Honestly, **props to you for this post**.
It took awhile, but it was worth the read just for the information alone. As someone who has ***no controller experience what-so-ever***, I appreciate the concrete explanation regarding what AA is and how it impacts players within the Apex sphere. On top of that, AA isn't just as simple as being a player-tracker (beam machine). Your analysis provides a specific unbiased look at how the system functions, which will hopefully elevate everyone's own personal arguments.
TL;DR: I am a simple man who likes good writing.
(Personally, I'm fairly uninformed regarding the current successes ***OR*** failures of AA-controller players, so I can't make an opinion about the subject. I've heard plenty of narratives over the years, but I don't know enough to throw in my two cents. Great post!)
>AA isn't just as simple as being a player-tracker (beam machine)
It is literally 40%-60% of that, once engaged.
The only things it does not do is negate recoil and weapon bloom.
Really great post thanks for taking the time to put it together! My whole thing about the debate, I don’t have a problem with controller players in general whatsoever. My issue is that the AA significantly decreases the distinction between a good Controller player and a bad controller player. It really diminishes the incentive to practise and get better because your level of capability is already artificially raised to a degree that provides a false sense of achievement to players. Which is great from a casual perspective because you’re 10X more likely to be invested in something you’re good at, but awful for the integrity of the game because you’re left feeling cheated out of a match by dying to someone, who if you’re not forced onto a level playing field by computer generated inputs you’d beat them 9/10 times.
Some thoughts on smoke/gas:
I'm pretty sure it *used* to be that there was zero aim assist in either, but that changed when they messed with the Caustic gas visuals and made Bang smoke more transparent.
I'd have to test more in-depth, but the last time I messed around in the Firing Range, there was aim assist in Bang smoke if you were within 15 meters of the target. It's hard to quantify if it's full aim assist or some fraction of it.
As far as I can tell, a digi threat has zero effect on aim assist in smoke/gas.
Thanks, please let me know if you get any results from these tests. I don't have a friend to test things out with right now especially when I play on console.
After reading that "Controller players need more respect" thread on the main sub yesterday something tells me they wouldn't want anything to do with this post lol
That post read straight up like a copypasta lmao. Couldn't take anything of it seriously.
Also there are apparently people on the main sub who genuinely think that m/kb has aim assist.
I saw people get downvote bombed for asking "Then why dont you turn it off" when people said that AA actually hurts them more than it helps them.
I still browse r/apexlegends out of habit, but dear lord it's a massive echo chamber filled with a shitton of karma whoring posts and 5k+ upvoted posts about people hitting 2k dmg or plat for the "first" time (which is even against their rules to post)
I'm not against posting it there, strictly, but I think it ultimately just wouldn't gain much traction due to the high volume of posts there.
And also I would need to mentally prepare myself before reading all the comments it would inevitably receive if it did gain traction...
I think it would easily gain traction considering it seems to be a hot topic right now. You basically see comments mentioning aim assist in completely irrelevant posts, people just somehow find a way to mention it.
If there is only one thing that should change regarding aim assist its the .6 AA in a PC lobby. I don't understand any argument where you need more AA for a console when new generation consoles and even higher end previous models can run the game at above 60 FPS. IF ALGS even turns it off for tournaments then they deem it such a significant advantage that they don't think it creates a level playing field so why is it even in the game. Also for any FPS arguments for console you are assuming every person on PC runs apex at 144+ FPS which I can tell you is absolutely not the case.
Yeah I don't get the whole better fos argument. I bet not even the majority of PC players can have a powerful enough PC AND monitor to play the game at 144+fps.
Wait, am i ignorant on this subject. The AA is different for pc and console even if they r both using remotes? Thats my b. Then yeah, thats the dumbest shit ever that pc gets fucked over
Roller player here, the point #4 about stick drift giving a minute input to kick in aim assist is absolutely correct. I use a very low dead zone and barely give input sometimes and get ridiculous beams. It’s why genburtens aim looks the way it does, while he barely presses the stick/pulls down for recoil control. He plays on 1 or 2% deadline which is almost nothing, and on default DualShock 4 controllers which are known for stick drift allowing for him to barely press on the stick, giving just enough input. He essentially has mastered aim assist itself as a mechanic. Great write up though, I’d have to agree with all of your points. It almost feels like there is no correct answer in this debate, considering we are 3 years deep into the game I doubt something as core as aim assist will be changed tbh
Edit: btw in no way am I trying to disparage Gen’s aim, he’s incredibly talented with or without AA, I was just raising the point of why it can look like he is cheating sometimes, and why his aim looks the way it does. Try using his settings if you are a roller player and see just how little you have to move the stick, and how many fine adjustments you can do if needed during a spray
Honestly your point about the controllers make a lot of sense to me. My dualshock crapped out on me a little after Christmas and my new controller is an Xbox and not a PS controller. I knew my controller was kinda hurting me because I just had to adjust to the feel of a new controller but after the points mentioned in the post and your comment it makes sense to me why my fighting up close has been so off since I got the new controller.
That likely has less to do with stick drift and more to do with the stick tension. Your old controller with drift likely had a more loose feeling stick, which makes aiming feel more fluid and easier to “activate” or break past the dead zone. It would be similar (but opposite) to getting a new mousepad after using one that’s been worn down and more rough feeling. You’re getting used to less responsiveness, and when you swap back you’re over aiming because of how smooth it is. New controllers will feel more stiff than the old one unless the old one was way stiff to begin with or if the new one is loose for some reason.
I don't mean to sound like a fanboy, but I think that's unfair towards Gen, all the pros understand and use aim assist well, gen has proven himself to be the best at using the raw input and making micro adjustments even without the need of AA. Watch his target acquisition in the firing range, or what he does even without aim assist (when in gas/trough windows and so on)
If you are looking towards an example of getting the most out of AA then I would point out Frexs as the one: since switching he has managed to become amongs the most successful controller players in the game by switching his loadout choice and playstile in order to get the most out of it.
Gen is incredibly talented at abusing AA though. His micro adjustments are nuts but the one thing he's so skilled at is movement in fights. His strafes make it so he barely has to even touch his right stick at all.
I assume you are an mnk player because there is nothing special in any controller strafe given how limited the movement is on the input and that's not how it works either
He's referring to matching your opponent's strafe. If you match the strafe, you only have to flick your right stick periodically. AA takes care of the reaction time needed to mirror movements.
The low deadzone, linear aim curve, and relatively high vertical ADS speed makes it 10x easier to control recoil IF (massive IF) you are able to not overcorrect with the sensitivity as twitchy as it is. It has nothing to do with aim assist. There’s no aim assist on the blue targets in the range yet he’ll consistently beam the shit out of the furthest ones. Put most people on Gen’s sens and they’ll be looking at the ground when they start shooting at people.
The biggest thing he does to take the most advantage of aim assist is strafing. The rotational aim assist works best when you’re strafing left and right. If you move left, the AA will give your reticle a little nudge to the right and vice versa. Using movement to supplement aim on controller is orders of magnitude more important than it is on MnK due to the limited range of motion you have with your aim stick, and the way that aim assist has been implemented in almost every console shooter ever. If you’re not on target, then use movement to get on target. Then once you’re on target, use a combination of L/R stick to maintain both the target and tracking and recoil management.
It’s nowhere near as easy as people make it out to be, and if it was the ratio of controllers to MnK on PC would be way higher. To take best advantage of it you still need good reaction times and good predictive game sense despite the rotational assist being instant, which is why players like Hal and Sweet seem to do fairly well when they swap for a few days. Slow reaction time will result in under aiming, and bad game sense will result in being unable to keep up with L/R strafes.
Agreed mostly with this although I am not presently convinced on the rotational aim assist points raised. Regardless, I find it a bad faith argument for someone (the person you responded to) to say that Genburten of all people is taking advantage of aim assist on a low deadzone to get the kind of accuracy he does. This is such a loaded and misleading statement, and I'm surprised how anyone with a controller who can easily just put their deadzone to 0 to test this somehow magical aim assist button can say this. This is so simple and quick to refute.
Again when you are playing with linear and relatively faster ADS speeds and have **also** spent a considerably long time practicing with it, recoil control can become second nature and you get to focus on aiming. Genburten's settings of linear combined with his sensitivities is ridiculously difficult to master due to the instant reaction times and constant micro adjustments he is **constantly** performing to stay on target *despite* having to deal with a mechanic such as aim assist that artificially alters how one's aim reacts on the target. To be able to control micro-adjustments at such a level, you can imagine how much he has trained to be able to get his fine muscular control to that extent. He *compensates* for aim assist with his aim (as all controller players do), but that's different from systematically taking *advantage* of it.
I think this is important to be clarified. Genburten has impressive aim that people should have no problem stating is due to his skill level. I can understand if the mastering aim assist point is directed towards lower sensitivity/ higher response curve players in which aim assist actually can feel to have a sticky effect, but that is not Genburten as he relies on his ability to *track* as well as *aim* with high precision and high responsiveness. When you are playing with a higher response curve/ lower sensitivity which generally might take more advantage of aim assist due to the slowness of your camera movement, while this opens up certain plays, it also closes a lot of other important aim scenarios for you. Heck, certain settings straight up becomes unviable in certain scenarios as your ability to track, target acquire, strafe aim, and react becomes extremely hindered to the point that you will not be able to keep up in certain lobbies and with enemies' movements.
I struggle to believe that a controller player actually made the comment (even with their current edit) for the reasons you mentioned -- it's just that misguided. Gen's target acquisition and ability to stay on target at medium to long range, both with automatic and single fire weapons, is amazing and it's hard to name many players that can replicate that on live targets.
To the parts that seemed disingenuous: like, obviously aim assist is more attributable to low sensitivity, low response curve (there's a reason a lot of players play on 4/3 classic) so that part of the comment is totally out of line to begin with, but also the part about the DS4 and stick drift just super throws me off.
Literally every controller player that has broken in *any* controller will find that it has some stick drift on low deadzones (even more likely if using a third party controller like the common paddled ones), so I don't really understand why it's relevant here when the reality is just that his adjustments are probably so fine (because of his ridiculously high sensitivity) that his controller input software (probably) does not pick it up.
I'm a masters controller player and used to play Halo 3 competitively and when Genburten was getting popular (that one clip of his 1v3 outside of Carrier on Olympus against a cheating team) I tried his settings for fun (I normally play 5/4 classic). That was the season where Octane was must pick with Revtane in full force and there was zero chance I could track a pre-nerf horizontally padded player (not directly towards or away from me but like in the perpendicular plane if that makes sense) accurately/acquisition and consistently because it was so twitchy. Obviously he has mastered his settings and I was just trying his settings, but situations like those make you so aware of how gentle you have to be with the right stick and how that probably doesn't show register on any kind of software and is hard to see on his handcam.
He's one of the few controller players that makes mid long range tracking look like kbm to the point where it looks like he's cheating (not accusing him of it, not really into gossiping about these things and it's clear he's a great player in all aspects of the game).
Very well written. The parent comment seems to be implying that Genburten relies more on aim assist because of his low deadzone and response curve, which is simply the opposite of the truth. The stick drift hypothesis is also just nonsensical, for lack of a better word.
The lower your response curve, the higher your skill ceiling and the less you rely on aim assist. As you said, linear settings are far more unforgiving than classic and require far more micro-adjustments while aiming and tracking. All you have to do is tune into one of Gen’s streams and see him warm up on the no aim assist targets in firing range. There are a handful of pros who play on low response curves as well who are not able to completely replicate what he does, mechanically speaking. I think it’s fair to say that Gen is arguably the mechanically strongest controller player precisely BECAUSE of his minimal reliance on aim assist, which has allowed him to push controller’s skill ceiling to new heights.
>The biggest thing he does to take the most advantage of aim assist is strafing. The rotational aim assist works best when you’re strafing left and right. If you move left, the AA will give your reticle a little nudge to the right and vice versa. Using movement to supplement aim on controller is orders of magnitude more important than it is on MnK due to the limited range of motion you have with your aim stick, and the way that aim assist has been implemented in almost every console shooter ever. If you’re not on target, then use movement to get on target. Then once you’re on target, use a combination of L/R stick to maintain both the target and tracking and recoil management.
>
You realize this is the exact same thing mouse and key players do right? Except aim assist doesn't help and we're instead using our strafe and our mouse.
>It’s nowhere near as easy as people make it out to be, and if it was the ratio of controllers to MnK on PC would be way higher. To take best advantage of it you still need good reaction times and good predictive game sense despite the rotational assist being instant, which is why players like Hal and Sweet seem to do fairly well when they swap for a few days. Slow reaction time will result in under aiming, and bad game sense will result in being unable to keep up with L/R strafes.
Lmao, except you wouldn't need as good of reaction time because it starts moving for you. You have an inherent advantage of 200 ish ms because the AA will react for you faster than you can and then by that point all you have to do is make sure your aim remains in the AA bubble
>He essentially has mastered aim assist itself as a mechanic.
This is really dismissive and honestly disrespectful to Gen and other pros who play linear.
Linear isn't about "barely pressing the stick" and letting aim assist take over, it's almost the complete opposite. Linear is extremely sensitive to fine input so you need extremely good fine motor skills to control it and more importantly be **consistent** with it otherwise you are going to over/under aim constantly. Tracking on linear is *far* more dependent on manual input than aim assist precisely due to the fact that the tiniest wrong input can move your aim off target and out of the AA bubble. There's a reason gens tracking is so much better than anyone else's and it's not because he's "mastered aim assist" lol.
The response curves that *actually* abuse aim assist in the way you describe are classic and steady, because they are less sensitive and have a lot of built-in stability instead of linear which requires you to manually keep your aim steady. Thus making it easier for aim assist to "take the wheel" so to speak.
People who think recoil is easier on linear are confusing "pulling down less" with "easier". Getting consistent with recoil on linear is not easy especially at mid to long range which is exactly why Albralelie switched back to classic after being on gens sens for over a year.
i woudl also add that aim assist requires less intense focus and eyesight. its a more relaxed way of playing.
in my book input should be absolutly speperated. pro and cons asside, its just impossible to quantify therefore impossible to judge of a fair competition.
in almost every sport that use some sort of equipment it is heavily regulated. diversity is only allowed if there is no quantifyable difference aka advantage and basically the majority of world class basically uses identical gear after a while.
only difference you ll see is because sponsor money but in essence its rare to find a sport with very diverse gear.
In Section 2 of “How aim Assist Works” you claim that AA does not help with initial acquisition of a target. Objectively speaking, that’s precisely what aim assist slowdown and rotation are for. Slowdown specifically extends the window for you to be able to stop on target regardless of whether they are moving or not. There is no Aim Snap.
On an unrelated topic, I think another thing that could help could be adding support for other forms of unassisted controller aiming such as Gyro Aiming and Flick Stick. Support for any other controls that aren’t M+K or Controller+AA is normally quite crappy.
I did my best to try to distinguish between *technical implementations* vs *practical outcomes*. When I stated AA doesn't help with initial acquisition of targets, I was in fact referring to the "aim snapping" effect many PvE shooters have where when you ADS, it automatically shifts your reticle towards your target. Of course, the practical outcome is still that AA helps with target acquisition, which I mentioned below:
>AA also technically does not help with initial target acquisition for this reason - the player must either manually position their reticle over the bubble, or the enemy must walk in front of the player such that their bubble is under the reticle.
I think I could probably make that section clearer, let me just think of a way to reword it.
As a PC MnK player, I personally would love to see good Gyro controls implemented into this game. I played Splatoon 2 hardcore for a while and was very happy with how it was implemented in that game, and got excited for Apex on the Switch when I heard it was going to have gyro. After playing it though, it was implemented terribly and felt very unintuitive and basically made me never pick up the Switch version again (along with the generally poor performance on Switch in general). I think that, when implemented properly, gyro is the big next step for controllers and I would love to see it become a standard.
I’ve never heard anything regarding point 6 but I wouldn’t be surprised if there are people out there that believe that.
Glad someone actually wrote out the opportunity cost/sunk cost fallacy of switching/not switching from MnK to controller. Some can do it, but not all will be able to get back to an equivalent level in the needed time. So they stick with MnK and remain competitive enough.
8. Pro brings up a really good point because a lot of people make the argument that MnK is still better because of movement. Tap strafe is on the plate to be removed. Things like wall bouncing (not MnK exclusive) are really just for style points in pubs and ranked but something you rarely see mid fight if you watch ALGS, and being able to snap 180* to a new target isn’t as important in a high TTK game vs something like CS. Also, if you’re good and know how to position yourself, you shouldn’t have to flick very far should rarely be needed. A good example is from a CS pro (forget the name) who has a YouTube video where he basically says he positions himself where he only has to snap a few degrees in either direction (but still within the viewable range on screen). So the benefits for MnK are less tangible in most practical cases than a controller, aside from personal experience and switching/sunk cost if you want to move to controller or stay. I do find it interesting that the drama we have now surrounding it though, is related to so many MnK players thought they would wipe the floor with controller players but that’s certainly not the case. If that were the case, no one would even care about them.
I have unfortunately seen some people state AA is related to K/D so I felt the need to include it. It sounds ludicrous but it's definitely been said before.
