Does the shallow TTK shortchange the Depth this game could have?

[Figment]

We were talking about situational awareness and utilising it. Merely pointing out that visualy covering isn't sufficient if even possible (I think I actually stated that as a conclusion in a sentence). At least we can agree on that then.


If you want to know why instantly dropping the other guy is in favour of larger groups, play World of Tanks for a week. Hell, a day should suffice.

The team with 1 guy more who can quickly kill will win 9 out of 10 matches even if the fight itself is evenly matched and often even when you can one shot each on the other team because they're highly damage. Why? Because their damage output is greater and their numbers ensure they can outflank you if they're smart and dare to sacrifice one of them. You can't dodge them all if they all engage shortly after one another. You need to be able to take one out, absorb damage and find cover to reload or heal. That requires exposure time. That requires survival chance. You don't get that with a low TTK.


At low TTKs, skill becomes completely and utterly irrelevant, because everyone is capable of landing 1 to 4 shots from an outflanked position and in a situation where you're outnumbered, the outnumbering players will all get some shots on target, even if they don't come one at a time. Skill in an engagement that you already lost is not relevant any longer.

Skill becomes more important when you have to be consistent over time. Fluke chance shots become less dominant in engagements and are mitigated through consistently good aiming skill. On top of that, dodging and maneuvring skill becomes important when an engagement takes longer: the impact increases. If any fluke shot can end the engagement, you do not have to consistently engage a moving or target in cover for a very long period of time, so it's less hard to win. In terms of reaction time, situational awareness (which also includes knowing where the nearest cover is), can provide more impact if an engagement lasts longer

I'm not entirely sure what "skill" you're refering to, but it's not consistent aiming and it's not movement. So I presume it's twitch reflex skill you're talking about. That's nice, but that too is more dominant in a longer engagement outside of the ability to instantly do headshots. But even that requires some reaction time and if you can only react after the first shot has been fired (which often is the case) then I pose you that a Bolt Driver in PS1 (two shot sniper kill) takes more skill than a bolt-action instakill weapon in PS2, because in PS1, your second shot was at a warned opponent actively seeking cover or even retaliation.

Skill is more dominant in the latter case and as the OP suggested, you get far more chance to practice, learn and get better with a longer TTK because your window of opportunity to discover, react and analyse grows larger - something a skilled player who makes those decisions faster can do more with. But at least both can do something within that period.

[Sturmhardt]

What do the 2 guys who can VISUALLY cover a room get out of it if they die instantly when 6 people enter from 4 different directions? I never got the point of that...

[StumpyTheOzzie]

Originally Posted by sneeek

Regarding avenues of attack and TTK, if you're playing the game "correctly" in a squad / platoon that is working as a team, then presumably most avenues of attack are covered by teammates. At worst, you only need to listen out for gunfire / death screams coming from directions you don't expect. So you shouldn't actually be taken by surprise very often.

On the other hand, if you're attempting to flank enemies, you risk being flanked yourself in return. You get to take advantage of low TTK on unsuspecting enemies in return for risking somebody else doing the same to you. Seems OK to me.

Consequently I don't see any problem caused by the TTKs being lower than in original Planetside.

And this touches on the issue.

Complexity and depth and single player tactical awareness vs TTK while keeping "the fun factor" available and blah-de-blah are all blown out of the water by zerging.

This game has complexity and depth and wonderfulness for the individual player, but it's just easier and more effective to roll with a platoon and not have to worry about it. You get more certs/hour doing that than caring about TTK and tactics.

[Hamma]

Great thread! I have nothing to contribute, but I love seeing great threads

[Figment]

Originally Posted by Kerrec

I entered this discussion with you because you link TTK with Flanking, which I still find wrong. Never did I say 2 guys should hold a room that has several entry points versus larger numbers. I just pointed out, that if you play with ONE more person instead of solo in a game that is defined as teamwork centric, you can cover the large majority of your mutual flanks, to avoid being UNKNOWINGLY flanked. In that respect, I will continue to hold to the belief that if you get flanked and ganked, your teammates failed you, you placed yourself in a bad situation, or your opponent truly outplayed you.

