Mouse cursor aiming discrepancy + other targetting issues

Hello everyone I am once again asking for your support to raise awareness on the various cursor aiming issues. I understand GGG are all-hands-on-deck just trying to get to 1.0 so something "small" like this is not a priority. Still my hope is it gets some attention because imo it's actually quite fundamental and really affects engaging with what is otherwise, unquestionably, the most mechanically-satisfying combat in any APRG.

There are actually three disparate but related issues that compound to create the jankiness with mouse targeting. The main one, and biggest by far, is 1) cursor-aim discrepancy, and the other two are 2) autoaim & 3) namelocking.

-----------------------------------------------


1.0) Cursor Aiming:
For those unaware, I'll summarise as briefly as possible how this is currently done in the game (and PoE1). Please refer to Fig. 1a and Fig. 2a to see how this works for ranged and melee, respectively, with three example cursor positions:

Fig. 1a: https://imgur.com/NzVBY1R
Fig. 2a: https://imgur.com/0UVEOTF

First, consider a 2D-plane on the ground (shaded green), which for simplicity we'll define as being located at z=0, although in practice the actual z-value in worldspace will of course depend on the elevation of the terrain. A ray is cast from the cursor position in 2D-screenspace to the game's 3D-worldspace. The point at which the ray intercepts the ground (green plane) is determined and the character model is aligned so their feet/hips face that point. Then the character fires off a projectile/swings the melee weapon. This is the simplest way to map the character's orientation to the cursor and works "well enough", hence why GGG and some isometric games do it this way.

The problem with this approach however, is that the path of the projectile (or direction of melee swing) IN SCREENSPACE is higher than the actual cursor position. Furthermore, the amount by which it deviates is not constant: it is zero when aiming vertically up/down and gets worse the closer the cursor gets to the horizontal.

The dashed coloured lines lie on the green plane at z=0 and define the character's orientation based on cursor position. The solid coloured lines denote the actual path of the projectile/direction of melee swing and the X marks the actual location of projectile/melee "hit". Hence, the solid lines and X's lie on a higher z-value than the cursor's ground position, since the source of projectiles/melee swing is actually at the arms/shoulder height - call this the z-offset. This is a fixed constant and depends only on the character's height.

In terms of actual gameplay, what this means is if you want to manually and precisely hit your targets, you literally have to aim at their feet which is patently absurd. And if the monster is far away enough and short enough, even aiming at their feet will not be sufficient and you sometimes overshoot their heads!

1.1) Solution to Cursor-Aim Discrepancy:
In some isometric games, the same thing is done but with one crucial difference which resolves the issue entirely and is demonstrated in Fig. 1b and Fig. 2b, for ranged and melee, respectively:

Fig. 1b: https://imgur.com/1JUj0sR
Fig. 2b: https://imgur.com/OsqOAci

Now consider an additional 2D-plane (shaded blue) which is higher than the ground by an amount equal to the z-offset. The cursor-ground raycast intercept point is still calculated the same as before, but this time we apply the z-offset when determining the character's orientation to correct for the fact that projectiles are emitted from and travel in the blue plane, not the green plane. This means the solid coloured lines showing the "corrected" projectile paths will now always pass through the cursor exactly.

For an quick, animated comparison:
Fig. 1 - Ranged: https://imgur.com/zs0eO3X
Fig. 2 - Melee: https://imgur.com/U73QZbe

This is far more intuitive since now you simply hover your cursor over an enemy's centre-mass and that is exactly where your projectile will land. This is especially impactful for melee. It's a relatively simple change but even in the case that it requires more work than is seemingly apparent, in my opinion it would be absolutely worth the engineering effort to properly realise the Vision™.

(I've glossed over how to actually "apply the z-offset" as it involves some trig and is beyond the scope of this post anyway. Besides GGG can obviously determine which implementation makes the most sense for their engine.)

-----------------------------------------------

1.2) Effect on character rotation when not casting/attacking:
This solution also resolves the jank when rotating the character as you move the cursor around them. Currently the character faces the direction of the point at which the cursor intercepts the green plane. This causes strange behaviour when the cursor is very near the character, as shown by this quick clip:

https://youtu.be/DzRGSPQ4Gf8

We naturally navigate the world at head/shoulder level, so when the cursor is to the bottom right of our character, bringing the cursor in closer but maintaining the same angle, relative to the centre-mass of our char, ought to have no effect on the char's orientation. Instead, as the cursor approaches/crosses the feet, the char will rapidly spin around. The z-offset having a fixed value means a bigger change in the orientation the closer the cursor is to the char. This is unintuitive and feels bad.

1.3) Effect on aimable skills (attacks & spells)
The cursor-aim discrepancy causes jank any time the monster being targeted is not directly above or below and affects every skill in the game where the source of the projectile/melee attack is the character's arms ie. virtually all of them.

- Ranged skills: it is self-evident why ranged feels bad - projectiles do not go to the cursor.

- Melee skills: rather counter-intuively, melee skills are actually most affected since the cursor is typically much closer to the char, as you can see in the Fig. 2 - Melee gif. This is the actual reason skills like Perfect Strike, Raise Shield, Parry and Disengage all feel janky.

