An Aim-Assist Feature Gone Wrong - Elden Ring
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- Опубликовано: 15 июл 2024
- Free-aiming is a creative way to take magic casting and other ranged playstyles further in both PvP and PvE. In this video we talk a lot about free-aiming and the ways it's useful, but also dive in to the topic of a not-really-talked-about mechanic, which is holding free-aiming back. This feature seemed to be intended to make a basic use of casting easier, but the fact that it is baked-in without the option to turn it off ultimately puts a hard limit on how you can aim projectiles, and especially kills their effectiveness in PvP.
If you're interested in PvP, I highly recommend joining the Elden Ring PvP discord.
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0:00 What is free-aiming?
3:40 An unannounced feature
9:25 An easy fix
12:36 What we’re losing out on
Credits
FleaMeKnee, for the absurd lag clip with a player flying through the air and instantly hitting them
Karandra, for the free-aim Lightning Spear Clip
Floozutter, for help with a lot of the demonstrations in this video
Politary, for the meta DS3 caster 1v1 clip • Duels with Cr0noz pt2
Songs used
docs.google.com/document/d/1e...
#eldenring 
Игры
allowing players to turn off unlocked dead zones in the controls would be such a nice change!
player freedom is cool and good :D
having options seems rare in FS games, even the graphics settings are so few (except in best souls 2)
@@bllover1684 no option to disable floating player movement animations
Honestly it should just be off by default with a button you can press to lock horizontal when needed
It's definitely the sort of option that would be very interesting to have, as some builds would be able to use it while others would want it gone
Options to add deadzone customization for controllers would be nice.
If only consoles had access to anti deadzones and acceleration curve customization natively, would make it very enjoyable.
As a DS3 invader who *loved* free-aiming consumables, I remember being so stoked at launch by how much more variety there was to consumables in Elden Ring. I could never put my finger on why, but they just felt so weird to use, and this is absolutely it!
I always knew, that free aiming felt off in Elden Ring, but I was never able to tell exactly why it felt so sluggish. Here comes Amir to the rescue with the answers. Thanks for all of your informative content!
I tried making a Page cosplay build before I realized crossbows are unusable with this feature. Doesn't matter if you use explosive, perfumers or lightning bolts if you can't freeaim.
Bringing back memories of the arbalest with exploding bolts in ds3
@@lossfusionO you don’t have the right
I use the great jar cannon with explosives greatbolts as an alternate while invading pretty much always. It has gotten me a great many kills
I've made the pulley crossbow work but it can still be annoying
I remember grabbing a heavy crossbow around 500 hours in so I could experiment with DS3 style free aiming, but I didn't bother with it much because the damage was so low. Knowing that there's this dead zone tells me I made the right call.
This answers so many questions of occasionally wacky projectiles where i think thats not how i was aiming at all
Thank you for describing the main problem for scouring black flame.
that 25 degree downward deadzone is painful, and the tracking is also really bad. good luck tryna hit anyone anywhere close to you.
I think many intuitively noticed these dead zones but seeing them visualized like this is amazing. Best technical videos for souls content, great stuff Amir.
Im so glad someone is finally talking about this. This feature actually made me quit elden ring a few months ago. I was trying to improve the consistency and reliability of my free aim on spells because I enjoy a battle mage playstyle. I learned alot of the things you discovered in this video after alot testing myself. That aim snapping shit can really get you killed alot in tight situations and felt like a hard limit on my skill expression in the game. I felt like I could excel with so many weapons but magic gameplay has a wall you can't go past. Very sad 😞
That's a lot.
Magic is severly limited in skill expression indeed, basically you can NOT stray from the path in any way. Chain casting, even if broken at the moment, managed to get something out of good decision making and spell choice.
Magic has always had a "wall" naturally. Its just the nature if magic gameplay in these games. It never took much skill but you can still do quite a lot with it in ER. Pretty dumb reason to quit, but ok.
@thegk-verse4216 it really isn't as limited as you think. But even so, magic in of itself never required much skill.
It's strange to me that some people would "quit" playing a game because of pvp in a pve game.
I noticed this first day when I was off handing a crossbow, like I swear my aim felt so off, I had explosion bolts on but even that wouldn’t help the horrible free aiming mechanism Elden ring has
You know what else is wrong? Being able to summon a lebel 500~ phantom and able to turn off taunters like tf they got rid of 6 player limit but still kept blues and resummons
Make Taunters stay on till death like DS3 Bone Finger and we good, simple
I think you should only be able to turn it off if they are no enemy phantoms in your world, otherwise you can toggle it on/off whenever you like. Would be even better than DS3's dried finger that way imo.
