Head shots, body shots, TTK

asdar · 2012-06-13, 10:14 AM

I hope this doesn't turn into a thread about which is more tactical, short or long TTK. I'm just curious about how the TTK is weighted right now, and maybe what you think it should be.

If you go with the heaviest attack, either the Max unit or HA vs the Lightest armor LA, eng or medic how many head shots does it take? and how many body shots?

I think I'd be ok with 2-3 headshots in this situation, and 6-9 body shots.

If you went the Lightest attack vs the heaviest infantry armor I'd be ok with 5-7 head shots and maybe 15-20 body shots, Max Units I'd think 10-12 head shots, 20-30 body shots.

I figure head shot should be roughly 3X a body shot in damage.

Vanu Techpriest · 2012-06-13, 10:33 AM

From the livestream footage I watched, it seems that you can kill some of the lightly armored classes very quickly provided that you can aim properly and control recoil.

I saw some instances where people were wasting whole clips spraying and others where the enemy died within 1-2 seconds.

wasdie · 2012-06-13, 10:38 AM

They are making the gunplay more along the lines of modern shooters so expect much shorter TTKs than in Planetside.

OutlawDr · 2012-06-13, 11:03 AM

I want shorter TTKs tbh. PS1 ttk were just too long for my tastes even back then, and new players today won't put up with it now.

I watched some clips to figure out how many shots it takes to kill players.

A Vanu max with a quasar, took 4 shots to kill a light infantry
It takes roughly about 6 shots to kill a LA with standard infantry weapons.
I'm assuming these were all body shots.

In modern FPS games it averages about 3 shots up close and 5 shots from a distance to kill players. Headshots are usually only a 1.4-1.5 damage multiplier. Some sniper weapons sometimes have 1.7 multiplier, or have an automatic headshot kill ability.

SpcFarlen · 2012-06-13, 11:58 AM

I dont really feel fast TTK is bad. For vehicles it is fairly fast too. Though things do look fairly balanced, which is what i am looking for. It may not be everyone's cup of tea for fast TTK, but balancing it is more key.

Bags · 2012-06-13, 12:03 PM

At the moment 2 headshot to take out a HA with a medic carbine rifle.

So given hundreds of people instead of 100 at E3, expect to die instantly every time you poke your head out.

Have "fun"!

asdar · 2012-06-13, 12:42 PM

I watched most every bit of footage from E3 and I didn't see any HA get taken down by a medic with only 2 headshots.

Can anyone confirm this, 2 headshots is way to low in my opinion if this is true.

I saw a Light armor kill an HA, but it took 6-8 shots and I'd have sworn every shot was a head shot.

Mechzz · 2012-06-13, 12:44 PM

I saw an uncloaked infil kill a max from prbly full health with a sniper rifle from about 5 yards. Don't think it means I'll see that every day?

fod · 2012-06-13, 01:07 PM

going by TB's videos imo TTK is waaaay to low

how many "bullets" it will take will all be dependant on the faction so the tr with their low damage/high ROF will need more bullets than the NC with their high damage/low ROF so talking about how many bullets it should take is irrelivant imo its all about the "time" it takes to kill

sure ps1's was a little high in the ttk but i think the battlefield 3/COD model is also way to low for ps2 - a little higher than the TB videos would be perfect

OutlawDr · 2012-06-13, 01:16 PM

shot to kill gives you a good approximation of ttk.
Accurate TTK values are impossible to get unless you know damage and rof values. In the videos some guys took forever to go down, some went down in seconds. It all depends on the players movement and aim. Going off by shots gives us now something solid to compare to other games.

In the E3's videos, ttk in PS2 looks to be somewhere in between modern FPS games and PS1.
2 shot head kill is probably the only thing that mirrors exactly a modern FPS game, as even an SMG can kill in 2 hits at close range in mw3.

