New damage models are horrendously broken

There is NOTHING broken about that. This is exactly how we always wanted the game! To be able to kill and get killed with 1-2 shots only, just like Insurgency Source.

@benz No2 way.That's not insurgency

Maybe 1 shot kill for no armor target?That makes armor useful.

Yes, I've explained before why I want that particular skill ceiling among several skill ceilings in the game lowered, I won't do it again. It was in my long post that got ~30 upvotes, first page in the locked ttk thread. It's about Insurgency maintaining its identity and setting itself apart from all the other shooters. If you don't agree that's fine.

I re-read your post you are referring to and yes, you basically state there that you want an easier and more simple game and that is your opinion and preference. And that's fine, you like what you like.

I'm not a fan of making the game something like 10 shots each kill with each weapon, but the TTK is already very low. You can win flanking situations very easy in this game already. You want to make it even easier. Last patch improved the hitreg and on top of that they even lowered TTK with the patch.

What I'm afraid of, is making every weapon 1-hit kill and then ruining the game balance totally. Your argument in the post was, that it makes all the weapons viable. But it has been proven many times on this forum, that it does not make all the weapons viable, it makes the highest ROF weapon the most viable and only option. Even UT instagib realized this: that game mode only had one weapon, a hitscan rifle that killed instantly. Because no other weapons were needed. And this was in 1999, almost 20 years ago.

I want tactical gameplay and immersion and intensity from this game. Now I have the understanding that you also want the same things (correct me here If I'm wrong). I basically want the same things you do, only difference is I don't want dumb down the gameplay. I personally want a balanced TTK.

Now here's a question I would like everyone to think about: if TTK was the one thing that made gameplay supertactical, then COD4 hardcore would've been the ultimate tactical shooter. Is it or is it not? And why do you think so?

@jensiii I think the low ttk is what makes insurgency so exciting.

@l1ttel_y You would've loved COD4 hardcore then! 🙂

My opinion is that balanced TTK should be in the lower end, so the weapons still feel lethal (so you get the feeling of "danger", I suppose we could call it that). But 1-shot kills are not needed for that.

@jensiii too old,no interest to play.(didnt play any cod before)

@l1ttel_y Do you mean you're not interested in playing games at all anymore or are you not interested in a low TTK game?

@jensiii said in New damage models are horrendously broken:

Now here's a question I would like everyone to think about: if TTK was the one thing that made gameplay supertactical, then COD4 hardcore would've been the ultimate tactical shooter. Is it or is it not? And why do you think so?

Oh yeah. M16 with double tap and ACOG on hardcore. Also deagle 1-taps.

last edited by DootyBooty

@slazenger said in New damage models are horrendously broken:

@benz
Higher TTK than Dall of Duty.
This guy is nuts

Let's stop making random claims about Call of Duty like it's the BF3 pre-release, lest I grow a tumor in my skull.
https://stealthypancake.github.io/ww2/#assault

I totally agree with Doghead here, if sandstorm wants to continue being a stale, thoughtless shooter like source became it should keep the ttk standardised, then everyone can just abuse whatever gun has the highest ADS speed and "get good"

@lambda-unit said in New damage models are horrendously broken:

If you think run and gun gameplay that places emphasis on twitch reflexes is a good time insurgency isn't the franchise for you

The only thing stopping it from being this way is the average skill/confidence of the playerbase being too low in "tactical shooters"
It's still just a video game after all. Bullet whizzes and your character shouting voicelines stops being panic inducing after a while.

@biass Read his post

1 shots for headshots+bolts vs. everything
2 shots chest vs. no armor, 3-4 for pistols
3 shots high caliber vs light/heavy
4-5 shots medium caliber vs. light/heavy

last edited by Slazenger

@slazenger said in New damage models are horrendously broken:

@biass Read his post

1 shots for headshots+bolts vs. everything
2 shots chest vs. no armor, 3-4 for pistols
3 shots high caliber vs light/heavy
4-5 shots medium caliber vs. light/heavy

Sure, if you want to only care about the highest time to kill and none of the others to attempt to push your point, go ahead. You're using the case where an underpowered weapon is taking on an armour piece in the game that was put in there to counter it order to make the case for the entire range of firearms. There would not be much of a point for using the G3 or the AKM or anything that trades off raw DPS for armour penetration if they were the same against armour, which is the point of the OP, actually.

