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In the last patch the way that aiming works was changed. Here's the relevant patch note:
The description here is very brief and doesn't give much insight into what's actually changed. You'd be forgiven for thinking this was a very minor adjustment. At the same time I think it also got a bit lost and confused with the desync issues, but the change is actually quite significant.
I asked Dan Ogles to elaborate on the change and he was kind enough to do so. But before we get into that it's worth quickly explaining the problems faced by third person aim in general and how things worked prior to this patch.
Problems arise in any third person shooter because the character is placed off to the side of the crosshair. This means it's impossible to perfectly align the paths of projectiles with the crosshair. Instead, you can only choose one distance/point where the projectile will be completely in line with the crosshair. Equivalently, you must choose an angle that the projectile is shot at in relation to the crosshair.
Which of the orange projectile paths do you choose?
Here are the patch notes from closed beta 1.2, where they updated how the aiming works. As far as I know, this is how it has been since then up until the most recent patch.
So if no characters were nearby, the projectile was aimed at whatever background object was under the crosshair. If a character was near the crosshair, the projectile was instead aimed at an imaginary surface placed at the same distance as that character. This only affected targets that were roughly 10 or more meters away, otherwise it reverted to just aiming at the background.
So what changed in the last patch? Here's Dan explaining the change:
Thanks to Dan for responding and giving some more info on the change.
So the same or a very similar system that was previously applied only at distances >10m is now used everywhere, including close range.
This means that projectiles can be be aimed much more sharply in towards the crosshair when aiming at close range targets, whereas previously they fired more in the direction your character was facing if your crosshair wasn't directly on them. If you were used to the old system, you may now find yourself aiming too far to the right of targets. This is because shots used to be aimed towards the background and so targets would often intercept them and be hit to the left of the crosshair. Previously I found that hitting shots at close range focussed a lot on more on aiming with your character. If you wanted to hit close range, you would position your character in front of your target and face towards them. Often this meant that the crosshair wouldn't necessarily be on them. Now, the new system will angle your shots in towards your crosshair, which can cause you to miss despite your character facing the right direction. Instead it's much more important to have your crosshair near the target, which means positioning your character off to the left a bit so that the new system can aim the projectile inwards.
I've made a short video trying to show what this new system looks like (turn on sound to hear explanations).
I hope this cleared things up regarding this change and helped anyone who was wondering why their aim was suddenly off.
My personal thoughts and feedback regarding the change.
Overall, I think this change is terrible. My first and biggest issue is that it is a change to the most basic mechanics of a game that is well past release, dropped out of nowhere in the middle of the chapter. This sort of thing feels really bad to players who have invested time into the game and adapted to the original system. This is especially pertinent since I think that a strong desire to improve at the game is one of the few things that keeps players around for any length of time. I'm not saying that you can never change a core mechanic like this, but that if you do you should have a damn good reason. Instead, we have a change that I think quite literally no one asked for; I've neither seen nor heard anyone complaining or bringing up issues related to the aiming system. On top of this, the relative lack of information or justification for it indicates to me a lack of understanding of the significance of a change like this and it's effect on players.
The system itself is really unintuitive, confusing and ultimately a poor solution to the aim problem. The sudden switch from shooting towards the background, to having your shots swerve dramatically when your crosshair gets too close to a character, is incredibly jarring and makes aim feel inconsistent. The fact that you can aim to the right and have your shot go more to the left is absurd. It honestly feels like a wack version of aim assist designed to make you miss. It's an especially poor fit for a projectile based game where placing the cursor just off your target to lead them is common. You're often aiming around the edge of the system's 'area of effect', where projectile behaviour can be suddenly and dramatically altered by moving your aim as little as one pixel, such that it it switches between 'background aim' and 'target aim'. It even seems that this was identified as an issue back 1.2 and was why the system was limited to >10m distances (where changes in projectile path are much less significant):
"Finally, we only do this when the enemy is suitably far away from the camera (about 10 meters). Otherwise, the projectile would go wildly to the right and look/feel very strange."
These sorts of 'wild' projectiles are exactly what we see now and it certainly feels strange.
I also disagree with what seems to be the motivation for the change, which is that if the crosshair isn't over the target, the shot shouldn't be hitting. I would guess that the idea is that if the crosshair isn't on the target, you didn't actually aim properly and so shouldn't be awarded with a hit. Again, while this might make some sense in a hitscan game, it feels really weird to be getting hung up over this in a projectile game, where you usually need to be aiming ahead of targets anyway. To me, the crosshair is there as a guide to help you aim. There's absolutely nothing wrong with hitting shots where the crosshair is off the target, as long as the projectile behaviour is consistent and sensible. I think it's perfectly intuitive to be looking at your character's position to determine if you'll hit, e.g. if my character is right in front of and facing my target, my shot will land.
To be clear, I wouldn't go so far as to say that this completely ruins the game, but the whole situation certainly feels really really bad. It honestly baffles me that they would make this change. I highly doubt this will happen, but I'd be very impressed if the devs would consider reverting or at least revising the aim system.
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