What 343 MUST do regarding to kbm vs controller situation

Games Halo Infinite
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If you’ve been following the kbm vs controller discussion, you’ve no doubt seen the reddit thread showing a comparison between controller and kbm accuracies going around. For those unfamiliar, here is the original:

reddit. com/r/halo/comments/r3es60/accuracy_stats_for_kbm_vs_controller/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share

The problem

While there is clearly a problem, I first want to make clear that the data provided indicates controller has a greater advantage than it actually does. In particular, the comparison of top 100 controller vs top 100 kbm players, showing a whopping 16.4% median difference in accuracy between the groups, isn’t what I would describe as an apt comparison. The top 100 controller players comprise almost exclusively of pros or semi pros, who are pushing their input to the limit of what is possible. While I’m sure the top 100 kbm players comprise of some cracked individuals, you can be pretty sure that none or very few of them are actual pros. Most actual kbm pros are busy playing their own games.

With that said, what I do think is an apt comparison is the second half of the data, comparing the 50th percentile of each input. There is no logical reason to believe the average (50th percentile) controller player is more mechanically gifted than the average kbm player (nor the other way around for that matter). Yet if you compare the data, the median difference between cohorts is over 12%. That is insane. Some may be tempted to say that kbm is new to pc and therefore pc players just need to git gud, but actually, halo has been on pc since 2003, and shooters have been around on pc for even longer, so that argument has not a leg to stand on.

Pc players are already leaving in droves, and as if the reputation wasn’t there already, it is more and more being considered by many as simply impossible to compete on with kbm. If the issue is not addressed soon, the game will be another mcc, a shadow of its potential, with what is essentially a non-existent pc community.

The solution

While there are a few things they could probably try, it is essential that they do at least these two things:

First: They need to create a separate ‘hcs crossplay’ playlist with separate AA values (like Apex does), which results in kbm and controller accuracy being approximately equal, and make those settings the competitive settings used in tournaments moving forward. For all other playlists and campaign, keep AA values as they are so casuals consile players can enjoy the game as they please.

Second: bullet magnetism needs to be given to mnk to match controller. I don’t know if kbm has magnetism at all, but whatever it may have pales in comparison to what controller has. Give kbm the same hitboxes as controller across all playlists, so at least the gap can somewhat be bridged without directly affecting controller players experiences.

343 need to fix this sooner rather than later of they want kbm to even be a thing in Infinite, but with all the attention being on cosmetics atm (which imo is a bit of a red herring), I fear this issue will be swept under the rug for months, or even years, before it’s properly addressed.

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I’d rather they nerf strafe acceleration so it’s more focused on my input than have bullet mag increased. Also, it’s very hard to evaluate KBM due to server desync. Most KBM have also complained about input lag too. There’s definitely something wrong that we aren’t fully aware of and controller aim assist/bullet mag masks parts of it.

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No that would make the game way to easy to aim in and decrease the value of strafing overall

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Well PC controllers get better aim assist than console controllers… like why?

I still dont get why I’m even forced into crossplay tbh, if always been very happy without it and whenever its added to games it creates issues whether it’s from balance or just to worse latency and the odd cheaters

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There’s a reason cross play was avoided for years and years. It is virtually impossible to balance these two input forms. One input you’re using your fingers the other input you’re using your hand/arm with your fingers on a keyboard. The central crux of this, is that something is off with the overall look and aiming mechanics. This was heavily discussed during the tech previews.

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aim assist = hacking yup agreed well said OP

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I’ve played with a controller and I may be biased as a keyboard user mainly but i felt like i played worse with a controller than with Keyboard and mouse (I used both on pc and I did notice a slight aimbotty feel with the controller but the controller severly limited what i’d like to call my agility and abilty to turn around to retailiate.

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The subjective experience that you or anyone else has, myself included, is irrelevant. The stats speak for themselves. As it stands right now, controller is simply the stronger input.

Edit: The UI on this forum is horrendous.

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I fail to see how my expierience is irrelevant I think all data is valid weather subjective or not, further refining of data can be done later after it is gathered as long as it is properly labeled. I’ve been playing halo since Halo ce pc and have gone from both PC to Xbox360… in that time…

yeah the forum UI and function is very poor

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Have you played KBM? Even the best KBM players rarely get perfect with the BR, strafe is way too fast. How would it be too easy when you balance it? Use the gray matter and realize it doesn’t need to be knee jerked into the ground just adjusted. ffs

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Yeah I hit diamond with no real issue on MnK and can hit my shots fine and even the best controller players barely ever get perfects too? I’m onyx on controller and maybe get 2 a game if I’m lucky.

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I agree with you but sadly they wont nerf the aim assist on the controller. For obvious reasons many players dont like to aim in a shooter.

