This is not a problem with vats, nor is it a problem exclusive to consoles. This is a problem that is real and has been downloaded by pc players thousands upon thousands of times.

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/5606/? 30,808 unique downloads

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/394/? 10,091 unique downloads

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/788/? 4,400 unique downloads

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/1919/? 3,880 unique downloads

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/8309/? 792 unique downloads

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/4873/? 217 unique downloads

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout3/mods/6522/? 390 unique downloads

That's just Fallout 3 alone, I didn't bother looking at New Vegas or Skyrim mods for the same issue. Clearly this is a pc problem that literally tens of thousands of people had issues with.

never had that happen with spells, but definately had it happen a lot with arrows and crossbow bolts

http://http//www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/34723/? 43,115 Unique just for the top downloaded one.

All the combat mods I have made for the last 15 years turn "magnetism" off whenever I find it in a game I play. I first discovered that it was in Oblivion as I worked on my Locational hit mod (for limb and head shot effects). The game makes this stronger depending on your actor's skill level, so that may be why some people notice more than others. But I also make the NPC miss their shots more depending on their skill and movement and other combat conditions.

In Skyrim it even works for melee weapons. You can swing to your front flank and hit an opponent that is on your right or left more than 90 degrees.

That was the very first thing I notice after player for the first 20 minutes.

But it is easy to turn it off in Tes and Fallout via the INI settings. A Bethesda DEV once said "that is what the INI file is for" referring to making such tweaks to your game. But I guess that is no help for console users. On the other hand console users may need it because the aim controls can leave a lot to be desired.

If you have fallout 3 loaded.. the easiest way to see it, is get a rifle head toward the brotherhood home, you will find a group of raiders hiding under a bridge. If you look closely you will see the group is right next to explosive canister. You take aim at the explosive and magically hit the raider standing 3 feet to the side of it. Its not a question of normal shooting spread, the enemy acts like a bullet magnet.

edit: Anyhow thats how I always think of it, with any of those auto aim off mods you would hit the canister, or at least miss it due to bullet spread.

I have seen this on PC. Mostly with miniguns. But it's never been a problem with single shot weapons on PC or 360 (I.E. Gauss Rifle/Anti-Material Rifle)

Soooo yeah....

Recorded a video of it with the laser rcw. Will upload tomorrow hopefully

Sorry if it's been mentioned, or debunked.
But I always thought the aim was reflected by what your skills were set at. I know I've had plenty of ammo wasted on shots that were tip top, only to wind up a stray. It's never seemed like Red Dead Redemption to me. As a matter of fact, I mostly play VATS, because lining up a shot, only to have it miss is frustrating. I much rather have my percentage chance of hitting it up front.

I'm not sure what F4 has in store in regards to player vs character skill, but I imagine I will play using vats only.

This isn't an FPS, this is an RPG and RPG's are based off character skill, not player skill. ...So there needs to be a bit of an auto aim. If your character is a really bad shot you shouldn't be able to completely compensate for that with your awesome real life FPS skills.

As has been discussed, combat has had significant attention since the last game in the series.

We'll know in 32 days.

I highly doubt we'd see a return of the Hit-mechanic as it was in FO3 and FONV.

FO4 seems to really want to nail those first-person shooter mechanics, and that can simply not be married with bullet-magnet enemies or Neo enemies (that matrix dodge your Sneak shots).

That would fundamentally undermine what they're trying to do when they built up this new combat system.

Considering fallout 3 has sold over 4.7 million copies and only 40-50k people actually noticed and didn't like this over the years that it has been out, that means literally ONE TENTH OF ONE PERCENT of people noticed and don't like this.

Just does not seem to me like its a problem. But that's why there's mod support, so the one tenth of a percent of people can have it their specific way.

Just saying sorry if i pissed anyone off, i don't want you to fell like you're insignificant, just different than the masses

If you're going there, then you should add up all the downloads of the various auto-aim disabling addons. But that's not counting all the folks that tried the game, noticed the shooting was off but didn't realize why and just either put up with it or quit the game. Or those who stopped playing the game for any other reason, before they had the chance to notice this. Or those playing on console. Or...

FO3's shooting was widely criticized which is why they've put in the effort to improve it this time around. It's not an insignificant subset of the FO3 population that noticed that something was iffy with the combat engine, as you seem to think.

I've known about the auto-aim for ages yet it has never bothered me. I'm not even sure I've ever noticed it.

That might be because for me Fallouts are RPGs, not FPS games. Just because you view the game from first person doesn't make it FPS.

