this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2025
90 points (92.5% liked)

PC Gaming

12990 readers
526 users here now

For PC gaming news and discussion. PCGamingWiki

Rules:

  1. Be Respectful.
  2. No Spam or Porn.
  3. No Advertising.
  4. No Memes.
  5. No Tech Support.
  6. No questions about buying/building computers.
  7. No game suggestions, friend requests, surveys, or begging.
  8. No Let's Plays, streams, highlight reels/montages, random videos or shorts.
  9. No off-topic posts/comments, within reason.
  10. Use the original source, no clickbait titles, no duplicates. (Submissions should be from the original source if possible, unless from paywalled or non-english sources. If the title is clickbait or lacks context you may lightly edit the title.)

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
EXiLExJD@lemmy.ca
UncleBadTouch@lemmy.ca
KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com
90
According to Steam, the average PC Gamer [recursive reference from PCGamer] writer played 72 games this year (56% of which were new) and used a controller more than we'd like to admit (www.pcgamer.com)
submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by alessandro@lemmy.ca to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca
38 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] warm@kbin.earth 0 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Aim assist just lowers the sensitivity when you are aiming on an enemy. Games now have auto aim (called aim assist for some reason) that aim for you, snap on and follow the player around without even giving more input.

[–] Sylvartas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Nowadays "aim assist" is just the name given to the whole suite of controller aim assistances. At least at the studios I worked at. It includes:

  • Snap : "snapping" the aim to the closest target. For an easy example, it's typically very strong in Rockstar games, where you trigger it by simply pressing the aim button
  • Tracking : automatically tracks moving targets, if the player is aiming at them (again with a Rockstar games example: this is what happens after the "snap" when you just hold the aim button)
  • Head/weakpoint assist : reduces sensitivity when aiming at/around heads (or other weak spots).

These terms are just the ones I use personally, but at least none of my colleagues seemed to think they were too vague or misleading. There are also a lot of other mechanisms but these are the main ones. But I think you're right in saying that the dramatic snapping assist most games have nowadays have made the head assist mechanism almost redundant (though it is still present in many games, where it can come in handy for minute adjustments after the snap)

[–] warm@kbin.earth 3 points 2 days ago

Yeah, it's ridiculous now. I think it was a combination of trying to give less skilled players more of a chance and trying to give any controller user a chance versus keyboard and mouse, with the crossplay craze. Ended up being a disaster, it's hard to take it away too, because people are used to it.