What if we had Aim Assist options?

Tonight, while aiming down sights and putting fire into one guardian, taking down his shields nearing the point of death, another opposing guardian crossed his path. My crosshairs followed the moving target, dragging my reticule away causing me to miss those precious last few shots. The two of them proceed to murder me as my gun reloads.

This has happened to me thousands of times. I'm certain it's happened to you. Tonight, though, was the first time i realized that I think Bungie could give the player an option here, and a little more control over the outcome of this situation.

The reason your reticule sticks to a target is to make the game playable for those of us without the magical thumbs of a player like TripleWreck. It's a way for Bungie to make the game enjoyable for people who aren't exactly on the mark. You're still rewarded for being the better player, but give the underdog a chance. I get that.

But there is an algorithm at play that Bungie coded one way and I think they could have given the player an option. Bungie has coded it that when two targets cross, follow the one that's moving away. Your reticule will try and stick with them. But, it could probably be programmed to instead stick with the target with the least movement. Why not let the player have this choice in the settings? Aim Assist follows? or Aim Assist Stays?

I would love for Aim Assist to stay where I'm aiming. I'd like to finish one target move to the next, rather than divide my fire among two people and not kill either.

What do you think? Should/could this be an option? What would you choose?

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There's a sort of way to make this a thing: Play with guns that have very low assist values. The downside is that your bullets will also be less magnetic to the head, but it prevents reticle stickiness.

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Doesn't work very well, weirdly. I sit and snipe the stupid hive POE bosses and dumb acolytes always high jump and drag my gun up. This is with an Efrideet's Spear and a low aim assist scope. Meh.

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You're right, but it's not always enough. I use Praedyth's revenge partly for this reason, but any stickiness can be a bad thing when the reticule is dragged away from your target by another player. That's the difference between a headshot and a whiff some times.

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Some games (Black Ops 2 and Warframe come to mind) give players the option to disable aim assist altogether, and I find that it's much less frustrating to play as a result. Especially when trying to go for headshots. Tack it onto the list of things that I'd love to see in a future Destiny update but probably never will.

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Yeah, if I had the choice I think I would turn it off as well. At least then I could see how awful I am and decide if the trade off is worth it :)

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I think the algorithm could be improved.

Some Ideas:

Always stick with the target you've put the most bullets (or damage) into,
or stick with the target you've been aiming at the most in the last second (weighted moving average distance),
or always stick with the target with the least health,
or stick with the slower moving target (relative to your reticule).

I think the best solution would be the second one, but I could see it impacting performance unless they can tie it into some metrics that they're already keeping. The first one would be good, but could have some problems with high-health enemies always pulling your reticule when maybe you just need to clear some mobs around it (I'm thinking of the Skoals fight), the third would have the same, but opposite problem, mobs taking your reticule away from the boss you're just trying to finish off. The fourth might be the best compromise as it would be the least computationally heavy and probably do what you want in most instances.

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I think the algorithm could be improved.

Some Ideas:

Always stick with the target you've put the most bullets (or damage) into,

or stick with the target you've been aiming at the most in the last second (weighted moving average distance),

or always stick with the target with the least health,

or stick with the slower moving target (relative to your reticule).
I think the best solution would be the second one, but I could see it impacting performance unless they can tie it into some metrics that they're already keeping. The first one would be good, but could have some problems with high-health enemies always pulling your reticule when maybe you just need to clear some mobs around it (I'm thinking of the Skoals fight), the third would have the same, but opposite problem, mobs taking your reticule away from the boss you're just trying to finish off. The fourth might be the best compromise as it would be the least computationally heavy and probably do what you want in most instances.

Whenever I see suggestions on how best to improve destiny, instead of what they actually did, I think of this

[image]

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I think the algorithm could be improved.

Some Ideas:

Always stick with the target you've put the most bullets (or damage) into,

or stick with the target you've been aiming at the most in the last second (weighted moving average distance),

or always stick with the target with the least health,

or stick with the slower moving target (relative to your reticule).
I think the best solution would be the second one, but I could see it impacting performance unless they can tie it into some metrics that they're already keeping. The first one would be good, but could have some problems with high-health enemies always pulling your reticule when maybe you just need to clear some mobs around it (I'm thinking of the Skoals fight), the third would have the same, but opposite problem, mobs taking your reticule away from the boss you're just trying to finish off. The fourth might be the best compromise as it would be the least computationally heavy and probably do what you want in most instances.

Whenever I see suggestions on how best to improve destiny, instead of what they actually did, I think of this

Randall (not the Vandal) Munroe gets it. Things that SOUND easy for a human to do can be VERY hard for a computer (for many different reasons), which is why I think #4, is the best compromise. Of course, thinking about it more, tracking the velocity of targets relative to your reticule isn't computationally much different than tracking a weighted average distance over time.

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Of course, another solution could be to simply have different sights implement different aim assist algorithms, not just varying amounts of aim assist, but actual different algorithms.

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This would be a cool option, and actually what I expect when the Ambush scope says "Rewards a skilled hand" or whatever the exact words are.

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This would be a cool option, and actually what I expect when the Ambush scope says "Rewards a skilled hand" or whatever the exact words are.

I feel as if they all currently use the same algorithm, but with tweaked parameters (such as amount of magnetism). I suspect they may also alter trajectory of the bullets or maybe hit detection in various ways, but I'm not positive on this.

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I could be totally wrong but isn't aim assist basically two components: stickiness and bullet magnetism? Stickiness affects your reticule prior to the trigger pull and bullet magnetism affects the trajectory of your bullet upon fire. Is that right?

If so, in this scenario, you really don't want to turn off bullet magnetism, but rather the stickiness component. Without bullet magnetism, you wouldn't be able to hit much of anything I suspect. I'm not sure there is a complicated algorithm for stickiness as has been suggested. I think it just follows the closest target to the player. In most cases and with most guns this is a good thing, but perhaps it would be best to have it reversed or turned off with sniper rifles since you tend to be aiming for the further targets? Maybe only having it kick in past a certain range (hand cannon range) would be better? Adding in anything more complicated to the algorithm could have a cost in game performance.

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I can't verify, but this has happened to me regardless of who's closer. The reticule sticks to who is moving away. I'm only talking about aim assist here, other people have brought up bullet magnetism.

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Killing dudes with no aim assist on is less than fun.
Also balancing player adjusted aim assist would be pretty hard for Bungie to pull off I think. The small amount of variability now is probably challenge enough.

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What if we had Aim Assist options? (Destiny)