Aim Acceleration - Making or Breaking Halo?

[F_R_I_S_K_x]

Anyone who spends at least 10 minutes on any Halo 4 forum can attest to the fact that there are a lot of avid Halo players who feel that the path Halo 4 is going down is in a sense, diseased. Being a devout Halo fan for a number of years - since CE, I feel as if Halo's waters have been muddied. Halo Combat Evolved was by far and large the single greatest accomplishment in the FPS gaming community and paved the way for how future FPS games would be made. Somehow, Halo 2 improved an already legendary title by introducing what many would believe to be the single greatest FPS multiplayer experience on a console game. From the in-game clan system that allowed people with similar interests in gametypes to band together and helped develop the extremely large Custom Games community that exists today, to the ranking system that allowed people to play as competitively as they wanted to and be proud of their rank, to the fluidity of the controls and aiming mechanisms, Halo 2 was another monumental achievement in FPS gaming.

 

With the introduction of Halo 3, Bungie incorporated a specific mechanic to the aiming system known as Aim Acceleration. What exactly is aim acceleration though? Aim acceleration is the acceleration of your aiming speed the further your push your joystick, starting off slower than your selected sensitivity during the initial movement of your joystick then speeding up to as you push it further. To put it more simply, if you have a sensitivity level of 5, when you move your joystick, your aim doesn't start moving around at level 5 sensitivity, it starts at level 1 sensitivity and progresses through levels 2, 3, and 4 before it reaches 5 sensitivity. To many, this was an unnoticed addition into the Halo series, but to those who prided themselves on their ability to 4 shot and take enemies down with the reflexes and precision that a Spartan should possess, this was disastrous.

 

It could be said this mechanic helps those less familiar with the game adjust to the style of aiming in Halo 4. But there isn't any need for adjustment, because this Aim Acceleration is there, and it cannot be turned off. But ask any Halo player, heck, ANY FPS player, and they'll tell you it takes a little bit of time to find your right sensitivity and once you find it, you adjust your movements of your thumb based on the situation at hand - small movements for precision, longer movements to acquire further targets. That's why there exists a joystick with an omnidirectional pad - you get to choose how far and how fast you want to move your stick. Having a mechanic in the game that chooses this for you is in my mind, what is ruining the competitive spirit of Halo, and will further ruin all competitive potential for Halo's future. It truly is sad to see what was once a flagship game for MLG dropped from the circuit this year.

 

 

What do you think? Do you think if 343 could and would be willing to fix Aim Acceleration, what would you want done? Removal of the aim acceleration mechanic, an option to turn it on/off, or to let it stand as it is and let the Aim Acceleration plague run its deadly course?

[FleshBack]

I just played Halo 2 on my original Xbox last night with a friend and noticed that I couldn't aim at anything at all--even on a 1!!! I didn't remember it being like that when I first picked up the game years ago and having been spoiled on Halo 4 for a while, I found the "effect" as you have desrcibed to be quite punishing. Of course I didn't really think there was anything at work or not at work until you brought this up, which is quite funny.

 

That being said, I found it extremely difficult to adjust to not having this aim acceleration on as I said before, even on a sensitivity as low as 1 BRing anything was difficult. I would prefer to have more control over my aim though, and I don't believe in an option to turn it off/on because eeryone should be on an equal playing field for maximum competitive gameplay. Of course, that is merely my impression.

[Cpt Picardo]

I love it!

[Twinreaper]

Aim Acceleration does not exist in any Halo games in the naming convention you are using. If it did, there would be data in the tagset to point to this. What you are talking about, is the amount of time it takes for sensativity controls to overide the base biped turning and looking settings. Why do you think "3" is the default? It's because that is the biped tags own default setting equating to the controls. This 'Aim Acceleration" as you call it, has been part of Halo since the beginning. For all intent and purposes what you are describing can also be seen by only putting your joystick slighty to one side, and you turn slower than you would if you jammed it all the way.

