Does the shallow TTK shortchange the Depth this game could have? - Page 8

sneeek · 2013-01-19, 09:21 AM

Originally Posted by Mietz

Of course it is important.

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.

Absolutely correct, Nanoweave below lvl5 does nothing on average.

Your assumptions are simply flawed, and it's trivial to come up with examples that invalidate your reasoning.

There are many ways to end up with "random" levels of health or shields in a real battle, due to many ways to be damaged by a "random" amount.

- Explosions - grenades, tank shells, zephyr, rockets, vehicles exploding nearby
- Biolab benefit healing you slowly when at partial health.
- Fall damage.
- Sniper bullets, MAX bullets.
- Pain field.
- and others that don't happen very often, like coming under fire whilst being healed.
- Simply activating HA overshield in anticipation of a fight causes it to drain, and it basically acts as additional temporary health.

It's irrelevant that there aren't many infantry guns that do damage in ticks of less than 100.

An example:

Assume for the sake of argument that health+shield = 1000 and you're at full health. A guy attacks you with a gun that deals damage in ticks damage in ticks of 160 at a given range. You need 7 bullets to die. 15% extra health gives you 1075 total, so you don't survive an extra bullet. Now suppose a guy attacks that you with a gun that deals damage in ticks of 200 at a given range. 15% extra health means an extra bullet is required.

That is hardly equal to "never". Combine that with the tendency that you don't run around on full health or shields all the time in a real battle, and you see average survivability increase as a fractional number of bullets.

Note that the above example can be modified by HA overshield. Your overshield, which can have a variable amount of charge at a given moment, may or may not have enough charge to push you over the threshold of requiring an extra bullet. Medic healing in the middle of a fight (which a lot of people do) has a similar effect.

Nanoweave armour then modifies the above example even more, which also may be enough to push you over the threshold of requiring an extra bullet, regardless of how many ranks you have in it. In fact, the number of ranks you have increases the likelihood of needing an extra bullet.

psijaka · 2013-01-19, 11:15 AM

Originally Posted by Ruffdog

Late to this thread but heres what I think:

The TTK is *slightly* too low. Every squishy class should have a 15% health buff across the board. Keep headshots on a 2x multiplier

This brings me to Max units.
Maxes dont feel like they're in a good place at the moment.
Correct me if I'm wrong but they seem like they have no different category of armor to squishy units. They just have more health and thats it. (And no regen shield)
PS1 had gold (AP) and white (AI) ammo to take down your foes and white ammo did FA to a Max if I remember - so Decis or gold ammo was essential. Now fast forward to PS2 and focus fire from standard squishy guns will drop a Max in no time. Which I'm not a fan of. The NC AI weapons versus enemy Max units are disgusting.
I like the tactics needed to take out Maxs - you have to change guns to do the job required. But thats me.

TLDR; buff health on all infantry 15% and Max units by 20%

I play MAX + Dual Falcons a lot (favourite loadout at the moment, in fact)and TTK feels pretty long to me; I can take a lot of punishment. In fact, I often deliberately expose myself to fire for a second or 2 to tease the enemy into giving away their position, so that my team mates can deal with them.

And you can cert regenerative armour on a MAX; it's a bit slow, but still well worth having for those times when you don't have a friendly engi around. I've certed this twice and I regen at 0.5%/sec, not a lot but it does make a difference.

Edit - In fact, I spent an hour on Ceres this afternoon in a failed attempt to capture the Crown up the southern road, running as a MAX. Claimed around 30 scalps and only died twice, despite this being an absolute meatgrinder. MAX is plenty tough enough already.

psijaka · 2013-01-19, 11:58 AM

Originally Posted by Figment

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.

This argument can be turned on it's head. I agree that Engi turrets are a death trap (a special case, and a separate issue), but on the whole, a higher TTK would favour the attackers; means they can rush the defenders across open ground with less chance of being taken out. Such rashness deserves to be punished.

Bases are difficult enough to defend as it is.

PredatorFour · 2013-01-19, 12:10 PM

Originally Posted by psijaka

I play MAX + Dual Falcons a lot (favourite loadout at the moment, in fact)and TTK feels pretty long to me; I can take a lot of punishment. In fact, I often deliberately expose myself to fire for a second or 2 to tease the enemy into giving away their position, so that my team mates can deal with them.

That's really the whole playstyle/role of the Max you just described there. Maxes shouldn't be easy to roll over.

