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Why aiming in your game feels like shit: bad aim mechanics explained

FeldMonster

Member
Aim acceleration makes aiming in an FPS awesome. The best ones (Destiny 1, H2/4/5, TF2 after some adjustments) can convince your mind that you are moving your weapon to fire on a target.

Playing without aim acceleration gives the weapon no weight, and it becomes distractingly obvious that you are sliding a cursor across the screen, like a puck on an air hockey table.

I think the people who hate aim acceleration only play via mouse on computer.
 

Fredrik

Member
I have a lot of respect for people who can aim with a controller.. its such a clunky/difficult way of doing it
Yeah. It works for twin stick shooters where there is 1:1 correlation between the stick and aim direction. But first person shooters with a controller, nope can’t do it.
 
Maybe it is autoaim but Destiny 2 makes me feel like a FPS god as it's headshot after headshot while Metro Exodus is the gun version of trying to punch someone in a dream and hitting like a newborn baby as I feel helpless with a controller.
 

RoadHazard

Gold Member
Aim acceleration makes aiming in an FPS awesome. The best ones (Destiny 1, H2/4/5, TF2 after some adjustments) can convince your mind that you are moving your weapon to fire on a target.

Playing without aim acceleration gives the weapon no weight, and it becomes distractingly obvious that you are sliding a cursor across the screen, like a puck on an air hockey table.

I think the people who hate aim acceleration only play via mouse on computer.

Nah, the cursor speeding up on its own feels unpredictable and terrible.
 

Justin9mm

Member
Metro Exodus and Hunt Showdown have dogshit stick aiming. (have not played next gen upgrade)

I've heard excuses that some games do it to give a sense of weight or because the developers don't intend your character to be agile, but I don't buy that excuse.
I'm one who never looks for or touches any sort of aim settings and I just adapt to what's given to me by devs as default. I normally don't have any issues. But Metro Exodus, it was literally the first thing I noticed when I started playing and the aiming felt God awful!
 

II_JumPeR_I

Member
Aim acceleration makes aiming in an FPS awesome. The best ones (Destiny 1, H2/4/5, TF2 after some adjustments) can convince your mind that you are moving your weapon to fire on a target.

Playing without aim acceleration gives the weapon no weight, and it becomes distractingly obvious that you are sliding a cursor across the screen, like a puck on an air hockey table.

I think the people who hate aim acceleration only play via mouse on computer.
Wrong lol
It makes aiming terrible and unresponsive
 
Wouldn't the control method explained in the OP end up kinda feeling like Fallout 3? That's what I imagine when I hear people ask for straight 1:1 controller aiming. Just vanilla ass FO3.

The secret is having a ton, and making it feel like none. It's the same principle as make-up and women.
 

Justin9mm

Member
Wouldn't the control method explained in the OP end up kinda feeling like Fallout 3? That's what I imagine when I hear people ask for straight 1:1 controller aiming. Just vanilla ass FO3.

The secret is having a ton, and making it feel like none. It's the same principle as make-up and women.
I specifically chose a woman that does not wear make up and you would not know whether she had some on or not because her face is naturally beautiful. And this is how I want my aim settings lol
 
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Hyperscape the thread

i think we take for granted how good controls have gotten. Because when they're not good, Boy is it noticeable.
RDR 2 at launch too. Couldn't hit the broadside of a barn. Which was infuriating since RDR 1's shooting was good
 

Uiki

Member
You can think of a mouse in terms of absolute positioning (even it's not absolute but the concept still works). You move 400 counts at 400dpi, your cursor moves 1 inch. 1:1 correlated to your sensor movement.

A stick is relative, meaning that you don't actually aim something.. you just tell the cursor "go in that direction with that speed" and the time component is just you letting go the tilt at the right time. There's no 1:1 control... even with OP graph you get linear accelleration at best............... which is not great on a controller.