@@Amir0 But in that case, a red could queue and you already cut off his buddy !
@@glatykoffi6672 Ideally they would make it so the moment a red starts connecting, it cannot be turned off.
@@glatykoffi6672 in fact it could work in the same way as the other items, you can only deactivate it when there is no one in the world, and if someone is joining the session, the item would be unusable.
I never played a PvP in my life in a Souls Game, and I'm far from being good at the game or playing creatively, but I just want to note that I discovered this feature early on and I absolutely hate it.
It genuinely makes it impossible to hit certain enemies in PvE, with them dodging every locked on cast, and this feature creating a dead zone for free aim.
All in all, I just want to say that it's a massive problem not only for those at the top level of the PvP play, it is also a big issue for a regular scrub PvE caster.
When I did my mage build I also noticed this.Sometimes I would aim slightly down to hit an enemy yet the projectile would fly completely horizontally, so I would then aim heavily downwards, only for the projectile to hit the floor.I was pretty confused since my aim was good enough but the spell refused to go where I aimed.
I've send a short explanation + your video to bandai support. Thank you Amir for doing this! There's nobody in the ER community I appreciate more than you.
Btw., there's one way to still shoot into deadzones.... but it's incredibly difficult. For comet at least, I have to release the shot in such a way that it comes out while my aim goes through the deadzone, at the point where I want to shoot at. It's insanely difficult tho, and really it'd so much better if we could just turn deadzones off.
Could you elaborate on how you do that? Is it done by like releasing lock on and the projectile on the same frame? That would be how I would assume it would work.
@@Amir0 Uhm, no. But now that I think of it, and considering it has been months since I did that... maybe I just imagined it working? ^^"
The idea was following:
1.) I charge comet
2.) I look completely down into the ground, as far as I can.
3.) I snap up while releasing comet, so it shoots out at the moment my characters aim moves up enough to get the angle I wanted
It's kinda similar to how in shooters, you can flick over someone, and while you're still in movement, you release your shot.
But I might be mistaken tbh... sry^^"
@@fullfildreamz Hmm, that's interesting. I can try it myself sometime. Not sure how that would bypass the deadzone.
Yeah, watching you shoot so many projectiles while moving through the deadzone kinda disproved my idea I believe. Not sure why I didn't realize that immediately while watching.
I'm sure Bandai will be very thankful for you providing them something to wipe their asses with.
This is actually one of the reasons I don't use ranged attacks very often in PvE. A lot of the times the optimal range to position and/or enemy height differences will lead to impossible angles to land projectiles and it's very annoying. Especially when enemies have location dependent hitboxes. It feels even worse since a lot of ashes of war fire projectiles with physical based scaling. Something that makes builds that blend melee/ranged more potentially interesting if they could actually be used at more angles.
its like Miyazaki made a pact with Satan. his game will all sell well but the game mudt include "features" designed by Satan. in ds1 was chained backstabs. in ds2 it was agility. in elden ring is this deadzone.
it'll NEVER get fixed. not matter how much 110% of the playerbase complain.
Pretty dumb reason not to used ranged attacks in pve since they can still be very effective.
@CallMeMimi27 I mean, it isn't even that bad. People like blowing things out of proportion, it seems.
However, it very well could get fixed.
@@loubloom1941 "it isn't even that bad" -Satan
@@loubloom1941 For context I have a melee build that occasionally uses ranged weapon arts and throwables. There is often angles where I could be landing headshots with throwing knives or manually aiming at "flying" enemies" to hit them while they flap around akwardly. Due to the deadzone the exact angle to hit in both these situations is impossible at certain ranges, and if I don't land a headshot or am locked on to an erratic enemy it's rarely ever worth it. Either I need to use lock on and the headshots are not possible, or the enemy is moving to much for the range attack to hit when locked on. There's also a lot of instances where I could perfectly angle a cracked pot for AoE, but the angle deadzone prevents that perfect position from being achievable. This doesn't happen as often, but when it does happen it's really irritating.
I Also said I didn't use them "very often". Which means I do use them, but not nearly as much as I would if I could consistently go for tightly aimed shots.
