Destiny 2’s guns won’t recoil on PC as they do on consoles

Project lead says aiming drift "doesn't feel good" when using a mouse.

https://youtu.be/XLxBuglID7g

When Destiny 2 brings the first-person shooter from the console to the PC later this year, the developers at Bungie want the gameplay to feel the same across platforms. But there is at least one important change being made to make the PC edition of the game play differently for keyboard and mouse players.
"For instance, there’s no recoil on guns on PC because recoil on the controller feels really good," Destiny 2 project lead Mark Noseworthy said in an interview with Australian website Finder. "'I’m firing, I’m firing, I’m firing, oh, I’m losing control of my gun a little bit.' That feels great, especially with magnetism and all the magic in the controller that makes you feel it. With a mouse and keyboard, you don’t want the mouse moving without you moving it, so recoil doesn’t feel good, so there is no recoil on PC... The basic idea is that some things don’t work that don’t feel good, and those places there are going to be little forks in the road."

Noseworthy later tweeted a clarification from Destiny 2's PC lead David Shaw, who said that recoil won't be completely eliminated on PCs but just "heavily modified from console." You can watch E3 footage captured on the PC version of the game which shows very little drift as a semi-automatic weapon empties numerous bursts of fire into enemies. Compare that to how the original Destiny works on consoles, where many weapons see their aim drift upward or to the side over multiple shots.

The amount of in-game recoil can vary greatly across first-person shooter franchises; as one Reddit user summarizes, "CoD games have virtually none, CS:GO feels like a horse is kicking you in the face every time a bullet is shot."

There are also some examples of games where gun recoil works slightly differently when you switch from keyboard/mouse to a controller: see this illustrative example from Rainbow Six Siege, where recoil is actually higher for keyboard-and-mouse players.

That said, there are plenty of PC first-person shooters where recoil is a fact of life that users have to account for by dragging the mouse during long bursts of fire. Far from something that "doesn’t feel good," that kind of natural drift can be an important test of skill that forces players to constantly readjust their aim as they go.

Strong recoil can also be an important limiter on the accuracy of powerful weapons that might otherwise seem unfair. Then again, Destiny on PC could just increase the randomized "spread" of a powerful weapon's bullet trajectory, limiting overall accuracy (and the value of player skill) without throwing off the one-to-one link between mouse movement and the aiming reticle.

The elimination of recoil could help smooth out a Destiny 2 experience that's overwhelmingly focused on cooperative play against computer opponents rather than on direct competition between humans. Much like prominent aim-assistance on consoles, the lack of aiming drift could provide a more consistent, potentially less frustrating experience, especially for those of us whose reflexes and coordination are not what they once were.

In a follow-up tweet, Shaw says that his intent is "to keep to one design as much as possible" between the PC and console versions of the game. That said, the recoil discussion shows that the different platform versions of the game won't be identical, even absent natural differences between the controls.