Why is aim assist allowed in Ranked?

"a system that narrows the skill gap between beginners and high-level players doesn't make any sense for a competitive mode."

That might be true in a very loose sense - though I could argue convincingly against it - but when was the last time you played a ranked match where the lobby was made up of beginners and pros? And even if you could get into such a match, do you really think the "casual" players would stand a chance - even if they had aa and the pros didn't? AA is just like the tide. It lifts all boats or it lowers all boats. It doesn't selectively raise some and lower others. Until you start talking about PC input devices, which is a whole different can of worms. In the mean time, if you take it away it doesn't change the leaderboard. All it changes is accuracy rates. And not by as much as you think, especially at higher levels of play. Imo.

But wouldn't putting in the effort to "lift that boat" actually make it more competitive? If we're talking about PC servers and turning off AA doesn't even affect the leaderboards, then people shouldn't mind removing it at all. Hearing you say that makes it feel like removing AA for high ranks is a pretty solid move—what do you think about that?

Also, pros matching with beginners feels like a super rare edge case anyway. That’s just how ranked is, which is why casual modes exist, and I’m pretty sure the devs are trying to improve the matchmaking system. Between this and the whole debate about making ranked Solo-Q only, I honestly have no idea what either the players or the devs want this game to be anymore.

What about everything that can be done with mouse and keyboard but is impossible to do with controller? Should this also be removed in the name of fairness?

As someone who plays on console and occasionally teams up with PC players I can assure you that aim assist is not a magic bullet, and I lose just as many fights (if not more) when I meet opponents who use mouse and keyboard as their input.

"But wouldn't putting in the effort to "lift that boat" actually make it more competitive?"

What does "more competitive" mean? I already said I don't believe it would have any material effect on outcomes. Here's what I think it actually would do: It would widen the skill gap in a game where you already have an huge skill chasm. The net effect, or so says me, would be to make already bad sbmm feel even worse. And that's player vs. player in a normally spread lobby. The effect on individual players would be even worse. Those at the top would go to bed one night with 40% accuracy and wake up the next morning with 22%. You're still winning and losing in the same ratio as before, but you feel subjectively AND objectively like trash because you can no longer hit the things you used to hit. Or at least not as much. So if the goal is to make all players feel worse about their performance for no other reason than to create an illusion of better competition... then so be it. You would evacuate the remaining population overnight. People in this game already spend their lives unhappy with their performance. Now you want to make them feel miserable about it?

And we haven't even got to the worst part yet. Do you know what happens to the accuracy of a cheater when you take away aa? Nothing. Nothing at all. You've only made it harder for a legitimate player to engage a cheater, and it was **bleep** near impossible to begin with. You may say that's not important because cheating is minimal or only affects top ranks, but if you did then you would be wrong on both points.

"Also, pros matching with beginners feels like a super rare edge case anyway."

Not sure how much time you put into this game or where you are on the skill spectrum, but all you have to do is go into unranked trios and look at the skill curve the developer lays out for us in the pre-game lobby. When they first started putting out this information a few seasons ago it was pretty common to see a grey area that spanned two thirds of the curve. That's still common today. And that grey area represents an enormous breadth of skill. So sure, if you're at the right hand side of that curve, it all looks good. If you're anyone else then the developer has just handed you a flaming sack of **bleep** and told you that if you eat it fast enough it won't burn your hands. This is almost every single match anymore. And I may not be able to see the curve in Wildcard, but experience has shown me there may as well be no sbmm at all in that lobby.

And then you have ranked where "I can see this match is high gold to low platinum." But it isn't really that at all. That's the range of CURRENT ranks of the players in the lobby, not the rank they will eventually achieve. And given how many players in this game rank up to their ceiling and then just start over on a secondary, you are guaranteed a skill spread in ranked play that far exceeds the visible rank spread. It's not as bad as pubs, but it's not good.