“But MnK are better for shooters” I can already see many people claiming but the thing is: it is fast for reactions, thats why in games like CoD MnK will be better. But Halo is different, thanks to the longer TTK (which is fine btw) it is not game of reactions but maintaining the enemy on your sights. And thats why controller players has a HUGE advantage, the aim assist is ridiculous it kind of lock on target. Anyone saying otherwise has not try both.

MnK vs Controller is a preference, if you are good with any of those cool. But the facts is that controllers players are getting a lot of help

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I’d like to point out that I’ve tested rather rigorously whether the bullet magnetism values for both input types are the same, and they honestly are exactly the same, but what I HAVE found is weird tho is the bullet magnetism per weapons differ depending on what part of the body you aim at, at least it seems this way for precision weapons…

You can go and test this right now if you want… in the shooting range with the sidekick, aim between the spartan’s legs, inside and out, and close to the elbows and waist, you will see that the crosshair has to either be very close to center of the bloom point when you fire for it to even register a hit, or around in between the small and big circle of the crosshair to register a hit…

If you aim at the head however, with K&M OR Controller… regardless of what part of the head you are shooting at, your crosshair barely has to touch the outside of the helmet to register a hit, making the headshot magnetism hitbox a fair bit larger than it honestly appears to be and mind you, this was me shooting at a target within 7-10m away, and the bullets were still hitting the head with my crosshair not having to be dead on, which is INSANE, and may explain why people feel it’s BS when they get spam sniped by a pistol from what feels like so far away…

Unfortunately, the downsides of controller in ranked are FAR outweighed by the ability to mark and callout via VC (which is what people SHOULD be doing in ranked…) since it eliminates the need to play on sensitivities so high it would negate the benefit of Autoaim tracking just to avoid getting backtapped by someone they just barely heard running at them from behind…

While you can make the argument that K&M can snipe better and mark more precisely more quickly, track a bit easier outside of the autoaim effective range and whatnot, let me tell you something, the controller Auto Aim effective range is FAR wider than people think… I went to high power and started with a BR, and while zoomed in, I was able to stay on target almost seamlessly on a moving bot located in archway and high power (the sniper spot). What map can you tell me in PvP ranked has a sight range that wide? the answer is none, so any advantage a K&M player would have in a match vs a controller player in every PvP map currently in rotation is nonexistant…

So no Effective range advantage over controller, requires Power weapons such as the Sniper or Skewer to compete, and only if the K&M player has amazing aim and doesn’t choke the CQC or mid range no scopes because unless they’re God at quickscoping, they’re not zooming in on anyone while under fire…

They are very hard to sneak up on due to insane reaction time, but it’s 100% on the K&M player if they can track perfectly against a controller player or die, lets not forget that due to how erratic and snappy mouse aim can be while you’re tracking someone, sometimes the melee lunge does not work, so if you whiff the melee, you’re dead, and if you don’t track the target that close where it’s piss easy to cookie cut em, you’re dead…

in Quake, Movement is 50% of your aim… in Halo, 100% of your skill on controller is movement, because aim was taken out of the equation. So it’s 50% Aim/ 50% Movement vs 100% Movement and near perfect aim, meaning K&M player vs Controller is gonna lose 1v1 duels almost every single time, potentially even during optimal situations for the K&M player…

I’m almost to Onyx in the K&M only lobbies and honestly I feel for em… this has been both the easiest and the hardest rank to work my way up to, mainly because people miss shots just as much as I do… it is not uncommon to see someone dueling use up their entire BR mag trying to kill each other because of how difficult it is to track someone so close moving so twitchy, so it feels a lot more natural and rewarding to get kills.

If I want the other two Onyx medals tho, if I don’t use controller for the Mixed lobby, I am literally throwing the game for my team, ESPECIALLY if it’s slayer, because while I’d be able to always pop people with nades or melee and certain power weapons, I struggle so hard to finish kills since I’m trying so hard not to die moving any which way I can that it throws off my aim hard, and that last shot matters so much.

I am also very VERY bad a dueling a controller player that has a sidekick, I can barely pop their shields before I get deleted, and that’s just vs one (the bloom is honestly worthless since with controller you can spam no problem and get consistent kills), so it defs does not feel remotely fair at all to put both control schemes in the same lobby if it’s ranked, it genuinely feels like the mixed lobby is an easy way for controller players to boost their rank quickly vs players that are too stubborn to use a controller…

Sorry for the somewhat ranty ish ramble, but I just wanted to give my thoughts and experiences so far with all this. I’m all for Crossplay, but in Ranked it defs shouldn’t exist, it’s WAY too unbalanced, so much so that the weapon meta for each ranked playlist is very different. What works in the Controller lobby may suck -Yoink!- in the K&M one, and vice versa…

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It’s also a factor of playlist, and weapon range potentials.

