Melee is to Brawl as Short TTK is to Long TTK

I'm too lazy to get those huge posts from ViXeN's thread.

but here are the relevant quotes made in this thread so far.

In order to increase the fairness of a system like this they would have to change the hit registration code to add a delay for high ping to give people with better connections to the servers time to act. I don't know if this is at all practical in terms of numbers of players and server load already causing laggy connections. Really the game already has significant problems with the whole thing feeling really lame and unfair in many situations with the current time to kill. Really if I can think of any reason for people not voting for ttk to be shorter it's because of how bad it feels in game to be on the "receiving end" of a low ttk currently.

What? Since you seem to know your melee stuff, let me present a video too you.



I'm really surprised something like this is in a competitive game like smash. You hit a single button to grab your opponent and they die. It is not skillful, fun and makes you feel completely helpless. Similar to being OHK by a rocket launcher. At the end of the video Mango shakes the guy's hand and if it were me I wouldn't have. Its complete cheese and something that needs to be outlawed. (A friend of mine is big into smash and showed me the vid, I played it a bit and understand most concepts, but he is a pretty good player) If you cannot fight back, how is the game competitive? Its more like 1 player vs the mechanics of the game than 1 player vs another player. When mechanics allow for that, its garbage, nothing more nothing less. Its not competition.

Edit: I think a situation like this above is much like how Conc. grenades are as well. You throw one and the room you are about to breach has players in it that can't fight back. Its pretty cheesy and non skillful. (clear vision implant FTW) Its not competition, you take out the competitiveness aspect by making sure your opponent can't fight back.

Sure, this game has some bad mechanics, but i'm saying in general for most shooters a higher TTK takes more skill. CS takes a lot of skill, but if you land a single lucky headshot GG, dead player. I like CS and it is a game that takes a lot of skill, but lucky events happen in it a lot that I think are complete BS (like headshoting a guy through a door or through smoke, mostly luck in normal games) Honestly, I think there is more luck in faster TTK, 1-2 lucky shots and you can win an encounter. Where as if it takes 10 or so bullets to kill, you may get a few lucky shots, but then after that you have to be good and keep a consistent aim on your opponent.

Headshots are important and it is all in the math. They do more damage than regular shots, thereby making them more important. They also take skill due to the fact the head is a small hitbox in comparison to the entire body. I'm frankly quite surprised that someone is trying to argue this. I think it is common sense. Numbers don't lie. Headshots would still be very important in higher TTK scenario's. Once again its math. If it takes 10 body shots to kill a guy, it will take 5 headshots to kill. Obviously, if I shoot you 5x in the head and you shoot me 9x in the body I will be rewarded for the kill due to superior aiming.

Double post because SOE can't even get a forum to work right.

I feel like you dont though,

i would say that the average weapon has an RPM a little higher than 600 meaning that you shoot 10 rounds a second. if you want a 2-3 bullet TTK that means that you are dead in .2 or .3 seconds respectively. Which coincidentally falls within the .3 seconds of lag compensation so in this case you are dead on your enemies screen before you even know that you are being shot at.

Unless my math is horrifically wrong somewhere there will be absolutely zero time for reaction, you will be dead. End of.

You're right, this game definitely needs more client-side deaths and camping.

longer ttk is better because:
+ partly compensates flaws of network, lag/latency issues, high/low ping difference between players, game/engine problems
+ firefights last longer if everyone dies less quickly
+ less wtf moments & frustration
+ skill is a larger factor (any noob can one-shot someone. but only skilled players can still turn around, take cover, then counterattack -- would not be possible if ttk is short)

I'm wondering about drunken pugilism.

Er, one of your quotes suggested that the value of RNG elements increases with longer fights. Maybe that's relevant to Smash Bros, but it's certainly not relevant to nearly every other game, where the impact of RNG decreases over prolonged engagements.

If you gave us both 1 million health in PS2, I assure you the randomness of the CoF will play no role in the outcome. But in a 10-bullet kill there is a very strong possibility of RNG affecting the outcome (from shots randomly going from where I'm actually aiming to a better or worse location.)

Rounding the corner in PS2 has more value than in any other shooter I've played (just slightly more than PS1 which was the previous record-holder). And while setting up those situations involves skill, that's a skill which would still have value in longer fights. But if you double the bullets-to-kill then you halve the value that you get purely through Ambush Skill, and offload that onto Aiming and Evasion skill.

