people actually play the campaign.

Those stats are so impressive, except for Spartan Ops, seriously Spartan Ops is such a terrible failure, I hope 343 looks at the stats and just trashes Spartan Ops and gives us Firefight back.

Yeah that's not true. It was a few years ago, but Activision said that over half of the copies of MW2 sold never played multiplayer.

Point being that even on franchises that are considered multiplayer focused, a lot of people are just playing the campaign.

 

[Speedy Blue Dude]

Yeah that's not true. It was a few years ago, but Activision said that over half of the copies of MW2 sold never played multiplayer.

Point being that even on franchises that are considered multiplayer focused, a lot of people are just playing the campaign.

Wait really? People actually play the Call of Duty campaigns? I only played and finished Modern Warfare's 2 campaign, did like 2 mission in Black Ops, first in Modern Warfare 3, and haven't touched Black Ops 2.

I always thought most people just ignore the campaign and story in CoD.

 

[Omni]

:lol

Spartan Ops was so terrible. Admittedly it got better in the second half... But eh. You can try to polish a turd all you want, but it's still a damn turd. It had absolutely nothing on Reach's firefight, and arguably even less than ODSTs (becuase it did something that was new and different, but still fun). So much fun playing coop FF.

 

[Kuroyume]

I went back to look at the stats 343 gave for Halo 4's playtime in the first 5 days.




I honestly forgot that Halo is probably the only shooter where people actually play the campaign.

Those stats are so impressive, except for Spartan Ops, seriously Spartan Ops is such a terrible failure, I hope 343 looks at the stats and just trashes Spartan Ops and gives us Firefight back.

Half-Life. Doom whenever it comes out.

 

[Steelyuhas]

Wait really? People actually play the Call of Duty campaigns? I only played and finished Modern Warfare's 2 campaign, did like 2 mission in Black Ops, first in Modern Warfare 3, and haven't touched Black Ops 2.

I always thought most people just ignore the campaign and story in CoD.

Yeah I would assume the stats have shifted slowly since then (over 3 years since MW2), but competitive MP centric games aren't really as MP centric as some people might believe.

People love to say that DICE/EA shouldn't waste time on campaign for Battlefield and that "no one cares/no one wants that", but there is no way in hell that BF3 would've shipped 17+ million copies if it didn't have a campaign mode.

The big upcoming test to this is obviously Titanfall. You'd hope that in the year 2014, on a new console that seriously, who is buying that isn't online all the time, you could sell a game without a single-player only mode, but we'll see.

 

[J10]

Shadowrun failed. Brink sucked. Titanfall will blow.

 

[Fracas]

A quick Google search led me to this article from 2010.

Seventy-eight percent of PS3 users have the console connected to the internet, while Xbox 360 has 73 percent and Wii has 54 percent, according to Diffusion Group director of research Michael Greeson.

I'm not sure if this means that those consoles are constantly connected, or just that they have been taken online at least once. A Joystiq article that discusses the same results says that those percentages are for consoles that have been taken online 1 or more times, but I'm not really sure. Still, that's a significant number of consoles that don't ever go online. I wonder what percentage of Xbox Live members (active ones at least, not throwaway accounts) are Gold vs Silver. As an anecdotal point, in my personal experience, out of the couple dozen or so people I know that own a 360 and have broadband, maybe half of them have an Xbox Live account, and only a few are Gold members.

edit: Just to clarify, I think Titanfall will sell adequately. I do think that requiring an internet connection and not having a campaign will affect sales, though.

 

[Madness]

Shadowrun failed. Brink sucked. Titanfall will blow.

I don't know, didn't it win all those game critic awards and those best of show awards? The thing is even PC folks are excited for the game.

I'm more excited for TitanFall as a multiplayer game than I am for Destiny.

 

[FYC]

:lol

Spartan Ops was so terrible. Admittedly it got better in the second half... But eh. You can try to polish a turd all you want, but it's still a damn turd. It had absolutely nothing on Reach's firefight, and arguably even less than ODSTs (becuase it did something that was new and different, but still fun). So much fun playing coop FF.

I hope so. I just finished episode 5 with my little sister and I'm dying to finish. She really likes it though, so I'll keep on truckin' for her.

 

[TheOddOne]

The original Infinity Ward knew how to make choas work to their advantage. Everybody after them wanted to 'clean' it up, but by doing that they ruined the basic game to some extent.

They are the guys that can make a concept that was terrible on paper actually work in-game. Fun, fun, fun.

 

[Gui_PT]

I hope so. I just finished episode 5 with my little sister and I'm dying to finish. She really likes it though, so I'll keep on truckin' for her.

Lower ur expectations for the ending

 

[Duji]

All this aim assist talk. Here's the way I see it. Aim assist needs to be balanced together with kill time, shot lead, weapon accuracy, hitbox size, and movement. The overall goal should be

1: To have the average kill time less than or roughly 2 seconds.

