jigglet
Banned
I posted this in another thread but with the Halo beta going on (I'll return to this later) I thought this deserved a thread of its own.
If you've ever wondered why aiming in your game felt like shit? Or why it feels so weird to switch from one shooter to another, read on.
Let's start with what GOOD aiming controls are. Good aiming controls take us close to 1:1 movement. 1:1 basically means one unit of movement in your joystick equates to one unit of movement on the screen. It's linear, like this:
This is your optimal state. It's nice, clean, and consistent. Everything else is unpredictable. This is what all games should strive for, however...
A lot of the time, game controls aren't linear. Developers, trying to be too clever, will implement all sorts of crazy ideas. The most common is aim acceleration, which means the further you hold left for example, the faster the cursor goes. So pegging the stick half way may equate to one unit in cursor movement, HOWEVER peg it all the way (double the distance in stick movement) may equate to three units in cursor movement (instead of two). Basically - your crosshair moves faster depending on how far you peg the stick.
So it ends up looking like this:
This originated from the early days of console when no one was used to playing with dual analogue controls, so they were trying to find all sorts of unique solutions to help ease people into them. Those days are over, yet developers still cling onto these old concepts for some weird reason, even though industry leading games like BF and COD have largely moved away from them. The preferred controller aids these days are aim assist or bullet magnetism, not weird aim acceleration curves.
The very worst examples of this in the industry are Halo 5 and Rainbow Six Siege (console version). They don't only have aim acceleration, but they have acceleration jumps, which means it's not even a curve like you see above...its a wavy line with steps. Each of these games got about 3-4 aim mechanic updates over their lifecycle - they got better, but are still quite bad and still stand out as the two of the worst examples in the industry.
So now we come to Halo Infinite. I was reading comments last night about how the controls felt a bit off. I thought: oh fuck here we go again. It gave me flashbacks of Halo 5's launch where so many of us had to spend months begging on Reddit and Halo's forums for a fix. Luckily I've moved to PC as I'm sure it's the same team behind the controls.
Input latency also plays a role, as does a low or inconsistent framerate, but they are small potatoes compared to a bad aim mechanic. Think about how clean and crisp Destiny feels @ 30fps. Anyway I hope that sheds some light why some games have aim mechanics that feel like shit, and why switching between two games in the same genre (e.g. FPS to FPS) with the same framerate might feel day and night.
If you've ever wondered why aiming in your game felt like shit? Or why it feels so weird to switch from one shooter to another, read on.
Let's start with what GOOD aiming controls are. Good aiming controls take us close to 1:1 movement. 1:1 basically means one unit of movement in your joystick equates to one unit of movement on the screen. It's linear, like this:

This is your optimal state. It's nice, clean, and consistent. Everything else is unpredictable. This is what all games should strive for, however...
A lot of the time, game controls aren't linear. Developers, trying to be too clever, will implement all sorts of crazy ideas. The most common is aim acceleration, which means the further you hold left for example, the faster the cursor goes. So pegging the stick half way may equate to one unit in cursor movement, HOWEVER peg it all the way (double the distance in stick movement) may equate to three units in cursor movement (instead of two). Basically - your crosshair moves faster depending on how far you peg the stick.
So it ends up looking like this:

This originated from the early days of console when no one was used to playing with dual analogue controls, so they were trying to find all sorts of unique solutions to help ease people into them. Those days are over, yet developers still cling onto these old concepts for some weird reason, even though industry leading games like BF and COD have largely moved away from them. The preferred controller aids these days are aim assist or bullet magnetism, not weird aim acceleration curves.
The very worst examples of this in the industry are Halo 5 and Rainbow Six Siege (console version). They don't only have aim acceleration, but they have acceleration jumps, which means it's not even a curve like you see above...its a wavy line with steps. Each of these games got about 3-4 aim mechanic updates over their lifecycle - they got better, but are still quite bad and still stand out as the two of the worst examples in the industry.
So now we come to Halo Infinite. I was reading comments last night about how the controls felt a bit off. I thought: oh fuck here we go again. It gave me flashbacks of Halo 5's launch where so many of us had to spend months begging on Reddit and Halo's forums for a fix. Luckily I've moved to PC as I'm sure it's the same team behind the controls.
Input latency also plays a role, as does a low or inconsistent framerate, but they are small potatoes compared to a bad aim mechanic. Think about how clean and crisp Destiny feels @ 30fps. Anyway I hope that sheds some light why some games have aim mechanics that feel like shit, and why switching between two games in the same genre (e.g. FPS to FPS) with the same framerate might feel day and night.
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