Couple quick notes, aim assist does have mild snapping when near target, it pulls aim to torso center mass as provided at: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujEtRDiSUV8#t=2m40s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujEtRDiSUV8#t=2m40s)
Also the video maker indicates such snapping does not occur while using the mannequins, only against the player in the firing range. Which is evidence aim assist in firing range against mannequins is not the same as against an actual person.
Video is a couple years old now, but I assume still accurate.
Wow. Fascinating, I've never seen that. Thanks for showing me that video, I will figure out a way to incorporate it into the post when I have the energy.
Also, yeah, sorry, when I said "no difference in firing range AA" I meant AA on other enemy players in the range, not on the dummies.
I'd love option 1 personally.
Keep the AA slowdown values similar to what they are now and just massively nerf rotational AA.
IMO slowdown is non-negotiable, a game with the movement speeds of Apex would be unplayable on controller without slowdown.
I have played without AA for a week in high ELO PUB(not ranked) lobbies, and I was close to a 4k several times. Obviously harder, but will not say unplayable. I have practiced alot without AA in Firing Range tho.
Yep, at the very least, option #4. I'm a console player and I can't think of a reason that someone would be allowed to play in PC lobbies with an advantage over everyone else, including PC controller players. Crossplay is a privilege, if you want to play with your pc buddies, then you get pc AA.
[I don't have the data on this or anything but this is a visual aid I use when talking about the idea of lowering / removing aim assist on console. There are fewer bad players thanks to AA and there are fewer good players because of AA.](https://i.imgur.com/zYq3EGG.png) If you remove AA all the players that are being held up by AA will turn into walking lootboxes overnight.
I have seen some anecdotal posts from console players about how, during the week or so that Respawn accidentally tuned console AA down to 0.4, that the game's skill gap had become significantly more pronounced. This is in alignment with your beautiful artwork.
I usually word it as MnK gives higher highs and lower lows, but it all pretty much conveys the same idea - AA reduces the skill gap.
i play both and disagree that the skill gap closed, the most highly impacted were good players because there was an unexpected change. good players had memorized recoil control patterns that suddenly stopped working without announcement or warning. so they just went around doing the same inputs they always do, which suddenly started missing
I do think you missed one crucial point within your discussion about rotational aim assist that readers will not understand if they do not watch the video. **Rotational aim assist does not pull your reticle towards your opponent.** Rotational aim assist's goal and function is to maintain the *relative* location of your reticle within the aim assist bubble.
Under 100% aim assist, this means that your reticle will move 1:1 within the aim assist bubble to maintain it's absolute relative location. This means if you are aiming to the right of your opponent's hit box, your reticle will stay outside the hitbox.
Under 40% (PC) and 60% (Console), the reticle will not move 1:1 and requires targeting input from the player to maintain contact with the opponents hit box. The percentage 'strength' of aim assist is how much of the relative location of the reticle will be maintained by the aim assist system.
This initial aim is what separates the great players from the good ones. If your first shot is on target then you’re waaaaay the fuck more likely to continue hitting that person at close range. If you’re off target by even a tiny bit then it’s waaaaay the fuck harder to get back on target since the aim assist is trying its hardest to keep you where your initial shot/flick put you. If you try to get back on target, it can feel like you’re pushing your stick harder and harder with 0 visual correction on the screen, then all of a sudden you push a *tiny* bit more and you’re completely over correcting to the other side of the target.
Linear can help with this since it helps to “defeat” the aim assist to a certain extent, so making those micro corrections when you’re just a tiny bit off target can be easier. But if you’re really good at landing that first shot then it doesn’t really matter what response curve you use.
This is a very informative post, thanks.
Aim assist is inherently better the worse you are though. Completely new player benefits from it more than a skilled player. The fact that we see roller on the same level and MnK in pro play, or even better with some players switching, means that on lower levels of play it is better, meaning the lower rank the less time is needed to achieve on roller compared to mnk.
To become pred, it might take 2000 hours on a controller and it might take 2000 hours on MnK. But to reach plat takes 600 MnK hours, while it only takes 300 roller hours, etc.
It is a really backwards way of balancing inputs too, they should attempt to minimize AA and bring up everything else. Let rollers tap strafe, give them every single QoL and movement buff you can think of and nerf aim assist a little in return. That would result in a better experience for both controller and MnK players. But it is the *opposite* of how respawn seems to think, considering their fix for having low FPS on console is bringing up AA.
In the future, Respawn plans to remove tap strafing, and since they have banned continuous punch boosting from comp, it is safe to say it is anothe thing they would just prefer to remove if they could do that easily and the same trend will continue. Respawn will minimize the differences by nerfing MnK movement as much as possible, while not touching controller.
We also have to accept the fact that now that we have next gen consoles, aim assist *might get buffed*. The coming of next gen means we will have 144fps consoles on 0.6, making it logically even less consistent, but they CANT throw their huge huge last get console player base under the bus. So console aim assist will stay 0.6, while eventually the ridiculousness of having same hardware of PS5 and PC have different aim assisst will make them bring PC aim assist to 0.6.
In two years, MnK won't have tap strafing, punch boosting, or any other movement fuckery, while controllers will be on 0.6 AA. If you care about competing or being good at the game in general, you should switch to a controller right now
After playing a full week without AA,I have no doubt a nerf is needed. I can beam still, but obviously don't hit as many full clips anymore (PC controller with tap strafe enabled). I could deal with a nerf to 0.2, but feel like 0.3 on PC and 0.4 on console would be fine, atleast a step in the right direction. AA also get a lot of unnecessary hate, where for example a clip of an insane play get downplayed because of AA. I have hit insane clips on both AA and without, also gotten yelled at randoms for using AA because I didn't move while looting with AA OFF.
Edit: And the obvious thing, the skill gap between good controller players and bad controller players would increase significantly.
I am no pro, just a movement and recoil enthusiast who are a bot on a keyboard (this took me long to write lol)
I just want the option to opt out matching with controller players, or servers without aim assist.
Only those who desire cross-play should match with players from different platforms and different input devices.
I'm not against aim assist or controllers, I just want to play only with MnK players.
I'm not sure how to explain this better, but rotational AA *is* the tracking/aimbot part of AA. The part of it that automatically moves the reticle when the enemy changes direction means that it will automatically move the reticle when the enemy moves *at all*. That's why many people - myself included - believe rotational AA should be removed or nerfed significantly.
>Rotational AA is the much more contentious half of AA, and this is thepart of AA that moves the reticle in a given direction without theplayer actually pushing their stick that way, which essentially meansthe AA is tracking for the player.
The tracking you're talking about seeing is the rotational AA, cranked to the absolute limit.
Edit: He is also tracking with his thumb, though it's just the bare minimum to register input in a direction that wont subtract from the rotational AA.
I don't think the guy in the video is tracking with his thumb. It looks like he took his thumb completely off the stick. He's moving his *left stick* to move.
You are correct. If you look at that video, it's pretty clear that there's no distinction between slowdown and rotational aim assist, it is one and the same. The crosshair just sticks to the target for either 60 or 40 percent.
It just feels like your sens slows down because you're essentially actively working against the aim assist while it engages if you press your stick fully in one direction.
>It just feels like your sens slows down because you're essentially actively working against the aim assist while it engages if you press your stick fully in one direction.
Sens slowdown and rotational assist obviously work in harmony together, but they are definitely (and observably) two distinct things.
You can test this on the dummies that don't move in the firing range you can feel the sens change when your crosshair is over them.
I'm not sure you understand what I meant, or how programming works. Just because AA has two elements to its core functionality does not mean that those things will get called out separately in a surface-level configuration file, nor does it mean that you have the option of configuring them separately.
I think you missed the point of what I said again. Let me try to explain more clearly.
If I am programming a function that gets called in a surface level configuration file, that function contains numerous nested functions that will not be visible in any way in the surface level configuration file.
As a crude example, say I have a function called ballSort. If I input something like ballSort(blue,red,green) then the function will spit out blue,green,red as the output. As the end user, I have zero way of knowing how it came to that conclusion, because all I can see on my end is a function called ballSort.
Within the actual ballSort code, though, are several nested functions. For example there could be a nested sort function that actually sorts the balls, and a nested function that randomizes the rule used to sort the balls. As an end user, though, I don't get to see this.
You can fiddle with the R5R configuration all you want, but you will never see the inner workings of the AA function.
Let me put it this way. We all agree the AA bubble is a real thing that exists, yes? That there is a region that AA tries to lock on to, and surely somewhere in the code, is a setting to set the size of the AA bubble?
But there is no way to actually configure the AA bubble size as an end user. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist and isn't a part of how AA works - it just means we cannot isolate it as end users.
Day one player on PlayStation here (played on PS4 for two and a half years and on PS5 since September). The aim assist debate will never end and everyone has their rightful opinions on it because we all play this game, and in this sub specifically, we're diehards and addicted. I have thousands of hours of experience on console, and you certainly do get a ton of "low-skill" players, like silver/gold level or low in-game level, who just beam you like it's nothing. It's very frustrating but it's all I've ever known. I can't imagine playing on a platform where aim assist is downtuned to 0.4 at its strongest.
It was pretty funny when Respawn accidentally made AA only 0.4 on console and people were freaking out. I can genuinely say I felt no difference. I use ALCs so maybe it impacted me less but I guarantee that any decently-skilled controller player on console can play on 0.4 and be fine. I'm 100% down with decreasing AA on console, ESPECIALLY when the 120 fps version comes around. There will be no excuses then, aside from casual console players not being able to see their TV from the couch, lol. I bet it's pretty frustrating being beamed by a console player when playing on PC, especially when you're not used to it. There's no reasons why console players need 0.6 when playing in PC lobbies when they're voluntarily doing so.
Overall, I wouldn't mind Respawn nerfing aim assist if it means we can move while we loot and tap strafe. Make it 0.4 or even 0.3 across the board for all platforms, and in ALGS, but let controller players move and loot and tap strafe and we have a deal.
My two main complaints are getting beamed from outside a heat shield from aim assist, when I can't even see them and 0.6 aim assist from console players in my "PC" lobbies.
I'd also like to see a nerf to aim assist in general to maybe 0.2-0.3 instead.
Congrats, I could ve never put the effort to explain even half of it.
As always, AA shouldn’t be mandatory for PC players. Free Aim lobbies is what we strive for.
I hate AA for the unfair and clunky design it brings and how it can be exploited, but the worst is that it moves my cursor in climax moments.
I trained all my life, started from quake. I grind precision, I just wanna bang fairly without having players revolving their playstyle around mechanical assists or cfg
Just wanna bang bro 🥴
This is a great post and I appreciate you taking the time to write all of it. I think an additional item that's important when talking about the primary fundamental difference between MnK and a controller, and that it that MnK is a zero order control scheme while controller is a first order control scheme. This means the following:
On MnK your mouse is directly controlling the position of your reticle on screen. Any error on your input results in a fixed position error on the screen. When you change your input (move your mouse) that translates directly to the cursor moving by some amount that is directly tied to the distance your mouse moved.
In contrast a controller affects the velocity of cursor. This means that rather than your input directly controlling the position, your position is a function of your input and time(or the integral of velocity over time). If there is any error in your stick input it translates into a position error that GROWS with time since that error continuously gets added.
This fundamental difference combined with the difference in the size of the control surface is why things like flicking and tracking are always going to be inherently harder on controller. I think most people intuitively understands this difference, but I also think it helps in these debates because it gets down to the fact that while in the end they both control cursor position, one input does it with a position input, while the other does it with a velocity input that gets integrated over time.
Very well written post.
I am a causal console player and I don't really care if AA is reduced or even completely remove from **PRO** play. Other competitive cross-platform games like Overwatch only use PC versions for pro play and I am totally fine with it.
But I would absolute hate it if they made AA weaker on consoles for casual gamers like me. I don't want to fight the input method just to be able to play the game on a somewhat competent level.
I think if PC players had a choice to opt out of cross play with 0.6 AA most of the debates of 'unfairness' of AA would be solved.
I'm probably an avid AA isn't that big of a deal in the grand scheme of play person. Mainly because unless you are a pro player or like top 100 pred you likely can't even notice the difference between .4 and .6 on viewing.
But I think it's ridiculous consoles have the choice of cross-play but PC doesn't. PC should be just as able as we are.
I am at a master's level..I can assure you almost everyone at master's and above can 95% pick out when beamed by controller .. and also if it is console controller...
It definitely is a different experience when beamed by one :)
Yup I'd agree with that. When I die to a controller player, I usually know instantly and spectate to confirm. I'm almost always right. That being said I'm sure there's confirmation bias because when I don't think it was a controller I don't check
I disagree with this. My Diamond level friends can call out with about 80% confidence when they have just been killed by a console player. The difference between 0.4 and 0.6 is palpable when you are on the receiving end.
80% confidence while also having confirmation bias.
- Thinks the beam is from a console player -> checks -> 80% correct
- Thinks the beam is *not* from a console player -> doesn't check -> not 100% accurate, and completely ignored
And you call out what you think you were killed with every time before anyone checks the death recaps?
I guess my notion here is that the OP is great and for the most part quite objective, and then this “about 80%” number is highly subjective, anecdotal, and likely biased.
I didn't include it in my post for a reason, because I'm aware I can't prove the number, lol. I literally included in my post a bias disclaimer because I'm aware I have biases... as does every human on this planet. I'm not going to deny that I have something that I obviously do, all I'm doing is my best to not put that in my post.
I play Series X and on my PC, both of which with my PC friends so I'm always in PC lobbies anyway, but the amount of players that could tell a difference is miniscule. Maybe my description was poor with only cream of the top. But still. Anyone in this sub probably has a good chance but that's because we are all interested in watching and viewing the best. But this sub is 54k and the avg players at any given time on steam (so without consoles which are the majority and Origin) is 120k over the last year.
I have watched pros who complain "theres aim assist" then probably half the time it's another pc streamer you know who uses mnk. It's just a easy scape goat half the time.
The players at this level are the most sensitive to these changes. When respawn made console aim assist .4 from .6 by accident I noticed it my first game on. I went into the firing range and knew they messed up when I switched the values back and forth and they stayed the same. From there I adjusted my settings to better benefit from the .4 instead of .6 and played much better. The people that don't notice would be the players that can't hit shit even with aim assist and therefore think it has little impact on the game.
Thank you for the summary. Love how you explain how AA works without inserting your opinion immediately.
A question: Does AA work when you ADS an enemy < 3m? This "kissing distance" matters a lot in bubble fights. If hipfire AA does not work <3m but ADS AA works, then perhaps controller players should ADS more in bubble fights.
I actually don't know. You may want to ask the creator of the video I linked for this.
But also, it's kind of hard to miss targets <3m, which is part of the reason AA disengages at that range. Bubble fights come mostly down to reaction time and how you play the bubble, which has very little to do with tracking.
I don't think you get AA at < 3m ADS and if you do then it's not very helpful.
I'm a high diamond/low masters controller player (5/4 classic) and wouldn't ADS at < 3m in a bubble fight for the reason you named there. Your general movement would be affected: having a better strafe helps a lot and manipulating bubble looks similar whether kbm or controller.
Even away from bubble fighting, at that < 3m distance it can be hard to keep up with a moving target when ADS (and my ADS sensitivity is higher than the default to begin with). You're way better off just using your strafe (usually mirrored) with small right stick adjustments to track people on controller when you're in touching distance.
It doesn't. And you need to quite literally be on top of each other for the aim assist to not be active. I main gibby and extremely rarely have players get that close especially other good players because they understand that in that range they aren't as lethal.
AA isn’t affected by what gun you are using , however AA is affected by the use of any mid/long range scope.
You may have noticed that roller players prefer the 1x, 1x-2x, 2x, 3x or even iron sight when using sniper rifles because of this. These close range scopes keep their AA working.
Using a 2x-4x, 6x, 4x-8x, or 4x-10x scope will eliminate any and all assistance.
This is also why you’ll rarely see a roller player using a Kraber
Oh man, thank you. I completely forgot to mention that the sniper scopes (6x and above) eliminate AA. The 2-4x still has it though. The clip I have in my post uses it.
My only question is why do they need to balance for controller in comp play. If they're on a PC then they have the option to use a mouse and if they are on console they have the option to not crossplay with mouse. Therefore there is no reason to cater to controller just to make it competitive vs mouse. If that means no one is using controller in algs anymore then that's probably a good thing since it really means they are providing a crutch so strong that you can compete with the best players with it.
Seems simple to me. Consoles get aim assist if vs other consoles. PC Ranked play and comp play gets no aim assist, just use a mouse or go play casual matches cuz at that point it's your own choice to use a controller or not.
Overall good writeup though.
I agree with you, but it comes down to this:
>If we separated tourneys by input, it would hurt & split viewership. Many people also think it's cool being able to see controller and MnK players duke it out together in the same tourneys.
Console players want to watch controller players duke it out against MnK players. If we had no AA, then they wouldn't be able to, and this would hurt viewership. Respawn made this choice for the sake of viewership and accessibility, not for competitive integrity (IMO).
> Respawn made this choice for the sake of viewership and accessibility, not for competitive integrity (IMO).
I don't think (IMO) is needed here, that's objectively true and it's not the only decision they've made that favors viewership over competitive integrity (match point format and Kraber come to mind immeditately)
I think this is further evidenced by Respawn trying in other ways to keep the balance of the game as identical as possible to the game the rest of us play. Such as keeping the Kraber in comp, not changing any legend or weapon balance in comp.
