Not indicators when you get hit, but that little X that shows up in your crosshair when you successfully hit an enemy that appears in so many modern shooters.

My question is... Why?
Why do these exist? Does anyone like it? Is this something that people asked for?

For me, all it does is kill immersion. It is one of the things that totally ruined FEAR2 for me.
I was excited for PAYDAY 2, but after seeing this in every gameplay video, I'm not sure I'm even interested anymore.

I don't want a freaking X in the middle of my screen telling me when I hit something. I want character animation, blood, and sound to tell me that. Not a little X. And if the enemy is too far away for me to tell if I hit them or not, that's fine. It adds more suspense. It makes it more interesting, not knowing if I killed an enemy or not.

I hate hit indicators. I think it is one of the worst trends in FPS games over the last decade.

What do you think?

Crosshairs started appearing with the early 3d shooters mostly because you had absolutely no way to know where you were aiming. Get a watergun (or bb gun, or real gun if you have access to) and do a hip shot. Compare where you were aiming with what you actually hit.
Thus crosshairs appeared. Some time later, the ability to actually aim down the sights of your weapon was added to FPS games. In that case, the crosshairs are redundant, though still welcome for those that don't want to go through all the motions needed to adjust the sights of the weapon, since your character is supposed to be able to do it himself.

Edit: The post below me seems to indicate that you meant the old shooting arcade indicator, not a crosshair. If that is what you meant, ignore my post above, hadn't encountered something like this so far so I wasn't aware of it at all.

This never bothered me but I can see what you mean by immersion killing. Me and a few friends began to play Call of Duty 4 again a few days ago and every time you hit someone that X appears, indicating someone is there so you might as well continue to hit. It makes things easier but I think it's possible to temporarily delete that option in the console for that particular game.

Not sure exactly what you mean by "shooting arcade indicator", he's talking about how in COD and other games when you're shooting your gun and it hits an opponent a little X pops up and a sound is played everytime you hit someone or a grenade explosion hits someone.

I don't know how to feel about it honestly. On one hand, yeah it kills a lot of immersion and makes the game a bit easier. On the other hand it is nice to know whether or not spraying through the wall is actually getting you anywhere.

Either way it's likely here to stay.

I'm under the impression that in the old arcades (coin-op) where you used a laser gun to shoot at the screen, you would also get a marker on where you just shot. Something like this.

To be clear - a picture of what I'm talking about.
http://media.pcgamer.com/files/2012/08/call-of-duty-hit-sound.jpg

Most notably seen in the last 17 Call of Duty games. I first saw it in an official patch to Battlefield 1942, and has been in every BF game since.

To be fair, I do kind of appreciate it in Tribes Ascend, because that game moves so fast, it is basically impossible to tell if you are hitting anything or not. But sometimes I still wish it were gone, just for a more "pure" FPS experience.

I actually remember when early FPS games didn't have crosshairs; the Marathon Trilogy didn't have them, and a lot of DOOM clones/derivatives didn't have them either. Some games did, like Hexen/Heretic did, but IIRC, they weren't enabled by default.

Honestly, I never really paid hit indicators much attention, and I'm sure that they'd easily be explained away by whatever in-universe explanation they have for having the in-game UI plastered all over your screen (e.g. Google Glass-like mini-screen worn over your eye, helmet with a HUD, nanotech implants, etc.). What actually does bother me, come to think of it, are the various UI elements employed by FPS games to show you from what direction you're being hit. I often find them too distracting, and an addition bit of UI clutter I don't need.

Now that I think about it, Unreal Tournament had an option for hit indicators, they were purely auditory though.