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

[Figment]

Stellar. The only person who keeps yammering about extremes is Kerrec because he does not accept a grayscale can change gameplay just enough to be better than the status quo.


I'm not at all interested in really long ttks, but my argument keeps being presented by the opposition as such. All arguments fall in the under three second practical ttk range with perfect ttk being over 0.8s for shotguns.

[Stellarthief]

I can only assume this entire discussion is about infantry weapon TTK and not tank/air because with most of the weapons out there you have basically 0 TTK and I don't see that getting tweaked by so much as to you having a chance head on against a tank/air/etc. if you get hit... I could deal with a reduction in splash damage, and correcting that you can get hit while in bunkers/walls by certain guns... But that's not a TTK issue.

But realistically a jump from 0.5 to 3 or 3 to 5.5 is not going to suddenly make your game any more or less tactical, deep, etc.

2.5 seconds extra is not enough to suddenly have a massive amount of time to make decisions when being fired upon or to adjust your reactions by so much that it has on the whole a big impact on the game-play itself. We aren't all Formula 1 car drivers....

Additionally this is only the theoretical TTK, not functional TTK that can consider CoF, bullet travel, bullet drop, damage dissipation, etc. into account. Also doesn't take into account the difference in class health/shield pools, special abilities, etc. Also these theoretical TTK, I don't see anyone mentioning that different parts of the player body lead to different damage scores. Bullet to the head area counts for more than to the foot area.

This has all been mentioned before... Adjusting TTK alone, the basic relativistic damage the guns do, is not going to impact the game in any way that will change the way the game is played unless we go to extremes.

Even if you put the average TTK up by 2.5 secs, you STILL will not survive the 50 people camping the spawn + tanks + air hovering there. And if you do, you are outnumbered massively and will still get hunted down in short order. If you do kill them they will re-spawn at any number of sundies or outposts very near and be back in the fight before you can turn the tide. Still a numbers game.

I'm sorry, but regardless of what kind of TTK we are talking about, practical or theoretical or just talking how much damage you take per bullet per sec per bla bla, I don't see any of this actually changing the way the game is played unless massive tweaks are made. 7 bullets instead of 6, 8 instead of 7, 10 instead of 6. It's all a matter of a couple seconds or fractions of a second. 1m closer to the grenade, or 20cm or direct exposure... In my mind these won't change the fundamental of how PS2 plays out.

I should mention last night I was in several pitched battles. And most of the time I only died after I ran out of ammo on main weapon, sidearm, grenades and there were no engineers or no one left on my team and I got swarmed under before I could bail. I managed to raise my KD/R by quite a significant figure because I played smart and finally got a handle on my weapon/class. Other deaths were caused by my own team running me the hell over (as usual) or by me thinking bases were clear and running through like a family of ducks without a care in the world.

I think PS2 is spot on as it is with TTK and situational awareness.

[Kerrec]

Originally Posted by Figment

Stellar. The only person who keeps yammering about extremes is Kerrec because he does not accept a grayscale can change gameplay just enough to be better than the status quo.


I'm not at all interested in really long ttks, but my argument keeps being presented by the opposition as such. All arguments fall in the under three second practical ttk range with perfect ttk being over 0.8s for shotguns.

Good morning Figment. New day, new batch of yammering's incomming.

A (grayscale?) can change gameplay just enough to be better than the status quo.

Well, a (grayscale?) can change gameplay just enough to be WORSE than the status quo.

I would rather reach for the low hanging fruit.

-Fix bases so the overall tactic isn't to push defenders to their spawn building and keep them pinned there. Instead, make the fight AT the objective. In other words, a HOLD for either the attackers or the defenders. Just like you want!

-Fix the whole metagame/resources aspect (lack of). It is stupid that I can pull an ESF to take out an annoying Liberator in a blazing glorious suicide run and then see the same duo manning another Liberator 10 seconds later in opposite roles.

-Or pull a Burster MAX to "deter" those Liberators, gaining NO experience for it, while the damage I do nets the other team experience for repairing.