You assume the player actively created that situation and should be rewarded. I submit this is a competitive game and that the player ONLY created an advantageous starting position for starting an engagement. Your point of view is that the engagement involves positioning.

Considering the random run-and-gun routes in PS2 that leads to very random encounters en route to other positions, I find this a questionable claim. Do people actively seek out cross-fire setups? Of course. But at the same time, people are forced into them. Punishing people that are forced into a crossfire further by reducing their chances of making it through open terrain (while not being able to fire from cover) is simply not fair or fun.

TTK determines the effectiveness of techniques, the chances of finding cover when confronted with a threat and the competitiveness of a player who was dropped on.

If you think players who get dropped on should just die, why not make every weapon a one shot tool? That wouldn't be fun and you know it. The fun of a shooter is not in ganking a string of people, it's in beating people competitively and knowing you could have lost, but rigged the chances in your favour and therefore came out on top. But you actually fought for it. THAT gets the adrenaline pumping and makes your opponent feel you beat him fair and square. Getting ganked is not considered a fun experience, especially when there's little you could do about it (it not being entirely your fault, as you seem to suggest).

You seem to have an issue with the defensibility in PS2. That is again an entirely different issue than TTK. And to set the record straight, I do not think that the defensibility of structures/bases in PS2 is OK. The way I see it, the majority of the facilities in PS2 are designed to NOT be defensible.

It's a direct tangent issue. I agree they're not defensible, but TTK has a lot to do with how effective defenses are.

Defensibility is directly linked to TTK and weapon qualities like accuracy, blast radius and lethality. It determines how much terrain can be covered by an advancing enemy or if a sprint between your current, a retreat or relocation like heading for a better piece of cover is possible because that determines the exposure time. Exposure time and TTK are obviously directly linked: if TTK is longer than exposure time, the opponent needs more exposure time to get a kill. The defensibility of the Engineer Turret for instance (to name a very simple defense structure) is laughable, cause you can just one shot him through the head with ease or one shot with splash damage, where the exposure time is continuous.

Keep saying it, I still don't believe it. So we're back to the one on one situation, because you keep insisting THIS is the metric to define what is "OK". Fine... say you get flanked by a HA and since he knows his gun takes too long to kill, he uses his rocket instead. Boom, insta-gibbed. You STILL don't have enough time to react.

Depends on the weapon qualities and suit. Of course players will use the most effective means of killing available. Hence why explosive handheld AV weaponry in PS1 required triple TTKs if not longer with respect to using rifles and shotguns.

Logical wrt real life? No. But this isn't a sim, it's a game. AV is not an AI weapon normally.

More fun, fairer, higher skill requiring and less frustrating? Definitely.

Or any class usess a grenade.

One required four grenades to kill a PS1 rexo (PS2 HA). TTK matters.

Or drops a AI mine.

Two needed to kill a PS1 infantry unit (only cloakers who stepped right on top of them would die instantly), 4 to 12 to kill a vehicle. Couldn't be thrown, had interference radius with other mines. Couldn't be placed indoors.

So again, TTK matters.

Or drops C4

Called Boomer, it made a loud warning sound in PS1, green smoke animation, holstering took a bit longer than in PS2 (especially if you wanted to use more as you'd have to open your inventory for it), you triggered one at a time, had to place it in the exact position you wanted it yourself (no throwing sticky bombs or mines from a distance). Could be seen because it had high contrast with the surrounding textures in most situations, could be countered with an EMP grenade (would often kill the placer before he could run off). Needed several to kill a MAX, up to five to kill an AMS. Big toll on ammo count and medkits carried due to inventory system.