Ratstomper · 2012-06-13, 01:24 PM

Originally Posted by fod

going by TB's videos imo TTK is waaaay to low

how many "bullets" it will take will all be dependant on the faction so the tr with their low damage/high ROF will need more bullets than the NC with their high damage/low ROF so talking about how many bullets it should take is irrelivant imo its all about the "time" it takes to kill

sure ps1's was a little high in the ttk but i think the battlefield 3/COD model is also way to low for ps2 - a little higher than the TB videos would be perfect

We also have to take into account that we had ALOT of action going on in one spot between three different empires; something that probably won't happen THAT much in the game proper. I'm willing to bet this caused alot of variables (target health being low, for instance), just because there was such a flurry of activity and people just running around deathmatch style.

My hope is that the TTK is a bit longer than the videos showed; especially for some air vehicles.

asdar · 2012-06-13, 01:53 PM

The way I understood the comments from E3 each player had a shield and health and the shield regenerated after action. The health I've heard people that were at E3 say that it didn't regenerate at all, but some regeneration was seen on the video. I think maybe the medic regen was involved, but I didn't see it.

Saying that TTK was too long or too short to me is just gut reaction. It should be based on shots vs armor in some manner.

Vehicles is a totally different affair. I'm not sure how to weight them yet, so I'll keep my mouth shut on that topic. The vast majority of vehicles I saw destroyed were killed because the pilot ran into something. I'd keep that as it is, if you're not good enough to avoid the mountain then stay out of the sky.

Well, I won't totally shut my mouth on the topic. I'd hate to spend a lot of credits to get a ship that's taken out by one Lock-on type missile that takes no aiming. I'll give the devs some leeway to find the right balance for air.

OutlawDr · 2012-06-13, 02:06 PM

Health does regen. Players at E3 were probably to involved in figuring out what to do to notice. It takes about 25-30 seconds to start the regen, and about 10 secs for the regen to full hp from low health. Shield starts regen after 10 seconds and takes about 5 seconds to refill from zero.

maradine · 2012-06-13, 02:17 PM

I am 100% in favor of body shots.

Sifer2 · 2012-06-13, 02:47 PM

Well in terms of standard body shot TTK I think its way too low currently. They seem to be trying to copy Battlefield 3 here in terms of pacing an kill times. The problem I see with this is that Planetside 2's scale is entirely different. Battlefield is 64 player max. That TTK maybe fits there. But what about when its 500 players in a small area? I think its just going to be way too fast an people will ***** an moan that they die almost right after they spawn, and that it's all random bullets killing you instantly from everywhere with no idea what's going on. That's my prediction of how first few weeks of Beta is going to go, and they will need to up the TTK.

As for Headshot's oh man you could wright a whole article on that. When they are just thrown into a shooter with no thought they can easily ruin it. GTA4 multiplayer for example had really bad headshots. Since they were instant kill compared to the beefy health bars you had if someone was trying to body shot you. You kind of have to have played it to know how god awful it was. It felt so random with you both just spamming bullets at each other, and who ever got the lucky headshot first always won.

IMO the game that did Headshot's the best of any I ever played was actually Halo. In fact I would argue that was the primary reason that game series ever became so popular. It was the famous three headshot Pistol kill. The way they did it was only certain weapons could get headshots. Pistol, Battle Rifle, and Sniper Rifle. All the more spammy weapons like SMG's or Assault Rifle could not. This allowed more skilled players who were good with the slow firing weapons able to aim, and consistently score multiple headshots in a row would rise to the top.

Unfortunately now we live in world where people would rather play Call of Duty. Where you just spam a couple bullets in the general direction of your opponent, and they drop dead. In Planetside 2 footage is appears to be pretty similar here where you just spam full auto at head level, and you easily kill your opponent. IMO they should aspire to be more like Halo. And restrict headshots to weapons like Pistol's and Snipers only. Maybe even add a Battle Rifle class of weapon which has small clip size and low firing rate but better accuracy over long distance, and headshot capable.

TLDR:

TTK needs to be higher.
Only certain none spammy weapons should be able to headshot.
Headshot should almost never be instant kill unless maybe its a Sniper on light armor class.