> There is a hitbox around the head and the characters in most games. The head is usually larger than it looks already.
>
> http://blog.counter-strike.net/wp-content/uploads//2012/03/hitboxes_0001_CSGO.jpg
As far as I know, the hitboxes in Halo don’t work in that fashion. If you go to custom games, take a guest as your teammate, and start tracking the hitbox, you should end up to the conclusion that the hitbox is shaped very much as the player is. There are no huge blocks. If you miss the player model, you miss the shot.
> Call of Duty is the most casual shooter far more fast-paced than Halo and it strictly features sticky aim and a system that slows down your crosshair as it passess over opponents. It doesn’t feature any sort of bullet magnetism and players are very accurate.
>
> Halo is a much slower game with bigger characters, it doesn’t make any sense that it features insane bullet magnetism at the top of sticky aim and crosshair slow down.
Are you absolutely sure there is no magnetism in Call of Duty? Personally, I doubt it. There might very well be small amounts of it. Alternatively, the hitboxes might be constructed differently from those of Halo. Due to difference in design, comparing CoD to Halo doesn’t help your argument here. In the end, you should also take into account that CoD requires drastically less time to kill, which means less time spent aiming.
I had a debate about the necessity of bullet magnetism and aim assist few months ago. It made me to go to Halo CEA, and experiment with the Eye Patch skull that disables all aim assisting mechanics of any kind. It made me realize that for an enjoyable experience, some amount of bullet magnetism and aim assist is really needed. The fact alone that if there wasn’t any, the hit detection would be perceived as “broken” by many is enough reason to have then both.
> And if you believe that a game without bullet magnetism doesn’t feel good, I don’t think you understand at all what is fun about competitive FPS games, because there is nothing that feels better than a pixel perfect headshot or rocket thrown seconds before it hit a target, stuff that makes you feel in perfect control over the game universe that you hold in your hands. It’s even better if you can remove the crosshair entirely and feel the gunplay rather than trying to manage a crosshair.
Frankly, I don’t like my thumbs. Neither do I like how the analogue stick on the Xbox 360 controller is shaped nor do I like the stiffness of the default sticks. There are some shortcomings in the way we aim on consoles. And while it’s not impossible to aim without any assist, a matter of fact is that it’s so brutally difficult to most that such a game wouldn’t perform very well. If it’s uncomfortable to me, I can only imagine the kind of frustration it would awake in the average player.
> It’s not normal to play with all sorts of aim assist on console. People feel the need to because they just cannot accept that a thumbstick is different from a mouse and they don’t want to spend as much time to become as fluid.
It’s exponentially harder to aim with the sticks than a mouse. You have much less control over the movement of your thumb than you have over the movement of your whole hand. The control with a mouse is also much more direct. With the analogue stick you are controlling the speed and direction of your reticule through the position of the stick. With the mouse you are controlling the speed and direction through speed and direction, it’s much more direct and therefore more intuitive.
If I had to choose between Halo 4 level of bullet magnetism and no magnetism and all, would I choose Halo 4? No. But if I had freedom of choice, the optimal scenario would be a slight amount of magnetism and a slight amount of aim assist. Enough to make it comfortable but not too much to make aiming too easy.
I still dare to question have you ever actually tested Halo in a scenario with nothing to help you at aiming. It’s easier to say it’s not needed when you don’t realize how integral part of your experience it is, and how much it actually affects your aim.