I've been trying to use crossbows (in pve), but I could never hit anything with unlock free aim and shooting locked on for enemies that doesn't just run into you is just a guaranteed miss; at least now I know the reason why.
10:23 Oh god I just aged ten years why is this game so frikkin neglected
Cause they have no incentive to get better
I'm a spellsword guy. I am kind of addicted to the playstyle. If there's one thing people know about me, I am a spellsword enjoyer.
I pretty much constantly free aim. Whether it's an AOE or even something like comets. It makes your intelligence build infinitely stronger, especially in invasions where people are often distracted or self unaware.
I have definitely noticed the things you're talking about here. I thought maybe I was just messing up but it seems I'm getting Miyazaki'd.
If there was a somehow a peripheral available (Third stick on controller or gyro controls in a society where it's useful) I would really want a game with the ability to "lead" your shots when targeting, Like the lock on dot moves with my right stick and when I hold fully right it will lead the spell enough to catch someone strafing right.
Might be a headache to program, but it would've been nice if lock-on works like aim assist where you still have some semblance of camera control but your character is in the lock-on state; the controls will be exactly like what you've described and right stick will affect the dot placement.
Yeah I was thinking about that since I first got a look at Elden Ring's spells. Things like Glintblade just don't feel right that you can't adjust how they aim after you initially cast them.
There's lots of means they could allow you to adjust how they aim, but I don't think there is a perfect means. You'll never be able to have remote control of every projectile u fired exactly how you would like while also retaining control of your chr.
One idea I had tho was you could update the lock-on-target of all your active projectile spells by holding down right thumbstick briefly as you lock-on to an opponent, could have a visual red pulse or something to indicate that you performed that action. Could be really cool as you could free-aim a spell then quickly lock back on and hold to make your spell even more likely to hit. You could also do things like cast glintblades, and last moment switch it's target to a seperate enemy, would be awesome in invasions.
@@Amir0 lmao bring back Binoculars
@@shira_yone OH, that's actually a perfect way to handle it imo, altho the right stick is also programmed to allow you to switch to adjacent lock on targets, so they'd have to make that a toggable option that replaces that function.
There’s one game I know that does this actually. When you use a bow in Outward locked on, the camera control stick becomes what you aim with so you can still move relative to what you’re locked on to, but still be able to aim.
Yes, finally SOMEONE talks about this! From needs to remove this deadzone, or at least give us a toggle option.
Sometimes playing ranged caster, something always felt off: you've succinctly explained why. Fantastic vid and the demo videos of the dead zones were impressively beautiful. Felt like they were a scientific diagram
I noticed the horizontal snapping when i was trying to shoot short stuff like rats and slimes with a crossbow while freeaimed, i dont really pvp unless im playing with friends and wow i didnt know it was that bad with spells, this is really good documentation of the problem and they really should put a toggle in the options, Nice video dude!
been playing with consumables and bows more and more as I mess around with elden ring and always felt the aiming felt really bizarre freeaim, think this is what I was feeling. Crazy how big those deadzones are!
This makes night maidens mist almost impossible to use on covered stairs without hitting yourself. Since the spell actually damages you unlike every other spell, you have not only failed to smoke an enemy out but youve smoked yourself out if you hit the floor or ceiling.
I loved the little touch of adding the jerma rats remix song in the background of the footage when fighting rats :P
2:26 good transition, love how not only you dig up the data from the souls games, but you take some extra effort in the videos when presenting to us, great work Amir!
I've noticed this bullshit happening before but I always assumed it was a bug caused mostly by terrain. Seeing the frame data was really eye opening, thanks!
dang, thanks for the info
and btw, you have a wonderful taste in backgroud music!
Incredible video as always my friend, just something I would never have thought of
A key thing to remember is that a casual who isn't familiar with these games is most likely going to just lock on as it's simple, convenient, and easy while also solving the issue of managing heights but because of this arbitrary deadzone there's nowhere else to go after that for people who do want to free aim and have full control of their character
It brings more issues than solutions, free aiming should have been encouraged by the devs instead
@@glatykoffi6672 Why though? With the vast majority of weapons and spells there's no reason to engage with enemies farther than mid range anyways and you can just lock on for that. You can do multiple NG+ playthroughs without free aiming a single time. Like I said this issue basically doesn't exist for the vast majority of players, granted I think the deadzone is stupid and seems more like a bug than a feature but I never noticed it in over 700 hours of playtime
@@axis8396 I can think of a few reasons why the deadzone causes more issues than it solves.
