If you were involved with TM 2012 during the initial months and were part of the crowd that was disgruntled about the difficulty to dodge weapons, you may have played some matches with manual aim (all players on the same team with friendly fire enabled) or imposed rules to reduce the impact of auto-aim. And more likely than not, you found it to be boring. With the limited skill players had with most weapons and vehicles, fights were usually quite drawn-out and stale to the point manual-aim matches became such a niche variant that they were entirely dropped by the community. By the time competitive scene was established and there were consistent rules for battles and wars, most everyone committed to play the game by the broader rules.
A number of vehicles/tactics were banned as they were found illegitimate or broken, but banning auto-aim entirely imposed a whole new set of rules. Truth be told, veterans in TM 2012 hadn't played no auto-aim rules in many years, and certainly not since players reached their primes after years of playing. We do goof around here and there, mixing up some settings and playing some minigames in a casual setting. However, since most of us found those rules to be boring at that time years back, that stigma has carried over the years. However, in light of some recent chats (partially influenced by posts here as well) I've arranged some lobbies with modified no auto-aim rules, which are outlined below. Note that any other weapons with homing ability are not listed because they are considered consistently dodgeable.
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No homers.
No snipers.
Half-charge stalkers at maximum.
Do not use remote bombs for homing (environmental and detnoballs are fine).
No DW, RK, OL or VM primary or secondary special.
No MW primary special.
No DS seconary special.
No rockets sidearm.
Only use freeze missile from close range.
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We've played by these rules a number of times now, and I recorded a few matches on one evening as shown below. Note that in this lobby there's a range of skill and not every player is a veteran stretching back to the game's launch, but everyone's a respectable players nonetheless. There's a couple instances where homers get misfired, or stalkers may get a tad overcharged, but the impact is negligible. Health was also banned for these matches, aside from mercy bonuses. The recording for the Axel video skips a tad later in the video, sorry for that.
Once you take away the auto-aim, the game appears much more resemblant of previous TMs in terms of deliberate offence and defence. There's a definite presence of stagger-based combos, and both the potential for deliberate and by-chance dodging is evident. One thing that can't be erased is the speed of missiles which really shorten reaction times if playing a lightweight, and can make some weapons impossible to dodge for a heavy if they aren't already driving at a proper angle from the attacker to be able to avoid it. This means heavies will still tank fire and stalker missiles quite frequently, but as demonstrated in these matches, they can still be frequently dodged.
Although this mode has its merits and represents a lot of the tweaks I wish had actually come to fruition before patching and balancing came to a halt, I don't foresee this variant becoming the norm for standard competitive unranked the future. However, it really is a nice break from some of the frustration of auto-aim. It would be really awesome to perhaps see some TM2/TMBO vets who dropped the game back in the day give it another with these rules, now that the balance isn't whack and the servers are far more tolerable. Hopefully the videos are an enjoyable watch.