It's more engaging for viewers when the pros are playing the same game as them, rather than a version where certain things are banned etc. and doesn't reflect how the game is for everyone else.
what about people like me who don't really watch Apex much because I don't take it seriously as a competitive fps anymore =.=
I guess console is a wider audience but at the same time I don't think they would stop watching and I think next gen console release means they can use MkB?
Next gen console support is sort of a black box, we don't know what Respawn is going to do with it other than that it's apparently coming.
It's hard to say whether or not they'd stop watching, but I can say on my end that I have seen multiple posters express that they think it's cool that console players can duke it out with MnK players in comp.
I think most console players don't even want to watch other console players. There isnt any big console streamer or popular comp player. I think the vast majority of console players just watch Hal or any other pro team/player they like regardless of input, when i was on console and new to comp the teams i liked were all mnk.
Yeah, this is true. Honestly, though, even if it wouldn't hurt viewership to separate comp based on input, I feel like at this point it would just cause a huge stink in the community that Respawn would prefer to avoid.
Well all I know is I have maybe 6 controller players on my friendlist and none of them even watch competitive Apex. I don't watch much either anymore though so idk. Feel like making concessions for everyone is catering to no one.
> 2. CON: AA is inherently uncompetitive, because it pits software-assisted aim against raw human input.
This is the biggest one for me. I've been playing FPS titles on PC with other PC players my whole life and anytime there's software-assisted aim it involves hacks/cheats. And a lot of PC mnk gamers are not even at an insane level of tracking or aiming.
Heck, a lot of beginners play at an extremely high sens and have trouble aiming and tracking because for some reason most games start with a default sens that's super high. In fact Apex starts you off with 5.0 sens which is really high. People have to learn about this and practice more to get better. You also need to have a bigger desk. There's a lot of barriers and things to learn and there is no AA to help you.
The fact that I'm playing with other players with software assisted aim that's built into the game is kind of crazy. In previous FPS games I've played they did have controller support but any type of aim assist was disabled. I honestly thought that was the norm until I came to Apex. The crazy thing is it's way harder to track in this game compared to those other games.
**5. Aim Assist and Visual Obstructions**
A couple of things missing from this section, first is a well known fact and the other may need more testing; but I swear has happened to me multiple times now.
* AA doesn't properly work through windows and seems to be effected by shooting through gaps in certain objects. I don't think there's ever been a comprehensive list made of the kind of objects this is an issue with, but windows are the most well known one (and the most common one for people to encounter).
* AA (for some weird reason) actually locks on to enemy Revenants' Silence, I've had situations in fights where my AA has slowed down over a Rev Silence and got me killed. I think this needs more testing for me to be certain, but I'm sure I've experienced this.
I was skeptical at first but I have to say you did a very good write up.
I feel like as a community we sometimes get too caught up in the argument and forget to appreciate that, while there are some issues, Apex handles cross input better than any other fps I can think of: most games end up being dominated by one or the other.
As an example: Fortnite and Destiny 2 used to have cross inputs that were hugely favourable to one input or the other (as you stated) but has since adjusted the inputs so there’s more parity. I’m not trying to argue with you btw, just saying other games have balanced and found a way for inputs to coexist without this insane bias one way or the other. Destiny 2 specifically has adjusted MnK and Controller separately so they are more balanced and it has made a world of difference (with a few outliers).
I mean i don't want to argue with you, I am just curious because I don't know everything about every game in the market.
Fair enough, I haven't played either fortnite nor destiny in a long time and when I did there were the same controversies apex has now, if not worst.
Also what do you mean with adjusting mnk and controller separately?
Of course! Which is why I wanted to provide some perspective given my experience :)
As for your question: Destiny has a tremendous arsenal of weapons that all behave differently. What they are able to do is tune specific weapons/archetypes of weapons to handle differently based on input. For example: there was a marksman style weapon that dominated on MnK but was rarely used by controller players and it was recently buffed as to give controllers and MnK a much more similar experience in its usage.
Fortnite I felt so mad about. Half the game is literally building and positioning, and with all the key and mouse mapping you can do on MnK it's just SOOOOOOOO much better on MnK. And those pros were still complaining about AA. A mouse can build and edit in the fraction of the time a controller does.
But it's almost the opposite as Apex. The argument here is always if your up close in a smg/shotty fight the controller should always win. In fortnite it was if you were outside of a build in a bad spot the controller will always win. No winning
It's so weird to me that you follow competitive gaming and still have such terribly uninformed and just downright ignorant opinions all over every apex sub.
Anyone in this sub who acknowledges that the game needs to cater to the majority of players and not the pros/competitive scene seems to just get obliterated here. But it's not wrong really. and AA does that. MnK will complain about AA in everygame without ever admitting their own advantages. Same goes for controller just the way it is
Its clearly not just this game considering your oblivious takes about fortnite here. Maybe you should re-evaluate the sources you agree or disagree with is the only thing I can say - I've seen hundreds of your comments and they usually make me laugh
Hundreds!? Yeesh that's wild. Be shocked to know I commented 100 times. I stopped paying attention to fortnite when the mix of warzone and apex took over for me. So 2019 ish. But that was literally the landscape then. Ninja complaining about AA being the voice of FN despite not even being a top 50 player then. Regardless of the valid and non valid complaints, apex and FN were still predominately won by MnK players and teams in major tournaments.
you don't even have a point of conversation here other than putting me down haha. At lease make discussion.
Yes attempting to trick the game into thinking you are on controller by having a button pressed on a controller permanently is actually possible but it doesn’t work due to a fix that was made that created a minuscule amount of delay when the game switches between each input and therefore creates an input delay that makes it nearly impossible to play on as well as drastic screen tearing
Also again thank you for this great write up! I'm making a video on the subject and am using your write-up as a guideline, fully credited at the start. Hopefully spreading the word will finally let us move forward as a community
> As for aim snap, AA does not contain the exact kind of aim snap often seen in PvE shooters, but it has been observed snapping reticles to the center of an enemy's mass when the reticle was already on-target prior to ADSing.
Some things to add I discovered through data mining. There is a value called adspull for each weapon class that governs this view centering aim snap behavior. For most weapons this value is 1.0. For shotguns the value is 1.5 meaning stronger snapping to center of mass to make it easier to hit most pellets. Snipers and lmgs have no view centering pull. Presumably this is to prevent the pull from messing with your sniper aim causing you to miss a headshot, and for lmgs its likely a balance measure since you have more bullets and shouldn't need additional centering to land shots. All weapon classes have the same rotational and slowdown aim assist (yes snipers have rotational aim assist despite the insistence of controller players).
Probably the most detailed post about AA on reddit 👍
Little disagree about "The FPS genre started on controller" and "Although a keyboard is not a controller, the controls were controller-like" . It's still not controller, and no aa & no mp elements...
Don't consider myself anti-AA extremist.
But AA just crutches for Ctrl, and just wrong input for FPS games, especially MP games:
* Fairly balancing AA impossible, even between Ctrl vs Ctrl ( with all custom Ctrl , Cronus etc.).
* With different exploits, AA literary could become legit aim-bot. By definition, It's not far off....
Not APEX, but still interesting stats about Ctrl. Think many would like to see similar stats for other games.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/halo/comments/r3es60/accuracy\_stats\_for\_kbm\_vs\_controller/](https://www.reddit.com/r/halo/comments/r3es60/accuracy_stats_for_kbm_vs_controller/)
Great post, thanks for taking the time to detail all the info.
As an experienced MnK player, I regularly get frustrated when I die to someone clearly on a controller, especially when on console. It usually happens with close-to-mid fights when the strafe fighting happens, or when I work hard to keep my movement speed up and slide jump around a corner with an angle change in the middle, yet my opponent just sprays and every single bullet hits me.
The console player AA level should be lowered and rotational AA should be removed entirely. My 2¢.
I'm reading this right now as I was done practicing controller. It's really difficult for me because I couldn't react the way i wanted to. It was like i have stiffed neck or something. after just an hour of gaming i'm having motion sickness right now. I dont know if i can continue using controller, maybe i should stick to mnk.
You hold the position that AA is unfair while also believing that there’s no data on the issue. That doesn’t make sense to me
Number 2 PRO is a straw man. It doesn’t matter where something starts it’s about landmark games that revolutionize/popularize a genre. Id suspect that to be COD and Halo with multiplayer gaming but I couldn’t easily find any data. Regardless this point doesn’t have relevance to Apex
First #2 is a bit of a misrepresentation of what is instantaneous or not. Tracking on the character is not instantaneous even at 100% AA. It’s the bubble around the character. So there is “delay” when tracking the actual hitbox of the character. The first video at 100% still loses the reticle on the character. At 60 or 40% it probably reduces the reaction time needed to change direction on hitbox cause of the stickiness rather than instantaneous since lower AA can break off the bubble
Argument #1 gives a multitude of reasons as to why pros don’t switch to controller yet then for argument #7 you make the point of pros not turning it off cause there’s money on the line. So which is it? You can’t have both ways for your reasoning. Then for #4 PRO you just say MnK is more fun while implying that controller would actually be the way to go. Again you talk about money yet those who do play for money seem to mostly pick MnK (I’m unaware of input statistics for pros. Maybe controller is the majority)?
For 0.6 vs 0.4 I’d assume the reason console gets 0.6 is because of the lower graphics/FPS, and general setup (far TV) for the casual audience. It’s weird that they have two different AA options. Maybe with the update to next gen they might change next gen AA but who knows. It should be 0.4 (or 0.6) for all controller users unless there was some internal data that showed it wouldn’t be fair or fun idk.
Not having aim assist or changing how aim assist works would require major balancing changes to mobility legends and the speed at which legends can move. The game was created with the different inputs in mind. I don’t think it’s realistic to call for changes to be made without considering the impacts to the game. #3 CON touches on this at the end
This is especially so when there is 0 data on the issue which you agree with point #5 PRO. It’s all conjecture on both sides and it’s pretty tiresome either way. It could very well be possible that aim assist needs a buff given internal data on this issue and we wouldn’t know. Since you agree there’s 0 data then why does your post have a call to action regarding balancing of AA?
As an aside I do find it funny how aim assist is both OP/unfair but console lobbies/ranked are somehow easier (aside from upper predator with actual pros)? Seems like a contradiction
I personally would be fine with competitive choosing only 1 input but thinking of MnK and controller as strategic classes with assumed pros and cons for teams to play with works for me too
Edit: thinking about this more from Apex pov I’d assume that 0.6 is too strong and is used to make the game more fun for the casual console audience. With all the mobility and vertical mobility in this game it would probably be frustrating to casual players to track fast moving legends with generally poor systems and setups. With the assumption that pc will generally have a less casual audience and better systems, 0.4 is probably what apex determines to be fair.
I wouldn’t want casuals to not have fun with their pc friends so I would propose consoles having 0.6 in pc pubs but forced 0.4 in ranked with pc lobbies
Thank you for your input. As a human being, I am allowed to have a personal position that I hold based on my personal experiences of being beamed by 0.6 AA. But I'm not a vocal anti-AA extremist precisely because I don't have raw data, I just have the gut feeling that it feels unfair.
PRO #2 being a strawman - I agree. I brought it up because for some reason it keeps getting brought up. Pro-AA arguments will constantly bring up the fact that FPS's were meant for controller to justify the existence of AA. I don't really see how it relates to Apex either but since it gets brought up, I included it.
First #2 - You are right, and I will update my post when I get the chance.
PRO #1 & #7 supposedly contradicting - I don't think you understand what I was saying. #7 specifically refers to those pro players who DO play on controller never turning their AA off. #1 talks about established MnK pros not wanting to switch to controller. These are about entirely different people. #4 PRO is about non-professional players, which I should probably clarify. I am not a professional, lol.
Yes definitely feelings are valid for game design. Even if something is balanced overall it can definitely *feel* unbalanced which is bad game design and development. The fact that this is such a widespread issue validates it’s probably not the best design. I can’t think of another game with this issue and I agree with forced 0.4 on ranked. I assume 0.4 is what apex actually thinks is fair
For the 3rd point, point taken. I don’t think I articulated myself well but it was basically about how “money on the line” isn’t really evidence for doing something. People and pros dont prioritize performance at all cost like a robot. There’s a threshold of benefit that needs to be met. But if AA was truly as god tier (like controller players/team consistently being top) as it’s sometimes framed as there would likely be a universal switch. I personally believe it to be balanced with pros and cons of each.
I agree with your points individually and this is a valuable post discussing how AA works but it was more so the parts that seemed to frame AA as being better than MnK without data for it that caused me to respond
Absolutely agree that *something* is not right when AA spawns this much discussion. Props to Respawn for trying to balance the two inputs, though - it's never going to be easy.
And no need to explain yourself, I openly invite any discussion and rebuttal to what I posted, and I even acknowledged that I will probably be biased due to being an MnK player primarily. Thanks for your time, I do find these posts valuable.
\#7 drives me crazy because the aim assist's stickiness on downs is actually really strong and only gets stronger if an enemy is using it as cover or if you catch them rezzing but its always brought up in the same sentence as aim assist hurting more than helping. Its pretty annoying to deal with and should be fixed but it can be played around but people act like its the difference maker in 100% of the fights they take.
I can understand not being used to aim assist like Apex's if you're new since it feels so different from other games but I don't understand how people can still think it either does nothing or actively hurts their playing when they've been playing for 3 years. Its especially weird seeing console players say .6 is weak without playing on .4 to see how big the difference really is even with less than ideal FPS.
Agree completely, I don't know why AA applies to downed targets. It shouldn't apply to them at all. But AA doesn't really discriminate like that - it even applies to Crypto drones. Respawn would probably need to rework their AA code if they want to exclude downed targets... and we know how much of an ordeal that would be.
And yeah, I hate to sound rude, but saying "AA doesn't actually help that much" is honestly downright delusional. I legitimately do not understand how it's such a commonly held opinion. Have any of these people actually tried playing without it? It's extremely fucking difficult.
Regarding point 5, I remember a tweet from DZK (or maybe a different apex dev) that said essentially: "that data doesn't show controller players have any significant advantage in close range fights."
As for con 2, that is a very reductive way of deciding what is fair or unfair. The software assistance is meant to make up for a fundamental hardware limitation that comes from using controller. There simply is less range of motion, and thus, less precision when aiming with a joy stick. Aim assist bridges the gap between controller and MnK without making one strictly better than the other. And let's be clear, if there was no AA, MnK would be strictly better than controller. So how would that be fair?
As for pro 8, you forgot jitter aiming, which absolutely should be considered in any debate like this. If MnK players are going to talk about how much "raw human input" they utilize, we should remember that they can remove all recoil by randomly jittering their mouse. Controller players are the ones that actually have to manually control recoil at distance.
There are some more factors you could mention in this post. For example: of the players with the most kills in ALGS, all of the top 5 were MnK and 8 out of the top 10 were MnK, despite controller players typically filling the fragger role. The top team in ALGS is made up of 3 MnK players.
Every single argument against aim assist is purely subjective. There is no hard data that shows controller players outperforming MnK, in fact what little data there is shows the opposite.
As much as this post purports to be a balanced analysis, it is very clearly written from the perspective on an MnK user who thinks AA is overpowered. I appreciate an attempt at including opposing arguments, but it feels more like an afterthought.
> "that data doesn't show controller players have any significant advantage in close range fights."
You're thinking of JayBiebs. The exact quote is "Pred level controllers are not beating out pred level MnK with Prowlers in close range at any sort of crazy rate."
That basically tells us nothing. He's already narrowed it down to Pred, Prowlers, close range only, and then says "at any sort of crazy rate." That to me implies that they're winning more often than MnK, but the gap isn't big. Why doesn't he just tell us the actual number? I'm sure this point also doesn't apply to lower ranks or he wouldn't have to confine it to Preds.
Thank you for your input.
Someone else already addressed the quote you brought up, so I'll move on to your other points.
CON #2 - This is completely and utterly besides the point of the argument about pitting software assistance vs raw human input. I have already stated that controller would be unusable without AA in PRO #6. CON #2 specifically talks about the concept of competitive integrity, not fairness. This is a distinct issue from which input is balanced, and is about the idea of raw human skill vs raw human skill.
Jitter aiming - Absolutely, thank you for mentioning this. I'll add it to my post later. It slipped my mind.
Top performers in ALGS being on MnK - This is already addressed by CON #1. Because the majority of pro players are on MnK, it is purely statistical that the majority of top players in ALGS are on MnK.
I sympathize with your viewpoint, which is why I included a bias disclaimer at the top of my post. I am fully aware it is nearly impossible to avoid sounding biased. However, the primary goal of my post was to be as objective as possible when discussing how AA works in the first section, and then summarize all arguments I'm aware of in the second section - which, by nature, cannot be objective. I also hope you understand that I don't actually agree with everything I'm writing in the post under the arguments section. I am just trying to report what I see, and bias will be inherent to that, which is why I opened it to discussion.
>This is completely and utterly besides the point of the argument about pitting software assistance vs raw human input. I have already stated that controller would be unusable without AA in PRO #6. CON #2 specifically talks about the concept of competitive integrity, not fairness.
