Now that I've had the chance to play around (after much trial, error, and malfunctioning controls) with NF2's manual FCS, I have to say I'm disappointed. We were assured that manual aim would provide an advantage in this game -- just as it had in NF1 -- but unfortunately, that advantage comes in the form of a minor RoF increase, rather than a major accuracy increase. In other words: unless you're firing with 100% accuracy and trading salvo for salvo with an auto aim user, there is no advantage to using manual aim. In fact, it is disadvantageous.
One of the hallmarks of NF1's skill based gameplay was the fact that it made auto FCS very much unviable after a certain point. The increased spread applied to shells was so great, that no auto user could ever hope to achieve the same kind of damage output as someone who used manual aim. This was considered balanced because manual users would have to rely on skill and educated guesswork to dial in range, lead, etc, while auto aimers could literally just spam left click and spacebar and achieve technically even greater accuracy (as it was near impossible to miscalculate range, for example, when using auto FCS).
Now, in NF2, this balancing disadvantage no longer seems to apply to auto aim, and the shell spread is more or less identical to that experienced under manual aim. What's more, you can even make your guns converge while using auto aim -- something which couldn't be done in NF1.
Without a massive (or at least moderate) disadvantage in terms of shell spread, auto FCS is plainly overpowered to the point where manual aim users are actually disadvantaged. This is even more true given the inherent greater difficulty of using manual aim in NF2 as opposed to NF1 due to the much faster pace of the game.
This needs to be addressed, not just because it's incredibly misbalanced, but because NF1's style of manual aim was the core of what made it such a skill-intensive, competetive, and fun game. Without that, a huge portion of what made NF worthwhile is completely lost.
Thoughts?