• The vast majority of incoming projectiles and melee attacks are also at torso height since the monsters generating them are not flat 2D entities living in FlatLand, so if you use Raise Shield or Parry to block whilst hovering your cursor over an incoming attack, but your cursor is near your char, even a slightly movement might cause your char to randomly spin 90-180deg as shown in the clip above!
• Perfect Strike is infamous for whiffing all the time - THIS is why.
• Disengage will similarly miss all the time, even when your cursor is right on a target, and GGG wonders why most players didn't want to engage with the melee/ranged hybrid system to generate/spend frenzy charges. Many of them tried but couldn't articulate why it felt so bad. I personally loved it - but only when it worked and the game wasn't "misinterpreting" my inputs.
• Tempest Bell is actually one of the worst offenders, where you have to aim at the BASE of the bell instead of just putting the cursor on the bell. And even when you know to do this, the autoaim snapping that sometimes happens with Icestrike, Tempest Flurry etc. will make you whiff anyway!

GGG keep doing these bandaid solutions but just fix the underlying cursor-jank instead and all these problems are instantly resolved, forever!

- Ground-based skills: can remain unchanged since they actually work perfectly fine in the current system since you're not aiming at monster centre-mass but intentionally aiming at the ground, so wherever your cursor is that is where these skills land (Leap Slam, Vine Arrow, Flame Wall, Lightning Rod, Curses etc.).

• the one exception is Tempest Bell where the placement feels terrible, although that is not due to cursor-aim discrepancy, but due to the bell having a collision hitbox so it can't overlap with a monster's when placing. I'm not sure what the fix for this is but I hope GGG look at it. It just feels bad trying to place the bell when against large packs and big monsters/bosses.

1.4) Potential issue due to differences in class height
Every class has a unique model, and therefore different heights, so the exact z-coordinate of the source of projectiles will slightly differ but they will still be around that ballpark of 1.4 - 1.6m. This is small enough that even if GGG did not want to dynamically adjust the z-offset based on each character's height, choosing one fixed value would still be a marked improvement over it effectively being at 0m/ground-level.


2) Autoaim
I'm guessing part of the reason why GGG even feels the Autoaim is necessary in the first place IS kind of a hacky workaround to the above since GGG must know aiming at the monster's feet doesn't feel right. In addition to fixing the cursor issue, simply offer a Toggleable Option to disable the autoaim for those who don't like the game interpeting our commands. Trying to swing a melee weapon with cleave into a tight mob grouping manually SHOULD feel ultra satisfying but it so often doesn't because the cursor-aim issue + autoaim will just wrestle control away from you and aim in a completely different way. Same for any ranged skill with either a piercing or AOE component, which is most of them.

In addition, autoaiming of skills aside, monster highlighting itself has consistency issues. Hovering over an enemy's centre-mass should highlight them, and not require placing the cursor on their feet. It does technically work when aiming centre-mass but it's so inconsistent and if there's more than just a couple monsters, amd either the monsters or cursor is moving fast, it feels really unresponsive. Even if autoaiming could be disabled, the red targetting outline is an important part of the audiovisual feedback to make combat feel snappy, not to mention displaying the the healthbar to see debuffs & mods. Cannot count the number of times I've hovered the cursor over a rare mob to see its mods and just nothing happens.

3) Namelocking
This isn't so much an issue in the early game where the atk speed is low enough that you can realistically tap your mouse/kb skill buttons so the autoaim updates its target to the current cursor position and it feels pretty good. However soon as you stack enough atk speed (doing four, five, six ore more attacks per second) this is completely unrealistic and makes holding skill buttons feel AWFUL because you can't respond to threats/switch target rapidly by moving the cursor without furiously tapping the keybind - just asking for carpal tunnel. Not to mention, you'll often find yourself clearing mobs and panning your cursor and then randomly notice desync as your character continues firing in a particular direction nowhere near your cursor, because of a tanky mob/rare, instead of continuously updating the firing direction to where the cursor is. Super jank.

4) Closing thoughts
Since PoE1 has worked this way for its entire existence, it is perhaps *intended* behaviour and is unlikely to ever be fixed because GGG probably don't see it as broken in the first place. I sincerely hope they reconsider. They've done such a brilliant job with the combat from animations/effects/sounds/graphics to give the combat real weight, as most everyone agrees, but personally the above issues really detract from the experience. The game's still super fun but has the potential to be even better and I hope others agree.

Hitbox too small for range attacks, monk hand skills can get blocked by terrain and still considered used.

Been struggling with the exact issues you've described since I took part in the closed beta and through EA launch until now. I have no idea why more people aren't talking about this issue, it negatively effects gameplay every single time I play. GGG, please fix this - making melee feel good is one of your mission statements and this is one of the biggest reasons it feels bad, as well as also effecting traditional ranged gameplay.

Yeah it really boggles my mind aswell there isn't much more discussion around this. I do see a few comments here and there and it gets a decent amount of upvotes/replies but way less than I think it ought to. Consider me thoroughly boggled.

+1

Very nice post. Have been talking about this issue since forever, it's insane that after so long there's still not even a toggleable option for autoaim which is absolutely horrible

bump

there's definitely something wrong with targeting in this game, sometimes i have a target selected and when i use a skill it goes to a totally different direction with no enemies at all, it's crazy

GGG Pls fix, targeting is currently horrible.

Good post, precision is basically required for some endgame encounters; whiffs at high levels can cost you a trip back to the last checkpoint.
This issue seems like it would be a relatively easy fix, hopefully it'll come to the developer's attention before the full release.

You must put me in touch with your dealer my friend cos you are on some top tier shit rn