Kerrec · 2013-01-19, 12:24 PM

Not going to cut and paste what is turning out to be huge walls of texts. This reply is in response to some points Figment made. Go read them if you want to know what I'm talking about below.

Point of views:

1) If you're in a position and an enemy shows up behind you and kills you before you can react and "have a chance" to win the encounter, that sucks and you' don't find it fun.

2) If you see an enemy giving your team a hassle, you spend 30 seconds to a minute taking a long route around buildings and terrain, all the while potentially exposing yourself to attacks from other directions, yet you manage to flank that enemy you originally saw and kill him before he has a chance to fight back, that's hella rewarding.

If you find yourself in situation 1 more than situation 2, then maybe you play conservatively, take few risks or prefer simple face to face engagments, and that affects how you play. The other guy took risks, time and very basic strategy to gain a superior position, and used it effectively.

So in my eyes, being flanked is rewarding (fun) for the person that does the flanking, because they took the risk, the time and made a tactical decsion that worked out. To me, that's OK. Nothing wrong.

If you want to raise TTK on the basis that this is NOT OK, then you're effectively telling people that their effort, time and tactics have no place in PS2 and should be punished.

If you allow me to exagerate, as an extreme of what you're asking, I picture a system where someone has to offer a challenge. The challenged has to be accepted. Then both combatants get a countdown timer in which time they can choose where and how to fight. THEN they are allowed to be able to do damage to themselves. At no point can there be outside "fluke" influence, lucky shots or anything.

Sounds alot to me like what you want is an organized ladder championship type of game. Not a chaotic battlefield with thousands of soldiers with vehicles mixed in.

psijaka · 2013-01-19, 01:13 PM

Originally Posted by Kerrec

Sounds alot to me like what you want is an organized ladder championship type of game. Not a chaotic battlefield with thousands of soldiers with vehicles mixed in.

I'll take the chaotic battlefield with thousands of soldiers with vehicles mixed in any day; gives the feeling that I'm part of something much bigger than myself. This is what makes PS2 so attractive to me.

If anyone would like to experience PvP with a seriously long TTK, then I have 5 Firefall beta keys up for grabs. This is a genuine offer - just pm me and I'll get back to you.

I love Firefall PvE, but their PvP, with it's long TTK, is far too "arcade" for my liking.

Mietz · 2013-01-19, 09:55 PM

Originally Posted by sneeek

Your assumptions are simply flawed, and it's trivial to come up with examples that invalidate your reasoning.

I had some really long post typed up responding to you with all sorts of statistics and numbers, and how your specific scenarios don't matter in a general sense and how medical applicators heal in increments and that splash from explosives -still- comes in increments and has set max and min numbers.

But we/ for now answer me this.

Before I waste my time any further, what would you need as data (which I have access to) to falsify your claim.
i.e. What kind of evidence would I need to present to you to convince you?

Baneblade · 2013-01-20, 04:06 PM

The game seems to reward luck more than skill as it is now.

Saraya · 2013-01-20, 05:20 PM

Originally Posted by Ghoest9

I like the short time to kill it places more emphasis on tactics and less dancing tricks like circle straff and bunny hopping.

I think one of the silliest aspects of most shooters is that when someone shoots you in the back you have a fair chance of killing them by dancing around.

Its much better that game actually reward you for sneaking up behind someone.

The run and gun, hip shooting with no iron sighting infantry style is all there with it's usual bunny hopping, crouch jumping, mouse jerking, quick sighting unrealistic nonsense.

Between the advantage of battle rank, perks from certifications(most often bought with real money or farmed certifications), lag and Call of Duty game play, you can absolutely have someone dead to rights in the back, head shot them, knife them, put some more bullets in them as they dance around and try to jump over the ridiculous world geometry (which you just get stuck on), and still not die - only to then 360 you and BAM dead.

TTK is only a problem when dealing with laggers, hackers, newbies or the status quo extremely average player - which is a.k.a. the COD crowd.

Planetside 2 = Tribes 2 meets Battlefield 3 with a Call of Duty style at it's core. It's such a blatant ripoff I'm surprised Activation, Infinity Ward, Treyarch and EA haven't sued them.

Now, that issue transcends everything else - the rest of it falls under that umbrella and is largely irrelevant.
Until developers learn to model their games more like the ARMA series, where the casual average person WILL not be interested, then they aren't really impressing anyone.

Thank goodness it's free.