For me, Fallout is far, far more than its combat mechanics. It is first and foremost a game set in a unique, post-apocalyptic, retro-futuristic universe, where I am given the freedom to play as the character I choose, and where those choices are reflected in how the world responds to the character. If the combat is real-time or turn-based, entirely ruled by stats or personal skill, is entirely irrelevant to my enjoyment of the franchise. What is relevant, however, is whether or not whatever mechanics they choose to implement in the game work in a logical, consistent fashion. If the game allows me to aim at a specific point, then I expect my bullet to land somewhere that makes sense within the parameters of the underlying mechanics (skills, stance, etc.), not veer off in a direction which isn't explained in any way by those mechanics.

I cannot take this seriously... auto-aim? I'm going to say there is no such thing. Played FO3, NV & Skyrim thousands of hours on PC, and bullets always went where I aimed.

It's especially easy to see with lasers; unaware enemy ahead, set my crosshairs on his head, squeeze the trigger and... BOOM! Kneeshot!

I suppose it was supposed to simulate "character skill over player skill", but now that they've stopped pretending to make RPGs and have FPS professionals on board, i don't expect to see it anymore in F4

This. More attention to PC skill, not player skill, please.

I definitely noticed something was off every now and then, but I wasn't aware of auto-aim, so I just went "huh, that's weird" and moved on. So yeah, you can count me in the category of those that noticed but didn't know why =)

It was especially obvious with the sniper rifle for me. I completely stopped using the Reservist rifle because I could never hit a damned thing with it. Even at 100 skill I'd miss a dead clear shot. Never happened with the Gauss rifle or Harkness' plasma rifle.

I agree, the FPS aiming was so poor in fallout 3/nv I dont see how someone couod even notice auto aim.

But, I do not think there was an auto aim.

I always just assumed since this was an "RPG" and not a "fps" they put a randomizer on all bullets where they would have a chance to change direction due to the stat bases mechanics trumping my FPS skill.

While character skill should be reflected in combat, it doesn't have to come in the form of an auto-aim mechanic. Skill can be just as easily reflected damage-side, with higher skilled characters dealing more damage per hit than lower skilled characters. This would reflect the fact that not all hits are equal ... vital organ vs flesh wound ... and that the skilled shooter is more likely to achieve the former than the latter. This way, character skill is still rewarded without actually compromising the shooting game.

Ultimately, the effects of higher skill in an RPG boil down to killing enemies quicker (and therefore spending less time being shot at) and expending less ammo while doing it. Whether this is achieved accuracy-side or damage-side is largely irrelevant as far as character skill is concerned, but auto-aim changes the feel of the shooting and is therefor less desirable to me.

Gun sway was a good indicator. I mentioned this in another thread, and I hope there will be gun sway in FO4 as well to indicate lack of skill.

It's more noticeable when using laser weapons. In you use the Laser Rifle/RCW in New Vegas, you can definitely see that the beams will not hit the same spot where the aiming reticle is if enemies are inches away from it and will attempt to hit them instead. This is even more noticeable if you move around while shooting.

Fallout 3 and New Vegas certainly had some issues with aiming, and it wasn't always related to character skills but rather the mechanics themselves. I play primarily in 3rd person and there were certain distances at which you ran into the problem where your shots weren't going where your reticule was aiming.) Or there have been times when I'm trying to shoot at an explosive object but the auto-aim pulls the shot toward the guy standing behind the barrel instead. Those aren't cases where I'm experiencing wobble due to my character's low skill, which I'm actually in favor of - but rather the fundamental mechanics are giving out counter-intuitive results.

It's also one of those things where you may not always notice it happening, but then once you do it's kind of hard to ignore. For example, the first time I played through Fallout 3, I didn't notice any disparity between my aim and where the shots were landing while in 3rd person view. But then when I went back and played through again it started to creep up on me. Since I was more familiar with the controls and how things played I had more "headspace" to pay attention to the finer details of the mechanics, I suppose. Or I'd start noticing opportunities for exploding barrels and the like more often, start taking bigger chances. After that, it was just hard not to notice every time it happened.

My last play of Fallout 3 I was constantly going from 1st to 3rd-person, not due to personal preference, but just so I could get my shots to line up right in certain situations.

They've said that they put a lot of focus on tightening up the shooting mechanics for Fallout 4, and I'm rather optimistically taking that to mean specifically that these issues have been looked at.

In general, I'm in favor of a bit of auto-aim. This is an RPG, I like character stats to play a role, and that's one manner in which those stats can have an impact. But they ought to, as much as possible, give you intuitive results.

Yea I never experienced this either ...aiming wasn't great but I hit what I meant to hit

What

I've played hundreds of hours on Xbox 360, both FO3 and NV, the sniper rifle is my favorite weapon, I can easily headshot enemies who are so far away I can barely tell their heads from the rest of their bodies, and I have literally never noticed this. And I think it's super obvious playing certain other games like Halo. Are you sure this isn't just misinterpreting the cumulative effects of weapon sway + skill rating + weapon spread? I have noticed it in Skyrim, but we're not talking about Skyrim.

Yeah