The most interesting games involve a lot of different types of skill (such as SC2's micro, macro, and strategic elements). The least interesting ones only reward a narrow set of skill.

Mango absolutely destroyed Wobbles in the Grand Finals at EVO though. ICs isn't even top 5 characters even WITH it legal, and they have the worst MU ever against Samus, who's around top 8. The whole thing about wobbling, and why I think they ought not be banned aside from ICs just not being that good, is that the pre-grab setup becomes that much more important. It's something they're aware of at all times, and separating Nana from Popo is paramount in the MU anyways. Without wobbling, they still have 'true combos' which rack up a ton of % with each grab. You can also mash out of wobbling at lower %s. It's still very much competition, and still very hype. If you want to ban wobbling, in my opinion, you should also ban Jigglypuff, the way HungryBox plays is, as many call, lame, and people boo him just as they do wobbling.

Rocket launchers, while they feel cheap, are nowhere near good enough to actually warrant a nerf. It's the same reason there's no truly good, competitively viable shotguns in FPS games anymore. The reason why you don't see massive groups of people walking around with shotgun or rocket launcher only is because they're inconsistent, while cheesy, not because they're socially discouraged.

You may well be right about the second. I would defer to your judgement about CS, I haven't played it much, but I hear lots of folks talk about it. But I have to maintain, CS as a whole is not wont of skill due to the lucky headshots, and the player with better skill will still the vast majority of the time trounce those of lower skill in both fast and slow TTK games in general.
There is an enormous emphasis on 'feeling', which I must admit I sometimes refer to, but I have become completely desensitized to being insta-gibbed. I get far more frustrated when I have zero chance to overcome when I am directly confronted than when I am sniped cross-map, odd, I know, it is a matter of preference.

And no, it's not straight math. It's why I feel as if TTK is one of the worse statistics to look at when comparing weapons, because consistency and accuracy are far more, and one is not to forget that if one misses, which happens QUITE often (most people hover around 15-30% accuracy), weapon TTKs usually quadruple in practice. Rare is the day that one gets all 5 headshots while the other, who is aiming center mass, will more likely get all 10, and if they're that good that they do so consistently get headshots, a lower TTK will benefit them all the more because they are able to take them out faster and move on to another target.

Here's an important, oft unconsidered scenario when people look at raw weapon stats and engagement mechanics. When two people are introduced as one side of the engagement, at a certain point, short/fast TTK makes it so the 'one' side has a greater chance of taking them both out if his skill be high enough, whereas, in a long/slow TTK, 'one' has a hell of a time taking out both of them due to the two having, if we're assuming an average skill level, more relative time on target. This 'certain point' is at the initial seconds of the engagement. Here, I also assume that being higher skill means that the time it takes to gain full accuracy is faster, and that they hit more often, but not incredibly more so, for as an average player's increase is slower, and accuracy lower, two will in general hit more often than one. Since it is obvious that two players cannot occupy the same space, and often do not come upon the one at the same exact moment with the same exact reaction time, the obscuring of view by the teammate in potentiality, and many other factors foremost as we've seen is positioning so they can both happily engage the enemy, in which the two have an advantage as two exert more spatial control more handily than one, those initial moments are the most important. If the TTK is low enough in the given game that one can kill before the second gains their full potential, that is further the importance placed upon the wide array of factors in both reaction and tactics.

Edit: And now I must go

If they add more shots to kill but not more rounds in the magazines then I would just play more HA.

Which is partially my point. Would Wobbles even have made it as far as he did if he didn't have this mechanic to exploit? Its a hard question to answer, but the fact is if you rely on broken game mechanics for crutches you aren't as good of a player as you think you are. That is the point i'm trying to make as far as skill is concerned.

We can disagree about its place in competitions or the amount of skill it takes. One thing that most people would agree about is that it isn't a fun game mechanic to feel mostly helpless (completely as you said if you have a higher %). Many one shot mechanics fall into this not fun and completely helpless category. I like to be vocal about a games balance and strive to make games more competitive, but at the end of the day if there are mechanics that are just straight up not fun, in the long run it will hurt your player base.

Did you play PS2 when shotguns came out? Guessing not, if you were you wouldn't be saying that shotguns weren't viable. I agree with you though, the way shotguns are designed they are a luck based weapon. Which is why players who are really good at games don't use them, they want to use a consistent performing weapon. Personally, I don't want to be screwed out of getting a kill because one my my pellets missed.

