This is a mirror of a thread I posted on Reddit. I’m posting it here for visibility.
I as well as many others in the community are finding it impossible to dial in our aiming settings. Part of this is due to suspecting that there are simply aiming parameters/characteristics we are unable to access or modify, but part of it is also both the dearth and the ambiguity of the aim settings for controller. There’s only one real setting beyond basic H/V sensitivity and that is aim acceleration, and it is presented as a number that has no reference to anything. Frankly, a lot of players can’t deal with this and it’s injuring our ability to even enjoy getting this game under our fingers. I myself have had this issue in the past with both Halo 3 and Halo 5 and it is a barrier to entry to even booting those games up.
My solution is this. The basic aim settings will be a three-parameter bundle with “ADSR” style controls. If you’re into music production, you know that ADSR envelopes allow you to change the time dimensions of a sample or instrument. Rather than try to explain exactly how that works, here is a simple GIF showing the logic of the controls. You can see that you can adjust the time parameter as well as the total amount on an X-Y grid, and you can further adjust the shape of the curve with the “tension” knob.
i DOT imgur DOT com/q83uSaI.gif (can’t include links in my post so navigate there yourself lol)
Translating this to controller settings would read like so:
- Horizontal stick sensitivity/deflection with a two-parameter (amount/curve) X-Y adjustment on a 1-10 scale with fractional increments
- Vertical stick sensitivity/deflection with a two-parameter (amount/curve) X-Y adjustment on a 1-10 scale with fractional increments
- Aim acceleration/ramp up with a three-parameter (time/amount/curve) X-Y adjustment, amount on a 1-10 scale and time on a 0-2 scale measured in seconds, both with fractional increments
- Per-optic sensitivity modifier on a percentage scale
- Min/max/center deadzone/threshold settings, parameter/resolution based on either a 1-10 scale with fractional increments or whatever is most intuitive to the underlying technology
I feel like this would be a much simpler, more intuitive, and drastically more effective method of tuning your aim as you can achieve any conceivable metric through these combinations. With this style of adjustment, players have a much more sensible visual reference to understand what the adjustments mean. It would go a long way toward allowing some players to feel comfortable performing the most fundamental action in an FPS game, which is aiming.