Also also, accelleration on a mouse is a superior way of aiming. There's a reason why the majority of cs 1.6 and quake players used accelleration. It takes way more time to get used to but the end result is always better. The reason why is not used anymore is because "accelleration" means nothing: every game or even every windows version has a different accelleration curve and it's impossible to build muscle memory. You can install specific drivers with customizable accelleration but almost every anticheat blocks them nowadays... so it's almost impossible to get used to it.

1:1 is just way more pratical.
 

assurdum

Banned
I could swear some developer intentionally make the controls worse because the game would be too easy. Speaking as mainly a console gamer, I noticed it more than a time. I take The last of us or why not the last 2 Uncharted on ps4 as example. If those games would use the same aim of Uncharted 2, I can finish them at whatever difficult without any kind of problem.
 
Also also, accelleration on a mouse is a superior way of aiming. There's a reason why the majority of cs 1.6 and quake players used accelleration. It takes way more time to get used to but the end result is always better. The reason why is not used anymore is because "accelleration" means nothing: every game or even every windows version has a different accelleration curve and it's impossible to build muscle memory. You can install specific drivers with customizable accelleration but almost every anticheat blocks them nowadays... so it's almost impossible to get used to it.

1:1 is just way more pratical.
As I was trying to figure out if I could find an origin for the term I stumbled across this: Mouse Acceleration

And with a XIM you almost always want the response curve to shoot up at some point, but that's mainly to help your brain deal with the fact that you can't just flick as fast as you want. When you reach the turn rate cap sooner you end up wasting less mouse motion.

And I did always kind of wonder if maybe 'good' acceleration like that site is trying to sell could be useful. Over the past couple of years I've gotten way more analytical about my mouse aim. For a while I went with super low sensitivity, paired with even lower sensitivity for ADS. But even with gigantic mousepads that gets a little unworkable. I'm now at what I'd consider kind of medium-low, I think it's 9 inches for 180 degrees in hip fire, and then ADS going for that same feel adjusted for FOV, so something like Universal Soldier Aiming in Battlefield. Though I find it helps to add just a little more sensitivity the more you zoom in. I think my brain doesn't quite agree with the standard 2/3 of the screen point people have been using to scale sensitivity in recent years.

Anyway, I guess I just don't have enough awareness of how fast my mouse is moving at any given time. Like if I'm flicking on an enemy is that really always slow enough compared to my 180 flick to where I could map out a sensitivity curve to differentiate the two? I kind of want to try it but at the same time, like you say, 1:1 is more practical. And at my current sensitivity everything feels pretty good. I don't find tracking very comfortable at lower sensitivities so I'd still probably be sacrificing some aspects of my aim even if were to improve others.
 

Uiki

Member
As I was trying to figure out if I could find an origin for the term I stumbled across this: Mouse Acceleration

And with a XIM you almost always want the response curve to shoot up at some point, but that's mainly to help your brain deal with the fact that you can't just flick as fast as you want. When you reach the turn rate cap sooner you end up wasting less mouse motion.

And I did always kind of wonder if maybe 'good' acceleration like that site is trying to sell could be useful. Over the past couple of years I've gotten way more analytical about my mouse aim. For a while I went with super low sensitivity, paired with even lower sensitivity for ADS. But even with gigantic mousepads that gets a little unworkable. I'm now at what I'd consider kind of medium-low, I think it's 9 inches for 180 degrees in hip fire, and then ADS going for that same feel adjusted for FOV, so something like Universal Soldier Aiming in Battlefield. Though I find it helps to add just a little more sensitivity the more you zoom in. I think my brain doesn't quite agree with the standard 2/3 of the screen point people have been using to scale sensitivity in recent years.