And... third person allowed you to check for traps before turning a corner. There was a higher degree of situational awareness regarding high power explosives which you don't have in PS2.

Or a sniper gets right behind you and shoots you in the head with a bolt action.

Two shots required in PS1 with long reload time, takes one in PS2 or a series of high rate of fire hits. Sniper rifles were never used up close in PS1 and are used as shotguns in PS2. The Heavy Scout Rifle in PS1 (rapid rate of fire, but more like bolt action with a clip) took 4-6 shots to kill infantry in PS1. Much harder to kill with even from behind.

TTK matters.

Or whatever... you STILL didn't have a chance to react, because you got FLANKED.

No, because you got flanked by someone wielding short TTK weaponry. Flanking alone isn't enough.

Do you propose that a bolt action sniper that is right behind you and shoots you in the head, then has to go thru a gun battle in close quarters because YOU want a "fair" chance to react?

Yes. But it's not just about me, don't make this out as a selfish story argument, it fits in the competitive fight and conquest vision.

And what's "fair"? Some people have way better reaction times, way better hearing, way better situation awareness. How much do you have to increase TTK, so everyone gets their "fair" chance to react? The link you make between getting flanked and TTK is preposterous.

A fair chance is enough time to turn around or retreat a number of steps into cover, start dodging and return fire. That doesn't require a whole lot more time, but more than you have now in most cases. One shotting is IMO a no-no and too cheap.

Rate of fire of a lot of the higher rate of fire sniper rifles should be toned down to what, 0.5 seconds between each shot? They should be long range weapons, not spammed up close. There's a big rof difference between the Bolt Action one shot and the high speed rifles, that doesn't have to be such a big rof distance.

I'm sorry, but in this case I'm the one that has to pull the "gaming experience" trump card. In a multi-class multiplayer game, you CANNOT achieve game balance by starting with one on one scenarios. There's a staggering amount of combinations because of the different classes, and the distances that each class can choose to engage at.

Because there are so many combinations possible, how in the world would you want to balance based on the infinite combinations possible? No. You balance around one on one. Classes are like Roman Gladiators. Balance trade-offs between one another. If they're fair one on one, they're more likely to be fair in groups, exceptional abilities like medic revives aside (those are unbalanced in big groups as a class, since small groups can field less numerically and in variety).

I'm not really sure what you're trying to say. At some points, it sounds like you're making my argument for me. Low TTK gives smaller numbers a chance, since they can use the advantage of surprise vs. reaction time to make an impact. I've already brought this point up, and others have also tried to point this out to you.

Yet you either completely forget or ignore that if the enemy knows in which room you are held up, you DO NOT have the element of surprise: the one entering the room knows when and where he is entering from. THEY have the element of surprise.

But the above seems like you're confusing defensibility of a choke point with TTK. [...]
Either way, TTK has nothing to do with defensible positions.

You don't understand how TTK determines how large an influx you can hold off and how many of the defenders the influx can shoot? (Influx is the amount of players over time entering through a chokepoint).

Seriously, you don't see any relation here? Especially not in relation to having more options to enter through so more people can get in at the same time? You've not once in PS2 agreed on Teamspeak to enter the same room holding three enemies from 4 or more directions at once? Seriously? You have any idea how we can use our numerical advantage in combination with chokepoints and short TTK to create utter chaos and kill them all before they can process what's going on and prioritise a target? These room clearings are over in half a second... :/ The whole fight is over in that time, because by the time they come back due to travel time, the point is captured (outposts in particular are easy to cap that way). It's utterly boring.

Keep in mind that whatever a small unit can do, a big unit can do too. If it takes the small group 1 second of focused fire to kill one unit, then it will take a group twice the size half a second to kill one unit. AND they have half as many units to kill. So I'm sorry, but TTK has nothing to do with defensible positions, or HOLDING anything.