For starters it's unintuitive. If you realize the direction the camera is in influences where the projectile is fired when not locked on, it's reasonable to assume that it would function like this consistently. The deadzone produces and inconsistency in the projectile's direction relative to the camera angle when within a certain vertical angular threshold. A player who recognizes free aiming is a thing (even if they aren't good enough at it to use consistently yet) may think they just need to adjust their aim slightly to hit something they miss. The reality is that they could've hit, but due to the deadzone certain angles were impossible. If you don't understand it then it appears as too unreliable to use, and if it is understood it feels like the game cheated you out of something that should've hit.
Another issue it introduces is that certain enemy movements (whether form another player or AI) prevent you from hitting them. Locking on fires at where they were and not where they're going to be, and free aiming has limitations on what angles things can be fired or thrown at. The only way around these scenarios when certain free aim angles are not accessible, due to the deadzone, is to use manual aiming. Which can be impractical at mid to close ranges due to the zoom and slow camera movement, or downright impossible with 1-handed crossbows, throwables, spells, and ranged weapon arts. A lot of which would be very functionally useful at close to mid range if the player could free aim them. Angling AOE based throwables and spells to hit as many enemies as possible within their radius also becomes limited. Leading to even more situations where throwables just aren't worth it compared to a single target spell or melee attacks. In fact, if free aiming didn't have deadzones then throwables would be useful for things outside of resetting posture regen or pulling individual enemies. The ability to angle them leading to headshots for openings, or optimizing a throwable's damage radius as mentioned before.
There's also the fact that the deadzone's angle doesn't adjust with terrain, making it even more limiting if you're not on flat ground. I've had situations where I literally could not hit low profile enemies with throwables on slopes because the game decided to throw it straight forward instead of where I was aiming. The locked on throw just completely misses due to the enemy moving around or the arc intersecting with terrain that blocks it. So there was no way for me to hit them with things that can't be manually aimed.
Basically it feels bad, limits what you can do for no logical reason, and makes certain options weaker than they should be. If it was done to "balance the effectiveness" then it's a terrible way of doing it since tweaking the numbers is much better than making it awkward and inconsistent to use free aimed projectiles. Even so I doubt that was the reason it's like this because even highly scaled throwables aren't as effective as ranged spells and weapon arts (which are also impacted and even better than other ranged options that can manually aim like bows).
Also, if you didn't notice it in 700 hours of gameplay that doesn't address the fact it effects a lot of people and is very noticeable to even newer players. When I originally played my first souls game I instantly caught on to how free aiming works, and I'm sure that many others have as well. Even if it wasn't a majority of players, the deadzone still functionally impacts players who don't notice. It doesn't matter whether or not you "noticed" it in 700 hours of playtime. The fact is, many players have. Even if they couldn't put it into words or didn't test it like Amir (and probably a lot of other observant players).
I love how your videos always thoroughly explain and visually demonstrate these secret mechanics which I can only ever intuit the existence of. about a week ago i was trying to kill the nokron mimic tear with a magic pot by free aiming it from a distance which doesn't trigger the mimic to clone the player, and i went through like 7 pots cause no matter where i aimed it would miss. I could only land the pot when i moved to slightly higher ground and closer. I remember thinking something felt janky and that if this was ds3 it would have been way easier. I have also noticed the bow thing where an ADS shot goes to a different place then an unADS'd shot, something which ds3 never had an issue with. so thanks for this.
10:20
You have no idea how glad I am that you also think that the absolute travesty of the netcode for Elden Ring is the biggest problem the multiplayer of this game currently has.
Althought it is only a fraction of the netcode, to me the biggest problem of all souls pvp is the overlapping i-frames that makes roll spam invincible. It erase skill on the most important action of the game, so by extension it is the ultimate skill negater.
Bhs and quickstep wouldn't be nearly as strong without it.
Same goes for phantom hits. Ironically though in the only game that doesnt have this feature, trying to bleed or poison someone was useless outside of certain bugs (bat staff + poison mist for my ogs out there)
Very interesting video. You did a fantastic job with the visuals which made everything easy to comprehend
Love your brake downs on mechanics clear concise informative all in all GG
This is certainly something I've felt while playing before but never could've described it without seeing a visual explanation first, great video
I know you already said it, but this definitely has an impact on PvE players.
