Aim down sight cone of fire is based on the center of your screen. Not your sights.

So using the mumble cross hair overlay would be the safest way (except for physically marking your monitor) to mark the center of your screen? Pretty sure Mumble is one of the trusted programs.

As a temporary "fix", yes, placing tape and marking a crosshair at the center of your screen does help.

Problem is, this should not be the "fix" because you still have all this other visual information that is intentionally designed to trick your brain into thinking that the weapon is aimed elsewhere- not only is this a terrible long term solution but it is really distracting until you practice ignoring the very thing your brain wants to use to judge the shot (i.e. the actual gun sights).

Not only this but it is not like this happens on all occasions or with all scopes. For instance, shooting from the hip? No problem, SOE gives you crosshairs that always point towards direct center and are spaced so as to represent the size of the COF (wow, not only do they help indicate where the true center of the COF is located but they also show you the size of the COF... fictitiously with a HUD... when you are shooting from the hip). Maybe this is why so many people say "you are ADS, you are doing it wrong" (for the record, no, I was not doing it wrong- SOE was).

Using a high powered scope? No problem, SOE actually does this correctly- sure, there is "scope sway" (i.e. the background moves relative to the crosshair) but who cares because your crosshair is still representing where the center of the COF is located and thus aiming is a breeze. Using the HSNV scope? No problem, again SOE lets you see where you are actually aiming. Aiming down sights with any non-overlay scope (i.e. all but the HSNV and long range scopes)? Sorry, you're screwed- not only will SOE not give you accurate information about where you are aiming but they actually give you misleading information. Play LA? Well, you're double-screwed because all those times you use the jetpack the useless shiny graphic will obscure the center of the screen and thus the center of your COF- the gun may appear to pointing straight up but rest assured the projectile still fires focused on dead center screen.

Basically, all the gun animations are just cheap graphics pasted over your screen that have exactly 0 relationship to the mechanics outside of letting you know when you are reloading. Justification? You guessed it, "immersion" (or "realism"). Yeah, really immersive (or realistic) to make a FPS with intentionally misleading information regarding your aim for only some of the options available (and, oh yeah, they still have that really useful fictitious HUD to tell you exactly what is happening when you are shooting from the hip).

Worst part is that people who use the mid-range scopes and frequently ADS are likely (1) to be the very people who care about accuracy and/or (2) be in the very situation where accurate aiming is important. We unlock these misleading (read: broken) scopes with certs. We equip an item specifically devised (in real life or any decent FPS) to give us better information about where the projectile will go, we hold down a button to have this information and all the while sacrifice our FOV as well as our movement speed and what do we get in return? We get tricked into thinking the projectile will go where the crosshairs say it will- we actually get distracting and incorrect information. Sadly, people who care most about aiming and are actually good at lining up the crosshair correctly are the very people who are punished the most.

The crosshair is arguably the most important thing in a FPS. Sights being bad is one thing, sights that actively work against your ability to aim is a core gameplay issue. How can you spend millions of dollars developing a FPS and do such a poor job on such a central element?

Honestly, it feels great to go from PS2 to just about any other FPS. For a while I wondered why other FPS felt so much tighter and thought it was just lag or something related to how information is handled on the client side. Now I know why other FPS games feel so much better to play- because they actually let you know where you are aiming.

How do you do this?

How sad do you think it is that you can play the game so much better by completely scraping the central graphic design of the UI?

How long before they release consumable implants that actually give you an honest sight? Lol.

I know it takes a lot of work and intelligence to program complicated games but wow- is there no programmer at SOE that took basic physics? First it was flinch and any bright 10 year old could have told you the way they initially implemented that was bogus- still took 4 months to find and fix. Now it turns out all the while we have been playing we've been duped into thinking a crosshair is a crosshair- how silly of us.

I said it before in another thread on this topic but honestly I think I and a lot of other people would have clued into this a lot sooner if we had thought, for just one second, that they would really do something like that. I had to watch hard video evidence twice and then try for myself because I was so convinced that they could not have possibly done something like that. I feel like an idiot because it is so obvious and yet I am sure the only reason it did not slap me in the face in the first week of playing is because it is so stupid.

I mean, look at all these different stats for weapon performance- COF with different values for different situations, starting COF different from a multiplier, COF bloom, etc. etc.- I just kept thinking it had to be something like that. Nope, its a magic trick like slight of hand. See all these stats! Just look at all these stats! Look how complicated and quasi-realistic all this is! Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! Or apparently, all the graphics...

Lol, you could setup a macro depending if there is actually a key to turn off your HUD (every mmo has one but I am not sure if PS does). If PS does have it you can make a macro so when you press right mouse button it turns off HUD and enables mumble overlay. Then when you release right mouse button it disables mumble overlay and turns the HUD back on.

And this is why you all use HS/NV

SOE should implement this- fix their broken game with a Mumble overlay macro. Lol.

Why should I bother fixing (or playing) someone else's broken game?