-Or do damage to any vehicle, watch them drive away with the speed advantage their vehicle gives them, then gain experience while repairing. Meanwhile, I have to run on foot and find an ammo box or a terminal to reload.

-Or equip something like Armor Piercing rounds on a MBT and discover that all I accomplished was limiting myself to anti-vehicle combat, without gaining any significant advantage against those vehicles, that can also take out infantry with their HEAT/HE.

-Or log into my server to see a 30% distribution of population across the board, but when I look at the continents, each faction is zerging their own separate continent with 80% of the continental population. My choices come down to join my faction zerg, cap base after base fighting with my faction to find and get kills OR I could pit myself against another faction zerg and be the guy that everyone rushes to kill.

There are so many things that can be tweaked and changed that will not risk breaking the very fundamental balance of faction vs. faction vs. faction, and class vs. class. Make all the other changes so their implementation makes sense. If all that doesn't work, THEN you can fool around with things like TTK.

[psijaka]

I too think PS2 is spot on as it is with TTK and situational awareness.

However, I am not fundamentally opposed to a small increase in TTK for full auto weapons, mainly because I don't think that it will make much difference in practice (and it could easily be reversed), but there's a potential problem here.

If the game is to retain 1 shot kills for bolt action headshots, tank shells, launchers, nades etc, then these weapons would become relatively more powerful than they are now when compared to the full autos with their new longer TTKs. This could have an adverse impact on gameplay balance and their frequency of use.

There are ways to offset this, such as reducing the rounds per minute/reload time, but care would be needed as this would have further implications for gameplay balance.

[psijaka]

Originally Posted by Kerrec

-snip-

-Or pull a Burster MAX to "deter" those Liberators, gaining NO experience for it, while the damage I do nets the other team experience for repairing.

-Or do damage to any vehicle, watch them drive away with the speed advantage their vehicle gives them, then gain experience while repairing. Meanwhile, I have to run on foot and find an ammo box or a terminal to reload.

I thought that I read somewhere that XP was going to be awarded for damage to vehicles in a forthcoming patch. Someone correct me if I am wrong.

[ShadetheDruid]

Originally Posted by psijaka

I thought that I read somewhere that XP was going to be awarded for damage to vehicles in a forthcoming patch. Someone correct me if I am wrong.

Nope, you're right, XP for damaging is coming in the patch.

[Stellarthief]

Originally Posted by psijaka

I too think PS2 is spot on as it is with TTK and situational awareness.

However, I am not fundamentally opposed to a small increase in TTK for full auto weapons, mainly because I don't think that it will make much difference in practice (and it could easily be reversed), but there's a potential problem here.

If the game is to retain 1 shot kills for bolt action headshots, tank shells, launchers, nades etc, then these weapons would become relatively more powerful than they are now when compared to the full autos with their new longer TTKs. This could have an adverse impact on gameplay balance and their frequency of use.

There are ways to offset this, such as reducing the rounds per minute/reload time, but care would be needed as this would have further implications for gameplay balance.

My experience is that with full auto weapons, or burst weapons that the first few secs are what determine the kill. It's that initial on target burst that usually takes down the shields and a bit of health. I personally wouldn't probably notice a difference if they decreased full auto weapon damage.

But the thing you have to remember about the 0HK weapons is that they are situational... You aren't going to be using your sniper with 12x scope in CQC or indoor medium range, tank shells need to be adjusted to work with the environment properly and not gimp you through walls and bunkers, same with mines/grenades/c4 and force barriers. Your shotgun with buckshot isnt going to be used to sniper or in any situation besides CQC combat (you can 1 shot with buckshot). Also everything is on a limited supply which you can only resupply at cost from a sundy or equipment station and not an engineer (except launchers/HA tools, but tools have an extreme reload time). I wouldnt mind increasing reload time of grenade launcher.

So I don't think it would change the relativistic power of the items because they are limited in use where as an automatic rifle has CQC, medium and long range use. What it would mean is that players would need to manage their ammo more carefully and might steer more away from carbines as the RoF on some of those without proper aim would lead you to being out of ammo, super fast...