Considering a "High caliber" ‎7.92×33mm Kurz round fired from the STG 44 takes 4 shots to kill on an unarmoured target in call of duty ww2, compare that to the 2 shots fired from a drastically smaller rifle calibre on the same target in sandstorm. not including the faster ADS time too.

"but biass" i hear you say. "the high caliber semi auto rifles in WW2 are a 2 shot kill" and that would be because they have a soft lock which prevents them going over a certain rate of fire, else players with macros or modded controllers would abuse the living christ out of them like they used to in older games. This makes the time to kill around the same as the automatic firearms too. considering both that an SKS or similar in the game were already close to a 1 hit kill without variables and have a much smaller soft ROF lock, i claim the semi's in sandstorm are also a lower TTK then in cod as well.

And this you have this thing:
Youtube Video

@biass said in New damage models are horrendously broken:

Sure, if you want to only care about the highest time to kill and none of the others to attempt to push your point, go ahead.

My god, i'm not even going to read beyond this. Why tf would anyone NOT use armor in Benz's ideal ttk? It will be the same as stopping power from CoD and a total step back from Insurgency.

@slazenger because it would come with drastic movement penalties that in a competitive environment would force a different style of play and shift the meeting points on a map to compensate. Trading off map control and overall speed that can confer the faster player an advantage if they're not a scared little child. But that's unrelated. That's not even considering high caliber rifles.

What's also unrelated is how poorly you come across by acting like reading is too difficult, especially after you attempt to tell people to do the same if they don't agree with you.

last edited by biass

@jensiii said in New damage models are horrendously broken:

I re-read your post you are referring to and yes, you basically state there that you want an easier and more simple game and that is your opinion and preference. And that's fine, you like what you like.
I'm not a fan of making the game something like 10 shots each kill with each weapon, but the TTK is already very low. You can win flanking situations very easy in this game already. You want to make it even easier. Last patch improved the hitreg and on top of that they even lowered TTK with the patch.
What I'm afraid of, is making every weapon 1-hit kill and then ruining the game balance totally. Your argument in the post was, that it makes all the weapons viable. But it has been proven many times on this forum, that it does not make all the weapons viable, it makes the highest ROF weapon the most viable and only option. Even UT instagib realized this: that game mode only had one weapon, a hitscan rifle that killed instantly. Because no other weapons were needed. And this was in 1999, almost 20 years ago.
I want tactical gameplay and immersion and intensity from this game. Now I have the understanding that you also want the same things (correct me here If I'm wrong). I basically want the same things you do, only difference is I don't want dumb down the gameplay. I personally want a balanced TTK.
Now here's a question I would like everyone to think about: if TTK was the one thing that made gameplay supertactical, then COD4 hardcore would've been the ultimate tactical shooter. Is it or is it not? And why do you think so?

Thanks, I've also re-read your long post that you linked to me in the now locked thread and I can appreciate that you put a lot of thought into the matter and have a nuanced opinion and respectful way of presenting it. Thumbs up for that, I wish everyone was arguing at that level.
I've stumbled over a post by @DerpyDays that describes it pretty well I think:
https://forums.focus-home.com/topic/29658/before-literally-anything-else-bolt-action-snipers-need-to-be-able-to-kill-in-1-shot/18

I used to play CS:GO with friends that later were "Global Elite" rank in CS:GO competitive, and when they tried Insurgency, they got absolutely stomped. They very quickly went back to the game they were good at, and I can understand that. For me Insurgency as a newcomer was very welcoming. It was intense on a level I had never seen before, but I started out with a much better K/D than I do when I try a COD game on a free weekend. A friend who recommended Insurgency to me said "brace yourself for a rough ride in the beginning, you'll often not even know who or what killed you". And sure, those things do happen, but I also had rounds that went amazingly well with a 20:5 K/D on the day after I had bought the game. I can't even tell you exactly why, but I think low TTK must be a part of it. It's not that I'm unusually terrible at CS:GO or aiming either, I ranked as "Master Guardian II" back when I still played, which afaik is very slightly above average.
I just find competing on the various aiming skills alone boring. I want there to be a bit more to the game than that.

