It’s not every day that an FPS game developer questions the advantage Aim Assist gives players in crossplay FPS games, and that’s precisely what Embark Studios has just done.
This week, Embark Studios started to clamp down on Aim Assist thanks to a new patch, which they now felt confident in tackling, thanks to an in-depth review of how Aim Assist works.
The nerfs rolled out in the patch target zoom snapping and camera magnetism and come after weeks of loud complaints from the player base, pointing out that the players who use a controller have a far bigger advantage over mouse and keyboard players.
This isn’t the first time that the topic of Aim Assist has come up, and it won’t be the last. Still, unlike how these complaints usually go unanswered, Embark Studios is actively trying to level the playing ground.
These are the changes players can expect:
- Zoom Snapping Angular Velocity now has a max cap, preventing unintended rapid 90-degree turns.
- Camera magnetism will be reduced to 35% from 50%, making the player’s aim less sticky and lowering the controller’s accuracy.
- Zoom Snapping Time will be reduced to 0.25 seconds from 0.3 seconds.
- Zoom Snapping will be removed from the SR-84 Sniper Rifle, Revolver, LH1, and all Shotguns, as it buffs them more than other weapons.
- Aim assist will ignore invisible players and fix bugs in the existing system.
- Clients running key remapping programs on PC cannot access Aim Assist.
The three most noteworthy changes come with the shift in camera magnetism, which means that the camera for controller users won’t be as great at drifting in the direction of nearby foes – something that Embark Studios hopes will help lower controller accuracy and then Zoom Snapping and key remapping.
Zoom snapping allows controller player’s reticle to snap to an enemy’s head or body when aiming as long as they’re looking in the enemy’s direction.
Thanks to the update, Zoom snapping won’t be as sensitive as before, and guns that previously benefited greatly from Zoom snapping, like the SR-84 Sniper Rifle, Revolver, and shotguns, are losing it entirely.
Embark Studios has also decided to focus on players using remapping programs like reWASD to fool their clients into thinking their keyboard and mouse is a controller. This is a notorious spoofing trick because it allows mouse and keyboard users to leverage both the precision of using a mouse with the aim assist of using a controller.
Thanks to this latest patch, Embark Studios warns that it will detect if players use spoofing software like this and turn off aim assist. This change makes The Finals the first ever FPS publicly acknowledging controller spoofing. Hopefully, it’s a catalyst for other games to follow suit.