Agreed, skill, positioning and game knowledge together trump everything on avg. regardless of TTK. I'm just saying in a faster TTK environment I think luck has a slightly larger role. We could argue this forever, but it all depends on what works for the game. A faster TTK for PS2 would be really bad due to the large scale of the battles and as has been stated the various amount of technical issues this game has.

Edit: Yeah, getting sniped isn't exactly the most fun mechanic. But at least it takes a decent amount of skill (leading shots based on distance, bullet drop ect.). Snipers also can't kill heavy vehicles like what rocket launchers can. Which is one of my main problems with rocket launchers is how versatile they are. They one shot infantry and are still really good against Max's and vehicles.

I was using it as an example, I wasn't claiming that people are perfectly accurate. When you do 2x the damage for a head shot in comparison to a body shot, I think its math. Aiming for the area that does the most damage is always better in terms of prioritizing hit boxes. I understand your point though, there are some guns that are hard to control and therefore want to play it safe and aim for the body. Those guns are usually considered sub par as for competitive environments (like you said you stated about shotguns). Most of the time I will be choosing the accurate gun that I can get head shots with because head shots do more damage.

Except in a game like PS2. You breach a point room with 5 guys in it and they all put 1 bullet on you and your dead. A faster TTK would exacerbate the problems with this game.

Those who act like vegetables should not complain that they are on a farm.

Being farmed is a choice.

I was actually a big fan of the TTK when nanoweave armor health increase was a thing. It definitely felt a bit more fun around that range with less OHK's. That doesn't drastically increase TTK, only by about .5 seconds, but that was just enough to feel like I had a chance.

I'm fairly average at shooters, though. I could see people of different skill levels wanting different things. I'm just not a fan of OHK items as they are a "one way skill" type of item. Sniper rifles were my most used item after the nanoweave nerf just because it's so easy to snipe people from any distance even if they are moving, with no risk to yourself. That means that my skill trumps anyone else's skill just because I can hit them from a thousand miles away and there's nothing they can do about it.

Same goes for tanks and such spamming HE shells through windows. I guess some people call it skill because they brought a tank to the fight but it just seems silly to me. It's a good farm though and i'd be lying if I said I didn't do it during double exp...

TLDR: Bring back the old nanoweave health increase but leave it on as default.

I play planetside 2 BECAUSE I have time to react, it feels like it requires far more skill then in say COD ghosts, where you basically just have to flank the guy and it's almost always your win.

MW2 was ****** console bases FPS, that had no dedicated servers (only hacked version had ones) and was 6 vs 6 FPS. If host had terrible internet, the game went to **** and hosts were chosen RNG.

So we already had that TTK discussion plenty of times, we even tried several slow/fast TTK incarnations back in beta. And still you come here and try to argue for a 2-3 BTK (which IMO is ridiculous in a semi-arcade FPS of the likes of BF, CoD or PS2). Even better, when people actually try to argue your case you attempt to shoot them down with what could be described as anecdotal evidence at best, citing some obscure pro-board and aliases I've never heard before on the internet.
And after all this, you still think we should trust you on this.


Fat chance.


PS: INB4 my K/D not allowing me to form a valid opinion.

You think me so shallow?
I, personally, have not had the TTK discussion many times, which is why I made this thread, only once, and what happened there was a pretty resounding victory against the notion that lower TTK means less skill, which is why I wanted to make this thread.
The reason I asked for trust is exactly because I understand that many would choose to reject my appeal to authority, because to many it will be of dubious origin. If I thought my sources were sufficient to stand by themselves without any further argumentation for most, I would not have asked you to trust me. I myself dislike the appeal, but I wanted to keep this topic on TTK specifically, so I tried to pass over it as quickly as possible, leaving that particular argument wanting.
Yes, I do know that various TTKs were tested in Beta, Den told me that. I just happen to dislike slow TTKs, and want to push my agenda as much as possible, this should be no surprise. I really do think a fast TTK would solve a variety of issues for how I feel about gunplay at this moment. So, please, view the other posts made, wherein argumentation is made more thoroughly on the topic at hand.

Edit: Rather, I should say that I don't like talking about netcode beyond the conclusions because it's a super long and tedious road filled with misnomers on all sides. I am flawed in this, lazy, yes.

I posted a thread on /r/planetside a while back with pretty much the opposite argument. While it did devolve quickly into arguing with one guy with a twitchy downvote finger, I think some good points were made on both sides that might be considered relevant to this discussion.