Apex Legends developers at Respawn Entertainment have confirmed they are still evaluating the power of aim assist in the battle royale as more players switch to controller as the superior input.
Aim assist debates in shooter games are never-ending. Players on Keyboard & Mouse believe it’s an unfair advantage for controllers, while players on controller argue it simply levels the playing field.
While it’s true that playing on a mouse has distinct advantages over aiming with a toggle, aim assist is intended to balance this. In Apex Legends though, many argue that it is over-balanced, resulting in aiming with controller simply being better than mouse.
Respawn, the developers of Apex, have repeatedly acknowledged the complaints about aim assist in the past, but are yet to make any significant changes. Although they said they are still looking into it, they have no changes planned – for a number of reasons.
Speaking at a press conference for the release of Season 18 on August 8, the developers were asked if players can expect any changes in the update to aim assist.
No aim assist changes coming in Season 18
Unfortunately, for the aim assist haters, there are no changes coming anytime soon, but that doesn’t mean Respawn are unaware of the issues.
“We’re definitely looking at aim assist,” Respawn said. “We don’t have any changes at this time, but it’s definitely something we want to address.”
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In Season 18, SMGs are getting a nerf, and part of this, Respawn said, is because controller has made SMG’s ‘meta’: “It’s becoming more apparent that the reason the SMG meta is the way it is is because of controller.”
Why Respawn isn’t changing aim assist – yet
So, why are Respawn not rolling out a nerf to aim assist?
Because in order to do so, there is a lot of code that would need to be unraveled and put back together. The complexity of aim assist coding means it is not a simple thing to change.
“It’s a technically deep and complex system,” the developers said. “We’re going to have to unspool a lot of stuff to get to a point where we feel like it’s in a better spot.”
They described aim assist as a “very fragile system,” and that they would need to thoroughly assess changes to make sure they are “healthy” and “an improvement” to the current status quo.
So, don’t expect any aim assist nerfs any time soon (good news for controller players), but don’t rule it out at some point in the future either.
