The Question of Aim Assist

So I was watching this video, and many of the clips here seriously have me questioning legitimacy. Hit recognition for these players is through the roof at times, like the guy with the ballistic shield getting a kill each time he hits out with it despite being a few feet away (I can be right against someone and it won't connect) The accuracy, quick scoping without loss of accuracy, shots not going wide etc, and then of course this gem with a console player. Slow the video down to .5 or .25 normal playback speed and watch what happens after that first kill at 4:47. 

https://youtu.be/L1eM868uJfA?t=287

Get a DICE dev in my squad last match and when asking them about whether the anti-cheat in the game actually does anything, was told it works about '85% of the time' followed by: 'life isn't fair, people cheat in games as in real life, get used to it.' 

Some stellar confidence from a member of the development team right there in tackling the issues plaguing the game recently (and increasingly). 

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@Moab23 wrote:

Get a DICE dev in my squad last match and when asking them about whether the anti-cheat in the game actually does anything, was told it works about '85% of the time' followed by: 'life isn't fair, people cheat in games as in real life, get used to it.' 

Some stellar confidence from a member of the development team right there in tackling the issues plaguing the game recently (and increasingly). 

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I think someone was pulling you leg.

My uncle who works for DICE says that anti-cheat works 94% of the time.

An additional thing I'd like to mention is this game's balancing. I have no idea how it assigns you, but it is consistently stacking teams to the point of absurdity. What makes it more frustrating is that it seems to be the enemy team that comes out on top 95% of the time. My win/loss ratio is quickly evening out because I'm enduring an average of ten losses a night to a single win. Enemy teams are not only exhibiting bizarre levels of coordination among randoms, but their teamplay is always better, their scores are always higher, often double, and they frequently have a higher proportion of questionably legitimate players in them. They seem to instinctively counter everything, or always have the right equipment. An example being if I am in a ground vehicle, all infantry will have rocket launchers and all aircraft will have anti-tank weapons. If I'm in an aircraft they will have Stingers, air-to-air missiles, or AA vehicles, without fail. 

Not only this, but recently I'm seeing players below the rank of 50 topping team after team even with S100+ players in the matches. As always, console players are just devastating their way through matches, tanking damage and instantly capping heads. At times it feels like the game itself is being deliberately frustrating, with an example being: I engaged a player with a PF51, hit them with the entire mag, no kill, instantly die from SFAR fire. I shoot a player with an SFAR, and I'm instantly killed by their PF51. These frustrations are overwhelmingly caused by console players getting a get out of death free card through constant headshots. I had people shoot my feet and score headshots. 

I will 100% say that crossplay is totally ruining any experience that this game provides. 

Just a question if a statistics like this exists for BF2042 as well as this one for Halo:

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/r4pqtl/top_kbm_players_are_barely_over_the_50th/

For HALO, this is obvious how ridiculously overpowered aim assist is in this game. It would be nice to have something similar for BF2042 to clarify this once and for all (well, until AA is changed again of course 😉 ).

@DuaneDibbleymy son-in-law plays both on console, based on his opinion, BF2042's is now stronger. Before the patch, it was probably weaker or more inconsistent than Halo's.

So it is hard to use a chart of any player's stats because they are a total of all stats, not pre or post-patch. So just looking at stats now would show them relatively the same or in some cases worse than PC players overall. However, just look at some players' graphs for recent play. A bunch of top console players magically all got better with the patch, which makes sense because they fixed AA. However, if you consider where they are at now compared to KBM, it would look very similar to the Halo graphic. It is just too OP right now compared to how bad mouse input is right now.

Maybe if mouse input was fixed it would be better or more equal, but right now it's not. Note, most of the current devs are console players.

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@Adamonic wrote:

So it is hard to use a chart of any player's stats because they are a total of all stats, not pre or post-patch. So just looking at stats now would show them relatively the same or in some cases worse than PC players overall. However, just look at some players' graphs for recent play. A bunch of top console players magically all got better with the patch, which makes sense because they fixed AA. 

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I took a screenshot of my VCAR stats shortly after the controversial 1.2 patch that addressed the aim assist.  

A week or so after the patch (8/17) my VCAR stats were:

Headshot 17.7%
Accuracy 28.9
Shots Hit 17779
Shots Fired 61519 (calculated)

Now they are:

Headshot 17.6%
Accuracy 29.4
Shots hit 21410
Shots Fired 72823 (calculated)

This is all I need to know:

So just taking a top 5 player in the leaderboard (PC and Console) for overall kills with at least 2500 kills with each weapon in their top 10 (SMG/AR/LMG), then look at HS% for each weapon. Outside of the LCMG (which seems wrong for DsXXXX), the Console player with a huge sample size and a ton of kills has a HS% 2.9% higher than one of the best PC players in the world with 9 out of 10 weapons with a higher HS rate. That is over 15% more HS kills and that is the total since the game launch, not just after the patch. I am sure that rate is even higher now, probably considerably higher because it was broken before. I would not be surprised if that difference is double now, more like 5-6% higher which would equate to 25-30% MORE Headshot Kills with automatic weapons. That is insane.

