Why does bullet velocity matter?

I understand that large differences in bullet velocity make a difference in balance, if say you have a Decimator vs. a Lancer, but when I look at all the carbines, rifles, etc. and I see differences in 50 m/s, I just don't see how that matters at all.

I played a lot of PS1, which had some seriously slow bullets, so I'm used to leading my target. So what if I have to lead the target a little bit further? It doesn't affect whether I'm going to hit them or not.

So why do you, as a player, care about velocity? Is leading targets really that hard, or am I missing something?

It's a bonus feature, not a deciding factor, in judging a weapon.

At least, that's how I've always seen it.

Bullet velocity is directly related to TTK. A slow velocity directly inflates TTK for the user. There is no downside to having good velocity.

Think of this problem. One person has a gun that fires 16 bullets a second which travel at 500m/s, and the second person has a gun that fires four bullets a second which travel at 1000m/s. It takes four bullets to kill and the two people are spaced 1000m apart. When they begin firing at the same time, it takes the first person .1875s to fire the killing shot and 2s for the shot to reach the target. The second person takes .75s to fire the killing shot and 1s to reach the target. The first person has a TTK of 2.1875s, and the second person has a TTK of 1.75s. The second person wins, although his gun has the theoretical higher TTK.

Now you know the effect of bullet velocity in a game that calculates bullets as projectiles using physics!

This, combined with lag/clientside is why higher muzzle velocity will always be a better option.

Leading targets is hard, man.

I understand that velocity, on paper, affects TTK. I have a hard time believing it has significant, if any, effect on actual combat. If I and an enemy are both shooting each other with weapons that have a difference of 50 m/s velocity, nobody is going to win because of that. Because by the time my enemy's faster kill shot reaches me, I've already fired my kill shot. We're both still dead.

If, somehow, that extra velocity does manage to get someone a kill before their opponent, the probability of that happening is very low when considering how often two people square off against each other at long distances where velocity has any impact.

Compare that to ROF and consider all the 1v1 short range encounters in the game, and you can easily see how ROF matters way more.

My original question wasn't about whether someone would actually pick a gun based solely on velocity, but why it's even used as a statistic to balance different guns. For instance, if I had a choice between two near identical guns, both designed for long distance combat, I would choose ROF over velocity every day. I would probably also choose mag size, reload speed, COF, recoil, EVERYTHING before considering velocity.

This is why I use HV on all my guns. Yes, it makes the rifle shake a bit more... But that can't really be helped, just gotta learn to burst fire.

High velocity = less drop and less leading = easier headshots at longer ranges

It does make a difference to tracking targets especially when you get to the lower end that you see with some carbines and smg.

It does affect you if your target changes pace and/or direction. If the bullet takes 2 seconds to reach a guy sprinting across your FOV and he stops running after 1 second, you are going to miss. If the bullet was twice as fast, you would have still hit him.

For small arms there are 2 meaningful levels of velocity: slug velocity and non-slug velocity.

I would look at everything. Recoil, Velocity, etc. When combat gets over 50 meters it really starts to matter.

This only really has an effect in practice if velocity differences are THAT severe. But considering most are under 150 difference within the same weapon category (maybe 200ish with HV ammo) It doesn't mean much in regards to TTK. It's nowhere near a deciding factor when compared to bullet damage tier or rate of fire. Especially for close to mid range weapons (the majority of most weapon categories)

You used distances that are an order of magnitude higher than what actually usually occurs in game (1km?! hell, people don't even render beyond 300m) and differences in velocity speed that are also way higher than most of what occurs in game (most guns are between ~400m/s and 600m/s). Bullet velocity matters relatively little when it comes to "shooting each other at the same time". Where it does matter is following targets beyond 40m or so. If the target is zigging and zagging, it doesn't matter how good you are at leading the shot, you'd have to be psychic to land all bullets. With a high enough bullet velocity, this can be mitigated.

To illustrate this point, note that in your example one person has two whole seconds of lag between firing and hitting (meaning the other guy has two seconds to dodge) and the other has only a second. This is much more important than how many bullets are in the air (I'd be surprised if these guys managed to hit each other even once if they strafe at all, even if they had perfect CoF).

As a second, lesser concern, it also reduces the effect of bullet drop since gravity has less time to affect the bullet as it flies (more noticeable in sniper rifles, but still).

EVERYTHING is a deciding factor. You wouldn't get a pistiol with 150/ms that has 14 ammo and 140 damage instead of a pistol with 430/ms , 10 ammo and does 135 damage, would you?

50 m/s is alot of speed tbh. Maybe this will put it in perspective: 1 m/s = 3,6 kph.

Again, these numbers are ridiculous. Could we please use actual values or at least ones that are somewhere in the ballpark of actual values?

Then question isn't "why does bullet velocity matter?" but "when does bullet velocity matter?".

Just emphasizing the On-Paper value of velocity...
50/ms isn't that much, but on lower RoF weapons, his makes a large difference. 2 guys in a 50m long room. Both shoot stuff, one has 600 RoF, the other has 650RoF. The bullet velocity in this 50m long room does in fact mae a (possibly small) difference. I didn't do loads of mathematical shizwaz, so feel free to correct me.

Bullet drop man. Put a suppressor on a parallax (bolt action sniper rifle) and the bullet drop is ridiculous. Also, the lead must be really annoying.

The bullet drop is proportional to the square of the time in the air, according to normal laws of gravity... so 2 secs of bullet drop would be 4x greater than 1 secs (ignoring air resistance).