I'm so non-core casual swayze lil b rocking softcore

@seppli laying down the law here. Great points. It's enjoyable to read somebody actually giving GTA V its due. It racked up requisite praise, but there seems to be a lot of limp wristed digs on it's various systems after the fact. The reality is that almost everything in the game is tight. I use free aim and love it. The shooting, racing, mini games, traversal and city are all wonderfully realized. And auto aim will actually get you killed in some encounters. Free aim lets you be more precise.

I'm having a hard time filling up lobbies in free aim too. A majority of GTA Online players seems to gravitate towards aim assist. Matchmaking is a tad bit more efficient there.

The depths of gunplay still hold surprises for me. Like I wasn't aware for the longest time that I can peek out of cover to get a crosshair, before I fully commit to aiming down sights and exposing myself wholly. Little touches of depth that add up to something special, but if one doesn't play with free aim, all of that is lost to the crutch.

Why would you use aim assist? As Jeff said on the podcast, it breaks a bunch of mechanics:

• Snipers become bad
• You have a huge advantage on foot vs riding in a vehicle
• Micheal special ability is almost useless
• Deathmatch with aim assist is retarded

Finally, I can't understand people saying that the aiming in GTA5 is bad. What the fuck are you talking about? Maybe it's harder and requires more skill then just flicking the right stick while holding the right trigger to mow down all the ennemies but it's certainly more fun and more rewarding.

I really, really hate controllers, and as such am not used to them for anything other than racing, so I used the lock on so it was like I was playing old GTAs. Come at me.

Free aim for multiplayer, lock on for campaign. The controls are still relatively too sluggish and the A.I. in the story are devilishly accurate.

I switched to free aim about halfway through. I think it made me enjoy the shooting more. There were some missions that were way too frustrating though, and I switched back for those, but there were only a couple of times where free aim wasn't good enough.

It boggles my mind that all of the GB crew play GTA V with the auto-aim on. I don't think it's fun at all when it's on. The free-aim feels perfectly fine and makes the game much much better. I started using it with San Andreas (which the free-aim wasn't too great) and haven't turned auto on since. Had auto on for a while with Red Dead, but found it much more satisfying to shoot a man off running horseback when it was actually my "skill" shooting them off.

@foxmulder: the AI in multiplayer have laser-precision aiming and can shoot you way before you even see them. I was flying a helicopter over the Lost camp out in the desert, high enough where I wasn't able to see anyone on the ground and I took enough damage to make my helicopter start smoking up. This combined with how little health you have and how quickly you go down makes me really rely on the aim-assist because it's oftentimes unreal how good at the AI baddies are at one shotting you from across a map.

Free Aim because Lock on is boring in open world games. I played through RDR with lock-on and regretted it after finishing it.

Also, I'm shocked that way more people play free aim than I thought.

I use lock on shooting. The free aim just feels really sluggish to me.

Lock on because I don't play Deathmatch anyway.

Lock on makes shooting super boring, only ever used it to power through some rampages, otherwise I think most everybody is doing a disservice to themselves if they're not using free aim.

@clonedzero: Well after doing that boat mission 3 times in a row with free-aim and still dying from a single bullet from across the map I gotta say I'm not super convinced that the aim-bot on the enemies is lessened with that targeting mode.

Also sharing 3 lives among 4 players is just bad. Considering you die so fast the life limit per mission seems nuts.

Hey, that mission is super hard! there are merryweather dudes all over the place. We almost had it a few times. I wouldn't blame the mechanics for that, it's just a super hard mission.

Call me crazy, but I was having a ton of fun on that mission. The only thing that gave us trouble was the squad of dudes on the dock by the boat and the helicopter. The dock dudes would keep us busy and a stray dude in the warehouse would sneak up behind us and gun us down.

I used to think lock on was ok for online, but the more i play, the more i prefer free aim. Probably because i'm engaging more in the PvP aspects of the game now, and prefer the level playing field.

Yeah. Theres alot of reasons i prefer free-aim. The added challenge and satisfaction. The fact that its not "who see's the other dude first wins" every single time. And a pretty huge one. BEING IN A MOVING VEHICLE ISN"T A DISADVANTAGE ANYMORE.

It's a bummer now that i decided to stick with freeaim matchmaking is slower and i'm seeing a lot less giantbomb folks, which sucks alot actually, they've always been fun. But lock-on shooting just isn't any fun at all. I still dont understand the argument "well i think the shooting is bad so i'll choose the style that makes it worse". Like why would you do that? Gta5 is no Max Payne 3 when it comes to TPS, but its not that bad guys. come on.

The default. What's the difference between lock-on and auto-aim? Sounds like the same thing.

@clonedzero: you're not crazy, I was having fun by virtue of doing stuff together with crew members, but I still died in really bullshit ways a lot of the time. Twice I died on the door to the very right of the warehouse. I'd take cover outside the doorway to pick them off on the inside and die instantly - I think the bullets were literally going through the wall I was taking cover up against. When we were on the boat I thought we had made it but then that chopper man..

Earlier in the day I was doing a mission for Lester that required one person to make his way over the rooftops to a chopper while the other guy covered him from a nearby rooftop. When that was done you fly it back to Lesters warehouse and fend off a chopper along with a squad of goons. That took us a couple of tries also and the mission only allowed for 2 players and gave 1 extra life.

I just don't get why they limit lives at all instead of giving players infinite spawns and the ability to actually finish the mission. It's that weird Rockstar stubbornness where other games have came up with better ways of doing this sort of thing - like being able to respawn as long as at least 1 player is still alive. If we absolutely have to rely on limited lives, at least give each player 2 individual revives, not 2 per team.

The only thing *sluggish* or *bad* about Free Aim isn't a flaw at all, it's direction. The mere fact that the crosshairs only show up when aiming throws many people for a loop, but that's what makes GTA's shooting mechanics special. Nothing quite like *feeling the headshot*.

Most cover-based shooters are childsplay because you get a crosshair to aim from in cover. You don't in GTAV. You either need *feel your aim*, which is always center screen - or you need to peek around the corner to get the crosshairs before commiting to getting out of cover and shooting ADS, and of course there's an actual use for blindfire, which is super effective due to dynamic knockdown/pushback animations on hits. On foot, you can go hogwild and start shooting from the hip with full mobility by just pulling the trigger, you can zoom-in a little and always keep your crosshair by aiming at the cost of movement speed, and you can use your optics to zoom-in even farther by pushing R3.

Most 3rd person shooter's gunplay depth ends with pointing a crosshair, no further thought needed. GTAV isn't like that, and that's what makes it more rewarding - not automatically bad.

Btw. I've beaten pretty much every mission in GTA Online solo while being stuck in the Dunce Pool, the shooting mechanics are definitely up-to-snuff to kill the *AI with the lazer-aim*, as long as you got decent tactics and don't act lazily.

Not to be that guy, but I'm pretty sure auto-aim/lock-on is the level playing field haha

not when you're in a car and i'm on foot its not

And to contradict myself, i've now gone back to Traditional GTA aiming. When i feel like running missions the matchmaking is slow enough already with lock-on - with freeaim it feels non-existent at times.

And for pvp, i just make sure i get out of my car asap :P

I like the free aim, I just wish it was better. The reticle should be on screen at all times