This is my third post on the subject of Infinite’s Aim Response Curve (ARC). Parts 1 and 2 can be found here and here. Read them for context.
I wanted to make another post because with the recent proliferation of high-quality, third-party pro controllers, functionality has become common which allows you to effectively turn off Acceleration, leaving you to aim and turn exclusively with the base ARC (as if there's a ‘0’ setting for Acceleration). GameSir’s G7 Pro is currently the most popular controller in our scene, and GameSir is doing God’s work propping up our limping community, so I’ll use their software for my instructions. They are:
- In your Infinite settings, set your Look Thumbstick's Max Input Threshold (MIT) to 0. The MIT is the extent of your thumbstick’s physical range that the game registers as the maximum input. For movement, this is max walking speed, for looking, this is your Sensitivity’s maximum velocity. Putting this at 0 sets your MIT to 100% of the joystick range—i.e., you must move your stick all the way to contact with the outer ring to register maximum input.
- In the GameSir Nexus app, set your right thumbstick’s Anti-Deadzone Max to 96 (Sticks → Right Stick → Anti-Deadzone → Max 96). This imposes an outer deadzone of -4%, effectively placing your thumbstick’s max input 4% beyond its physical range. This ensures that you cannot reach the MIT in-game. Because you can’t reach the MIT, you can’t engage Acceleration. Because you can’t engage Acceleration, you’re aiming and turning exclusively with the base ARC.
- Play.
Et voilà, you are now experiencing Infinite’s raw, Acceleration-free ARC. If you’re like me, words like the following are likely coming to mind: Slow. Stiff. Unplayable. WTF.
Recalling my three points from Part 2 is instructive:
1. It makes close range shooting and 1v1s feel terrible.
PvP in Infinite at very close range (we’re talking melee or near-melee distances) feels atrocious, and it’s because of the ARC. For most players, because of how “stiff” it is, it’s basically impossible to move your reticle left-right fast enough to track a fast-moving player who’s taking up much of your FOV. This leads to what I call “whipsawing,” and it explains why it’s weirdly difficult to consistently three shot + melee opponents at point blank.
2. It leads to excessive engagement of the Max Input Threshold and Acceleration.
Notice how slowly you turn without Acceleration. Effectively disabling Accel reveals something particularly damning about the ARC’s design: it causes players to engage Acceleration when making small turns (i.e., all the time). The function of Acceleration is to enable quick turning, but Infinite’s ARC engages Accel so frequently that it effectively causes players to aim with acceleration. With the base ARC, for even modest reticle movements you simply can’t turn fast enough to snap onto targets without engaging Accel.
3. It conflicts with Infinite’s best gameplay dimension: movement.
Whether it was intended to be or not, Infinite is a movement shooter. Its ARC, however, is about as non-complementary of rapid movement as is possible. When players curb/sprint slide, they change position quickly, and this demands that they turn quickly. Without Accel, Infinite’s ARC + movement would be and is unplayable.
The imminent release of Campaign Evolved is the principal catalyst for this post. 343 has an established track record of screwing up the aiming in Halo games (H5 heavy aim, Infinite ARC), so the release of any new title is now associated with uncertainty surrounding how the aiming will feel. With the transition to Unreal, I’m concerned that there’s elevated risk for them to screw things up again. Bungie’s games set industry standards along almost every dimension, including controller-based aiming, and every time a new team of developers builds a system from scratch instead of building on top of Bungie’s work, the default expectation is inferior quality. Unreal shooters can feel great, but they require a lot of under-the-hood development to get there, and off-the-shelf Unreal is, in my experience, pretty terrible for aiming responsiveness. Hopefully Campaign Evolved feels just like Reach (which would be satisfactory, but not optimal).
If I make another post on this topic, it’ll probably be about how the next Halo multiplayer can have the best-feeling aiming of any Halo game (spoiler: replicate settings from other AAA shooter franchises). In case I don’t make that post, my message to Halo Studios is this: just replicate Halo 2/3’s ARC and Acceleration rate (~600 deg/s, not ~360 deg/s), and don’t reinvent the fucking wheel!