Personally, this is really quite a big let down. I played avidly from Beta and only a couple of months ago did I start lessening my gameplay. Just recently I started playing again and just when my old frustrations began returning I saw the reddit post and ever since I just cannot get into anymore. I'll log on, equip a HSNV scope so I can draw a real crosshair- play for a little while and get annoyed at how distracting the actual graphics are during gameplay, wonder why I am not playing a FPS that has the basic elements actually decently coded and then go play one of those.

*sigh* I wish TRIBES had a MMO version.

EDIT: Also, FYI, "gun bob" is hardly realistic in itself- go get a real gun (or a broomstick if you do not have one) ADS and strafe at comfortable speed. Now, take note of how much your real gun (or real broomstick) bobs when you move relative to your sight picture. Notice anything? Anyone else wondering why a properly held firearm would bob around yet your head (visual field) would not move relative with the sight? Do PS2 characters have Jello bones in their arms or what?

Informative and disappointing.
Like so many things in this game, it's a hidden system that can be mastered by veterans but will handicap new players that don't understand it.

Also this.

Most FPS games do this, Battle field 3 is the same way.

As long as you are centered you can keep firing at you enemy even if an animation shows you gun pointed down on the screen

Really? I've never played the Battlefield franchise but I can name several modern FPS games that do not do this- at least while ADS.

Moreover, even if it were true that most FPS games do this, that is no excuse. First, it is no excuse because not all of the crosshairs do this; firing from the hip = accurate crosshair; HSNV = accurate crosshair; long range scopes = accurate crosshair. Second, it is anything but realistic- unless you are crap with a firearm then strafing or turning at a comfortable speed while ADS should not produce this kind of an effect- at the very least, your visual field (read: head) should be moving relative with your sights and thus the proper effect should appear more like "scope sway" where the background bobs relative to your sight picture not the other way around. Lastly, the entire purpose of a crosshair in a FPS (and in real life) is to help judge where your projectile will travel- intentionally coding the graphics of the crosshair to misrepresent where the barrel is aiming is neither realistic or intriguing from a gameplay perspective.

Also see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflector_sight

There's no reason to turn the HUD off, since it's actually accurate. The problem is the ADS, which actually removes the accurate HUD crosshair (the removal happens because it's confusing to have two aiming systems displayed at once, much like the problem we get if using an overlay of any kind)

There is a way to toggle weapon visibility off (very similarly to toggling HUD off), but the weapon is unusable in that state from what I recall, can't test atm.

Last time I checked you are correct, disabling the graphic disables the weapon.

Doesn't work in PS2. You can disable the complete UI including weapon and crosshair with ctrl+F10, but you can't shoot then either.

That is what I thought.

So the most important thing in any FPS- hitting what you are aiming at- is complete trash in PS2.

Well this is clearly a bug which will hopefully get fixed.

I wonder if this was a result of the "camera projectiles" fix alone, and whether projectiles actually emitted from the reflex dot previously to this. It would certainly explain why I won't touch a shotgun with slugs for a mobile class anymore.

Nope- there are threads about this going back for sometime and if you read the reddit post (I think the OP provided a link) then you will see Higby defending the graphics.

I doubt it- not only does Higby appear to be defending this graphic on reddit but if you remember back to the early days this is why everyone preferred the HSNV scopes. I suppose I could be wrong but all along since Beta I have felt like there was something off and just kept chalking it up to either COF type values or client side detection issues. I know for a fact the "gun bob" animation has been here since Beta and (1) it would seem like quite a complex bit of code to make the COF center on that moving graphic only in the special circumstances where this issue arises and (2) it would seem like a complete waste to make that kind of code but then clearly have the COF center on center screen for HSNV, long range scopes, hip firing and vehicle weapons/turrets.

I know it is hard to believe but I do think this has just been here all along (and probably mocking us behind our backs).

I'm no pro by any means but I do tend to play a sharpshooter/sniper role when I play just about any FPS and could never wrap my head around why I seemed especially terrible at this in PS2. Who knows, maybe fixing this will not have that big of an impact but I can certainly vouch from recent experience using the tape+marker "solution" that I am more accurate, even though the graphics are still there and quite distracting from the information I really want- my drawn on crosshairs.

I wonder if this was meant to get people to stand still if they want to make the most out of their aim, but it never caught on with people who just can't stop moving...

Eh, I guess the reticule should waver around the center of the screen instead of wavering around an off-center position.

The issue is not the COF. The issue is people expect the COF to center around the nozzle of the gun, rather than the dead center of the screen.

I guess I just don't see this as a problem? Why is everyone getting so up in arms about this? You take this away and this game has less character, just like everything else we're campaigning to take away from the game. Standing fire is 100% accurate, don't aim while moving, hipfire, end story?

Part of the problem is that your gun is 100% accurate while moving and aiming down sights.
The aim point of the gun SHOULD bounce around where your sight indicates the bullet will land, making for a difficult shot. But instead, the bullet shoots dead center every time... which veterans can use to hit their target every time while new players wonder why their sights are so wrong.