I'm by no means a good tactician, I run-and-gun a lot in INS2. I mostly play skirmish and try to blow up caches there. I know roughly when and where the first enemies at the start of a round will be, I know the angles I have to cover at what times on the first run or the moment where I can wait around a corner because if someone rushes down that lane he's about to get past here now... I like persuing that high risk high reward goal where I might die horribly for the first 3 tries, but then eventually achieve something that matters and can decide the match for my team.

I think not enough people think about how a match plays out for the average player, they don't think past the 1v1 or 1v2 example engagements. I would much rather have the experience for a bad player be dying 5 times in a row, finding out he just can't advance in that lane because it's covered by snipers or people who are better than him at target acquisition, and then find the one flank route where he can get 3 kills at once. He'll still have a poor 3:5 K/D, but after the match he'll remember that one awesome moment he had, where he killed 3 people at once because he finally did everything right.
If a game for such a player instead is: die, kill, die, kill, die, kill, die, die, at the end of the match he'll still have a poor 3:5 K/D, but he will not have made any memories of cool events where he felt like something went really well. I want the "dynamic range" to be increased and the overall experience to be a more exciting one for the average player, leading to a much happier community because the chances are increased for each individual to experience noteworthy moments of victory instead of it all averaging towards a monotonous slog where you kill, die, kill, die in a rather predictable and repetitive way and statistically win exactly 50% of matches, mostly determined at random by how the teams are put together at random.

About balancing and ROF... you need to keep in mind that it's a big difference whether the win/loss of a game is measured in K/D, or in objectives. I think a whole lot of the issue gets aleviated by the fact that Insurgency does not care about K/D for win/loss states. If one team has all mp7s with magic instakill bullets and the other team only smokes and 3-shot-kill pistols but actually plays the objectives properly and uses their smokes, I could still see the pistol guys winning. And I'm not opposed to balancing ROF advantages out with increased recoil or higher supply cost. Those are the tuning screws that I think are the right ones to make the game balanced, and I would be fine with both being raised on full auto weapons if it means I get lower TTK too on semi-auto weapons like pistols.

In INS2 I always felt like I can do more to carry a team than I ever felt in any other shooter. And together with a friend I've joined servers that were 0:2 behind and we've won 3:2 and at the top of the scoreboard. And that's through objective play, because kills alone don't win you either of those things.

I have played INS2 for over 500 hours and on average the people just do not understand the game. The teams make the wrong calls on which objectives to persue in skirmish all the time. I think making the killing enemies part of the game easier to understand can't hurt to free up some thinking power for how to play the objectives properly. I want the youtubers to make their videos about good strats and teaching people useful things, instead of "weapon guides" that break down the stats of everything because they matter so much. I'd much rather the guns are all super lethal and your picks being more dependant on personal preference.

And regarding movement: I don't think nerfing movement is the right way to address TTK issues on targets in open areas. The movement is an integral part of the gamefeel and you spend much more time moving than shooting. Some of my feedback on movement has been to make it more snappy like it used to be, and they did that to a degree, so I'm mostly ok with how it is now. A friend of mine (also 500+ hours in INS2) started playing versus mode in Sandstorm yesterday, and one of his biggest complaints was that movement overall feels super slow and unresponsive compared to INS2. He didn't like that at all. I think the movement system needs to be optimized to feel fun and immersive, and define the feel of the game. It's the first thing a player notices every time they play. This stuff is super important. Nerfing movement speed to fix issues that come from too high TTK is the wrong aproach imho, because you make one of the most important aspects of the game more tedious, to fix something else entirely. If people dropped in one shot, you wouldn't need their ability to move slowed down. I would be ok with leg hits slowing you down heavily though, as a tradeoff to the legs currently being basically "armored by default". Then you'd also be able to see when you've only hit a guy in the leg instead of thinking he's taking 4 torso shots to kill.

