I think a lot of people are upset about the aim assist because the increase in use of hip fire which I totally understand. To be honest I love 1.4 in every way, I think its a great addition to Dust and has brought back a lot of players. But I see there are issue regarding aim assist in the community when I truly don't think its the aim assist being the problem.
First I want to address every shooter out there has had aim assist in some form or another especially console games. Whether its adhesion, friction, etc. and aim assist in Dust 514 is not really the issue i find most players are troubled by. I feel it is the problem with Dispersion and recoil in this game.

So Dispersion in Dust 514 is apparent, but should be even more so; considering there is a skill to sharpen this mechanic in the game. This Skill Sharpshooter and certain operation skills (ex. assault rifles reducing kickback) the spray of the weapon is nearly as accurate as aiming down the sights making them very effective. So we should be seeing larger dispersion in hipfire (and perhaps aiming down the sights too) and the skill sharpshooter which helps tighten that hip fire have less impact (or just increase dispersion in general which making skilling into sharpshooter more viable) so people who wish to hipfire have to actually invest into this particular skill no different from any other weapon or skill points in the game.

Recoil in this game is virtually non-existent and it is only masked by the dispersion of some automatic weapons (HMG). You will notice very many automatic weapon have low recoil but high dispersion (or at least higher than other weapons) a great example would be our HMG which does not recoil at all. But despite having no recoil its dispersion is quite large, yet some might figure with a weapon that is a sort of replica of LMG in modern day weapons there would be higher recoil. Now this example goes hand and hand with Assault rifles and SMG; every automatic in the game. The only weapons that seem to have some sense of recoil is semi automatics.

So in conclusion, aim assist really is not the issue I see being apart of the core shooting mechanic in the game. Everyone has played with aim assist and probably didn't even know it. The only reason its apparent now is because we had adjust without aim assist for so long that now we see how aim assist helps with precision and comfortable shooting. I think players who are upset about aim assist should be more focused on giving feedback on Dispersion and Recoil in the game if anything. Look at game like battlefield which survivability is so much lower compared this game but hipfire from 50 meters is pointless compared to aiming down the sights. Yet in Dust which Survivability is higher considering we can taking more of a beating the; dispersion and recoil which is not even noticeable is what I think everyone truly feels is overlooked.

Aim assist works in every console game out there, I wouldn't need to mention this if CCP actually kept aim assist instead of removing it during 1.2 which as you see is graphs of player count that when the player base drop drastically. People should be focused on more intuitive core mechanics and you seems to be one of those people. Dispersion and recoil are in need of this game, just take notes from planetside 2 which is coming to PS4. Hurry up CCP you're running out of time.

I Suport this endevor, but still my crazy laser Assist needs fixed, whiping back and forth and killing people without me aiming is weird.