Any chance you all can comment on aim assist on PC?
...well that sounds like just the dumbest thing I could possibly choose to-
Except that just isn't true. Given two equally skilled players using a g2a4, the one using the controller will win any engagement at medium / long distance always.
The expectation is that if you are on PC, you are using KB/M. There is no good reason to introduce aim assist in that space, even if you are using controller.
OH CHILD. OH NO YOU DIDN'T.
...okay.
Hmmm.
There's a few things to unpack here.
But First, Let's Address This
The precision argument is bogus because a controller gets a precision boost getting even remotely close to target. Whereas a KB/M player will miss the same shot every time. It is 100 percent bullshit. Simply put, a controller user will get hits on shots that a kb/m player would never get, ESPECIALLY, in a game as fast as Titanfall.
Absolutely not true.
Neither Titanfall game modifies a player's shots ("bends bullets", or etc) because of the control method. 0%. Not at all. The server doesn't even know what input you're using. The server doesn't care. Where a shot will go if you fire that frame and how your weapon will kick & react from it are 100% identical. Our weapons logic (which the server & client share and identically simulate/predict) gives zero shits about the input method.
So; no. Weapon behavior, 0% difference between input methods.
Now Then
By themselves, analog sticks are not fantastic input devices for a modern FPS's look/aim controls. For raw input they are clumsy and sweeping and twitchy.
Think of stick aim input at any moment as a point on a 2D graph. With analog input, the stick is physically at a point in space that corresponds to a point on that graph. You're inputing a specific down-and-to-the-left to the game because you've physically pushed the stick to that point in space.
To get to any other point of input (say; one in the lower-right), you have to physically sweep the stick over to that new position, passing through all points in-between. This is clumsy at best. Even the most agile thumbs will have a tough time hitting a new position in < 1/60 of a second.
But now remember that the stick input isn't even going in as simple "degrees", it's translated into "degrees per second". Time is a factor.
Compare all of this (lower-order nightmare) to the immediate, 1-to-1, nearly-independent-of-the-previous-moment's-action, godlike input that is a mouse. Laughing is okay; go ahead. That thing is almost too perfect, isn't it?
So What's a Dev to Do?
In very coarse terms, I'd describe the goal of aimassist (at least in Titanfall) as "subtly help the player do what they're trying to do, without playing for them or changing any rules".
We assist stick aim in two main ways. Broadly put:
- Dampen look input if crosshair is already over a target. Friction.
- Turn look input slightly towards a target as you strafe relative to them, if crosshair is already on their bounds.
Players in MP have to have done the work of getting their crosshair there in the first place (or been lucky enough to have their opponent get themselves there). I think that's key. You can still screw up and miss your target, they can still maneuver to escape your aim.
Again; this is all on the client. The server doesn't care. Weapon logic is unchanged.
That Said
[...] it is trivial to trick the game into believing kb/m input is a controller thus granting a "undetectable aimbot" for these kb/m users.
In a PC game that doesn't modify weapon logic for input method, that's not very scary.
Aimbot, nah.
Friction would be a bad crutch (if they're terrible with a mouse it probably helps, but if they're average or better it's just going to screw with them & cap their skill).
Strafe compensation would be nice, I think; but hardly game-changing. Nothing that other (especially mouse-) players should be afraid of.
I think that's still worth addressing, but it's in the domain of anticheat at worst.
If You REALLY Want to Get a Leg Up On Other PC Players
...use a 144hz monitor.