[Mietz]

Originally Posted by Stellarthief

You aren't going to be using your sniper with 12x scope in CQC or indoor medium range,

Unfortunately thats what people do, at least with semi-auto sniper rifles.

Hipfire, refire-reate and COF make it possible to use the sniper rifles as shotguns up close. Its just not many people realized that yet and hence the prevalence isn't as high.

Obviously this doesn't work with the bolt actions because the refire rate is too low.

[Stellarthief]

Originally Posted by Mietz

Unfortunately thats what people do, at least with semi-auto sniper rifles.

Hipfire, refire-reate and COF make it possible to use the sniper rifles as shotguns up close. Its just not many people realized that yet and hence the prevalence isn't as high.

Obviously this doesn't work with the bolt actions because the refire rate is too low.

Nothing wrong with using it as a shotgun up-close if you can make it work. But using the scope is not viable for your average player.

Did that in previous games too. High risk though

[Mietz]

Originally Posted by Stellarthief

I am not sure what you are arguing there? My point/question was that TTK starts only when you get fired on... That running around using movement doesnt affect your TTK. But you claim it does?

TTK is the average time of survival in an engagement.
In particular, in the scenarios discussed here, its about infantry vs infantry, just to be clear on this.

Survival in an engagement pertains to the time to actively try and kill your opponent. The average time to do that in a game is decided by weapon DPS(stats), health, movement, cover (map design) and skill of the player.

This isn't about running around at the warp gate or hiding in a spawn-room.

Its about an engagement of the enemy, directly and actively, where one side tries to kill you.

As mentioned by Figment, the "theoretical TTK" (weapon DPS vs player HP) isn't worth of discussion by itself since the "practical TTK" depends on various factors, for example weapon COF and accuracy at a certain range, movement, etc.

A shotguns theoretical TTK is ~100ms. It can kill instantly (given the ping in this game can be longer) with full shields and HP. But that can not be the point of discussion as this TTK is only reached at a very close range where all pellets hit perfectly.

Talking only about theoretical TTK is completely pointless because its not what is gameplay inducing (unless you are talking extremes, with theoretical TTKs of several tens of seconds, aka Borderlands 1/2 bullet sponges).

Currently the game does not allow for actual infantry "combat" or a "fight". You don't see people "fighting" as there isn't enough time to fight in the first place. You have people shooting other people and winning by virtue of shooting.

I miss engagements where I can have an actual battle against someone, where I can overcome the other person by my skill.
This doesn't necessarily mean I want to chase the target around for 3 minutes, that would be an extreme. I just want to have a fight with the other person that isn't over faster than I can react.

Yes some engagements in PS2 are not conductive of that, but there exist some that are (Biolab).

[Stellarthief]

I think most disagreement on this whole issue by now is that you keep calling it TTK but I/some don't really define it as that. I don't disagree with you principally. Death is a bit too quick usually in PS2, but I don't think it has much to do with TTK or weapons/player health.

Also as an aside: Even by your definition you define it as something else. You just called TTK "average time of survival in an engagement". Keep calling it that, don't attach another name / short form to it. It's not necessary.

But to the REAL point (this arguing about what TTK is is kinda useless).

I think the real reason average life span is pretty short in battles is design decision around facilities, amount of ground, air availability, range on 12x bolt action snipers, no windows, no doors, blast shields being a joke as they don't stop all blasts, the ability to sit and farm spawn rooms by various vantage points or the simple massive amount of people that can be at a battle, yet due to culling you can't render unless you actually ADS them or look in their direction, etc. I could mention everything I find inadaquate in the game, but I don't think that's necessary. There are enough threads about that

On the other hand if you look at the leader boards, the leaders KD ratios are anywhere from below 1 (yes, some of the top 20 have below) or all the way up to even above 40 yet no where is average life span listed. This doesn't REALLY show much because you can get 20 kills with 1 grenade... But still shows that it's very likely that some people simply live longer than others. And it must be in battles or else it wouldn't be tracked in the KDR. So I don't think its so bad. It all depends on how you play and your choices as well as design choices.