Sledgecrushr · 2013-01-20, 08:26 PM

Originally Posted by Saraya

The run and gun, hip shooting with no iron sighting infantry style is all there with it's usual bunny hopping, crouch jumping, mouse jerking, quick sighting unrealistic nonsense.

Between the advantage of battle rank, perks from certifications(most often bought with real money or farmed certifications), lag and Call of Duty game play, you can absolutely have someone dead to rights in the back, head shot them, knife them, put some more bullets in them as they dance around and try to jump over the ridiculous world geometry (which you just get stuck on), and still not die - only to then 360 you and BAM dead.

TTK is only a problem when dealing with laggers, hackers, newbies or the status quo extremely average player - which is a.k.a. the COD crowd.

Planetside 2 = Tribes 2 meets Battlefield 3 with a Call of Duty style at it's core. It's such a blatant ripoff I'm surprised Activation, Infinity Ward, Treyarch and EA haven't sued them.

Now, that issue transcends everything else - the rest of it falls under that umbrella and is largely irrelevant.
Until developers learn to model their games more like the ARMA series, where the casual average person WILL not be interested, then they aren't really impressing anyone.

Thank goodness it's free.

I think what youre trying to say is that with the fast kills in this game is that its pretty hard. I agree this is a hard game to play. Im absolutely loving every minute of it.

Black Creeper · 2013-01-21, 05:10 PM

Originally Posted by Kerrec

Point of views:

1) If you're in a position and an enemy shows up behind you and kills you before you can react and "have a chance" to win the encounter, that sucks and you' don't find it fun.

2) If you see an enemy giving your team a hassle, you spend 30 seconds to a minute taking a long route around buildings and terrain, all the while potentially exposing yourself to attacks from other directions, yet you manage to flank that enemy you originally saw and kill him before he has a chance to fight back, that's hella rewarding.

Best kills of the weekend:
1. Playing Engineer fixing a turret at the Stronghold. I throw an Anti Personel mine down behind me before I start fixing. As I'm fixing there is a huge explosion and I get an infiltrator kill on a guy sneaking up behind me during the firefight.
2. Pushing the VS with my Heavy Assault, I keep getting sniped from a canyon wall but I can't find the sniper. I spawn Light Assault and cruise up the walls. Near the top, I land almost on top of 2 VS snipers who grab for their pistols while I notch 2 kills with my Mauler shot gun.

Love this game

Kerrec · 2013-01-22, 08:17 AM

I think I'm starting to understand where some of the complaints are coming from.

Last weekend, I was helping to take a tech plant. I was LA, up on the outer wall trying to cover a generator room. Next to the generator room was a 2 storey building with roof access. One HA and myself kept exchanging kills. I'd get him, he'd come back and get me. Over and over.

I had just dumped my mag at defenders trying to get to the generator room when the HA guy ran up on the roof of the 2 storey building again. I saw him (expecting him) and started to move behind cover since I was mid reload.

Now I swear to you I was fully behind cover before I started getting hit and killed. Having some BF3 experience, I just cursed the guy for his high/low ping and cursed client side hit detection, then respawned and kept at it. But I had an "AH HA!" moment.

I could see how client side hit detection would make what I consider "fair" TTK feel like insta-gib. It happens to me regularly, but not frequently. I get 100% killed by some weapon that takes 8-10 bullets to kill, but it feels like it hits me all at once, and there's nothing I can do.

In a game that promotes thousands of players, you're bound to get someone with an absurd ping causing stuff like that. What can you do about it? Not much. Bump up TTK? IMO, that would hurt the majority of the game play to fix isolated situations.

Figment · 2013-01-22, 09:14 AM

High ping is a different issue. Incredibly annoying certainly (and can feel like gibbing, typically when over 300ms ping), but is a distinctively different issue from the degrees of situational awareness you either can and must have, and the ability to focus fire at choke points and survive rushes. It can affect efficiency, but isn't the key issue at all.

To understand it, I'd suggest looking up a number of PS1 hold videos. You can see how aiming skill (cof control and target leading mostly in PS1), defensive positioning and dodging skills create the opportunity to hold something with few against many. You see people ensure their arse is covered by walls so they can limit the amount of situational awareness they need and focus on the chokepoints ahead of them.

These chokepoints can be quite wide and even opposite of one another, like a 12m wide hallway or can be a very limited number of small doors (1-3 doors). It ensures that fights of 3 defenders facing 9 attackers, become a number of 1 vs 2, 1 vs 1, 3 vs 2 and 3 vs 3 engagements. Since there are only three defenders, if a defender dies there quickly through fluke shots (where the defender has the advantage of predicting enemy paths and trained shots), the attacker would gain a numerical ratio advantage more quickly.