About COD HC, I generally liked playing HC modes (never played COD 4 mp though), but both the kill focused game modes of COD and the low recoil, high ROF weapons make the balancing pretty broken for HC. Both things are already more suited for HC in Insurgency where objectives matter, K/D doesn't, and recoil is stronger. I think hipfire/freeaim is still too easy though, I would make that like it was before. Also the map design in Insurgency generally has more ways to flank or hide and thus "outsmart" an opponent that has a better weapon. I really think INS:SS could be a win with HC weapon balancing where COD failed.

I've put some of my stats into perspective:

TTK for several weapons:
0_1536411337231_stats.png

The only thing I see where I definitely agree it has a high TTK is the m24. I have sub-315ms on every freaking rifle. And people want that TTK to be lower? Nice. Even easier. Really nice 🙂 .

@grotesqueshadow said in New damage models are horrendously broken:

Thanks, I've also re-read your long post that you linked to me in the now locked thread and I can appreciate that you put a lot of thought into the matter and have a nuanced opinion and respectful way of presenting it. Thumbs up for that, I wish everyone was arguing at that level.

Thank you @GrotesqueShadow, I also appreciate you taking the time to re-read my posts 🙂 I'm glad that someone takes the time to respond to my post instead of just ignoring the points made there. This is how we can have proper discussion!

I've stumbled over a post by @DerpyDays that describes it pretty well I think:
https://forums.focus-home.com/topic/29658/before-literally-anything-else-bolt-action-snipers-need-to-be-able-to-kill-in-1-shot/18

Thank you for the link. I just re-read that so I can better understand where you are coming from.

I used to play CS:GO with friends that later were "Global Elite" rank in CS:GO competitive, and when they tried Insurgency, they got absolutely stomped. They very quickly went back to the game they were good at, and I can understand that. For me Insurgency as a newcomer was very welcoming. It was intense on a level I had never seen before, but I started out with a much better K/D than I do when I try a COD game on a free weekend. A friend who recommended Insurgency to me said "brace yourself for a rough ride in the beginning, you'll often not even know who or what killed you". And sure, those things do happen, but I also had rounds that went amazingly well with a 20:5 K/D on the day after I had bought the game. I can't even tell you exactly why, but I think low TTK must be a part of it. It's not that I'm unusually terrible at CS:GO or aiming either, I ranked as "Master Guardian II" back when I still played, which afaik is very slightly above average.

I can relate. I also had this feeling when I started playing INS2. I got the feeling that maybe somehow the game fit very well to my natural playstyle = not rushing, thinking my options before proceeding etc. and I was able to fare pretty well right from the start.

I just find competing on the various aiming skills alone boring. I want there to be a bit more to the game than that.

I agree that there should a variety of different skills needed to master the game. That will make the game have more depth.

I think not enough people think about how a match plays out for the average player, they don't think past the 1v1 or 1v2 example engagements. I would much rather have the experience for a bad player be dying 5 times in a row, finding out he just can't advance in that lane because it's covered by snipers or people who are better than him at target acquisition, and then find the one flank route where he can get 3 kills at once. He'll still have a poor 3:5 K/D, but after the match he'll remember that one awesome moment he had, where he killed 3 people at once because he finally did everything right.
If a game for such a player instead is: die, kill, die, kill, die, kill, die, die, at the end of the match he'll still have a poor 3:5 K/D, but he will not have made any memories of cool events where he felt like something went really well. I want the "dynamic range" to be increased and the overall experience to be a more exciting one for the average player, leading to a much happier community because the chances are increased for each individual to experience noteworthy moments of victory instead of it all averaging towards a monotonous slog where you kill, die, kill, die in a rather predictable and repetitive way and statistically win exactly 50% of matches, mostly determined at random by how the teams are put together at random.

I agree that I also want exciting moments in a game. I'm not sure exactly how this relates to TTK. Maybe you're implying that lower TTK would give average player a better chance to experience this?

About balancing and ROF... you need to keep in mind that it's a big difference whether the win/loss of a game is measured in K/D, or in objectives. I think a whole lot of the issue gets aleviated by the fact that Insurgency does not care about K/D for win/loss states. If one team has all mp7s with magic instakill bullets and the other team only smokes and 3-shot-kill pistols but actually plays the objectives properly and uses their smokes, I could still see the pistol guys winning. And I'm not opposed to balancing ROF advantages out with increased recoil or higher supply cost. Those are the tuning screws that I think are the right ones to make the game balanced, and I would be fine with both being raised on full auto weapons if it means I get lower TTK too on semi-auto weapons like pistols.