That is all I need to see. These players both have a ton of kills with each weapon and are both in the top 5 in the game in overall kills. There should not be that big of a difference if input was even. AA is too strong, it targets and sticks while awarding too many headshots. Play against bots on medium or high difficulty. It feels very similar on my end.

Now as a Console Player, it is not their fault. AA was jacked for a long time, but I think they made it a little too strong with how bad the mouse input is. If they fix mouse input, it may make it more of an even playing field, but right now it is not.

Just to note, the top PS player with over 2500 kills with most of those weapons (ARaXX) has 8 out of 10 weapons with a higher H/S rate than DsXXXXX (MP9 and LCMG lower). 

There are some PC players with higher HS rates than DsXXXX, but a player like EnergisedKXXXXX (XB) also has higher rates than QuXXXX. If I have more time, I will take the top 5 players from each platform and average their weapon HS rates as a group and compare that way so people don't think I am somehow cherrypicking.

In general, it makes sense for DICE to make the game easier/better for console players as they make up a bigger percentage of the playerbase. So if you can't make it even, make it better for the majority. 

@Adamonic 

I've said it before that I thought that they went overboard with that patch that allegedly "fixed" aim assist.

I would say with data you've gathered we can put to bed that "Aim-Assist isn't working" fallacy, ever since that patch the majority of my deaths have come from console players pulling off some pretty incredible feats of marksmanship.

They should probably reverse or at least halve whatever value they changed or "fixed" with that patch.

@Adamonic Choosing top console players probably isn’t the best for comparison. There is the problem of KBM adapters which is certainly more common among top players.

I have played 2042 on my sons series x and it’s harder to miss than hit lol and the recoil is absolutely non existent.

I understand aim assist is needed but to this extent is absolutely insane!

Instead of using PC player 'Tres' I used PC player 'Dos'.  Still comparing to Xbox player 'Cinco'.  I provided both overall accuracy and headshot%.

Simply using a PC player one position up on the leaderboard tells a different story.  I think we might want to save our outrage until we get better data.  

@emerson1975Why don't you just keep playing on Xbox? I tried to check your stats on Xbox but of course your profile is private. Why am I not surprised?

Blind test

Sort by time played, find players with over 50K total kills, KD over 2.5, over 3K OBJs captured with no insane number of kills with vehicles. Go down the leaderboard to around #200 to get rid of any extreme player and grab the first Origin icon and XBox icon that are next to each other and compare:

The result? Even worse than before. This Console player has a 6.6% better H/S rate than a comparable PC player. For some weapons over 10% better, which equates to sometimes twice as many H/Ss than the other player. Double for LCMG. These players have over 1500 kills with the LCMG, yet one player gets a H/S over a 1/3 of the time. 

I will go average a random consecutive group of 25 players from each platform and post the average H/S% next, at #500 on the time played leaderboard.

@ATFGunrYeah there are a ton of videos on it, even seeing thru vegetation and light smoke. Unfortunately, that is just where we are with gaming nowadays. Consoles are the primary platforms so they have to cater to the lowest denominator. However, even average players become really good, and really good players become insane.

I won't name names, but after going into the leaderboard for some comparisons, I saw a name I played with a few days ago. The guy/gal was 50-2 on BT Stranded, which is possible, but the next best was like 30-5. Console player, HS Rate 29%, K/D 5.4. So I just quit when I see one of those names on the scoreboard, why bother?

Here is an average H/S rate for a random group of players. I started at the 500th player on the time played leaderboard and only used players with a K/D of over 1.5 to be fair.

A couple of the ones in the 30s were sniper campers, but I left them in there anyway to be consistent. So Console players, in general have a 2% better HS rate (which is close to a 10% boost). Also, of note, 24 of the 25 Console players had an average over 23% while PC players only had 16 of 25. That also tells me the game is very forgiving for Console players. 

I am done comparing, I have seen enough, and these are total numbers and not since the patch. Since the patch, these numbers are considerably higher for console. 

If they are not going to further address mouse input, they really need to consider tuning AA down a little bit to make the numbers on par with one another. DICE has the info, they know AA is strong right now. However, that is fun for console players, so why would they change it? This is not a competitive game and the player count is so low that any change or lack of change barely has an effect on the player count. Can you imagine releasing a limited time event (for the first time in a title) and not even bring in any new players? That had to be sad AND embarrassing. Last Tuesday the Steam Charts peak players was 9274. On this Tuesday, the first day of the event, the player peak was 8761, so they technically LOST players with the event.