Like of course they implement this semi-broken feature, after they introduce a huge design change on verticality, even AFTER sekiro did too and had jumping.
That explains a lot. I do a hybrid melee/incantation build and so many times I've missed a ranged attack that i know should've hit because it went in a weird angle, either into the ground or the sky. Never figured out why it was happening, figured i just sucked at free aiming, this explains why it felt weird.
What a well made video, I didn't know about this but it makes sense when I look back to a lot of the stuff I thought I just missed. Also, +points for the rat song when you showed the rats
wow that's really interesting man, love me some good Amir insights
The music from Rat Movie 2 playing when explaining the example of glintstone arc was too perfect.
Great work! Love the documentation of mechanics.
This drove me nuts all game. Thank you for giving me the words to express my frustration.
Fantastic and informative as always, Amir. Thank you for everything!
Most interesting content I've seen for the game since release. Great demonstrations and followup reasoning.
Great video! Learned bigly
I agree that a toggle is probably the best way to handle the change. Cool experiment by FromSoft to try this though--manually aiming spells is something a lot of people struggle with in these games, so there's definitely a practical reason this was implemented.
This actually explains a lot with my free aiming experience. I'd just assumed i was missing or too latent.
Very informative videos as always, Amir.
Awesome video. I hope the developers see it.
The editing in this video is soooooo so good!
I always felt something was off with free-aiming, but had no idea this was a thing. Great video.
Thanks for the pretty lightshows, best part of the vid ngl
5:13 nice stream bro very strong and dominant, also nice cocc
Awesome visuals and amazing content. Thanks.
That grey closed arena with the ash on the ground really reminds me of the Dreg Heap from DS3 that’s neat.
Great vid amir! 1k hours and I never knew this existed
Amazing research and presentation, as always! This is an important issue for the game and I'm glad you were able to draw attention to it and explain it in such a clear manner. I hope this becomes a togglable option in the future, even though, frankly, it seems to me that the main people who benefit from it are players who are SO new that they've forgotten about lock-on.
The song that plays during the rat section is very appropriate
thank you for making this video i thought i was rusty for so long
Damn this explains so much, I have yet to dive into pvp as hard as I did in ds3 but I still always noticed how cursed free aiming is, I just figured I had the wrong angles though
those directly rendered visualized spell ranges tickle my brain I could look at arcs of colorful magic for ages
really interesting video! and well done very valuable info
Pumpkin helm meta
thank you for bringing light to this issue in such detail. hope a dev sees this and hooks it up for the game.
I noticed the "dead zone" while doing a crossbow build, sadly enough besides being hard to pull off it is easy to ge punished, it can be counter by jumping and also people just can tank the proyectile...
Anyway, i noticed it with the crossbow, but i didn't knew it was also a thing on spells and some ashes of war.
I admire your work Amir
"Thermonuclear Bomb of Haima" 😁
A very accurate description of how it feels to land or get hit by that thing.
And how they were made to look. It is such a great idea to make magic look more like actual explosions we might know of.
The way magic hurts should be more obvious, I still don't know what the er soul spear would feel like.
excellent video great work
Having done no-target challenge runs in every souls game (Sekiro was the hardest), but mostly in Dark Souls, I could always tell that there was *something* wrong with the off-target head-aim tracking in Elden Ring, and I'm quite happy to finally have a clear and visual explanation for what's going on. Maybe it will help me in future playthroughs (I call it a challenge run, but no-target is just how I generally play these games).
Really good. I hope you will also take the problem, that locked on firebombs are thrown in front of the enemies feet, instead of hitting them at the waist as in Dark Souls 3. Same goes for fireballs. When freeaiming fireballs and firebombs you have to aim so damn high into the sky for a far range, that you stop seeing the target in the distance. Its absurd that this made it through testing.
How interesting, I appreciate the breakdown. I noticed it only slightly my first playthrough; as I was mainly melee & dragon, I only used pots & such for projectiles. Now that I have a mag & hybrid phys/range, IT IS SO ANNOYING LOL. Even in pve , I'll usually miss ez crits w a crossbow etc against oddly shaped or enemies that are small. Thx again.
6:54 WOOOO, LIGHT DISC, YEAAAAAH!
Something thag felt intangible now has so many words. Thanks for the video
I can’t believe swift glintstone shard is STILL being slept on
Incredibly well made video!
Amir you are a godsend.