I think that principally, the game is fine as is with regards to weapon/damage balance. I don't think there is anything wrong with dying quickly if you walk into suppressing fire or getting gimped by people you don't see very quickly. I see this as fine and I dish it out as much as I get it but I have also slowly learned to adept to it. I don't try and get into the zerg or sit at the cap point when I am surrounded by 40 people. I would rather bail and come back when the main zerg leaves. But that's my play style choice. To reiterate that: I think that actual damage you take and can mitigate overall is fine but that the game forces your average player into a situation that will more or less just get him gimped quick.

I just think other design decisions are not up to par and that average life span, even in pitched battles, would be increased if some tweaks were made to things that I would call, not as intended or not fully fleshed out.

[exile]

"Time To Kill" has a widely accepted technical definition, which is the amount of time a "perfect" (every bullet hits the target) kill with a weapon takes. If you mean something different (e.g. factoring accuracy, player skill, time to travel from spawn (!?!?), etc) you need to use a different term.

The OP's question is talking about Time To Kill as a broad, generalised concept for the game. Talking about specific timings for specific weapons and scenarios completely misses the point. Think of it as the averaged TTK of all possible weapon/situation combinations.

Sirisian has the right of it. With the current complexity of gunfights a longer TTK is not necessary to increase the available depth as a player doesn't have a lot of decisions to make and can handle the mental burden of decision making within that timeframe.

As I said before (which nobody seems to have any comment about?) I would argue that a longer TTK actually decreases the available depth for an individual, because the longer a gunfight lasts the less ability the player has to maintain their situational awareness.

[Figment]

@Exile: Why are you exagerating the suggested increase in average TTK so much? You don't lose an incredible severe amount of situational awareness if any if an engagement lasts 0.5 seconds longer. Plus you seem to forget that under the same line of argument you may well get a better chance to dodge, play peakaboo and take cover which you didn't have before and during an engagement make a proper analysis of your direct opponent and his moves which you couldn't before - even a minor increase would be an increase in situational awareness. So perhaps a different kind of information process would get you more situational awareness in certain aspects? So saying you won't get an increase in complexity and options is simply weird.



And how can you talk about an average if the average for a game with extremes at 1 and 5 is the same as one for 0 and 6? Specific differences in TTK (and their prevalence, viability and usefulness) that lead to an average are more important than THE average.

How can you discuss TTK and not look at and compare a variety of scenarios and objectives within the context of the game if you want to discuss the meaning and impact of changing TTK length to the game? That's completely irrational: if you're not looking at the effects at all within the context of the game, then you can't make any arguments in favour or against.

Scenario building is an absolute must. Those who don't don't know what context they're talking about are just randomly discussing numbers without those numbers meaning anything.

[Sunrock]

Originally Posted by exile

"Time To Kill" has a widely accepted technical definition, which is the amount of time a "perfect" (every bullet hits the target) kill with a weapon takes. If you mean something different (e.g. factoring accuracy, player skill, time to travel from spawn (!?!?), etc) you need to use a different term.

The OP's question is talking about Time To Kill as a broad, generalised concept for the game. Talking about specific timings for specific weapons and scenarios completely misses the point. Think of it as the averaged TTK of all possible weapon/situation combinations.

Sirisian has the right of it. With the current complexity of gunfights a longer TTK is not necessary to increase the available depth as a player doesn't have a lot of decisions to make and can handle the mental burden of decision making within that timeframe.

As I said before (which nobody seems to have any comment about?) I would argue that a longer TTK actually decreases the available depth for an individual, because the longer a gunfight lasts the less ability the player has to maintain their situational awareness.

I agree and the TTK is good as it is right now. Increasing the TTK would just dumb down the game.

[Figment]

Originally Posted by Sunrock

I agree and the TTK is good as it is right now. Increasing the TTK would just dumb down the game.

OHKs AoE effects (shortest and most efficient TTKs) are so NOT dumbing down the game, at all.

Let's up the skill level of everyone and make everything OHK everything, cause shorter TTK is less dumbing down!

[/sarcasm]

If you're going to make use of a retarded non-argument, expect to get it launched right back in your face.