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It's no accident that aa and sbmm keep coming up in a discussion that started out being only about the former. But both of these are the primary mechanisms that developers use to make their games feel playable to normal people. And then just barely. Take away aa and suddenly the pros look a lot more like spray-and-pray scrubs, and the average players have left for some other game that doesn't expect them to wallow in a pit of failure and be grateful for the experience. Say what you want about competition and what you think would happen to it if you got your way, but whatever else you do you're gonna have to come up with some pretty wild math to convince me that removing aa wouldn't cause 90% of current players to leave for Marathon or BF6 or... anywhere. Anything would be better.

Personally, I think those features shouldn't be removed either. You're probably talking about tap-strafing and moving while looting. In my opinion, the best solution is to just make them possible on controller too.

Since tap-strafing is reproduced by spamming the W key, it should be entirely possible on controller if we could just bind 'move forward' to another button. In fact, a player named Ras used to do exactly that. The same goes for moving while looting—things would be much better if they just let us do it through the in-game settings. Controller designs these days have way more buttons anyway, so they really need to give us more depth and customization in the settings.

For someone who claims aim isn't everything, you talk as if aim is the only metric to judge high-level players. And if you're going to bring up cheaters as an example, why not just give everyone 1.0 aim assist? That would actually make it 'fair,' and honestly, that's pretty close to how aim assist is designed anyway.

Also, I've been talking about ranked and the competitive scene this entire time, but you suddenly started bringing up pubs. Are you high or something?

Controller is a fundamentally different input method from mouse and keyboard, so a good user interface has to be different (imagine having to use on-screen keyboard to switch and close apps on your phone instead of swipe gestures). The dual-stick movement-aim was popularized by Halo: Combat Evolved back in 2001 and had long become an industry-wide standard that is engraved in muscle memory of millions of players. If you remap movement-aim from joysticks to buttons, you are entering the genre of games with intentionally difficult controls (like Baby Steps), which is not what Apex Legends needs.

There’s no way around it – each input method will always have their own advantages and disadvantages. Since splitting the game in half and completely preventing mouse and keyboard players from playing with their controller-using friends is the last thing Apex Legends needs, it all comes down to finding the right balance. You can be certain that Respawn is actively looking at the telemetry and if we haven’t heard much on this topic since Season 22's patch notes, it’s likely because the data shows that the game is in a healthy state.

Aim is far from the only important metric in the game - it just happens to be the one we're talking about.

"why not just give everyone 1.0 aim assist? That would actually make it 'fair,'"

Careful saying this one out loud. Because it's partly true. It's not the game I would want to play, and I'm pretty sure you wouldn't either. But if hypothetically they gave everyone an aimbot tomorrow, the game will still produce winners and losers, and the winners will still be the people who are more skilled. The only thing that changes is the skill set being tested.

"give everyone 1.0 aim assist... honestly, that's pretty close to how aim assist is designed anyway."

Please tell me you're exaggerating to make a point.

"Also, I've been talking about ranked and the competitive scene this entire time, but you suddenly started bringing up pubs. Are you high or something?"

It's a pet peeve of mine that anyone anywhere at any time bothers to make a distinction between the two. Make of that what you will. And I brought it up because it's the best visibility on the trash sbmm in this game. And again, ranked is no different, it just has less visibility. You have to actually play it to understand fully how the pre-game lobby rank spread is lying to you.

You completely missed the point. I’m not talking about remapping buttons; I’m talking about being able to bind forward input to an extra button, just like on MnK, while keeping stick movement exactly as it is.

Maybe you've never played on MnK, but doing a tap-strafe without moving your camera requires simultaneous forward and backward inputs. Due to how controller sticks work, that's physically impossible without an extra keybind.

Also, you claim this is 'splitting the MnK and roller playerbase,' but I was explicitly talking about Ranked. Plus, the MnK player count has obviously dropped compared to back in the day.

You guys always ignore anything that works against you and only complain about what's convenient for you. Your arguments are completely inconsistent.