2: To acquire a healthy difference between the minimum kill time and average kill time (aka skill gap). It should look like a normal distribution.

Aside from slow-as-balls vanilla Reach, every Halo game fulfills #1 but CE is the only game to go the extra step and also fulfill #2. The kill time distribution is way too narrow in these recent Halo games: five-shotting with DMRs and four-shotting with BRs happens way more often than three-shotting with the CE magnum. And I'm gonna disagree with BigShow here and say that dropping all utility weapon aim assist down to zero isn't going to help H4. Yes, it will fix the kill time distribution issue, effectively fulfilling #2, but it will bring on by far the longest average kill times in Halo history, slowing the game down tremendously and no longer fulfilling #1. I don't even think BigShow would want to play this.

And wtf is Overdoziz talking about? lol

"Encounters become more varied and strategic"

lol. You're going to have to link me to some videos of this then. Thanks to working on my eventual sandbox post, I've watched hours of "high-level" CE gameplay and there's not as much strategy so much as predicting where someone will be and killing them with either a pistol, sniper, rocket, or grenade. You know, just like every other Halo game or FPS for that matter.

So every FPS game more or less requires the same amount of strategy. Can't tell if this is a joke.

 

[Omni]

Lower ur expectations for the ending

Yeah. Go into it thinking that 343i are going to trash the post-Halo 3 story line.

oh wait

 

[BigShow36]

All this aim assist talk. Here's the way I see it. Aim assist needs to be balanced together with kill time, shot lead, weapon accuracy, hitbox size, and movement. The overall goal should be

1: To have the average kill time less than or roughly 2 seconds.

2: To acquire a healthy difference between the minimum kill time and average kill time (aka skill gap). It should look like a normal distribution.

Aside from slow-as-balls vanilla Reach, every Halo game fulfills #1 but CE is the only game to go the extra step and also fulfill #2. The kill time distribution is way too narrow in these recent Halo games: five-shotting with DMRs and four-shotting with BRs happens way more often than three-shotting with the CE magnum. And I'm gonna disagree with BigShow here and say that dropping all utility weapon aim assist down to zero isn't going to help H4. Yes, it will fix the kill time distribution issue, effectively fulfilling #2, but it will bring on by far the longest average kill times in Halo history, slowing the game down tremendously and no longer fulfilling #1. I don't even think BigShow would want to play this.

And wtf is Overdoziz talking about? lol


So every FPS game more or less requires the same amount of strategy. Can't tell if this is a joke.

This is essentially my take on aim assist as well. There are games that benefit from it and there are those that don't. However, a console game doesn't need it to be playable, and in many cases is made worse by aim assist. I don't play Halo 4 right now, but if there was a massive aiming skill gap (such as with no aim assist), I think I would be playing it much more. Would it be ideal? Of course not, but I honestly do think I would play the game and have a lot of fun with it. A lot more fun that I am now with Halo 4.

 

[Duji]

This is essentially my take on aim assist as well. There are games that benefit from it and there are those that don't. However, a console game doesn't need it to be playable, and in many cases is made worse by aim assist. I don't play Halo 4 right now, but if there was a massive aiming skill gap (such as with no aim assist), I think I would be playing it much more. Would it be ideal? Of course not, but I honestly do think I would play the game and have a lot of fun with it. A lot more fun that I am now with Halo 4.

Start up a custom game with some of your buddies and fight each other while on the same team. The average kill time will go up by a good 5 seconds at least. There's no way you can prefer that.

 

[Ghazi]

Halo 1 mp wouldn't work the same as it did in LAN over XBL. Period, end of story, the experience will be way different, albeit better than H4.


Also, knowing 343 they'd probably make all the weapons hitscan rather than projectile based (not sure which, if any weapons were hitscan in CE)

 

[FyreWulff]

Xbox One's game capture and streaming limited to Gold members only

Really hope future Halo titles aren't depending on this to act as a surrogate Theater

 

[Fuchsdh]

Xbox One's game capture and streaming limited to Gold members only

Really hope future Halo titles aren't depending on this to act as a surrogate Theater

Isn't this game capture stuff essentially like your own capture card on the box? That would never replace the ability to pan around and have an unobstructed view Theater offers.

 

[squidhands]

Xbox One's game capture and streaming limited to Gold members only

Really hope future Halo titles aren't depending on this to act as a surrogate Theater

You know it will be. As soon as the xbone features were announced, I thought to myself "oh, that explains the lack of campaign/SpOps theater and why they didn't seem to make a big deal that it was axed."

 

[NobleGundam]

Xbox One's game capture and streaming limited to Gold members only

Really hope future Halo titles aren't depending on this to act as a surrogate Theater

I really hope not bcuz I want Campaign & MP Theater. Also there's benefits in using that feature to capture unique perspectives than what a game capture can do.