Of course I keep that in mind, but a small area to hold hampers a big group. Small groups can be fastly more effective with AoE weapons even if they don't instakill. I often softened up a group of enemies with a weak AoE damage over time Flamethrower, after which my shotgun wielding buddy would mow through them. Since it took them some time to kill me, and not instant headshot, I would get a chance to hurt a lot of them and lower the TTK on them, after which my also not headshottable buddy would come in with an already low TTK shotgun at close range and utterly rape them because of the TTK difference. This gun was called the Jackhammer btw. Completely incomparable to the one in PS2 too.

Sorry, I don't follow with regards to that last sentence. If individuals in the bigger group could instantly drop an enemy due to TTK, then the smaller group could instantly drop individuals in the larger group too. In that respect, all is equal. It becomes a contest of skill. That's perfectly OK. If the skill is equal and the smaller team gets 1 kill for 1 death, then they lose, because the other group has superior numbers. That's just life! That's not a game mechanic that is broken and needs fixing.

Yes it does, because if the bigger group automatically wins, there's no game. This isn't life, this is a game. There needs to be a game.

I think YOU missed the point utterly. I'm near 40 years old. I've been playing video games since my parents bought a Commodore 64 in the 80's. I have played A LOT OF GAMES. Just not PS1. Are you REALLY going to say that I have NEVER played a game that has high TTK? Implying that PS1 "owns" high TTK? And anyone that has never played PS1 can't possibly know anything about high TTK? Are you really going to ASSUME that?

I'm saying you never once before in your life played a MMOFPS conquest game with a higher TTK and good defensibility.

Or would you say otherwise?

You clearly can't use PS2 as a reference. BF games don't qualify. WWII Online doesn't either. What else? PacMan? :/ I played Pong and Prince of Persia when they came out too...

To make this comparison, you have to be sure that the ONLY variable left in the equation is TTK. So are you saying that PS2 defenses are exactly the same as PS2 defenses? I already know the answer to that, and it is the ENTIRE POINT I wish to make. TTK is equal for both sides. It takes them the same amount of time to kill you, as you take to kill them. It is inherently balanced that way. Being flanked is another issue entirely. The defensibility of a facility is an entire issue entirely.

Everything is related to everything. TTKs even have impact on the viability of metagame tactics like behind the lines PS1 genholds as they in part determine their duration, which in turn has impact on the fights elsewhere due to benefit denial.

The links are there, you just have to see them.

So a MAX crash is a tactic to pit a high TTK unit like the MAX against a varied bunch of lower TTK units that probably either won't have time to adjust (swap their own forces to MAX's), or simply won't be able to adjust at all. So the tactic is to thow UNEQUAL forces against each other, betting on the fact that the force with the higher TTK (and probably the more deadly weaponry too) will prevail.

Almost, it entirely depends on momentum. It creates a moment of imbalance by having a high endurance group speed/wade through a heavily defended area. Often ignoring the initial line of defenders to force them to turn around and then either keep pressing while the support troops kills the first line of defense, or turn around and kill them (note, more units had inherent, even though weaker, AV power in PS1) to create a lot of pressure on a single point and break through to an objective after which it is the dependence on fleshies that determines the outcome: someone able to hack open doors. Kill the fleshies, you win. It also meant that if it failed, for the next 5 minutes or so, your side would not have access to MAX units of any kind and if the MAX crash en route encountered a bunch of tanks or a prepared defense or an orbital strike, they'd be dead meat.

Assuming you could find a good defensible place in PS2 (again, a completely different issue than TTK), you could use the exact same strategy, because PS2 MAX's have superior TTK and superiour firepower.

And there are more of them due to not being cert limited and because there's no doors, yes, pretty much. They're just much easier to kill in PS2 actually. An infil in PS1 could not kill a MAX unless under very specific conditions and at incredible risk.

The relative balance of TTK between a MAX and other classes would probably not change even if TTK was increased as you wished. So the whole scenario you paint is pointless with respect to your arguments regarding TTK. The tactic would work NOW with the current TTK, or later with your proposed increased TTK.