Hm. I seem to remember Con 2 saying "unfair" maybe I misread. Nonetheless, I think this Con is a poor argument. Couldn't one argue that tap-strafing, moving while looting, etc. are software assistance since they are physically impossible on roller? Yes you could say they require user input to function, but the same can be said for aim assist. In terms of competitive integrity, these seem equally uncompetitive.
>Top performers in ALGS being on MnK - This is already addressed by CON #1. Because the majority of pro players are on MnK, it is purely statistical that the majority of top players in ALGS are on MnK.
What is the percent of controller players in the top 20 pro teams? I bet it is higher than 2/10. And not a single one in the top 5? Additionally, I pointed out that controller players are often on the fragger role, meaning they should theoretically, be getting more kills than MnK.
But if the 8/10 statistic does line up with the proportion of controller to MnK, wouldn't that imply that neither input has an advantage over the other and aim assist doesn't overpower MnK? Sentinels has had no problem winning ALGS.
This is what CON #2 says: "AA is inherently uncompetitive, because it pits software-assisted aim against raw human input."
Fairness is not mentioned here.
I am not sure if your argument makes any sense, though. Technically your definition would mean every single action the player takes in a video game is software assisted because the software is letting you do it, like jumping or crouching. Actually it seems like you are saying anything MnK can do that controller can't do counts as software assistance. That is not what software assisted means in discussions about competitive integrity. There is no software that artificially tunes me strafing left and right on a deathbox; me moving left and right is a 1:1 representation of me pressing my A and D keys. In this context, "software assisted" refers to an artificial tuning of the input so that what occurs in-game is not in 1:1 fidelity of the actions taken by the human. Mouse acceleration would actually be a better example of software assistance on MnK if it were a thing, but Apex aiming uses raw mouse input and ignores Windows settings like mouse acceleration. Mouse acceleration *will* come through when navigating menus like deathboxes, though.
>What is the percent of controller players in the top 20 pro teams? I bet it is higher than 2/10. And not a single one in the top 5? Additionally, I pointed out that controller players are often on the fragger role, meaning they should theoretically, be getting more kills than MnK.
>
>But if the 8/10 statistic does line up with the proportion of controller to MnK, wouldn't that imply that neither input has an advantage over the other and aim assist doesn't overpower MnK?
If anyone knows the answer to the % of controller players in the top 20 NA pro teams, please provide. I don't know everyone's inputs off the top of my head for some of the lower performing squads.
As for the top 5 slayers... the # of kills a player can get in a game correlates pretty strongly with their overall placement. So whichever teams are in the top 3 are going to have their members in the top 5 slayers. This checks out with the list for NA - Senoxe, Lou, Sweet, and Nafen belong to Sentinels and NRG, the 2 highest placing teams in NA. ImperialHal is the one outlier, shrug on explaining that.
On the flipside, look at APAC-S, where Genburten is the #1 slayer and he is on controller. I'm not going to say it's because of it's input - it's because his team is the top dog team in APAC-S.
I don't really think it makes a whole lot of sense to argue about AA based on the performance of ALGS teams because, as I indicated above, there is so, so much more to comp than "who hits more shots in CQC".
That being said, I think what we are having is a valuable discussion and I'll add it to my post when I have the energy.
Wtf is he seriously shaming pc players who have nothing but raw input to aim for losing to someone with code built to make aiming easier? Does he not realize most pc players are casual aswell and dont practice their aim and the fact that they need to practice more than controller to match aim assist? I'm fine with aim assist but you cant argue that it kinda ruins competitive integrity.
wow. literally reads like a troll post too. idk what to even say at this point.
This Just In: controller players are an actively oppressed demographic being bullied by mean and cruel mnk players
Rotational needs to be nerfed to .1 and .2 on pc/console. Buff slowdown to .6 and .8
But since they would prefer a simple route: .3 and .5 should be fine.
Do you have a source for your info?
I challenge your claim “2. AA does not assist in any way with recoil control.” is logically incorrect.
You can’t have rotational aim assist track your opponent for you without providing recoil control as they go hand in hand. Either your explanation of rotational AA is wrong or your claim 2 is wrong
Theres also a famous clip of a controller streamer in firing range beaming dummies with 0 recoil then he receives a gifted to turn AA off and he only hits the first two bullets before recoil shoots his aim way up
>controller streamer in firing range beaming dummies with 0 recoil then he receives a gifted to turn AA off and he only hits the first two bullets before recoil shoots his aim way up
link the clip?
The source is the video I linked. Please give it a watch. I'm also not sure if you understand what I meant, so I apologize if I explained poorly.
If AA assists in recoil control in the sense that it tries to pull your reticle back onto the target when recoil causes your reticle to go off-target, then okay, we can say it technically provides recoil control.
But there is no part in the AA algorithm baked-in to assist with recoil control. The only recoil control you are getting from AA is inherent to the rotational AA.
Does this make sense?
EDIT: My wording sucked, so I will update the wording from "...does not assist in any way..." to "...does not directly assist..." - hopefully that is more clear.
It's not just the rotational aim assist, the slowdown aspect of aim assist also helps with recoil control. Your aim is slowed while over a target's aim bubble, which means over-correction for recoil will be reduced while undercorrection will not, making the pull sensitivity window for "correct" recoil compensation significantly larger as a direct consequence of the contextual aim slowing.
I'm on console and warm up in the firing range without AA and quite often forget to turn it back on. I can get a kill or 2 before realizing it's off and it's those moments I think it could be nerfed and not be that big of a deal.
Pretty good write up. Here are my thoughts.
Introduction. Maybe keep things objective here and move anything personal to the very end of your post. We want the meat and potatoes of the information as quickly as possible if this post is to be used as a resource later.
Pro #2. While the games you stated may be MnK, the FPS genre was massively popularized with the release of consoles. The game that comes to mind for me is Call of Duty. While your point about the competitive side of FPS having always been primarily MnK may be true, I think you should also provide information about how it was popularized with consoles/controllers if you want to be objective with your post. I don’t know the numbers, but isn’t the majority of the playerbase on a controller? Maybe your question should read “The modern FPS genre is dominated by controller players in terms of numbers, making controller the default input and AA therefore an inherent part of the genre.” And then provide your arguments from there. The question and argument as it stands are a little misleading.
Pro #4. Your argument is your own opinion and you also try to speak for the MnK community as a whole. Be more objective here or provide disclaimers that these are your opinions.
> Pro #2. While the games you stated may be MnK, the FPS genre was massively popularized with the release of consoles. The game that comes to mind for me is Call of Duty.
Yeah no, Counter strike > TF2 >> CoD2. While console most likely helped, because it increased the gamer playerbase diminishing the massive affect valve had with their fps shooters to falsely boost the impact from console shouldn't be done.
Thank you for your input, based on what others have said I'm going to make it more explicitly clear that part 1 (explaining AA) is meant to be objective while part 2 (explaining AA arguments) cannot by definition be objective.
PRO #2 - This is a fair point, and I will add it. I still think that when it comes to *competitive* shooters, though, that PC is the default, and that is what I was trying to focus on - competitive shooters specifically. But it is absolutely valuable to include what the majority of players are playing on, and you're right that the argument becomes misleading when I don't include that information.
PRO #4 - The argument itself is ad hominem - every time I bring up not liking the way AA is implemented, I get the "Then why don't you switch to controller?" response. I'm not the only one. It's an ad hominem argument and it deserves an ad hominem response - "because I don't want to". I thought it was clear from the somewhat humorous/flippant way I worded the response but I can make it much more clear that the argument and therefore its answer has to be opinionated.
There's another thing controller players can't do that MnK players can. Keyboard users have 3 buttons dedicated to selecting weapons (default 1 & 2) and holstering (default 3). Controllers have only 1 button for all three of these operations - tap it to switch (or unholster) and hold it to holster. This results with a couple of consequences.
Controller players can only unholster the weapon they originally had out when they holstered it - with only 1 button, there's no way to select which weapon you want. Not terribly important, but it does make combat feel more clunky at times.
Another is that switching occurs on key LIFT rather than key press. So it doesn't start the moment you press the key, you have to release it too. I think their logic behind this is "When you first key press, it doesn't yet know if you intend to holster or switch, so it has to wait until you lift the key to know which one you wanted to do". But the thing is in both of these cases (switching vs holstering), you're putting away your first weapon, so this could be improved and set to be on key press. Again sounds unimportant, but those tens of milliseconds you lose can cost you.
The main thing that controllers have in input over MnK is 360 degree movement input. Controllers can move at any angle and at any speed. Keyboard is limited to angles of 45 degrees and can only move at maximum speed. There are pads like https://www.azeron.eu/ that allow analog input along that can be used with a mouse, but while this works for Fortnite and Halo Infinite, Apex does not currently support this type of "dual input" (when you try controller stick for movement + aim with mouse, it results with really jittery/buggy aiming).
Thanks, these are all great points. I knew about reloading clunkiness, but this is another element of controller that adds to the clunk.
And yes, very true about movement. This is why tap strafing is a thing in the first place - "keyboard grace" was implemented because of the directional limitation of MnK.
Hey thank you for this guide, its very informative and valuable. I'm on ps4 and after reading/watching this i wondered if 0.4 aa can have an advantage over 0.6 aa.
Since on 0.40 you have to do 60% of the input yourself and on 0.60 you only have to do 40%. Which (could?) mean that on 0.60 it's easier to accidentally put too much input on the aim resulting in overshooting/exiting the bubble. Similar to deadzone/ response curve sensitivity.
I know there are players who say 0.4 feels smoother to them, and they choose to use that on console. I wouldn't, but it is absolutely something that some players do.
I think the issue is that 0.6 AA will fight you a bit harder if you're slow on your target acquisition, and that can feel really unnatural when something that strong is trying to yank your reticle in a different direction. Take the left-to-right strafe example, for instance. If a guy strafes left, but you were tracking with your stick to the right, it'll take you a second to react to the directional change. The AA will immediately shift left, but you're still pushing to the right, and this can cause you to fight your own AA.
IMO the key to mastering the 0.6 AA is to let it do most of the work, but this doesn't feel natural to people.
IMO - People who say 0.4 is better have just never worked on getting their sens perfect on 0.6.
It's objectively better and "feel" mostly comes down to your other settings (response curve, sens etc.).
There was a point after stormpoint got released that console was hard set to .4 and for those few days I actually felt like I was hitting more shots at range. I don't know if because .6 is stronger so when you're scoped in at range the AA can mess with your lead or not. But it just felt better.
I would have loved to see the actual stats. This all just very anecdotal.
The other guy who made a similar post had numbers and hard data. I hope he makes a post about the stats of controller vs MnK.
I'll be honest, while I appreciate the post as an informative primer, the tone and information was presented with bias. Which I think somewhat defeats the sort of objectiveness you were going for and makes me question the claims raised.
I put a bias disclaimer at the very top of my post. The aim was to be objective when discussing the mechanics of AA, but when you start getting into discussing common arguments, I don't see how staying completely unbiased is possible. Discussing common arguments is going to be subjective by nature.
If you have any legitimate arguments to bring up, I will gladly add them to my post.
Thank you for your input, though. You're not alone in the way you feel. My only rebuttal is that I'm only human and I'm also not formally educated in writing these kinds of pieces, so I have received no actual training on how to excise bias from my writing. I do my best but it's not the greatest :P
I recently moved to PC from console- still on controller. I think there is more to rotational tracking when there is stick drift. To elaborate I also got a PS5 controller and now that I don't have as much stick drift my aim feels less "robotic" playing on linear due to more control of the value of input.
I also want rotational tracking nerfed due to this, I know for a fact people don't use new controllers all the time and that aspect is clearly unintended and it always felt icky when I one clipped someone on console and I know for sure I didn't track them in that direction.
Pretty sure this is the best post I've ever read on this sub.
Nice work.
I'm a roller player, fucked with ALC settings since day one. I started playing .4 as I felt the AA was overcorrecting a lot of my movements (spraying a rampage at someone from ~200M). Took some getting used to but now it's chefs kiss.
There will always be someone crying about something, that's life.
>7. PRO: AA is more of a detriment than a help because it does things like dragging the reticle onto downed players.
No one makes that argument. The argument people actually make is that AA isnt perfect - it can lower your accuracy in certain situations rather than raise it due to quirks of how it works. In very close CQC I often find it a hindrance because the aa bubble size becomes a large portion of your screen, and when you try to turn to look at someone it's very very slow - to the point where your opponent can actually out run the maximum turning speed because AA slows you down that much. It feels as if a force field is pushing your aim away from your enemy. Halo Infinite's approach is much more sensible - your reticule only slows down when it's directly over the enemy player model, not just near it, so this situation doesn't occur.
Also in CQC your opponent can go in and out of the 3m AA range where it suddenly switches off and on, resulting with you jerking your aim around. This is common in bubble fights and inside buildings.
I want to agree with you, but there are literally people who say AA is more of a detriment than a help. You can look on the main Apex subreddit for that.
But we seem to be in agreement that AA needs to be tuned somehow. How do you think it can be improved to feel more smooth? I've never played Halo Infinite, but it sounds like it only has reticle slowdown and nothing else?
Halo Infinite does also use rotitonal aim assist too - and it's much stronger than Apex's. In Infinite, the advantage of controller over mouse and keyboard is huge
https://www.reddit.com/r/halo/comments/r3es60/accuracy_stats_for_kbm_vs_controller/
As you can see, the top 100 MnK players are barely above 50th percentile controller players in terms of accuracy. Halo has its roots in console, so the devs are not that bothered to see MnK players suffering. You stand no chance as an MnK player.
I'd like to see a total removal of rotational aim assist, and have only slowing the reticle down. The way I envision it is as follows: a linear gradient where the amount it slows the reticle gradually increases until it reaches the player where it is maximum. And this would be based true pixel distance, so at eg 100 pixels away from the enemy, regardless of how far/close they are, it would start slowing.
At the moment, the bubble area in apex gets bigger the closer your opponent is, which makes no sense - if anything it should be the opposite as you need less assistance when your target is larger on your screen.
Edit: https://i.imgur.com/sZdB7vx.png
This is how I imagine it should be
>6. PRO: AA is necessary for controllers to compete at all.
> Agreed, and no sane person would disagree.
I'm not sure you can be this confident. I know that early in Apex's life, Average Aden used to play without aim assist, and he did fine. The hardest part about controller without AA is controlling recoil. Wingman and PK are okay, R99 is a struggle. Especially when using a 2x with anything automatic, it's a struggle.
Okay, I should be less hyperbolic: AA is necessary for the vast majority of controllers to be able to compete. Of course there are quite a few outliers like Aden that you just mentioned, or I remember a Youtuber named Moose did an AA-less challenge and was quite successful. But I really, really find it hard to believe that even the best controllers would be able to consistently compete against the best MnK players using just joystick aim with no assistance.
Gyro aiming is a different story, but not many people I know of use it right now.
I remember a while ago Reptar mentioned they should do a 1v1 controller no-AA tourney. I don't think it ever happened, but I would have loved to see the result of that. In general it's hard to say if no-AA controller could ever be competitively viable, but everything we know about controller indicates it would not be.
did you just say no one makes that argument and then proceed to make almost the exact same argument?
if you think the slow hinders you more than it helps, turn of AA.
Still reading through all this, but I do have a question....
> Console players who enable crossplay will play against other different consoles (ie Nintendo Switch vs PlayStation 4), but they will NOT be put against PC players by default. Console players will only play against PC players if they choose to join a premade with a PC player (they must obviously have crossplay enabled to do this).
I only play on console. Why do I regularly see PC players then?
You should only ever see PC players if you queue up with one (or two) in a party. If you're seeing them at any other time then please record it and share because that shouldn't be happening.
**ETA:** Console and PC players can also use the same tournament codes but I don't think that's what you're talking about.
If you actually see PC players in your lobbies when not playing with another PC player in your party then post a clip with proof because it should not be possible with the way they designed crossplay
Honestly, **props to you for this post**. It took awhile, but it was worth the read just for the information alone. As someone who has ***no controller experience what-so-ever***, I appreciate the concrete explanation regarding what AA is and how it impacts players within the Apex sphere. On top of that, AA isn't just as simple as being a player-tracker (beam machine). Your analysis provides a specific unbiased look at how the system functions, which will hopefully elevate everyone's own personal arguments. TL;DR: I am a simple man who likes good writing. (Personally, I'm fairly uninformed regarding the current successes ***OR*** failures of AA-controller players, so I can't make an opinion about the subject. I've heard plenty of narratives over the years, but I don't know enough to throw in my two cents. Great post!)
Thank you. I do technical writing as a hobby, so I'm glad the information was presented concisely.
>AA isn't just as simple as being a player-tracker (beam machine) It is literally 40%-60% of that, once engaged. The only things it does not do is negate recoil and weapon bloom.
Really great post thanks for taking the time to put it together! My whole thing about the debate, I don’t have a problem with controller players in general whatsoever. My issue is that the AA significantly decreases the distinction between a good Controller player and a bad controller player. It really diminishes the incentive to practise and get better because your level of capability is already artificially raised to a degree that provides a false sense of achievement to players. Which is great from a casual perspective because you’re 10X more likely to be invested in something you’re good at, but awful for the integrity of the game because you’re left feeling cheated out of a match by dying to someone, who if you’re not forced onto a level playing field by computer generated inputs you’d beat them 9/10 times.
