Embark Studios is enhancing Aim Assist in The Finals with a new patch. While this is an unusual step for an FPS in this day and age of cross-play, Embark says the change is the result of "a thorough examination of how Aim Assist works that could only be tested with a player base as large as ours."

The nerf, which targets "zoom snaps" and "camera magnetism" among other factors, comes after weeks of somewhat loud complaints from The Finals community that it favors controller players too much over mouse and keyboard players. Aim assist is a thorny issue in shooters where PC and console players compete under one roof. Mouse users' pleas tend to be politely ignored, but this is a rare case where a developer actually agreed and did something about it.

As of patch 1.4.1, released today, Aim Assist includes:

Perhaps the most important change on this list is one that weakens zoom snapping. Zoom snapping is an invisible force that guides the controller player's reticle to the enemy's head or body when aiming, as long as the player is looking in the enemy's direction, and the aim is fixed there for a certain time. While zoom-snap is not as sensitive as it used to be, the bigger problem is that guns that previously benefited greatly from zoom-snap, such as SR-84 sniper rifles, revolvers, and shotguns, are completely lost. Therefore, using The Final's precision guns with a controller should soon become more difficult.

In general, the controller's "camera magnetism" has also been reduced by 15%, making the controller's camera less good at vaguely drifting in the direction of nearby enemies; Embark expects this change to "make the controller less accurate."

The last bullet is also interesting: Embark is targeting the recent increase in players who use remapping programs such as reWASD to mislead clients into thinking that their keyboard and mouse are the controllers. Such "spoofing" tactics have long been a problem in console gaming, where mouse users can take advantage of both mouse accuracy and generous aiming assist Embark has been able to detect whether such software is being used and disable aiming assist Embark states that it is now possible to detect whether such software is being used and disable the aiming assist.

The Finals was the first shooter to publicly acknowledge controller spoofing on the PC, but it is far from the only game to do so. As awareness grows, the effect will snowball, and by 2024 this practice may be eliminated.