Don't see your point, since I'm not talking about MAX TTKs at all. I'm talking about grunt TTKs. But yes, if you increase the TTK of an AI MAX on a grunt, he'll have more time to react. Hence why the Scat MAX in PS1 was hated, because at close range it could instagib while the other MAXes could not.

Indeed. They could not, they had high rate of fire weapons and were extremely lethal, but didn't have superior TTKs, just more endurance.

You wrote that TTK needs to increase so defenders can cross courtyards and not get insta-gibbed. IE: Give them a chance to retreat and reassess when caught off guard by superior numbers. I am sorry, but I do not buy that. You seem to be touching on the issue of undefendable bases, HE spam, Lib spam, etc... but again, what does that have to do with TTK. It takes ten or so hits to kill.

Again, exposure time vs exposure time needed to kill (TTK).

At long range, this is very hard to accomplish without you having a chance to retaliate or take cover. At short range, you should have been aware enough to know there was an enemy there. If you got killed by a sniper, then gratz on him for headshotting you as you were running. If you died to a AI mine, again, gratz on your enemy for planning well. If you died to a grenade, gratz on your enemy for a well placed, well led lob against a moving target. If you got insta-gibbed by HE from tanks or air, then you were flatly out gunned. What does this have to do with TTK.

It has to do with you handing wins out far too easily and making the game uncompetitive, frustrating and boring.

All of those relate to what I stated above. Advantages are one thing, default wins another.

[Kirotan]

Yeah, this thread is all over the place, so I'll just throw in my .02. Possibly a grenade too.

Does the shallow TTK shortchange the Depth this game could have?

I don't believe so, no. You say shallow TTK, but isn't it really fast TTK?

Pay particular attention to the point about "Modern Shooters" while considering PS2's ingredients: Situational Awareness, tactical decision making, reaction time, Map & Terrain awareness, your opponent's class, your opponents weapon, where the nearest corners/cover is in multiple directions, ally locations, objective & spawn flow, recoil control, compensating aim for the impacts of flinching, ...and everything else I'm missing here that comes from hybridizing an FPS together with the macro-elements of RTS size armies & strategies .... and then compress it all into 0.80 seconds which is effectively your entire lifespan when being shot at.

Before I comment on this part, I want to ask you directly: What is the point of this exercise? You're trying to make a point but I'm not going to take a guess at what it is and end up arguing over a misunderstanding.

Is it "Depth", or "Complexity" that best describes 90% of the ways you find yourself dying in this game?

It's complexity. I feel the game doesn't really have much depth yet until more metagame type stuff is put in.

And do First-Order-Optimal strategies tend to work just as well if not better/faster when facing these deep and highly time compressed situations?

This is probably going over my head, but here goes:

Yes, a FOO strategy will work in this situation because my idea of a FOOS while getting shot at is: Shoot back or run for cover.

Half those things you mentioned that need to be compressed into the .8 seconds you're getting shot at don't belong there, IMO. I can't imagine anyone thinking, even on an habitual level from repetition, about things like, "spawn control and flow" and "all the RTS macro level elements" while being actively shot at.

Is this also part of the reason we have no Tutorial yet

Yeah. If the game was simple and deep, making a tutorial would be easy. There's a lot to cover though, so making a proper tutorial that covered just the basics would take some time.

or worse still, mean the game is also guilty of "Irreducible" Complexity for the average player?

Yes. You can only control so much, and the amount of complexity means that each choice you make is a roll of the dice. So luck is involved. Good players make their own luck by making a consistent series of choices that have a higher chance of survival.

Since you're the OP of this thread, let me ask you: Do you feel that the fast TTK shortchanges the depth this game could have?

I don't think TTK is a serious problem, and I'm fine with the way it is. Sure it's not perfect, but there are bigger problems that hurt game depth, IMO.