Anyway, I guess I just don't have enough awareness of how fast my mouse is moving at any given time. Like if I'm flicking on an enemy is that really always slow enough compared to my 180 flick to where I could map out a sensitivity curve to differentiate the two? I kind of want to try it but at the same time, like you say, 1:1 is more practical. And at my current sensitivity everything feels pretty good. I don't find tracking very comfortable at lower sensitivities so I'd still probably be sacrificing some aspects of my aim even if were to improve others.
1.33 coefficent (that 2/3 point) is not really a solution.. it's just the less shitty way of converting sens between games. That's one of the main reasons why I usually hate iron sight/zoom in games (that, and 5k hours on cs).

I played at almost every sensitivity you can think of.. from 15cm/360 to 90cm/360. Depending on the game I usually play a superlow sens but I can tell you that when I was using a mouse with built in accel (no windows, no ingame accel, always the same) I felt the best. Would I change it again right now? Probably not. I switch games often and it's impossible to get used to it.
 

BlackTron

Member
Oh my god.

Just play FPS games on PC like anyone else who really cares about aiming does.

The last shooter I bought on console was Perfect Dark, which was the last one to come out on a console with a halfways worthy aiming hardware AND software.

I could have gone on complaining for the rest of my life but I just switched over to PC for FPS games and problem solved!

I agree FPS games on console are kind of a joke but even if they did everything right, it's still a bad version compared to a mouse.

This is why Xbox 360 first party was meh to me, it specialized in the shooter genre.
 

tygertrip

Member
OP's heart is in the right place, but his reasoning is all wrong.

Well, I'll throw some notes together for you. Here's what I've found works well as a solid starting point for Gamepad Look Controls.

Values/Settings
ElapsedTime - Time since last update, in seconds.
PitchRate - User applied vertical analog stick movement, -1 to 1.
YawRate - User applied horizontal analog stick movement, -1 to 1.
PitchSensitivity - Desired pitch rate in degrees per second. Default, 120.
YawSensitivity - Desired yaw rate in degrees per second. Default, 160.
ResponseCurve - Magnitude of the input adjustment. 1 is linear. Greater values give smaller movements closer to the center and larger movements closer to the edge. Default, 2.
ExtraPitch - Extra pitch to apply when at max input. Generally shouldn't be used. Default, 0.
ExtraYaw - Extra yaw to apply when at max input. Can allow for quicker turns. Default, 220.
RampUpDelay - How long to wait before applying Extra Pitch/Yaw, in seconds. Default, 0.
RampUpTime - How long it takes to reach total Extra Pitch/Yaw, in seconds. Default, 0.65.
RampUpLag - Add a slower or faster build-up to the acceleration of Extra Pitch/Yaw. 1 is linear. Greater values slowly add extra input and then pick up speed. Default, 1.5.
InnerDeadzone - The amount of input to ignore near center, 0 to 0.5. Default, 0.15.
OuterDeadzone - The amount of input to ignore near the edge, 0.85 to 1. Default, 0.99.

Use a Radial Deadzone Correction. Applying deadzone calculations independently will give you a cross shaped pattern that is not good for these types of games.

Next, determine if the user input is at max (edge). Keep track of how long it has been there.

Adjust Pitch/Yaw Rates using the Response Curve:
AdjustedPitchRate = pow(abs(PitchRate), ResponseCurve) * sign(PitchRate)

Calculate the "final" Pitch/Yaw Rates:
FinalPitch = PitchSensitivity * AdjustedPitchRate * ElapsedTime

If Time at Max Input is greater than Ramp Up Delay, apply the Extra Pitch/Yaw:
FinalPitch += pow(clamp((TimeAtMaxInput - RampUpDelay) /RampUpTime, 0, 1) RampUpLag) * ExtraPitch *AdjustedPitchRate * ElapsedTime

Finally, make these calculations adjustable by the users. CoD, Titanfall, Apex, Battlefield are all great examples.
Holy SHIT. I'm sticking to mouse for FPS. Heh, actually, I've spent some time making my own curves for 3rd-person games, with the windows app for the Elite series gamepad. I've always wondered why it even has the option to turn off the radial correction. What benefit could it give to have it off?
 
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