I've been studying Doom and Quake a lot recently, and I've come to the conclusion that autoaim actually feels really nice. There's something really awesome about not having a crosshair, and just kind of WILLING your shot to go somewhere and having it obey.

Anyone else agree? Granted, it's not a good fit for all games, but for fast arcadey singleplayer FPSs, I actually think a bit of autoaim is actually a lot of fun.

EDIT:

Here, let me explain a little more.

First, let me clarify that I'm talking specifically about faster-paced FPSs, like Doom, Quake, Dark Forces 2... stuff from that era. Stuff where you're doing a lot of moving and shooting from the hip. Not stuff where you're expected to be stopping and ADSing all the time.

What I've found is that when you're aiming with a crosshair, you tend to focus more on lining up the crosshair than on the actual weapon. Naturally. So it kind of creates this disconnect between the weapon and your shots. I had one in my own game for a little while, but I noticed that the movement of the onscreen weapon ended up feeling kind of "fake" as a result. You knew where your shots were actually going, so any bobbing or swiveling of your weapon was just an effect. The moment I turned the crosshair off, the more "real" the weapon felt.

Problem is, aiming without a crosshair in a fast-paced game is quite difficult, and also didn't feel very good. So I added some auto-aim. And now it's easy to zip around and shoot guys even while moving at full speed, but you still feel like you're in complete control. The auto aim just takes a little bit of guesswork out and makes firing while moving more viable. Your shots go where you expect them to go, without the need of an obtrusive crosshair.

You do need a bit of auto aim for Dark Forces 2 as you're often firing highly dodgy blaster weapons at enemies outside the effective range of the average high calibre rifle. So in that one I do tend to leave it on the default setting.

Not for me it isn't. :P
Not when I'm using a mouse at least.

I didn't really have any major feelings towards Doom FPS when I played Doom and Duke and Hexen. I generally consider it inferior to actual FPS, though. But then, I had Rainbow Six. That kinda changed my opinion of how things should be.

I did really come to appreciate the auto-aim in Half-Life though.

gawd. imagine if they did a half-life in VR. I wouldn't play it. I wouldn't fucking play it in VR.

Not really.

Forum with mainly old pc gamers and auto aim? Let me grab the popcorns.

Stick autorun on and you don't even need to be present...
Seriously autoaim is naff in fps, it can be ok in third person combat, but mainly no.

I have terrible aim. So it's nice to autoaim. :)

same but i usually dont aim anyway just spray

and autoaim works for doom because you cant look up and down

Autoaim in FPS game, what? Where am I? HALP! :P

For Doom I agree, I tried both zdoom and gzdoom and in both cases manual aiming didn't feel that fun. :/
Not sure about Quake though, I've played the whole game w/ manual aim and that felt alright.

Here, let me explain a little more.

First, let me clarify that I'm talking specifically about faster-paced FPSs, like Doom, Quake, Dark Forces 2... stuff from that era. Stuff where you're doing a lot of moving and shooting from the hip. Not stuff where you're expected to be stopping and ADSing all the time.

What I've found is that when you're aiming with a crosshair, you tend to focus more on lining up the crosshair than on the actual weapon. Naturally. So it kind of creates this disconnect between the weapon and your shots. I had one in my own game for a little while, but I noticed that the movement of the onscreen weapon ended up feeling kind of "fake" as a result. You knew where your shots were actually going, so any bobbing or swiveling of your weapon was just an effect. The moment I turned the crosshair off, the more "real" the weapon felt.

Problem is, aiming without a crosshair in a fast-paced game is quite difficult, and also didn't feel very good. So I added some auto-aim. And now it's easy to zip around and shoot guys even while moving at full speed, but you still feel like you're in complete control. The auto aim just takes a little bit of guesswork out and makes firing while moving more viable. Your shots go where you expect them to go, without the need of an obtrusive crosshair.

Auto aim to me, is like getting whatever it is in Clicker Heroes, that means you can run the game & go do something else & not even have to be there to play it ;p

I like it a lot for the old-school kind of FPS games (Doom, Blood, Duke 3D, etc.), but that's also because I prefer to play those games excusively with the keyboard, without mouse aim. Something about that gives it a certain sense of beautiful simplicity. "Arcadey" is actually a pretty good word to describe it.