[Mietz]

Originally Posted by sneeek

It's not actually correct to say that +15% health will always require 0 more headshots, or 1 more non-headshot. It depends on how much damage has already been taken (which can be "a fraction of a bullet"), distance to target due to damage dropoff etc.) and no doubt other factors. Therefore 15-20% more health would probably require, on average, somewhere between 0 and 1 extra bullet, and in most cases, leaning towards 1 more bullet.

The point is that small tweaks can be worthwhile in achieving a reasonable balance that is acceptable to as many people as possible.

In any case, I took your original post to mean 15-20% to overall health (shields + health).

If you read what I wrote a page back, you will see that I'm perfectly aware of this, I was probing the poster if he just wanted HP or if he wants longer TTK.

As he explained, he wanted longer TTK (15-20% longer to kill) not HP.

HP is HP, if I said HP, I meant the 500HP everyone has.
Having 15% HP more isn't going to save you from anything since damage comes roughly in 140-200 intervals.

[sneeek]

Originally Posted by Mietz

If you read what I wrote a page back, you will see that I'm perfectly aware of this, I was probing the poster if he just wanted HP or if he wants longer TTK.

As he explained, he wanted longer TTK (15-20% longer to kill) not HP.

HP is HP, if I said HP, I meant the 500HP everyone has.
Having 15% HP more isn't going to save you from anything since damage comes roughly in 140-200 intervals.

If you mean it will never save you from anything, that's incorrect.

It's more accurate to say that it will save you from an extra bullet sometimes, depending on a bunch of other variables (target distance, explosions, falls, sniper bullets, vehicle bullets, bio lab health regen when at partial health, nanoweave armor certs, type of gun used). A small increase in either health or shields raises the probability that you can take an extra bullet in an actual battle, not a laboratory test.

I don't want an increase in TTK at all, but it did happen, I maintain that it would be best done by slowing down the rate of fire of all infantry guns, because this raises TTKs without much impact on anything else.

[Crator]

Yes, I do believe it does. The infantry weapons in particular suffer from the low TTK issue in that there isn't enough variance for variety.

I also like the points Mietz, VGCS, and Figment have made...

[Mietz]

Originally Posted by sneeek

If you mean it will never save you from anything, that's incorrect.

It's more accurate to say that it will save you from an extra bullet sometimes, depending on a bunch of other variables (target distance, explosions, falls, sniper bullets, vehicle bullets, bio lab health regen when at partial health, nanoweave armor certs, type of gun used). A small increase in either health or shields raises the probability that you can take an extra bullet in an actual battle, not a laboratory test.

I don't want an increase in TTK at all, but it did happen, I maintain that it would be best done by slowing down the rate of fire of all infantry guns, because this raises TTKs without much impact on anything else.

Let me phrase it as accurate as I can since we are dancing semantically and its getting tiring:

15-20% more Health on a player will save him under certain specific circumstances which may, or may not, happen and are not part of large scale balancing, as well as mechanics design, and can not be controlled for by neither designers, players or theorycrafting.
These circumstances may or may not happen just as a player might, or might not, miss at any given time with one of his bullets, ergo, these changes do nothing.
Introducing 15-20% more health, the increase in TTK would be so insignificant as to be not measurable and random statistical noise.

A similar valid way to increase TTK would be to say a prayer to your favorite god or pet your cat.

[Forsaken One]

Honestly I have to ask if I'm the only one who finds infantry fights, even 1v1 kind of boring atm. It just feels empty.

There is no feeling of "getting the drop" on the enemy, out thinking them, or outplaying them really.

Its just group spray at range should it be a group fight and "hurr durr aim for head" close fighting wise.

Sure there are tactics like flanking but when you do it doesn't give that badass feeling if you're the one doing it nor the "OMG we got flanked/outplayed" when its done.


It just feels too catered to twitch and stupid people.