All of those stats are from players who spend most of their time grinding Ranked, which has BR starts. The BR is one of the highest aim assisted weapons in the game on controller. So much so that it is noticeable on Xbox One at 30fps which has inherently more difficult aiming than at higher frame rates on PC or Series.

The Sidekick is significantly less controller friendly than the BR is, especially on Xbox One, is much stronger than an AR and has a much higher range potential on KBM than on controller. So it’s easy to see how players playing social matches are finding cross-map KBM sidekick laser beams diffcult to deal with.

The problem is that KBM and Controller are playing completely different games, with completely different weapon tiers. And not just that, but Xbox One players are at a disadvantage no matter what you do because it’s even harder to aim, to the point most guns rarely if ever feel like aim assist even exists on them.

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The solution ought to be fairly simple then: reduce AA values on the BR in the crossplay playlist to make their capabilities similar across platforms.

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Unfortunately, the 50 percentile data is also invalid since he got it by pulling the top players in the platinum 6 rank from each input leader board. We don’t actually have a percentile comparison between the two inputs, nor do we have a comparison involving crossplay.

That said, I think there is still some advantage for controllers in the most common type of engagement of ranked: mid range BR fights. The aim tracking makes it easier to stay on target with the BR at these ranges and on the closed-in maps in the ranked playlist. However, I think in most other engagements, there is an advantage towards K&M. Ultimately, I’d rather see tweaks that improve the experience/performance on K&M rather than harm the experience/performance on controller.

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True, neither comparison is perfect. A comparison between larger and more carefully collected data sets, done at a later time, would be ideal. Still though, I don’t think these variables justify the chasm that we see between the inputs accuracy.

I’m sure 343 has the data internally, though something tells me they’ll never actually publicise it LOL.

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Have the DEVs commented anything on this topic at all?

Just before I rant, here’s my stats to add some value and weight to this whole thing.

I’ve played all the old halos, halo 3 i was 47 MLG, and halo 5 i was pretty high onyx.
Now I play KBM solo duo on infinite and I’m top 10 in the UK and top 200 in the world.

My qualms are obvious, that KBM just doesn’t have any longevity, if a cracked KBM player can’t beat an average controller player it takes all the fun out of it.
I’m not even saying I want KBM to reign supreme like other games, I just want KBM to have a place in the competitive scene.

Honestly, high-level KBM games are sooo SICK. They aren’t repetitive four shots and are filled with so many creative plays. With movement and look speed at your fingertips, it creates so much diversity for how each game plays out.

A simple answer to this is just the option to turn crossplay off, let KBM players four stack and play against our own or (my preferred option) patch and update to bridge the gap between the clear imbalance of the two inputs.

Just to let you know, i have tried controller and think it feels sluggish, & boring, i get no excitement out of an easy perfect kill where the AA did 90% of the aiming.

I personally think this game like halo 5 is going live fast and die quick. There’s a short-lived satisfaction you get on controller which will quickly die out when you realise you’re doing the same stuff game after game.

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Accuracy values are farrr from the correct way to compare inputs. It would be nearly impossible to compare M&K with Controller on paper (or at least so complex that you really wouldn’t gain any practical info).
There is input based matchmaking, so the majority of the time, M&K are playing with other M&K unless they’re partied with a Controller user. So this discrepancy in accuracy is mostly AGAINST their own input device.
Strafing is sooo good on M&K since it’s INSTANT max acceleration. It’s harder to hit a properly strafing M&K. They can also peek fire at an insane rate, which decreases accuracy, but you are almost impossible to hit because of latency.
Sure controllers may win at close range because of the assistance of AA, but range is COMPLETELY dominated by a M&K. Getting descoped on controller is WAY more jarring than on M&K because of both the visual effect AND instant loss of AA.

TLDR: keep crosspaly where it belongs. Social. Keep it out of ranked. There are just too many variables.

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I feel like I would like kbm more if the hit registration wasn’t so awful. At least when I use controller, I know all my bullets are hitting, and mostly hitting the head, especially with the BR, so even when I’m fighting terrible hit registration netcode, I’m still getting a better and more consistent ttk with controller, since I’m far more likely to get perfects with aim assist.

I hate aiming slow with a thumbstick, and I hate walking in 8 directions with WASD, so I have a thumbstick keyboard, but it’s still just not good enough to beat using a controller even with the slow jank controls. My sensitivity is maxed on MCC so I aim very fast. Idk why Infinite turns so slow. I spent forever messing with the settings and just gave up, because honestly, I only really need to strafe to nail headshots with a controller anyway. The aim assist locks onto targets without me having to really do much with the right stick except move towards the enemy if they outpace the aim assist.

Something is just very wrong with Console Controller and kbm. PC Controller is the best way to play atm. I guess a very tiny amount of aim assist on kbm wouldn’t hurt, since sniping is stupid hard when scoped in. I can hit noscopes, but when scoped, somehow I can’t. Kbm has to be pixel perfect accurate to land shots.