I noticed this while trying to do a free aimed crossbow run. Gave up as soon as I got one.
Free Aiming
Basically a *"Lead Shot"*
Learned it through GunZ: The Duel, same idea but without predicting & calculating the lag delay and without the hitscan range attacks.
16:33 Mood.
Z will forever be depth in my eyes.
I once tried to free-aim bows in third person, ended up feeling worse than ADS aim. Good to know that it’s just the deadzone.
would love to see you make a video on why the game feels the need to level the camera for you when looking left or right and the camera is at a high or low angle and you are moving at the same time
as someone who never played elden ring, this was very good at explaining the problem, i myself would probably have needed less explanation but i currently sit around and play video games every day so most things are like second nature to me
This is one of those things where i knew something was off but couldnt put my finger on it. Ran into this alot when trying to free aim greatbow for a surprise 180
16:25 Y Up, my beloved.
I hope future fromsoft games have some sort of third person aiming for arrows and spells. Its an evolution im expecting to happen.
This feature is in DS3 as well, very obvious on the MLGS and the GS of judgment's projectiles, among other things.
Anyone who tried to aim glintstone Arc down a slope has known about this! Interesting to see it broken down in so much detail
great vid
I hope FS watches your channel xD
Im blaming all the fan daggers ive missed on that deadzone
:3
5:25 Honestly knowing makes why arching attacks feel a bit more reliable for me cause I usually aim about or below where that deadzone is.
8:37. Surprised noone noticed the rat movie background music. Rats rats we are the rats, celebrate another birthday bash.
This was also a problem in Ds3 with the Greatsword of Judgement, the WA projectile either has crazy amounts of deadzone or is completely vertically locked, which made it nearly completely useless in places like the Grand Roof arena.
I've been saying this for a while, but I wasn't sure it was true. Having no real way to technical skills to test it. You've Vindicated my insane rantings Twice Amir. Thank you for that.
I stumbled upon this as soon as I got glintstone arc, and after that when I tried to used unlocked crossbow. This was a great deal to me since I started my first playthrough as a mage. Never thought of it as an accessibility feature. Btw... the xbow horizontal free aiming is very weird too!
"I Beat Elden Ring on This 30° Angle Deadzone and This Happened!"
Wonderful video as all of yours, beat wishes to get the site back up running
The one thing that made hybrid builds at least usable in ds3, if this was in there it would have killed them... Thankfully in er there's alternatives but oof
I noticed this feature when I checked the new additions to the Bullet Param, but what really surprised me was how they added automatic targeting to some spells.
Like, even if free aimed, if there are any enemies in a certain cone in front of you, it fires the spell as if locked on
Worst thing about souls games is they are not made for pc. I wish i could just keybind all spells instead of cycling through them among other things.
The feature of all time!
This drove me nuts with glintstone arc early on with my first astrologer. Thats nice that you can fire it in such a way where it stays flat to the ground but lower like you showed with the rats but I would just always find myself getting screwed over by that huge deadzone trying to shoot it down a flight of stairs or other similar angles.
I also distinctly remembering trying to maximize my range with scouring black flame by compensating for the weird rising hitbox of the flames. The deadzone for that spell is even bigger so annoying!
I thought I was going crazy on my last int playthrough. I hadn't ever had the same issues in DS1, 2, or 3
This is something I was definitely noticing, even in singleplayer.
I have recently been trying to hamfist an ARC/INT build. Which is masochistic to say the least, and the only way I have actually been making it work is mostly with spells since Albinauric Staff seems like the most optimal for the ARC/INT split....and I hate controller aiming so I dabbled with M+K (I used to play toooooons of FPS's so I was like how hard could this be) so I could free-aim more and try to maybe get the most out of it. I think if From took M+K a little more seriously (there's a laundry list of issues I take with the current setup but c'est la vie, free-aim is what we're talking about here lol) it could actually open up a lot of really cool skill expression like you said. In a refreshing and rewarding way, instead of just the unfun cheesy feeling of....locking on and pressing button.
Anyways, I guess this anecdote on free-aim is coincidentally relevant to me, so thanks!
This... Makes me understand something thats been bothering me for a bit. I use a crossbow pretty regularly to mixed effect. Some days I would have decent results, others complete failures. But I noticed that I'd usually succeed when I was using all the bone bolts I had on stockpile. I was literally performing better because the bone bolts drop faster than the higher quality bolts.