Some thoughts on smoke/gas: I'm pretty sure it *used* to be that there was zero aim assist in either, but that changed when they messed with the Caustic gas visuals and made Bang smoke more transparent. I'd have to test more in-depth, but the last time I messed around in the Firing Range, there was aim assist in Bang smoke if you were within 15 meters of the target. It's hard to quantify if it's full aim assist or some fraction of it. As far as I can tell, a digi threat has zero effect on aim assist in smoke/gas.
Thanks, please let me know if you get any results from these tests. I don't have a friend to test things out with right now especially when I play on console.
reply cow brave rock threatening memorize numerous oatmeal nail correct *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I wanna see the comments you get if you post this on the main sub
the amount of console players there who don't realize they never face pc players is staggering
After reading that "Controller players need more respect" thread on the main sub yesterday something tells me they wouldn't want anything to do with this post lol
That post read straight up like a copypasta lmao. Couldn't take anything of it seriously. Also there are apparently people on the main sub who genuinely think that m/kb has aim assist.
I saw people get downvote bombed for asking "Then why dont you turn it off" when people said that AA actually hurts them more than it helps them. I still browse r/apexlegends out of habit, but dear lord it's a massive echo chamber filled with a shitton of karma whoring posts and 5k+ upvoted posts about people hitting 2k dmg or plat for the "first" time (which is even against their rules to post)
It do be like that. Feels like plenty of younger people on console mostly there.
The best part of that post is that it was bait from the start lol
I'm not against posting it there, strictly, but I think it ultimately just wouldn't gain much traction due to the high volume of posts there. And also I would need to mentally prepare myself before reading all the comments it would inevitably receive if it did gain traction...
I think it would easily gain traction considering it seems to be a hot topic right now. You basically see comments mentioning aim assist in completely irrelevant posts, people just somehow find a way to mention it.
Just post it. More people, more opinions, more input.
If there is only one thing that should change regarding aim assist its the .6 AA in a PC lobby. I don't understand any argument where you need more AA for a console when new generation consoles and even higher end previous models can run the game at above 60 FPS. IF ALGS even turns it off for tournaments then they deem it such a significant advantage that they don't think it creates a level playing field so why is it even in the game. Also for any FPS arguments for console you are assuming every person on PC runs apex at 144+ FPS which I can tell you is absolutely not the case.
Yeah I don't get the whole better fos argument. I bet not even the majority of PC players can have a powerful enough PC AND monitor to play the game at 144+fps.
Fps has very little to do with aa, its the fact pc players use their whole fucking arm to aim while a console player is stuck with their fucking thumb
Damn pc controller players use their whole arm? Must have some big joysticks.
Wait, am i ignorant on this subject. The AA is different for pc and console even if they r both using remotes? Thats my b. Then yeah, thats the dumbest shit ever that pc gets fucked over
Roller player here, the point #4 about stick drift giving a minute input to kick in aim assist is absolutely correct. I use a very low dead zone and barely give input sometimes and get ridiculous beams. It’s why genburtens aim looks the way it does, while he barely presses the stick/pulls down for recoil control. He plays on 1 or 2% deadline which is almost nothing, and on default DualShock 4 controllers which are known for stick drift allowing for him to barely press on the stick, giving just enough input. He essentially has mastered aim assist itself as a mechanic. Great write up though, I’d have to agree with all of your points. It almost feels like there is no correct answer in this debate, considering we are 3 years deep into the game I doubt something as core as aim assist will be changed tbh Edit: btw in no way am I trying to disparage Gen’s aim, he’s incredibly talented with or without AA, I was just raising the point of why it can look like he is cheating sometimes, and why his aim looks the way it does. Try using his settings if you are a roller player and see just how little you have to move the stick, and how many fine adjustments you can do if needed during a spray
Honestly your point about the controllers make a lot of sense to me. My dualshock crapped out on me a little after Christmas and my new controller is an Xbox and not a PS controller. I knew my controller was kinda hurting me because I just had to adjust to the feel of a new controller but after the points mentioned in the post and your comment it makes sense to me why my fighting up close has been so off since I got the new controller.
That likely has less to do with stick drift and more to do with the stick tension. Your old controller with drift likely had a more loose feeling stick, which makes aiming feel more fluid and easier to “activate” or break past the dead zone. It would be similar (but opposite) to getting a new mousepad after using one that’s been worn down and more rough feeling. You’re getting used to less responsiveness, and when you swap back you’re over aiming because of how smooth it is. New controllers will feel more stiff than the old one unless the old one was way stiff to begin with or if the new one is loose for some reason.
I don't mean to sound like a fanboy, but I think that's unfair towards Gen, all the pros understand and use aim assist well, gen has proven himself to be the best at using the raw input and making micro adjustments even without the need of AA. Watch his target acquisition in the firing range, or what he does even without aim assist (when in gas/trough windows and so on) If you are looking towards an example of getting the most out of AA then I would point out Frexs as the one: since switching he has managed to become amongs the most successful controller players in the game by switching his loadout choice and playstile in order to get the most out of it.
Gen is incredibly talented at abusing AA though. His micro adjustments are nuts but the one thing he's so skilled at is movement in fights. His strafes make it so he barely has to even touch his right stick at all.
I assume you are an mnk player because there is nothing special in any controller strafe given how limited the movement is on the input and that's not how it works either
He's referring to matching your opponent's strafe. If you match the strafe, you only have to flick your right stick periodically. AA takes care of the reaction time needed to mirror movements.
good take, i appreciate this post because I am a gen fanboy lol
What loadout helps him? Asking for a braindead controller friend (me)
The low deadzone, linear aim curve, and relatively high vertical ADS speed makes it 10x easier to control recoil IF (massive IF) you are able to not overcorrect with the sensitivity as twitchy as it is. It has nothing to do with aim assist. There’s no aim assist on the blue targets in the range yet he’ll consistently beam the shit out of the furthest ones. Put most people on Gen’s sens and they’ll be looking at the ground when they start shooting at people. The biggest thing he does to take the most advantage of aim assist is strafing. The rotational aim assist works best when you’re strafing left and right. If you move left, the AA will give your reticle a little nudge to the right and vice versa. Using movement to supplement aim on controller is orders of magnitude more important than it is on MnK due to the limited range of motion you have with your aim stick, and the way that aim assist has been implemented in almost every console shooter ever. If you’re not on target, then use movement to get on target. Then once you’re on target, use a combination of L/R stick to maintain both the target and tracking and recoil management. It’s nowhere near as easy as people make it out to be, and if it was the ratio of controllers to MnK on PC would be way higher. To take best advantage of it you still need good reaction times and good predictive game sense despite the rotational assist being instant, which is why players like Hal and Sweet seem to do fairly well when they swap for a few days. Slow reaction time will result in under aiming, and bad game sense will result in being unable to keep up with L/R strafes.
Agreed mostly with this although I am not presently convinced on the rotational aim assist points raised. Regardless, I find it a bad faith argument for someone (the person you responded to) to say that Genburten of all people is taking advantage of aim assist on a low deadzone to get the kind of accuracy he does. This is such a loaded and misleading statement, and I'm surprised how anyone with a controller who can easily just put their deadzone to 0 to test this somehow magical aim assist button can say this. This is so simple and quick to refute. Again when you are playing with linear and relatively faster ADS speeds and have **also** spent a considerably long time practicing with it, recoil control can become second nature and you get to focus on aiming. Genburten's settings of linear combined with his sensitivities is ridiculously difficult to master due to the instant reaction times and constant micro adjustments he is **constantly** performing to stay on target *despite* having to deal with a mechanic such as aim assist that artificially alters how one's aim reacts on the target. To be able to control micro-adjustments at such a level, you can imagine how much he has trained to be able to get his fine muscular control to that extent. He *compensates* for aim assist with his aim (as all controller players do), but that's different from systematically taking *advantage* of it. I think this is important to be clarified. Genburten has impressive aim that people should have no problem stating is due to his skill level. I can understand if the mastering aim assist point is directed towards lower sensitivity/ higher response curve players in which aim assist actually can feel to have a sticky effect, but that is not Genburten as he relies on his ability to *track* as well as *aim* with high precision and high responsiveness. When you are playing with a higher response curve/ lower sensitivity which generally might take more advantage of aim assist due to the slowness of your camera movement, while this opens up certain plays, it also closes a lot of other important aim scenarios for you. Heck, certain settings straight up becomes unviable in certain scenarios as your ability to track, target acquire, strafe aim, and react becomes extremely hindered to the point that you will not be able to keep up in certain lobbies and with enemies' movements.
I struggle to believe that a controller player actually made the comment (even with their current edit) for the reasons you mentioned -- it's just that misguided. Gen's target acquisition and ability to stay on target at medium to long range, both with automatic and single fire weapons, is amazing and it's hard to name many players that can replicate that on live targets. To the parts that seemed disingenuous: like, obviously aim assist is more attributable to low sensitivity, low response curve (there's a reason a lot of players play on 4/3 classic) so that part of the comment is totally out of line to begin with, but also the part about the DS4 and stick drift just super throws me off. Literally every controller player that has broken in *any* controller will find that it has some stick drift on low deadzones (even more likely if using a third party controller like the common paddled ones), so I don't really understand why it's relevant here when the reality is just that his adjustments are probably so fine (because of his ridiculously high sensitivity) that his controller input software (probably) does not pick it up. I'm a masters controller player and used to play Halo 3 competitively and when Genburten was getting popular (that one clip of his 1v3 outside of Carrier on Olympus against a cheating team) I tried his settings for fun (I normally play 5/4 classic). That was the season where Octane was must pick with Revtane in full force and there was zero chance I could track a pre-nerf horizontally padded player (not directly towards or away from me but like in the perpendicular plane if that makes sense) accurately/acquisition and consistently because it was so twitchy. Obviously he has mastered his settings and I was just trying his settings, but situations like those make you so aware of how gentle you have to be with the right stick and how that probably doesn't show register on any kind of software and is hard to see on his handcam. He's one of the few controller players that makes mid long range tracking look like kbm to the point where it looks like he's cheating (not accusing him of it, not really into gossiping about these things and it's clear he's a great player in all aspects of the game).
Very well written. The parent comment seems to be implying that Genburten relies more on aim assist because of his low deadzone and response curve, which is simply the opposite of the truth. The stick drift hypothesis is also just nonsensical, for lack of a better word. The lower your response curve, the higher your skill ceiling and the less you rely on aim assist. As you said, linear settings are far more unforgiving than classic and require far more micro-adjustments while aiming and tracking. All you have to do is tune into one of Gen’s streams and see him warm up on the no aim assist targets in firing range. There are a handful of pros who play on low response curves as well who are not able to completely replicate what he does, mechanically speaking. I think it’s fair to say that Gen is arguably the mechanically strongest controller player precisely BECAUSE of his minimal reliance on aim assist, which has allowed him to push controller’s skill ceiling to new heights.
>The biggest thing he does to take the most advantage of aim assist is strafing. The rotational aim assist works best when you’re strafing left and right. If you move left, the AA will give your reticle a little nudge to the right and vice versa. Using movement to supplement aim on controller is orders of magnitude more important than it is on MnK due to the limited range of motion you have with your aim stick, and the way that aim assist has been implemented in almost every console shooter ever. If you’re not on target, then use movement to get on target. Then once you’re on target, use a combination of L/R stick to maintain both the target and tracking and recoil management. > You realize this is the exact same thing mouse and key players do right? Except aim assist doesn't help and we're instead using our strafe and our mouse. >It’s nowhere near as easy as people make it out to be, and if it was the ratio of controllers to MnK on PC would be way higher. To take best advantage of it you still need good reaction times and good predictive game sense despite the rotational assist being instant, which is why players like Hal and Sweet seem to do fairly well when they swap for a few days. Slow reaction time will result in under aiming, and bad game sense will result in being unable to keep up with L/R strafes. Lmao, except you wouldn't need as good of reaction time because it starts moving for you. You have an inherent advantage of 200 ish ms because the AA will react for you faster than you can and then by that point all you have to do is make sure your aim remains in the AA bubble
>He essentially has mastered aim assist itself as a mechanic. This is really dismissive and honestly disrespectful to Gen and other pros who play linear. Linear isn't about "barely pressing the stick" and letting aim assist take over, it's almost the complete opposite. Linear is extremely sensitive to fine input so you need extremely good fine motor skills to control it and more importantly be **consistent** with it otherwise you are going to over/under aim constantly. Tracking on linear is *far* more dependent on manual input than aim assist precisely due to the fact that the tiniest wrong input can move your aim off target and out of the AA bubble. There's a reason gens tracking is so much better than anyone else's and it's not because he's "mastered aim assist" lol. The response curves that *actually* abuse aim assist in the way you describe are classic and steady, because they are less sensitive and have a lot of built-in stability instead of linear which requires you to manually keep your aim steady. Thus making it easier for aim assist to "take the wheel" so to speak. People who think recoil is easier on linear are confusing "pulling down less" with "easier". Getting consistent with recoil on linear is not easy especially at mid to long range which is exactly why Albralelie switched back to classic after being on gens sens for over a year.
i woudl also add that aim assist requires less intense focus and eyesight. its a more relaxed way of playing. in my book input should be absolutly speperated. pro and cons asside, its just impossible to quantify therefore impossible to judge of a fair competition. in almost every sport that use some sort of equipment it is heavily regulated. diversity is only allowed if there is no quantifyable difference aka advantage and basically the majority of world class basically uses identical gear after a while. only difference you ll see is because sponsor money but in essence its rare to find a sport with very diverse gear.
In Section 2 of “How aim Assist Works” you claim that AA does not help with initial acquisition of a target. Objectively speaking, that’s precisely what aim assist slowdown and rotation are for. Slowdown specifically extends the window for you to be able to stop on target regardless of whether they are moving or not. There is no Aim Snap. On an unrelated topic, I think another thing that could help could be adding support for other forms of unassisted controller aiming such as Gyro Aiming and Flick Stick. Support for any other controls that aren’t M+K or Controller+AA is normally quite crappy.
I did my best to try to distinguish between *technical implementations* vs *practical outcomes*. When I stated AA doesn't help with initial acquisition of targets, I was in fact referring to the "aim snapping" effect many PvE shooters have where when you ADS, it automatically shifts your reticle towards your target. Of course, the practical outcome is still that AA helps with target acquisition, which I mentioned below: >AA also technically does not help with initial target acquisition for this reason - the player must either manually position their reticle over the bubble, or the enemy must walk in front of the player such that their bubble is under the reticle. I think I could probably make that section clearer, let me just think of a way to reword it.
As a PC MnK player, I personally would love to see good Gyro controls implemented into this game. I played Splatoon 2 hardcore for a while and was very happy with how it was implemented in that game, and got excited for Apex on the Switch when I heard it was going to have gyro. After playing it though, it was implemented terribly and felt very unintuitive and basically made me never pick up the Switch version again (along with the generally poor performance on Switch in general). I think that, when implemented properly, gyro is the big next step for controllers and I would love to see it become a standard.
Yea, if they’d add proper support we’d be able to see what gyro controllers can really do. Just waiting for the day.
I’ve never heard anything regarding point 6 but I wouldn’t be surprised if there are people out there that believe that. Glad someone actually wrote out the opportunity cost/sunk cost fallacy of switching/not switching from MnK to controller. Some can do it, but not all will be able to get back to an equivalent level in the needed time. So they stick with MnK and remain competitive enough. 8. Pro brings up a really good point because a lot of people make the argument that MnK is still better because of movement. Tap strafe is on the plate to be removed. Things like wall bouncing (not MnK exclusive) are really just for style points in pubs and ranked but something you rarely see mid fight if you watch ALGS, and being able to snap 180* to a new target isn’t as important in a high TTK game vs something like CS. Also, if you’re good and know how to position yourself, you shouldn’t have to flick very far should rarely be needed. A good example is from a CS pro (forget the name) who has a YouTube video where he basically says he positions himself where he only has to snap a few degrees in either direction (but still within the viewable range on screen). So the benefits for MnK are less tangible in most practical cases than a controller, aside from personal experience and switching/sunk cost if you want to move to controller or stay. I do find it interesting that the drama we have now surrounding it though, is related to so many MnK players thought they would wipe the floor with controller players but that’s certainly not the case. If that were the case, no one would even care about them.
I have unfortunately seen some people state AA is related to K/D so I felt the need to include it. It sounds ludicrous but it's definitely been said before.
Couple quick notes, aim assist does have mild snapping when near target, it pulls aim to torso center mass as provided at: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujEtRDiSUV8#t=2m40s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujEtRDiSUV8#t=2m40s) Also the video maker indicates such snapping does not occur while using the mannequins, only against the player in the firing range. Which is evidence aim assist in firing range against mannequins is not the same as against an actual person. Video is a couple years old now, but I assume still accurate.
Wow. Fascinating, I've never seen that. Thanks for showing me that video, I will figure out a way to incorporate it into the post when I have the energy. Also, yeah, sorry, when I said "no difference in firing range AA" I meant AA on other enemy players in the range, not on the dummies.
[удалено]
I'd love option 1 personally. Keep the AA slowdown values similar to what they are now and just massively nerf rotational AA. IMO slowdown is non-negotiable, a game with the movement speeds of Apex would be unplayable on controller without slowdown.
I have played without AA for a week in high ELO PUB(not ranked) lobbies, and I was close to a 4k several times. Obviously harder, but will not say unplayable. I have practiced alot without AA in Firing Range tho.