Yes, objectives win the game in the end in game modes that have them, not K/D. Still, for balancing purposes I think we have to assume similar skills and goals between players in different situations, otherwise any possible set of parameters for TTK, ROF, recoil etc. could be justified with this kind of example.

In INS2 I always felt like I can do more to carry a team than I ever felt in any other shooter. And together with a friend I've joined servers that were 0:2 behind and we've won 3:2 and at the top of the scoreboard. And that's through objective play, because kills alone don't win you either of those things.
I have played INS2 for over 500 hours and on average the people just do not understand the game. The teams make the wrong calls on which objectives to persue in skirmish all the time. I think making the killing enemies part of the game easier to understand can't hurt to free up some thinking power for how to play the objectives properly.

I see, you want to make it easier for people to grasp the objective play, so we can have more people actually playing the game properly by playing the objective. I also want people to play the game properly and play the objective as a team!

But doesn't this example nullify itself? Killing enemies is easier, but it's also at the same time easier for the enemy to kill you, so the "struggle" to think about the objective is still the same. Could we come up with other solutions to promote objective and team play?

I want the youtubers to make their videos about good strats and teaching people useful things, instead of "weapon guides" that break down the stats of everything because they matter so much. I'd much rather the guns are all super lethal and your picks being more dependant on personal preference.

I understand. So player could just pick whatever weapon he thinks is cool.

I think the weapons are very lethal at the moment already and I just pick M4 and AK74 all the time, because I think they are cool 🙂

And regarding movement: I don't think nerfing movement is the right way to address TTK issues on targets in open areas. The movement is an integral part of the gamefeel and you spend much more time moving than shooting. Some of my feedback on movement has been to make it more snappy like it used to be, and they did that to a degree, so I'm mostly ok with how it is now. A friend of mine (also 500+ hours in INS2) started playing versus mode in Sandstorm yesterday, and one of his biggest complaints was that movement overall feels super slow and unresponsive compared to INS2. He didn't like that at all. I think the movement system needs to be optimized to feel fun and immersive, and define the feel of the game. It's the first thing a player notices every time they play. This stuff is super important. Nerfing movement speed to fix issues that come from too high TTK is the wrong aproach imho, because you make one of the most important aspects of the game more tedious, to fix something else entirely. If people dropped in one shot, you wouldn't need their ability to move slowed down. I would be ok with leg hits slowing you down heavily though, as a tradeoff to the legs currently being basically "armored by default". Then you'd also be able to see when you've only hit a guy in the leg instead of thinking he's taking 4 torso shots to kill.

I agree that movement should feel fluid in Sandstorm.

But I feel it's already gone the otherway around: movement issues are being fixed with requesting 1-hit kills. There is still no proper tagging when a player gets hit. Heavy armor is made completely useless with 1-hit kills instead of balancing it with movement mechanics. Now when I talk about 1-hit kills, I mean every weapon & every situation. So people don't understand me wrong. I agree that certain situations should be 1-hit kills in balanced TTK.

The map design in Insurgency generally has more ways to flank or hide and thus "outsmart" an opponent that has a better weapon.

I really like the more open maps in Sandstorm! 🙂

I've been playing more today now that I've had more time. I've had some really good experiences and exciting moments in the game! Mostly played M4 and AK74 and enemies are dropping in 2 shots most of the time on medium range (using 2x / 4x scope). I wouldn't reduce the TTK from there! It's more satisfying to kill with 2 shot than 1 and it's still really fast. I get punished if I make stupid moves or positional mistakes, but I can also get away and escape if I make just a small mistake in positioning and try a different approach.

@benz interesting stats there. I agree, I've been using M4 and AK74 and TTK is really fast at the moment. There's no need to for a lower TTK for these weapons.

@derpydays said in New damage models are horrendously broken:

Light armor is almost useless when you're given the fact that heavy armor still gives you decent mobility to make you effective in the battlefield.

