Mildly touchy question. Are you referring to auto-aim, hit boxes, or hitscan weapons? If you’re just talking about auto aim, I don’t believe so. The hit boxes also seem to be gone or made much smaller, although it’s hard to test it out without the ability to do custom games (so far). Human weapons are hitscan, but Covenant weapons aren’t.
If you read the above post and are wondering what language that is, auto aim is pretty self-explanatory. It’s also known as “aim magnetism” or “reticle magnetism”. It’s whether or not (or how much, in some cases) the reticle hangs over your target as you pass by. You can test these things by barely pulling your crosshairs over an opposing target and seeing if it snaps onto the target and stays there until you give the thumbstick a little more of a push. It sounds a lot worse than it sounds, especially if you’re not very good at the game.
Hitboxes are imaginary boxes drawn around your target that will accept damage. For example, there might be a box around the head of your enemy that, if a shot lands inside that box, but seemingly outside the head, it’ll register as having hit the head. The size of the hitbox also tends to change with zoom. For example, if you aim the rifle at an opponent’s head and barely miss (but hit the hitbox), you register the hit. If you zoom in, and, in theory, are more accurate, the hitbox is much smaller, or eliminated altogether. How to test: pop in Halo 2 and fire up a second controller. Have an opponent stand across the map from you, whle you have a sniper rifle. Move the reticle over their head until it turns red. Zoom in and do the same. Zoom in again and do the same. You should notice that the hitboxes, especially around the head, are a little generous in that middle range.
Hitscan is measuring/eliminating bullet time. If your reticle is on the target and you pull the trigger, does the game account for the time it takes the bullet to travel over? The human weapons in Halo: Reach are hitscan weapons. You aim the weapon, pull the trigger, the shot hits. Covenant weapons in the same title are NOT hitscan weapons. To help mitigate it, they’ve also included a “ghost reticle” to help with the aiming. Compare Halo 2 to Halo 3 to Halo: Reach. Halo 2 and 3 has a 3-burst battle rifle and Reach has the DMR, which is a single-fire weapon. In Halo 2, the battle rifle was a hitscan weapon. If one bullet hit, it counted like all three bullets hit. This was changed in Halo 3, where every individual bullet was tracked. There was also a spread introduced, where the first bullet would be right on target where you point, but the other two might be slightly off. compare these to the DMR, which fires one round when you pull the trigger and counts like a hit when the reticle goes over the opponent. One bullet simplifies things without making them odd like it was for Halo 2.
Now, why do those things exist? To help mitigate lag. If there’s network turbulence, and there very could be when connecting to people all over the planet, they’re built in to help shots land. Not only that, but within the community, there are stronger feelings about hitboxes and hitscan weapons, specifically.