If you have 8 directions to attack from, you can easily have a 3 vs 6 to 3 vs 9 situation. With 9 people engaging you at once, fluke shots add up faster, reducing your TTK. So if TTK is very short, say it takes one fluke shot, then 3 vs 9 becomes 1 vs 9 in an an instant. 1 vs 6 if you are lucky.

If TTK takes longer and you have good positions that can't always be flanked, you might survive through skill, where the 3 vs 9 becomes 3x 3 vs 3. :/

You may think this sounds weird, but if you ever had to control just two doors with two people, you'd realise you could take on 6-8 enemies if there's some time in between each entering the room and you getting the drop on them because they still have to orientate on where you are.

And yeah, third person helps a lot with this, as it strengthens ambushes over approaches. First person ensures line of sight from both sides, making an ambush less effective.

You can see the combination of those elements (longer ttk vs shotgun ttk, ambush third person, reaction time and dodging (ofc. adad-warp inducing was part of PS1 unfortunately) in vids like this:

Kerrec · 2013-01-22, 09:56 AM

I think I've written enough at this point. I don't agree with many of the things you wrote, and writing more isn't going to change your mind. You seem to equate TTK with Defensible positions all the time and I've said my peace on that issue.

You now also appear to make 6-9 one vs. one encounters as a 6-9 vs. 1. I really don't agree with that. There's no way 1 person can kill 6-9 guys in a row. Those 6 or 9 guys are going to land SOME hits, wittling you away. You will also have to reload at some point. So a "TRUE" 6 vs. 1, even if bottlenecked in favor of the defender, will not work the way you describe. What you seem to describe is a series of 1 vs. 1 encounters, with breaks in between. I have had PLENTY of those in my playtime in PS2. I've gone on 6-10 kill streaks defending rooms with up to 4 entrances! A fast TTK in PS2 didn't prevent exactly what you described from happening.

3rd person view. I detest it. IMO, it should even be removed from vehicles. Being able to see around a corner without exposing your character PROTECTS you from falling into an ambush. So I fail to see how you equate 3rd person view with more successful ambushes...

psijaka · 2013-01-22, 11:12 AM

Originally Posted by Figment

These chokepoints can be quite wide and even opposite of one another, like a 12m wide hallway or can be a very limited number of small doors (1-3 doors). It ensures that fights of 3 defenders facing 9 attackers, become a number of 1 vs 2, 1 vs 1, 3 vs 2 and 3 vs 3 engagements. Since there are only three defenders, if a defender dies there quickly through fluke shots (where the defender has the advantage of predicting enemy paths and trained shots), the attacker would gain a numerical ratio advantage more quickly.

If you have 8 directions to attack from, you can easily have a 3 vs 6 to 3 vs 9 situation. With 9 people engaging you at once, fluke shots add up faster, reducing your TTK. So if TTK is very short, say it takes one fluke shot, then 3 vs 9 becomes 1 vs 9 in an an instant. 1 vs 6 if you are lucky.

If TTK takes longer and you have good positions that can't always be flanked, you might survive through skill, where the 3 vs 9 becomes 3x 3 vs 3. :/

You may think this sounds weird, but if you ever had to control just two doors with two people, you'd realise you could take on 6-8 enemies if there's some time in between each entering the room and you getting the drop on them because they still have to orientate on where you are.

And yeah, third person helps a lot with this, as it strengthens ambushes over approaches. First person ensures line of sight from both sides, making an ambush less effective.

Sorry, but what you are saying just doesn't seem logical. Shorter TTK usually favours the ambusher/defender/flanker, not the frontal attacker. Means that if the defender get the drop on the enemy attackers then they'll down them quickly before they have a chance to retailiate. The exception is when the attacker knows where the defender is hiding, and can aim and prefire as they are turning the corner.

All this talk of you being damaged by "fluke" shots just doesn't ring true either, makes it sound as if your opponents posess zero skill whatsoever. What if they can shoot straight and are landing their shots on target - in a 3v9 you'll probably die anyway, whatever the TTK. In fact, I would go so far as to say that you would stand a better chance with a shorter TTK; a longer TTK would lead to a war of attrition, where sheer firepower becomes more important than quick skilful aiming.