 

[Fracas]

You know it will be. As soon as the xbone features were announced, I thought to myself "oh, that explains the lack of campaign/SpOps theater and why they didn't seem to make a big deal that it was axed."

Pretty much.

 

[willow ve]

Xbox One's game capture and streaming limited to Gold members only

Really hope future Halo titles aren't depending on this to act as a surrogate Theater

Isn't there a limit of 5 minutes rolling capture as well? So when you hit the button (or yell Xbox record) it saves the previous five minutes of footage. PS4 is said to capture 15 minutes.

 

[User 73706]

Have fun capturing Campaign tutorials with a two-hour setup being chopped into five-minute segments.

They never brought back film rendering did they?

 

[Gui_PT]

Isn't there a limit of 5 minutes rolling capture as well? So when you hit the button (or yell Xbox record) it saves the previous five minutes of footage. PS4 is said to capture 15 minutes.

This sounds like a joke.

It's a joke, right?

 

[J10]

Have fun capturing Campaign tutorials with a two-hour setup being chopped into five-minute segments.

They never brought back film rendering did they?

Anybody who's serious about that kind of thing already has their own real capture solution. The built-in capture features are for the uninitiated to get their feet wet.

And I absolutely expect 343 to axe Theatre entirely because of it because fuck us.

 

[Fuchsdh]

This sounds like a joke.

It's a joke, right?

5 minutes, 720p30 or thirty second clips according to Eurogamer.

 

[Deadly Cyclone]

Anybody's who serious about that kind of thing already has their own real capture solution. The built-in capture features are for the uninitiated to get their feet wet.

This. Not sure why anyone would think MS or Sony would allow for like 45 minute 1080p 60fps videos. If you're doing that kind of content you have a capture card/box. The capture functionality built into the systems is for basic gamers to capture a cool scene or awesome thing they did, not entire matches or gameplay segments.

 

[User 73706]

I wonder if we'll somehow be able to jailbreak the XBO to raise the 5-minute limit.

 

[Buddermilk]

10 Page preview of Halo: Initiation

I'll go back to lurking now.

 

[Dongs Macabre]

I wonder if we'll somehow be able to jailbreak the XBO to raise the 5-minute limit.

Well, the One can be used as a dev kit, but isn't everything stored in the cloud? It would probably require your own server if it's possible.

 

[CreateNowSleepLater]

I doubt 343 would make another game like this after seeing the population numbers. If Halo 5 is like this, it would probably be MS forcing them to.

Yep.

I don't think they or any developer cares about population over profit.

The publisher sure doesn't unless they have some money penciled in for DLC profit. Even then, with all this season pass stuff they get their money upfront so do they really care? Doesn't look like it.

Just imagine if they had a public beta prior the release...

This was intentional, it would have crushed sales. People would have lost their shit.

I hope so. I just finished episode 5 with my little sister and I'm dying to finish. She really likes it though, so I'll keep on truckin' for her.

Yeah and BTW 343, how about doing SOMETHING for the fans who are still around and let people play SO offline without Xbox Gold. Everything is installed locally.

It's bad enough you guys are making me pay for a Pit remake. Which I no longer think I will do.

 

[The Real Napsta]

I wonder if we'll somehow be able to jailbreak the XBO to raise the 5-minute limit.

'jailbreak'

That term seriously needs to die.

 

[DeadNames]

Wait really? People actually play the Call of Duty campaigns? I only played and finished Modern Warfare's 2 campaign, did like 2 mission in Black Ops, first in Modern Warfare 3, and haven't touched Black Ops 2.

I always thought most people just ignore the campaign and story in CoD.

Black Ops 2 campaign was a snooze fest. I was so bored of the hyper scripted, extremely linear shoot em up gameplay only 5 minutes into the game.

 

[Orochinagis]

I dont expect 343i just completely change the gameplay and mechanics they made for Halo 4 it will be more like some features merge into something new like perks being asociated with one kind of AA or Specialization branchs that allow you to summon specific ordinances.

 

[Silly.Mikey]

Black Ops 2 campaign was a snooze fest. I was so bored of the hyper scripted, extremely linear shoot em up gameplay only 5 minutes into the game.

The only reason i started to play it was cause i was bored one day. Otherwise, id buy COD games without the SP, and at a cheaper price.

 

[Speedy Blue Dude]

Xbox One's game capture and streaming limited to Gold members only

Really hope future Halo titles aren't depending on this to act as a surrogate Theater

I kept reading on GAF that Microsoft' confirmed that HDCP is disabled when playing games, so Capture Cards will work on the Xbox One. So it's just like this gen, guys with capture devices are still good.

Seriously though, I wonder WHY the limit is 5 minutes, anyone know why it even has a limit?

 

[Orochinagis]

Maybe for not oversaturing the storage and bandwitch,

Imagine a simultaneus uploads to youtube at peak traffic, booooooooom.