1-2 more shots doesn't make it all that much better than someone wearing light armor since your weapon also adds to your weight...Mr.SMG McLightfoot is still a more deadly target than Tank O'Mally 2ft behind him slowly losing ground and stamina to aim with because SMG-sama can pop his spray+pray ass around a doorway and ill you before you can react; leave before you hit the floor while Tank-san is still climbing in through the window...

@jensiii said in New damage models are horrendously broken:

@benz interesting stats there. I agree, I've been using M4 and AK74 and TTK is really fast at the moment. There's no need to for a lower TTK for these weapons.

Imho he has the math wrong for the weapons that still include headshots. He should have subtracted the number of headshots from the killcount and from the hitcount to get more accurate bodyshot TTK, and that still would be inaccurate because of the number of hits that might have gone into the body before a headshot ultimately killed the player, for which there are no stats. Also the ttk time he calculates is a purely theoretical value for fullauto fire that never misses a single shot, which I think is fair to say is not how this plays out for most players.
FAL and AKM stats are better because of lack of headshots. I think 2 shots with FAL and 3 with AKM is too much. Imho FAL should be a 1 shot because of its high caliber and low mag size, AKM 1 hit kill without armor and 2 hit kill with heavy armor or on legs (whole leg, not like it was last time I checked on bots).

You asked in another thread if we'd consider 2 hit kills a high ttk, and I personally can answer: yes, if I shoot a dude with a 7.62 mm round and he doesn't drop dead instantly, I'm pissed and think it's a bullshit long TTK in this game. If I then get killed immediately after, I tend to rage at the game, because I think this is super frustrating gamedesign.

I've played some more today and had a number of situations where I've hit a dude with my rifle and saw blood splatter, but then got shot by either him or his teammate. It makes the game frustrating to me and drives me towards either camping or high ROF weapons to just dump more ammo into enemies quicker, or get lucky headshots. I don't get the argument for "higher TTK is so much better because higher skillceiling with headshots", when instead it's compensatable with things like FAL fullauto hipfire (I've gotten several kills that way and I think this feels kinda dumb, I'd much rather make semi auto OHKs instead of this) or high ROF spray hoping for lucky headshots like with the p90 aka "pro 90" in CS:GO.

I'm still not entirely convinced that if every weapon was 1 shot kill on every hitzone regardless of armor, that everyone would be running around with only high ROF weapons and the game would be broken. The reason for that is that one of the deadliest things in the game is having to reload. I find the major advantage of semi-auto mode to be that it is more ammo conserving and thus creates less time windows in which you are vulnerable. Death-by-reload is like a meme for my gaming buddy and me because it has happend countless times to both of us. If everything was 1 shot kill no matter what, I'd probably go pistol only again, because I have the most fun that way, or if I wanna really go tryhard, then the semi auto gun that has the biggest mag would be my choice. With recoil turned back as high as in INS2, I'm not convinced I'd have better chances of hitting someone spraying than with semi auto. In Sandstorm I switch back and forth constantly, depending on situation and find it kind of annoying that I can't settle on one. I don't like full-auto very much, but right now it just is plain better in many situations imho.

So in short, right now the TTK creates many gameplay situations that are very frustrating to me, if they lower the TTK I will be enjoying the game much more and I seriously doubt that it has the game-breaking consequences that some people here fear. I think it is worth a try. They can always change it back if it indeed breaks the meta. If they raise the TTK further, I I'll probably stop playing. I'm not even sure that I couldn't adapt to a headshot meta, and maybe even perform better that way than I do now, but I wouldn't enjoy that kind of gameplay as much. If I wanna focus on headshots I'll play CS:GO again. That's not what I bought Insurgency for.

I know community fragmentation is bad, but maybe it would be best to have a separate mode that doesn't have any commander call-ins and has lower TTK (everything one or two less bullets to kill than right now, 1 min and 2 max vs armor), maybe even get rid of more of the HUD, and otherwise plays like skirmish. If that was available (lets call it HC Skirmish) I'd only play that. Player statistics will tell what the majority of the community really wants. But I don't know if that could be sustained long term with sufficient player numbers. It might not. There are very good arguments to be made against something like this. But it is also a fact, that no matter how long the TTK is, not everyone will like it, and some will leave the game because of it. I'd just rather keep the old INS2 players around than try to attract all the disgruntled BF players that are turning away from their franchise right now.