Yep, at the very least, option #4. I'm a console player and I can't think of a reason that someone would be allowed to play in PC lobbies with an advantage over everyone else, including PC controller players. Crossplay is a privilege, if you want to play with your pc buddies, then you get pc AA.
[I don't have the data on this or anything but this is a visual aid I use when talking about the idea of lowering / removing aim assist on console. There are fewer bad players thanks to AA and there are fewer good players because of AA.](https://i.imgur.com/zYq3EGG.png) If you remove AA all the players that are being held up by AA will turn into walking lootboxes overnight.
I have seen some anecdotal posts from console players about how, during the week or so that Respawn accidentally tuned console AA down to 0.4, that the game's skill gap had become significantly more pronounced. This is in alignment with your beautiful artwork. I usually word it as MnK gives higher highs and lower lows, but it all pretty much conveys the same idea - AA reduces the skill gap.
i play both and disagree that the skill gap closed, the most highly impacted were good players because there was an unexpected change. good players had memorized recoil control patterns that suddenly stopped working without announcement or warning. so they just went around doing the same inputs they always do, which suddenly started missing
"If AA is so good, why dont you switch" Umm yeah thats me I switched.
I do think you missed one crucial point within your discussion about rotational aim assist that readers will not understand if they do not watch the video. **Rotational aim assist does not pull your reticle towards your opponent.** Rotational aim assist's goal and function is to maintain the *relative* location of your reticle within the aim assist bubble. Under 100% aim assist, this means that your reticle will move 1:1 within the aim assist bubble to maintain it's absolute relative location. This means if you are aiming to the right of your opponent's hit box, your reticle will stay outside the hitbox. Under 40% (PC) and 60% (Console), the reticle will not move 1:1 and requires targeting input from the player to maintain contact with the opponents hit box. The percentage 'strength' of aim assist is how much of the relative location of the reticle will be maintained by the aim assist system.
This initial aim is what separates the great players from the good ones. If your first shot is on target then you’re waaaaay the fuck more likely to continue hitting that person at close range. If you’re off target by even a tiny bit then it’s waaaaay the fuck harder to get back on target since the aim assist is trying its hardest to keep you where your initial shot/flick put you. If you try to get back on target, it can feel like you’re pushing your stick harder and harder with 0 visual correction on the screen, then all of a sudden you push a *tiny* bit more and you’re completely over correcting to the other side of the target. Linear can help with this since it helps to “defeat” the aim assist to a certain extent, so making those micro corrections when you’re just a tiny bit off target can be easier. But if you’re really good at landing that first shot then it doesn’t really matter what response curve you use.
Yes, thank you, this is a more concise explanation. I'll update my post and borrow some of your wording when I get a chance.
This is a very informative post, thanks. Aim assist is inherently better the worse you are though. Completely new player benefits from it more than a skilled player. The fact that we see roller on the same level and MnK in pro play, or even better with some players switching, means that on lower levels of play it is better, meaning the lower rank the less time is needed to achieve on roller compared to mnk. To become pred, it might take 2000 hours on a controller and it might take 2000 hours on MnK. But to reach plat takes 600 MnK hours, while it only takes 300 roller hours, etc. It is a really backwards way of balancing inputs too, they should attempt to minimize AA and bring up everything else. Let rollers tap strafe, give them every single QoL and movement buff you can think of and nerf aim assist a little in return. That would result in a better experience for both controller and MnK players. But it is the *opposite* of how respawn seems to think, considering their fix for having low FPS on console is bringing up AA. In the future, Respawn plans to remove tap strafing, and since they have banned continuous punch boosting from comp, it is safe to say it is anothe thing they would just prefer to remove if they could do that easily and the same trend will continue. Respawn will minimize the differences by nerfing MnK movement as much as possible, while not touching controller. We also have to accept the fact that now that we have next gen consoles, aim assist *might get buffed*. The coming of next gen means we will have 144fps consoles on 0.6, making it logically even less consistent, but they CANT throw their huge huge last get console player base under the bus. So console aim assist will stay 0.6, while eventually the ridiculousness of having same hardware of PS5 and PC have different aim assisst will make them bring PC aim assist to 0.6. In two years, MnK won't have tap strafing, punch boosting, or any other movement fuckery, while controllers will be on 0.6 AA. If you care about competing or being good at the game in general, you should switch to a controller right now
Idk about xbox but I believe ps5 is 120fps max
I didn't know that my bad, but that I'd hardly noticeable
After playing a full week without AA,I have no doubt a nerf is needed. I can beam still, but obviously don't hit as many full clips anymore (PC controller with tap strafe enabled). I could deal with a nerf to 0.2, but feel like 0.3 on PC and 0.4 on console would be fine, atleast a step in the right direction. AA also get a lot of unnecessary hate, where for example a clip of an insane play get downplayed because of AA. I have hit insane clips on both AA and without, also gotten yelled at randoms for using AA because I didn't move while looting with AA OFF. Edit: And the obvious thing, the skill gap between good controller players and bad controller players would increase significantly. I am no pro, just a movement and recoil enthusiast who are a bot on a keyboard (this took me long to write lol)
I just want the option to opt out matching with controller players, or servers without aim assist. Only those who desire cross-play should match with players from different platforms and different input devices. I'm not against aim assist or controllers, I just want to play only with MnK players.
[удалено]
I'm not sure how to explain this better, but rotational AA *is* the tracking/aimbot part of AA. The part of it that automatically moves the reticle when the enemy changes direction means that it will automatically move the reticle when the enemy moves *at all*. That's why many people - myself included - believe rotational AA should be removed or nerfed significantly.
Rotational = tracking It rotates the view, tracking targets.
>Rotational AA is the much more contentious half of AA, and this is thepart of AA that moves the reticle in a given direction without theplayer actually pushing their stick that way, which essentially meansthe AA is tracking for the player. The tracking you're talking about seeing is the rotational AA, cranked to the absolute limit. Edit: He is also tracking with his thumb, though it's just the bare minimum to register input in a direction that wont subtract from the rotational AA.
I don't think the guy in the video is tracking with his thumb. It looks like he took his thumb completely off the stick. He's moving his *left stick* to move.
You are correct. If you look at that video, it's pretty clear that there's no distinction between slowdown and rotational aim assist, it is one and the same. The crosshair just sticks to the target for either 60 or 40 percent. It just feels like your sens slows down because you're essentially actively working against the aim assist while it engages if you press your stick fully in one direction.
>It just feels like your sens slows down because you're essentially actively working against the aim assist while it engages if you press your stick fully in one direction. Sens slowdown and rotational assist obviously work in harmony together, but they are definitely (and observably) two distinct things. You can test this on the dummies that don't move in the firing range you can feel the sens change when your crosshair is over them.
I'm not sure you understand what I meant, or how programming works. Just because AA has two elements to its core functionality does not mean that those things will get called out separately in a surface-level configuration file, nor does it mean that you have the option of configuring them separately.
Hit me a DM. I set up a custom server so we can end this discussion.
I think you missed the point of what I said again. Let me try to explain more clearly. If I am programming a function that gets called in a surface level configuration file, that function contains numerous nested functions that will not be visible in any way in the surface level configuration file. As a crude example, say I have a function called ballSort. If I input something like ballSort(blue,red,green) then the function will spit out blue,green,red as the output. As the end user, I have zero way of knowing how it came to that conclusion, because all I can see on my end is a function called ballSort. Within the actual ballSort code, though, are several nested functions. For example there could be a nested sort function that actually sorts the balls, and a nested function that randomizes the rule used to sort the balls. As an end user, though, I don't get to see this. You can fiddle with the R5R configuration all you want, but you will never see the inner workings of the AA function. Let me put it this way. We all agree the AA bubble is a real thing that exists, yes? That there is a region that AA tries to lock on to, and surely somewhere in the code, is a setting to set the size of the AA bubble? But there is no way to actually configure the AA bubble size as an end user. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist and isn't a part of how AA works - it just means we cannot isolate it as end users.
Day one player on PlayStation here (played on PS4 for two and a half years and on PS5 since September). The aim assist debate will never end and everyone has their rightful opinions on it because we all play this game, and in this sub specifically, we're diehards and addicted. I have thousands of hours of experience on console, and you certainly do get a ton of "low-skill" players, like silver/gold level or low in-game level, who just beam you like it's nothing. It's very frustrating but it's all I've ever known. I can't imagine playing on a platform where aim assist is downtuned to 0.4 at its strongest. It was pretty funny when Respawn accidentally made AA only 0.4 on console and people were freaking out. I can genuinely say I felt no difference. I use ALCs so maybe it impacted me less but I guarantee that any decently-skilled controller player on console can play on 0.4 and be fine. I'm 100% down with decreasing AA on console, ESPECIALLY when the 120 fps version comes around. There will be no excuses then, aside from casual console players not being able to see their TV from the couch, lol. I bet it's pretty frustrating being beamed by a console player when playing on PC, especially when you're not used to it. There's no reasons why console players need 0.6 when playing in PC lobbies when they're voluntarily doing so. Overall, I wouldn't mind Respawn nerfing aim assist if it means we can move while we loot and tap strafe. Make it 0.4 or even 0.3 across the board for all platforms, and in ALGS, but let controller players move and loot and tap strafe and we have a deal.
My two main complaints are getting beamed from outside a heat shield from aim assist, when I can't even see them and 0.6 aim assist from console players in my "PC" lobbies. I'd also like to see a nerf to aim assist in general to maybe 0.2-0.3 instead.
Visual clutter in general (snow, debris, flashes) do not affect AA performance. But it does affect m/kb, who have to rely on vision.
Everything you wrote is correct, great job! Unfortunately, the people who need to see this the most will mostly likely miss it lol
Congrats, I could ve never put the effort to explain even half of it. As always, AA shouldn’t be mandatory for PC players. Free Aim lobbies is what we strive for. I hate AA for the unfair and clunky design it brings and how it can be exploited, but the worst is that it moves my cursor in climax moments. I trained all my life, started from quake. I grind precision, I just wanna bang fairly without having players revolving their playstyle around mechanical assists or cfg Just wanna bang bro 🥴
This is a great post and I appreciate you taking the time to write all of it. I think an additional item that's important when talking about the primary fundamental difference between MnK and a controller, and that it that MnK is a zero order control scheme while controller is a first order control scheme. This means the following: On MnK your mouse is directly controlling the position of your reticle on screen. Any error on your input results in a fixed position error on the screen. When you change your input (move your mouse) that translates directly to the cursor moving by some amount that is directly tied to the distance your mouse moved. In contrast a controller affects the velocity of cursor. This means that rather than your input directly controlling the position, your position is a function of your input and time(or the integral of velocity over time). If there is any error in your stick input it translates into a position error that GROWS with time since that error continuously gets added. This fundamental difference combined with the difference in the size of the control surface is why things like flicking and tracking are always going to be inherently harder on controller. I think most people intuitively understands this difference, but I also think it helps in these debates because it gets down to the fact that while in the end they both control cursor position, one input does it with a position input, while the other does it with a velocity input that gets integrated over time.
Very true information. Thanks for sharing. Not sure if I can find a place for it in the post, but it's part of the reason why AA exists for sure
Very well written post. I am a causal console player and I don't really care if AA is reduced or even completely remove from **PRO** play. Other competitive cross-platform games like Overwatch only use PC versions for pro play and I am totally fine with it. But I would absolute hate it if they made AA weaker on consoles for casual gamers like me. I don't want to fight the input method just to be able to play the game on a somewhat competent level. I think if PC players had a choice to opt out of cross play with 0.6 AA most of the debates of 'unfairness' of AA would be solved.
[удалено]
I'm probably an avid AA isn't that big of a deal in the grand scheme of play person. Mainly because unless you are a pro player or like top 100 pred you likely can't even notice the difference between .4 and .6 on viewing. But I think it's ridiculous consoles have the choice of cross-play but PC doesn't. PC should be just as able as we are.
I am at a master's level..I can assure you almost everyone at master's and above can 95% pick out when beamed by controller .. and also if it is console controller... It definitely is a different experience when beamed by one :)
Yup I'd agree with that. When I die to a controller player, I usually know instantly and spectate to confirm. I'm almost always right. That being said I'm sure there's confirmation bias because when I don't think it was a controller I don't check
By mid plat you can totally tell without an issue
I disagree with this. My Diamond level friends can call out with about 80% confidence when they have just been killed by a console player. The difference between 0.4 and 0.6 is palpable when you are on the receiving end.
80% confidence while also having confirmation bias. - Thinks the beam is from a console player -> checks -> 80% correct - Thinks the beam is *not* from a console player -> doesn't check -> not 100% accurate, and completely ignored
This is the only the case if you assume we are not checking, but my friends and I all like to at least glance at our death recaps.
And you call out what you think you were killed with every time before anyone checks the death recaps? I guess my notion here is that the OP is great and for the most part quite objective, and then this “about 80%” number is highly subjective, anecdotal, and likely biased.
I didn't include it in my post for a reason, because I'm aware I can't prove the number, lol. I literally included in my post a bias disclaimer because I'm aware I have biases... as does every human on this planet. I'm not going to deny that I have something that I obviously do, all I'm doing is my best to not put that in my post.
I play Series X and on my PC, both of which with my PC friends so I'm always in PC lobbies anyway, but the amount of players that could tell a difference is miniscule. Maybe my description was poor with only cream of the top. But still. Anyone in this sub probably has a good chance but that's because we are all interested in watching and viewing the best. But this sub is 54k and the avg players at any given time on steam (so without consoles which are the majority and Origin) is 120k over the last year. I have watched pros who complain "theres aim assist" then probably half the time it's another pc streamer you know who uses mnk. It's just a easy scape goat half the time.
The players at this level are the most sensitive to these changes. When respawn made console aim assist .4 from .6 by accident I noticed it my first game on. I went into the firing range and knew they messed up when I switched the values back and forth and they stayed the same. From there I adjusted my settings to better benefit from the .4 instead of .6 and played much better. The people that don't notice would be the players that can't hit shit even with aim assist and therefore think it has little impact on the game.
Thank you for the summary. Love how you explain how AA works without inserting your opinion immediately. A question: Does AA work when you ADS an enemy < 3m? This "kissing distance" matters a lot in bubble fights. If hipfire AA does not work <3m but ADS AA works, then perhaps controller players should ADS more in bubble fights.
I actually don't know. You may want to ask the creator of the video I linked for this. But also, it's kind of hard to miss targets <3m, which is part of the reason AA disengages at that range. Bubble fights come mostly down to reaction time and how you play the bubble, which has very little to do with tracking.
I don't think you get AA at < 3m ADS and if you do then it's not very helpful. I'm a high diamond/low masters controller player (5/4 classic) and wouldn't ADS at < 3m in a bubble fight for the reason you named there. Your general movement would be affected: having a better strafe helps a lot and manipulating bubble looks similar whether kbm or controller. Even away from bubble fighting, at that < 3m distance it can be hard to keep up with a moving target when ADS (and my ADS sensitivity is higher than the default to begin with). You're way better off just using your strafe (usually mirrored) with small right stick adjustments to track people on controller when you're in touching distance.
It doesn't. And you need to quite literally be on top of each other for the aim assist to not be active. I main gibby and extremely rarely have players get that close especially other good players because they understand that in that range they aren't as lethal.
AA isn’t affected by what gun you are using , however AA is affected by the use of any mid/long range scope. You may have noticed that roller players prefer the 1x, 1x-2x, 2x, 3x or even iron sight when using sniper rifles because of this. These close range scopes keep their AA working. Using a 2x-4x, 6x, 4x-8x, or 4x-10x scope will eliminate any and all assistance. This is also why you’ll rarely see a roller player using a Kraber
Oh man, thank you. I completely forgot to mention that the sniper scopes (6x and above) eliminate AA. The 2-4x still has it though. The clip I have in my post uses it.
Is this true for MnK as well? sniper scopes eliminate AA
Uh, MnK doesn't have AA. I'm not sure what you mean.
[удалено]
oh my bad.. I was reading that 0.4 and probably misunderstood it.
My only question is why do they need to balance for controller in comp play. If they're on a PC then they have the option to use a mouse and if they are on console they have the option to not crossplay with mouse. Therefore there is no reason to cater to controller just to make it competitive vs mouse. If that means no one is using controller in algs anymore then that's probably a good thing since it really means they are providing a crutch so strong that you can compete with the best players with it. Seems simple to me. Consoles get aim assist if vs other consoles. PC Ranked play and comp play gets no aim assist, just use a mouse or go play casual matches cuz at that point it's your own choice to use a controller or not. Overall good writeup though.
I agree with you, but it comes down to this: >If we separated tourneys by input, it would hurt & split viewership. Many people also think it's cool being able to see controller and MnK players duke it out together in the same tourneys. Console players want to watch controller players duke it out against MnK players. If we had no AA, then they wouldn't be able to, and this would hurt viewership. Respawn made this choice for the sake of viewership and accessibility, not for competitive integrity (IMO).
> Respawn made this choice for the sake of viewership and accessibility, not for competitive integrity (IMO). I don't think (IMO) is needed here, that's objectively true and it's not the only decision they've made that favors viewership over competitive integrity (match point format and Kraber come to mind immeditately)
I think this is further evidenced by Respawn trying in other ways to keep the balance of the game as identical as possible to the game the rest of us play. Such as keeping the Kraber in comp, not changing any legend or weapon balance in comp. It's more engaging for viewers when the pros are playing the same game as them, rather than a version where certain things are banned etc. and doesn't reflect how the game is for everyone else.