 

And what are you crying about? By your own words, it was largely unoticed..meanign a split second or even maybe 0.01 of a second. And your really crying about it? Get a clue man, your the first and hopefully last person to bring up such a ridiculous claim, and try to say that it is hurting multiplayer. I can't help but laugh the entire time I am writing this....

[RedStarRocket91]

And what are you crying about? By your own words, it was largely unoticed..meanign a split second or even maybe 0.01 of a second. And your really crying about it? Get a clue man, your the first and hopefully last person to bring up such a ridiculous claim, and try to say that it is hurting multiplayer. I can't help but laugh the entire time I am writing this....

 

Come on Twin, you're better than this: the guy saw a ghost and you disproved it - pretty handily I might add - so there's no need to mock him for that. Sure, it might seem like an obvious mistake from a coding perspective, but humans do have a tendency to see things that aren't actually there.

 

On topic: never noticed it, probably because as Twin pointed out, it doesn't actually exist. If you're playing with a wireless controller you may just be feeling lag from that, try switching over to a wired one and hopefully you'll see an improvement. If that doesn't help, perhaps you just need to try a new sensitivity? I find what works best for me actually varies between weapons (I like a 4 for a Battle Rifle loadout, but need a 2 or even a 1 for a DMR) so try playing around with that for different weapons, see if it helps you at all.

[Bloody Initiate]

Xbox controllers have been able to sense how much you were pressing the thumbsticks and the buttons for a looong time, game developers who don't take advantage of this capability are doing their players a disservice. The triggers, ABXY face buttons, and thumbsticks can all detect how much you're pressing. The bumpers are just "clickable" (Pressed or Not) as are the thumbstick buttons, I don't know about the D-pad, I think it's just clickable too.

 

In fact I never realized but this may be a contributing factor to what made Halo feel more "smooth" than a lot of other shooters that were available and popular at its initial release. Other games felt jerky and disconnected from their thumbsticks, maybe they had uniform sensitivity for all pressures on the thumbsticks. I don't know because I've never had that kind of close awareness of what I was doing vs. the feedback I was getting. I'll have to boot up "Hybrid" some time and feel whether this is why I felt the game was unpolished.

 

So while I completely disagree that this is a problem, or that it was ever a "problem," I'm glad you pointed it out. It was a capability that has always been there and I knew it, but I never realized it could have been a major aspect of making the game playable.

 

Most game developers I've noticed DON'T use the variable sensitivities of the buttons. I remember Fable 2 did, if you pressed the button all the way down when using a bow your character would pull the bow-string back further. I honestly didn't even realize the button pressure was variable until I played that game because so few developers made use of the full controller.

 

This is also why I always hated playing games that also showed up on the PS2 back in the day. As I recall that controller has two fewer buttons, and so you'd play the game and you'd have at least two unused buttons. I always hated the old PS2 controller, it was a step in the right direction but simply less capable than the Xbox controllers. Playing PS2 games on an Xbox often left me feeling like I had fewer fingers or something.

 

I wish more developers would use MORE of the hardware, but in many situations it's understandable. In Halo for example, making the face buttons have pressure-sensitive in-game results would probably be a mistake because people need to press them too fast. They probably can't keep their speed and accuracy up if they also have to be careful. In bigger games where you can take a bit more time, especially single-player-only games, they could do much more than they do with the controller.

[ProudDrunkIrish]

Cannot say i have ever noticed this at all, no problems for me personally is all I can say.

[Chris Hansen]

I have problems with the game. This is not one of them however.

[BaconShelf]

It should stay. I don't see what the problem is, and removing it would be bad for machinima. You wouldn't be able to walk or look slowly etc. well, that's considering most machinima creators are staying on reach...

[MeTaPhYsiKs]

How can you guys not notice it? In H2 you could hold a direction on your right stick and it would instantly turn at max speed. In all proceeding Halos it starts out slow then accelerates to the max speed

Well written, Frisk. I agree 100%. I'm glad it's not just me who notices. These critics must not have been very good at Halo 2