[Figment]

@Forsaken One: The other thing about one vs one (but also the low amount of personal engagements before a fight is over due to the frequent distance to the CC and players dieing so soon after you opened fire - or you dieing so soon after they opened fire), is that I don't get the personal struggle that let's me get to know them.

I literally learned no new names aside from new outfit members and a few people active on command. On PS1, I learned new names daily, both allies and enemies, because you had time to get to know each other. Plus since you were forced into one another by the lattice and possibly because there were a few less people per continent, you'd encounter each other over and over.

It makes it less personal. That makes it less... interesting. Enemies currently feel like scripted AI mobs to me and the game treats them as such.

[sneeek]

Originally Posted by Mietz

Let me phrase it as accurate as I can since we are dancing semantically and its getting tiring:

15-20% more Health on a player will save him under certain specific circumstances which may, or may not, happen and are not part of large scale balancing, as well as mechanics design, and can not be controlled for by neither designers, players or theorycrafting.
These circumstances may or may not happen just as a player might, or might not, miss at any given time with one of his bullets, ergo, these changes do nothing.
Introducing 15-20% more health, the increase in TTK would be so insignificant as to be not measurable and random statistical noise.

A similar valid way to increase TTK would be to say a prayer to your favorite god or pet your cat.

I think your mathematical understanding is incorrect. 15-20% more health is about 1/2 to 2/3 of a bullet of most infantry guns. It may be less or more, but it's not important.

In general, an amount of health corresponding to a certain fraction of a bullet (2/3) will, on average, result in being able to survive about the same fraction of a bullet (2/3), assuming that over a number of encounters, you are attacked with a variety of guns and take a variety of types of damage. Of course, you can have runs where you are consistently attacked in the same way, so you consistently survive an extra bullet or not, but you can't escape averages. Therefore, you will take an extra bullet about 2/3 of the time, on average.

If this were not true, there would be no point in certing (for example) the first rank of nanoweave armour, since it represents a fraction of a bullet. But actually, given how cheap it is, it's pretty much a no-brainer if you just want an increase in general survivability.

[EVILoHOMER]

I want it to be like Quake 3 where you can die really fast to good players but you can solo like 20 bad players. Right now in PS2 it doesn't take any skill to kill someone, really just who sees whom first.

[Mietz]

Originally Posted by sneeek

I think your mathematical understanding is incorrect. 15-20% more health is about 1/2 to 2/3 of a bullet of most infantry guns. It may be less or more, but it's not important.

Of course it is important.

Originally Posted by sneeek

In general, an amount of health corresponding to a certain fraction of a bullet (2/3) will, on average, result in being able to survive about the same fraction of a bullet (2/3), assuming that over a number of encounters, you are attacked with a variety of guns and take a variety of types of damage.
Of course, you can have runs where you are consistently attacked in the same way, so you consistently survive an extra bullet or not, but you can't escape averages. Therefore, you will take an extra bullet about 2/3 of the time, on average.

Absolutely not.
You will not take an extra bullet 2/3rds of the time on average because the granularity of damage is not there.
The damage is delivered in whole bullets not fractions of them.

500hp
20% = 100

There are exactly 7 sources of damage producing 100 or below damage per tick.

All Pistols @65m+
VS6-7 @65m+
Solstice @65m+
Serpent @65+
Lasher AOE

Only if attacked with these weapons, at that specific range, in these specific circumstances, will you see an improvement in survivability.

This does not equal "taking an extra bullet about 2/3 of the time, on average."

You can't mathematically average numbers over time that come in quanta.
This isn't a smooth curve we are talking about, ergo you can not make that statement.
Your math is analog, while the game math is digital.

Originally Posted by sneeek

If this were not true, there would be no point in certing (for example) the first rank of nanoweave armour, since it represents a fraction of a bullet. But actually, given how cheap it is, it's pretty much a no-brainer if you just want an increase in general survivability.

Absolutely correct, Nanoweave below lvl5 does nothing on average.