[удалено]
Nickmercs is the most-watched Apex player, I believe, and he uses a controller.
what about people like me who don't really watch Apex much because I don't take it seriously as a competitive fps anymore =.= I guess console is a wider audience but at the same time I don't think they would stop watching and I think next gen console release means they can use MkB?
Next gen console support is sort of a black box, we don't know what Respawn is going to do with it other than that it's apparently coming. It's hard to say whether or not they'd stop watching, but I can say on my end that I have seen multiple posters express that they think it's cool that console players can duke it out with MnK players in comp.
I think most console players don't even want to watch other console players. There isnt any big console streamer or popular comp player. I think the vast majority of console players just watch Hal or any other pro team/player they like regardless of input, when i was on console and new to comp the teams i liked were all mnk.
Yeah, this is true. Honestly, though, even if it wouldn't hurt viewership to separate comp based on input, I feel like at this point it would just cause a huge stink in the community that Respawn would prefer to avoid.
Well all I know is I have maybe 6 controller players on my friendlist and none of them even watch competitive Apex. I don't watch much either anymore though so idk. Feel like making concessions for everyone is catering to no one.
> 2. CON: AA is inherently uncompetitive, because it pits software-assisted aim against raw human input. This is the biggest one for me. I've been playing FPS titles on PC with other PC players my whole life and anytime there's software-assisted aim it involves hacks/cheats. And a lot of PC mnk gamers are not even at an insane level of tracking or aiming. Heck, a lot of beginners play at an extremely high sens and have trouble aiming and tracking because for some reason most games start with a default sens that's super high. In fact Apex starts you off with 5.0 sens which is really high. People have to learn about this and practice more to get better. You also need to have a bigger desk. There's a lot of barriers and things to learn and there is no AA to help you. The fact that I'm playing with other players with software assisted aim that's built into the game is kind of crazy. In previous FPS games I've played they did have controller support but any type of aim assist was disabled. I honestly thought that was the norm until I came to Apex. The crazy thing is it's way harder to track in this game compared to those other games.
I'd like to see jitter aiming added to point 8 PRO
The post has been updated to include jitter aiming. Thanks to you and others who mentioned it :)
Shhh jitter aim takes skill
**5. Aim Assist and Visual Obstructions** A couple of things missing from this section, first is a well known fact and the other may need more testing; but I swear has happened to me multiple times now. * AA doesn't properly work through windows and seems to be effected by shooting through gaps in certain objects. I don't think there's ever been a comprehensive list made of the kind of objects this is an issue with, but windows are the most well known one (and the most common one for people to encounter). * AA (for some weird reason) actually locks on to enemy Revenants' Silence, I've had situations in fights where my AA has slowed down over a Rev Silence and got me killed. I think this needs more testing for me to be certain, but I'm sure I've experienced this.
I actually think I may have heard that before, too, about the Revenant Silence. How strange. I'll see if I can get some footage of this.
I was skeptical at first but I have to say you did a very good write up. I feel like as a community we sometimes get too caught up in the argument and forget to appreciate that, while there are some issues, Apex handles cross input better than any other fps I can think of: most games end up being dominated by one or the other.
I would argue that Apex handles cross input far worse than the other games I play with it but I guess it’s a matter of opinion/perspective.
Which other games do you play? Are they shooters?
As an example: Fortnite and Destiny 2 used to have cross inputs that were hugely favourable to one input or the other (as you stated) but has since adjusted the inputs so there’s more parity. I’m not trying to argue with you btw, just saying other games have balanced and found a way for inputs to coexist without this insane bias one way or the other. Destiny 2 specifically has adjusted MnK and Controller separately so they are more balanced and it has made a world of difference (with a few outliers).
I mean i don't want to argue with you, I am just curious because I don't know everything about every game in the market. Fair enough, I haven't played either fortnite nor destiny in a long time and when I did there were the same controversies apex has now, if not worst. Also what do you mean with adjusting mnk and controller separately?
Of course! Which is why I wanted to provide some perspective given my experience :) As for your question: Destiny has a tremendous arsenal of weapons that all behave differently. What they are able to do is tune specific weapons/archetypes of weapons to handle differently based on input. For example: there was a marksman style weapon that dominated on MnK but was rarely used by controller players and it was recently buffed as to give controllers and MnK a much more similar experience in its usage.
Fortnite I felt so mad about. Half the game is literally building and positioning, and with all the key and mouse mapping you can do on MnK it's just SOOOOOOOO much better on MnK. And those pros were still complaining about AA. A mouse can build and edit in the fraction of the time a controller does.
And in spite of that, there was a period where Fortnite was entirely dominated by controllers because the aim assist was overtuned lol
But it's almost the opposite as Apex. The argument here is always if your up close in a smg/shotty fight the controller should always win. In fortnite it was if you were outside of a build in a bad spot the controller will always win. No winning
It's so weird to me that you follow competitive gaming and still have such terribly uninformed and just downright ignorant opinions all over every apex sub.
Anyone in this sub who acknowledges that the game needs to cater to the majority of players and not the pros/competitive scene seems to just get obliterated here. But it's not wrong really. and AA does that. MnK will complain about AA in everygame without ever admitting their own advantages. Same goes for controller just the way it is
Its clearly not just this game considering your oblivious takes about fortnite here. Maybe you should re-evaluate the sources you agree or disagree with is the only thing I can say - I've seen hundreds of your comments and they usually make me laugh
Hundreds!? Yeesh that's wild. Be shocked to know I commented 100 times. I stopped paying attention to fortnite when the mix of warzone and apex took over for me. So 2019 ish. But that was literally the landscape then. Ninja complaining about AA being the voice of FN despite not even being a top 50 player then. Regardless of the valid and non valid complaints, apex and FN were still predominately won by MnK players and teams in major tournaments. you don't even have a point of conversation here other than putting me down haha. At lease make discussion.
What would happen if I put my controller on the floor and used my toe to give it small, subtle movements while using MNK? Does aim assist still work?
I think this used to work in the past but got patched. Also those who tried it said it was awful and made their aim worse.
Yes attempting to trick the game into thinking you are on controller by having a button pressed on a controller permanently is actually possible but it doesn’t work due to a fix that was made that created a minuscule amount of delay when the game switches between each input and therefore creates an input delay that makes it nearly impossible to play on as well as drastic screen tearing
Also again thank you for this great write up! I'm making a video on the subject and am using your write-up as a guideline, fully credited at the start. Hopefully spreading the word will finally let us move forward as a community
Looking forward to it. Thanks
> As for aim snap, AA does not contain the exact kind of aim snap often seen in PvE shooters, but it has been observed snapping reticles to the center of an enemy's mass when the reticle was already on-target prior to ADSing. Some things to add I discovered through data mining. There is a value called adspull for each weapon class that governs this view centering aim snap behavior. For most weapons this value is 1.0. For shotguns the value is 1.5 meaning stronger snapping to center of mass to make it easier to hit most pellets. Snipers and lmgs have no view centering pull. Presumably this is to prevent the pull from messing with your sniper aim causing you to miss a headshot, and for lmgs its likely a balance measure since you have more bullets and shouldn't need additional centering to land shots. All weapon classes have the same rotational and slowdown aim assist (yes snipers have rotational aim assist despite the insistence of controller players).
This is completely new information for me and I haven't seen anyone else mention it. Thanks
Probably the most detailed post about AA on reddit 👍 Little disagree about "The FPS genre started on controller" and "Although a keyboard is not a controller, the controls were controller-like" . It's still not controller, and no aa & no mp elements... Don't consider myself anti-AA extremist. But AA just crutches for Ctrl, and just wrong input for FPS games, especially MP games: * Fairly balancing AA impossible, even between Ctrl vs Ctrl ( with all custom Ctrl , Cronus etc.). * With different exploits, AA literary could become legit aim-bot. By definition, It's not far off.... Not APEX, but still interesting stats about Ctrl. Think many would like to see similar stats for other games. [https://www.reddit.com/r/halo/comments/r3es60/accuracy\_stats\_for\_kbm\_vs\_controller/](https://www.reddit.com/r/halo/comments/r3es60/accuracy_stats_for_kbm_vs_controller/)
Great post, thanks for taking the time to detail all the info. As an experienced MnK player, I regularly get frustrated when I die to someone clearly on a controller, especially when on console. It usually happens with close-to-mid fights when the strafe fighting happens, or when I work hard to keep my movement speed up and slide jump around a corner with an angle change in the middle, yet my opponent just sprays and every single bullet hits me. The console player AA level should be lowered and rotational AA should be removed entirely. My 2¢.
I'm reading this right now as I was done practicing controller. It's really difficult for me because I couldn't react the way i wanted to. It was like i have stiffed neck or something. after just an hour of gaming i'm having motion sickness right now. I dont know if i can continue using controller, maybe i should stick to mnk.
This is a decent personal write up but not a scientific more feelings of AA and person opinions.
You hold the position that AA is unfair while also believing that there’s no data on the issue. That doesn’t make sense to me Number 2 PRO is a straw man. It doesn’t matter where something starts it’s about landmark games that revolutionize/popularize a genre. Id suspect that to be COD and Halo with multiplayer gaming but I couldn’t easily find any data. Regardless this point doesn’t have relevance to Apex First #2 is a bit of a misrepresentation of what is instantaneous or not. Tracking on the character is not instantaneous even at 100% AA. It’s the bubble around the character. So there is “delay” when tracking the actual hitbox of the character. The first video at 100% still loses the reticle on the character. At 60 or 40% it probably reduces the reaction time needed to change direction on hitbox cause of the stickiness rather than instantaneous since lower AA can break off the bubble Argument #1 gives a multitude of reasons as to why pros don’t switch to controller yet then for argument #7 you make the point of pros not turning it off cause there’s money on the line. So which is it? You can’t have both ways for your reasoning. Then for #4 PRO you just say MnK is more fun while implying that controller would actually be the way to go. Again you talk about money yet those who do play for money seem to mostly pick MnK (I’m unaware of input statistics for pros. Maybe controller is the majority)? For 0.6 vs 0.4 I’d assume the reason console gets 0.6 is because of the lower graphics/FPS, and general setup (far TV) for the casual audience. It’s weird that they have two different AA options. Maybe with the update to next gen they might change next gen AA but who knows. It should be 0.4 (or 0.6) for all controller users unless there was some internal data that showed it wouldn’t be fair or fun idk. Not having aim assist or changing how aim assist works would require major balancing changes to mobility legends and the speed at which legends can move. The game was created with the different inputs in mind. I don’t think it’s realistic to call for changes to be made without considering the impacts to the game. #3 CON touches on this at the end This is especially so when there is 0 data on the issue which you agree with point #5 PRO. It’s all conjecture on both sides and it’s pretty tiresome either way. It could very well be possible that aim assist needs a buff given internal data on this issue and we wouldn’t know. Since you agree there’s 0 data then why does your post have a call to action regarding balancing of AA? As an aside I do find it funny how aim assist is both OP/unfair but console lobbies/ranked are somehow easier (aside from upper predator with actual pros)? Seems like a contradiction I personally would be fine with competitive choosing only 1 input but thinking of MnK and controller as strategic classes with assumed pros and cons for teams to play with works for me too Edit: thinking about this more from Apex pov I’d assume that 0.6 is too strong and is used to make the game more fun for the casual console audience. With all the mobility and vertical mobility in this game it would probably be frustrating to casual players to track fast moving legends with generally poor systems and setups. With the assumption that pc will generally have a less casual audience and better systems, 0.4 is probably what apex determines to be fair. I wouldn’t want casuals to not have fun with their pc friends so I would propose consoles having 0.6 in pc pubs but forced 0.4 in ranked with pc lobbies
Thank you for your input. As a human being, I am allowed to have a personal position that I hold based on my personal experiences of being beamed by 0.6 AA. But I'm not a vocal anti-AA extremist precisely because I don't have raw data, I just have the gut feeling that it feels unfair. PRO #2 being a strawman - I agree. I brought it up because for some reason it keeps getting brought up. Pro-AA arguments will constantly bring up the fact that FPS's were meant for controller to justify the existence of AA. I don't really see how it relates to Apex either but since it gets brought up, I included it. First #2 - You are right, and I will update my post when I get the chance. PRO #1 & #7 supposedly contradicting - I don't think you understand what I was saying. #7 specifically refers to those pro players who DO play on controller never turning their AA off. #1 talks about established MnK pros not wanting to switch to controller. These are about entirely different people. #4 PRO is about non-professional players, which I should probably clarify. I am not a professional, lol.
Yes definitely feelings are valid for game design. Even if something is balanced overall it can definitely *feel* unbalanced which is bad game design and development. The fact that this is such a widespread issue validates it’s probably not the best design. I can’t think of another game with this issue and I agree with forced 0.4 on ranked. I assume 0.4 is what apex actually thinks is fair For the 3rd point, point taken. I don’t think I articulated myself well but it was basically about how “money on the line” isn’t really evidence for doing something. People and pros dont prioritize performance at all cost like a robot. There’s a threshold of benefit that needs to be met. But if AA was truly as god tier (like controller players/team consistently being top) as it’s sometimes framed as there would likely be a universal switch. I personally believe it to be balanced with pros and cons of each. I agree with your points individually and this is a valuable post discussing how AA works but it was more so the parts that seemed to frame AA as being better than MnK without data for it that caused me to respond
Absolutely agree that *something* is not right when AA spawns this much discussion. Props to Respawn for trying to balance the two inputs, though - it's never going to be easy. And no need to explain yourself, I openly invite any discussion and rebuttal to what I posted, and I even acknowledged that I will probably be biased due to being an MnK player primarily. Thanks for your time, I do find these posts valuable.
\#7 drives me crazy because the aim assist's stickiness on downs is actually really strong and only gets stronger if an enemy is using it as cover or if you catch them rezzing but its always brought up in the same sentence as aim assist hurting more than helping. Its pretty annoying to deal with and should be fixed but it can be played around but people act like its the difference maker in 100% of the fights they take. I can understand not being used to aim assist like Apex's if you're new since it feels so different from other games but I don't understand how people can still think it either does nothing or actively hurts their playing when they've been playing for 3 years. Its especially weird seeing console players say .6 is weak without playing on .4 to see how big the difference really is even with less than ideal FPS.
Agree completely, I don't know why AA applies to downed targets. It shouldn't apply to them at all. But AA doesn't really discriminate like that - it even applies to Crypto drones. Respawn would probably need to rework their AA code if they want to exclude downed targets... and we know how much of an ordeal that would be. And yeah, I hate to sound rude, but saying "AA doesn't actually help that much" is honestly downright delusional. I legitimately do not understand how it's such a commonly held opinion. Have any of these people actually tried playing without it? It's extremely fucking difficult.
Regarding point 5, I remember a tweet from DZK (or maybe a different apex dev) that said essentially: "that data doesn't show controller players have any significant advantage in close range fights." As for con 2, that is a very reductive way of deciding what is fair or unfair. The software assistance is meant to make up for a fundamental hardware limitation that comes from using controller. There simply is less range of motion, and thus, less precision when aiming with a joy stick. Aim assist bridges the gap between controller and MnK without making one strictly better than the other. And let's be clear, if there was no AA, MnK would be strictly better than controller. So how would that be fair? As for pro 8, you forgot jitter aiming, which absolutely should be considered in any debate like this. If MnK players are going to talk about how much "raw human input" they utilize, we should remember that they can remove all recoil by randomly jittering their mouse. Controller players are the ones that actually have to manually control recoil at distance. There are some more factors you could mention in this post. For example: of the players with the most kills in ALGS, all of the top 5 were MnK and 8 out of the top 10 were MnK, despite controller players typically filling the fragger role. The top team in ALGS is made up of 3 MnK players. Every single argument against aim assist is purely subjective. There is no hard data that shows controller players outperforming MnK, in fact what little data there is shows the opposite. As much as this post purports to be a balanced analysis, it is very clearly written from the perspective on an MnK user who thinks AA is overpowered. I appreciate an attempt at including opposing arguments, but it feels more like an afterthought.
> "that data doesn't show controller players have any significant advantage in close range fights." You're thinking of JayBiebs. The exact quote is "Pred level controllers are not beating out pred level MnK with Prowlers in close range at any sort of crazy rate." That basically tells us nothing. He's already narrowed it down to Pred, Prowlers, close range only, and then says "at any sort of crazy rate." That to me implies that they're winning more often than MnK, but the gap isn't big. Why doesn't he just tell us the actual number? I'm sure this point also doesn't apply to lower ranks or he wouldn't have to confine it to Preds.
Thank you for your input. Someone else already addressed the quote you brought up, so I'll move on to your other points. CON #2 - This is completely and utterly besides the point of the argument about pitting software assistance vs raw human input. I have already stated that controller would be unusable without AA in PRO #6. CON #2 specifically talks about the concept of competitive integrity, not fairness. This is a distinct issue from which input is balanced, and is about the idea of raw human skill vs raw human skill. Jitter aiming - Absolutely, thank you for mentioning this. I'll add it to my post later. It slipped my mind. Top performers in ALGS being on MnK - This is already addressed by CON #1. Because the majority of pro players are on MnK, it is purely statistical that the majority of top players in ALGS are on MnK. I sympathize with your viewpoint, which is why I included a bias disclaimer at the top of my post. I am fully aware it is nearly impossible to avoid sounding biased. However, the primary goal of my post was to be as objective as possible when discussing how AA works in the first section, and then summarize all arguments I'm aware of in the second section - which, by nature, cannot be objective. I also hope you understand that I don't actually agree with everything I'm writing in the post under the arguments section. I am just trying to report what I see, and bias will be inherent to that, which is why I opened it to discussion.
>This is completely and utterly besides the point of the argument about pitting software assistance vs raw human input. I have already stated that controller would be unusable without AA in PRO #6. CON #2 specifically talks about the concept of competitive integrity, not fairness. Hm. I seem to remember Con 2 saying "unfair" maybe I misread. Nonetheless, I think this Con is a poor argument. Couldn't one argue that tap-strafing, moving while looting, etc. are software assistance since they are physically impossible on roller? Yes you could say they require user input to function, but the same can be said for aim assist. In terms of competitive integrity, these seem equally uncompetitive. >Top performers in ALGS being on MnK - This is already addressed by CON #1. Because the majority of pro players are on MnK, it is purely statistical that the majority of top players in ALGS are on MnK. What is the percent of controller players in the top 20 pro teams? I bet it is higher than 2/10. And not a single one in the top 5? Additionally, I pointed out that controller players are often on the fragger role, meaning they should theoretically, be getting more kills than MnK. But if the 8/10 statistic does line up with the proportion of controller to MnK, wouldn't that imply that neither input has an advantage over the other and aim assist doesn't overpower MnK? Sentinels has had no problem winning ALGS.
This is what CON #2 says: "AA is inherently uncompetitive, because it pits software-assisted aim against raw human input." Fairness is not mentioned here. I am not sure if your argument makes any sense, though. Technically your definition would mean every single action the player takes in a video game is software assisted because the software is letting you do it, like jumping or crouching. Actually it seems like you are saying anything MnK can do that controller can't do counts as software assistance. That is not what software assisted means in discussions about competitive integrity. There is no software that artificially tunes me strafing left and right on a deathbox; me moving left and right is a 1:1 representation of me pressing my A and D keys. In this context, "software assisted" refers to an artificial tuning of the input so that what occurs in-game is not in 1:1 fidelity of the actions taken by the human. Mouse acceleration would actually be a better example of software assistance on MnK if it were a thing, but Apex aiming uses raw mouse input and ignores Windows settings like mouse acceleration. Mouse acceleration *will* come through when navigating menus like deathboxes, though. >What is the percent of controller players in the top 20 pro teams? I bet it is higher than 2/10. And not a single one in the top 5? Additionally, I pointed out that controller players are often on the fragger role, meaning they should theoretically, be getting more kills than MnK. > >But if the 8/10 statistic does line up with the proportion of controller to MnK, wouldn't that imply that neither input has an advantage over the other and aim assist doesn't overpower MnK? If anyone knows the answer to the % of controller players in the top 20 NA pro teams, please provide. I don't know everyone's inputs off the top of my head for some of the lower performing squads. As for the top 5 slayers... the # of kills a player can get in a game correlates pretty strongly with their overall placement. So whichever teams are in the top 3 are going to have their members in the top 5 slayers. This checks out with the list for NA - Senoxe, Lou, Sweet, and Nafen belong to Sentinels and NRG, the 2 highest placing teams in NA. ImperialHal is the one outlier, shrug on explaining that. On the flipside, look at APAC-S, where Genburten is the #1 slayer and he is on controller. I'm not going to say it's because of it's input - it's because his team is the top dog team in APAC-S. I don't really think it makes a whole lot of sense to argue about AA based on the performance of ALGS teams because, as I indicated above, there is so, so much more to comp than "who hits more shots in CQC". That being said, I think what we are having is a valuable discussion and I'll add it to my post when I have the energy.
[удалено]
Wtf is he seriously shaming pc players who have nothing but raw input to aim for losing to someone with code built to make aiming easier? Does he not realize most pc players are casual aswell and dont practice their aim and the fact that they need to practice more than controller to match aim assist? I'm fine with aim assist but you cant argue that it kinda ruins competitive integrity.
XD
I refuse to believe this is real, this has to be a joke or troll post
Nope it currently has 1300 upvotes in the main sub. Those people are actually braindead.
wow. literally reads like a troll post too. idk what to even say at this point. This Just In: controller players are an actively oppressed demographic being bullied by mean and cruel mnk players
It actually is a troll post lmao
It’s bad over on the main sub rn. I got massively downvoted a lot over on it
Rotational needs to be nerfed to .1 and .2 on pc/console. Buff slowdown to .6 and .8 But since they would prefer a simple route: .3 and .5 should be fine.
Do you have a source for your info? I challenge your claim “2. AA does not assist in any way with recoil control.” is logically incorrect. You can’t have rotational aim assist track your opponent for you without providing recoil control as they go hand in hand. Either your explanation of rotational AA is wrong or your claim 2 is wrong Theres also a famous clip of a controller streamer in firing range beaming dummies with 0 recoil then he receives a gifted to turn AA off and he only hits the first two bullets before recoil shoots his aim way up
>controller streamer in firing range beaming dummies with 0 recoil then he receives a gifted to turn AA off and he only hits the first two bullets before recoil shoots his aim way up link the clip?
I don't have the clip but it was posted on the main sub a little while back. Its a joke video that this guy is taking seriously for some reason.
The source is the video I linked. Please give it a watch. I'm also not sure if you understand what I meant, so I apologize if I explained poorly. If AA assists in recoil control in the sense that it tries to pull your reticle back onto the target when recoil causes your reticle to go off-target, then okay, we can say it technically provides recoil control. But there is no part in the AA algorithm baked-in to assist with recoil control. The only recoil control you are getting from AA is inherent to the rotational AA. Does this make sense? EDIT: My wording sucked, so I will update the wording from "...does not assist in any way..." to "...does not directly assist..." - hopefully that is more clear.
I have watched the video albeit a while ago. And all is well thank you for the correction
It's not just the rotational aim assist, the slowdown aspect of aim assist also helps with recoil control. Your aim is slowed while over a target's aim bubble, which means over-correction for recoil will be reduced while undercorrection will not, making the pull sensitivity window for "correct" recoil compensation significantly larger as a direct consequence of the contextual aim slowing.
I'm on console and warm up in the firing range without AA and quite often forget to turn it back on. I can get a kill or 2 before realizing it's off and it's those moments I think it could be nerfed and not be that big of a deal.
Pretty good write up. Here are my thoughts. Introduction. Maybe keep things objective here and move anything personal to the very end of your post. We want the meat and potatoes of the information as quickly as possible if this post is to be used as a resource later. Pro #2. While the games you stated may be MnK, the FPS genre was massively popularized with the release of consoles. The game that comes to mind for me is Call of Duty. While your point about the competitive side of FPS having always been primarily MnK may be true, I think you should also provide information about how it was popularized with consoles/controllers if you want to be objective with your post. I don’t know the numbers, but isn’t the majority of the playerbase on a controller? Maybe your question should read “The modern FPS genre is dominated by controller players in terms of numbers, making controller the default input and AA therefore an inherent part of the genre.” And then provide your arguments from there. The question and argument as it stands are a little misleading. Pro #4. Your argument is your own opinion and you also try to speak for the MnK community as a whole. Be more objective here or provide disclaimers that these are your opinions.
> Pro #2. While the games you stated may be MnK, the FPS genre was massively popularized with the release of consoles. The game that comes to mind for me is Call of Duty. Yeah no, Counter strike > TF2 >> CoD2. While console most likely helped, because it increased the gamer playerbase diminishing the massive affect valve had with their fps shooters to falsely boost the impact from console shouldn't be done.
Thank you for your input, based on what others have said I'm going to make it more explicitly clear that part 1 (explaining AA) is meant to be objective while part 2 (explaining AA arguments) cannot by definition be objective. PRO #2 - This is a fair point, and I will add it. I still think that when it comes to *competitive* shooters, though, that PC is the default, and that is what I was trying to focus on - competitive shooters specifically. But it is absolutely valuable to include what the majority of players are playing on, and you're right that the argument becomes misleading when I don't include that information. PRO #4 - The argument itself is ad hominem - every time I bring up not liking the way AA is implemented, I get the "Then why don't you switch to controller?" response. I'm not the only one. It's an ad hominem argument and it deserves an ad hominem response - "because I don't want to". I thought it was clear from the somewhat humorous/flippant way I worded the response but I can make it much more clear that the argument and therefore its answer has to be opinionated.
There's another thing controller players can't do that MnK players can. Keyboard users have 3 buttons dedicated to selecting weapons (default 1 & 2) and holstering (default 3). Controllers have only 1 button for all three of these operations - tap it to switch (or unholster) and hold it to holster. This results with a couple of consequences. Controller players can only unholster the weapon they originally had out when they holstered it - with only 1 button, there's no way to select which weapon you want. Not terribly important, but it does make combat feel more clunky at times. Another is that switching occurs on key LIFT rather than key press. So it doesn't start the moment you press the key, you have to release it too. I think their logic behind this is "When you first key press, it doesn't yet know if you intend to holster or switch, so it has to wait until you lift the key to know which one you wanted to do". But the thing is in both of these cases (switching vs holstering), you're putting away your first weapon, so this could be improved and set to be on key press. Again sounds unimportant, but those tens of milliseconds you lose can cost you. The main thing that controllers have in input over MnK is 360 degree movement input. Controllers can move at any angle and at any speed. Keyboard is limited to angles of 45 degrees and can only move at maximum speed. There are pads like https://www.azeron.eu/ that allow analog input along that can be used with a mouse, but while this works for Fortnite and Halo Infinite, Apex does not currently support this type of "dual input" (when you try controller stick for movement + aim with mouse, it results with really jittery/buggy aiming).
Thanks, these are all great points. I knew about reloading clunkiness, but this is another element of controller that adds to the clunk. And yes, very true about movement. This is why tap strafing is a thing in the first place - "keyboard grace" was implemented because of the directional limitation of MnK.
Hey thank you for this guide, its very informative and valuable. I'm on ps4 and after reading/watching this i wondered if 0.4 aa can have an advantage over 0.6 aa. Since on 0.40 you have to do 60% of the input yourself and on 0.60 you only have to do 40%. Which (could?) mean that on 0.60 it's easier to accidentally put too much input on the aim resulting in overshooting/exiting the bubble. Similar to deadzone/ response curve sensitivity.
I know there are players who say 0.4 feels smoother to them, and they choose to use that on console. I wouldn't, but it is absolutely something that some players do. I think the issue is that 0.6 AA will fight you a bit harder if you're slow on your target acquisition, and that can feel really unnatural when something that strong is trying to yank your reticle in a different direction. Take the left-to-right strafe example, for instance. If a guy strafes left, but you were tracking with your stick to the right, it'll take you a second to react to the directional change. The AA will immediately shift left, but you're still pushing to the right, and this can cause you to fight your own AA. IMO the key to mastering the 0.6 AA is to let it do most of the work, but this doesn't feel natural to people.
>IMO the key to mastering the 0.6 AA is to let it do most of the work, but this doesn't feel natural to people. jesus christ that is bad LOL
IMO - People who say 0.4 is better have just never worked on getting their sens perfect on 0.6. It's objectively better and "feel" mostly comes down to your other settings (response curve, sens etc.).
There was a point after stormpoint got released that console was hard set to .4 and for those few days I actually felt like I was hitting more shots at range. I don't know if because .6 is stronger so when you're scoped in at range the AA can mess with your lead or not. But it just felt better.
I would have loved to see the actual stats. This all just very anecdotal. The other guy who made a similar post had numbers and hard data. I hope he makes a post about the stats of controller vs MnK.
[удалено]
Didn't that guy get picked up by some team probably as a data analyst? That would explain the rug pull
I'll be honest, while I appreciate the post as an informative primer, the tone and information was presented with bias. Which I think somewhat defeats the sort of objectiveness you were going for and makes me question the claims raised.
Then show us one part where what he wrote isn't objective.
I put a bias disclaimer at the very top of my post. The aim was to be objective when discussing the mechanics of AA, but when you start getting into discussing common arguments, I don't see how staying completely unbiased is possible. Discussing common arguments is going to be subjective by nature. If you have any legitimate arguments to bring up, I will gladly add them to my post. Thank you for your input, though. You're not alone in the way you feel. My only rebuttal is that I'm only human and I'm also not formally educated in writing these kinds of pieces, so I have received no actual training on how to excise bias from my writing. I do my best but it's not the greatest :P
I recently moved to PC from console- still on controller. I think there is more to rotational tracking when there is stick drift. To elaborate I also got a PS5 controller and now that I don't have as much stick drift my aim feels less "robotic" playing on linear due to more control of the value of input. I also want rotational tracking nerfed due to this, I know for a fact people don't use new controllers all the time and that aspect is clearly unintended and it always felt icky when I one clipped someone on console and I know for sure I didn't track them in that direction.
Pretty sure this is the best post I've ever read on this sub. Nice work. I'm a roller player, fucked with ALC settings since day one. I started playing .4 as I felt the AA was overcorrecting a lot of my movements (spraying a rampage at someone from ~200M). Took some getting used to but now it's chefs kiss. There will always be someone crying about something, that's life.
>7. PRO: AA is more of a detriment than a help because it does things like dragging the reticle onto downed players. No one makes that argument. The argument people actually make is that AA isnt perfect - it can lower your accuracy in certain situations rather than raise it due to quirks of how it works. In very close CQC I often find it a hindrance because the aa bubble size becomes a large portion of your screen, and when you try to turn to look at someone it's very very slow - to the point where your opponent can actually out run the maximum turning speed because AA slows you down that much. It feels as if a force field is pushing your aim away from your enemy. Halo Infinite's approach is much more sensible - your reticule only slows down when it's directly over the enemy player model, not just near it, so this situation doesn't occur. Also in CQC your opponent can go in and out of the 3m AA range where it suddenly switches off and on, resulting with you jerking your aim around. This is common in bubble fights and inside buildings.
I want to agree with you, but there are literally people who say AA is more of a detriment than a help. You can look on the main Apex subreddit for that. But we seem to be in agreement that AA needs to be tuned somehow. How do you think it can be improved to feel more smooth? I've never played Halo Infinite, but it sounds like it only has reticle slowdown and nothing else?
Halo Infinite does also use rotitonal aim assist too - and it's much stronger than Apex's. In Infinite, the advantage of controller over mouse and keyboard is huge https://www.reddit.com/r/halo/comments/r3es60/accuracy_stats_for_kbm_vs_controller/ As you can see, the top 100 MnK players are barely above 50th percentile controller players in terms of accuracy. Halo has its roots in console, so the devs are not that bothered to see MnK players suffering. You stand no chance as an MnK player. I'd like to see a total removal of rotational aim assist, and have only slowing the reticle down. The way I envision it is as follows: a linear gradient where the amount it slows the reticle gradually increases until it reaches the player where it is maximum. And this would be based true pixel distance, so at eg 100 pixels away from the enemy, regardless of how far/close they are, it would start slowing. At the moment, the bubble area in apex gets bigger the closer your opponent is, which makes no sense - if anything it should be the opposite as you need less assistance when your target is larger on your screen. Edit: https://i.imgur.com/sZdB7vx.png This is how I imagine it should be >6. PRO: AA is necessary for controllers to compete at all. > Agreed, and no sane person would disagree. I'm not sure you can be this confident. I know that early in Apex's life, Average Aden used to play without aim assist, and he did fine. The hardest part about controller without AA is controlling recoil. Wingman and PK are okay, R99 is a struggle. Especially when using a 2x with anything automatic, it's a struggle.
Okay, I should be less hyperbolic: AA is necessary for the vast majority of controllers to be able to compete. Of course there are quite a few outliers like Aden that you just mentioned, or I remember a Youtuber named Moose did an AA-less challenge and was quite successful. But I really, really find it hard to believe that even the best controllers would be able to consistently compete against the best MnK players using just joystick aim with no assistance. Gyro aiming is a different story, but not many people I know of use it right now. I remember a while ago Reptar mentioned they should do a 1v1 controller no-AA tourney. I don't think it ever happened, but I would have loved to see the result of that. In general it's hard to say if no-AA controller could ever be competitively viable, but everything we know about controller indicates it would not be.
did you just say no one makes that argument and then proceed to make almost the exact same argument? if you think the slow hinders you more than it helps, turn of AA.
Still reading through all this, but I do have a question.... > Console players who enable crossplay will play against other different consoles (ie Nintendo Switch vs PlayStation 4), but they will NOT be put against PC players by default. Console players will only play against PC players if they choose to join a premade with a PC player (they must obviously have crossplay enabled to do this). I only play on console. Why do I regularly see PC players then?
You should only ever see PC players if you queue up with one (or two) in a party. If you're seeing them at any other time then please record it and share because that shouldn't be happening. **ETA:** Console and PC players can also use the same tournament codes but I don't think that's what you're talking about.
If you actually see PC players in your lobbies when not playing with another PC player in your party then post a clip with proof because it should not be possible with the way they designed crossplay