New damage models are horrendously broken

@grotesqueshadow said in New damage models are horrendously broken:

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'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

Cognitive dissonance. Even with 2 shots you're seeing the exact gameplay symptoms I'm describing, but you can't imagine it with 1?

@jensiii not interested in call of duty

@doghead said in New damage models are horrendously broken:

Cognitive dissonance. Even with 2 shots you're seeing the exact gameplay symptoms I'm describing, but you can't imagine it with 1?

Show me one kind of proven balancing where ROF isn't king for the average-joe player?!
I'm saying spray and pray is already about as bad as it can get, you'd rather fix it with recoil, ammo cap and reload nerfs instead of raising TTK. I'd spray less with OHK balancing, if you wouldn't that's your choice.

@grotesqueshadow Or fix it with effective armor and one shot kills on high-end semi-automatic calibers, like we've been arguing for weeks now.

Lucky headshots are lucky. Just because a spray monkey can nail you once in a while doesn't mean we need to nuke and homogenize the entire weapons system.

last edited by Doghead

This game has a very clear choice here. They can appease the fans who like the last game's very campy less than "fun" gameplay or they can embrace that the reason that game wasn't super successful is because of this. The game can still be challenging without having to be stupid. There is a middle ground.

^^ this + good players don't rely on luck. Bad players do. A good player will try to minimize his luck.

@grotesqueshadow said in New damage models are horrendously broken:

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.

While his stats might not tell the exact average number of bodyshots required to kill, headshots are still a part of the TTK mechanics that affect overall TTK. Number of bodyshots to kill is still around 2 shots at the moment.

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.

That is correct, because some players have better aim and some players have worse aim. Skill plays a factor there of course, for balancing it's much more useful, if not even necessary, to assume 100% accuracy

Otherwise it could argued that TTK should be lowered because someone has higher TTK than others because of his aim: let's say 1-hit kills was implemented all across the board and still a player can't get the kill because he misses shots. Thus his TTK is very high. Should we lower the TTK? 🙂

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).

I agree that some rifles could have 1-hit kill on an unarmored target in balanced TTK. I'm going to claim that 2-3 shots against armored targets would be no problem at all if there was tagging. Everyone running blindly on the open would be picked off easily. Better cover and positioning would be more beneficial.

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 found, that instead of raging at the gamedesign by default, I ask myself: "what could I have done something better so I could've won the situation?"

Asking myself that question every time I get killed, I start to recognize mistakes in my playing. I've noticed that there's always something I could've done better to improve my chances and me dying was not the fault of the 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.

Balanced TTK is actually not about raising the skill ceiling with aiming skill, even with 2-hit kills there is barely a need for anything else in aiming than good target acquitision, there's just minimal tracking and recoil control. Balanced TTK is also about making positioning more important. How is that? Because having 1-hit kills effect positioning and making mistakes in a negative way. We talked about positioning and I made post about mistakes in another thread (https://forums.focus-home.com/topic/29335/we-want-the-one-hit-kills/121?page=7).

The situation you describe, I can only imagine that happening if the enemy also spotted you at the same time you spotted him. And if you then make the decision to go against him either 1v2 or 1v1, you are relying on your AIM, not your tactical skill. Unless you're a better at aiming than your opponent, you have no advantage, except if you are in good cover and he is in the open

If you are alone against 2, you're in big disadvantage. It's normal to lose these kind of situations. You have to be in a good position so you can get away from the situation to and try to find an advantage against them.

And if you happen to flank someone and you really have a positional advantage and you get to shoot him first, even if you use semi auto, you get shoot A LOT of shots before the opponent reacts, finds you and starts shooting. Unless he can retreat to cover right away, and that would be good positioning from his part.

You said described yourself as not that good of a tactician and said that you run-and-gun a lot. I get to similar situations if I play that way as well. I'm not a good aimer so I've been always trying to improve my tactical skills. Whenever I find myself getting frustrated and dying a lot, it's because I've strayed from my tactical playstyle into running and gunning.

I've also gotten hipfire kills on very close range. Can you claim that you would be able the play only by using hipfire?

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.

Death-by-realod is a tactical mistake 🙂

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.

Yep, 1-shot kills --> people using pistols as primary weapon --> kills the immersion for me.

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.

Yeah, I switch back and forth as well depending on the situation. And I like that! Full auto is better in some situations and semiauto is better in some. I feel that finally firing mode switch has a real meaning and use.

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.

Well, if TTK is 2 shots, you can't really go lower unless you go 1-hit kills. And even though you doubt that there would not be game-breaking consequenses, it has been proved with logic and reason that there will be and these claims are yet to be unproven using logic and reason. I would be glad, if someone would prove that it doesn't break the game, so we just didn't have to hope that doesn't happen.

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.

The only way to make headshots meaningless is to implement 1-hit kills. So even heavy armor on torso would be 1-hit kill.

If 1-hit kills is ever even tried, for me it's going to be so "immersive" to kill people by shooting their toe, when it's popping out of cover 🙂 I would rather choose headshots than toeshots.

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.

It is true, that you can never satisfy everybody.

I personally like the commander call-ins. They add immersion to combat.

Balanced TTK is hardly about trying attract BF players to this game by making the game BF-like. It's about balance which would be far from BF. If players of some other games find something from Sandstorm that they like and don't get from the other games, I think it's good.

@jensiii said in New damage models are horrendously broken:

And if you happen to flank someone and you really have a positional advantage and you get to shoot him first, even if you use semi auto, you get shoot A LOT of shots before the opponent reacts, finds you and starts shooting. Unless he can retreat to cover right away, and that would be good positioning from his part.

Today I did this: I was standing still behind a building and looking towards an objective, suddenly a damage marker appears pointing directly behind me, I flick around 180 degrees and mow down the security soldier who was shooting at me with his 5.56 mm rifle with my fullauto AKM hipfire spray. And I thought "this shit is exactly what I'm talking about on the forum, where no one believes me that it happens". That dude was like 2 meters away from me and I was standing still, there is no way he only hit my legs or something like that.

Yep, 1-shot kills --> people using pistols as primary weapon --> kills the immersion for me.

Pistols are still worse with mag size, sights, spare mags, ROF and most people don't like them as much as rifles. In INS2 it is very rare to see other people who go pistol only and I don't think I've ever seen 3 on the same team, myself included, in over 500 hours of play. That's a non-issue if you ask me.

I would be glad, if someone would prove that it doesn't break the game, so we just didn't have to hope that doesn't happen.

Do you think INS2 is a broken game? Not every weapon is a 1 hit kill there, but plenty are. And I'm not asking for lowering TTK below INS2 levels, I would just like to have the balancing back that I liked INS2 for.

I've also gotten hipfire kills on very close range. Can you claim that you would be able the play only by using hipfire?

I might unbind ADS for one match and let you know how it goes, it would be an interesting experiment. I'm cautiously optimistic I could do it without getting completely wrecked, but I'd pick my engagement ranges to be relatively close of course.

Balanced TTK is hardly about trying attract BF players to this game by making the game BF-like. It's about balance which would be far from BF. If players of some other games find something from Sandstorm that they like and don't get from the other games, I think it's good.

To me lower TTK is the one thing that made INS2 stand out from the crowd. You tell me, what does Sandstorm do better than COD, Squad and BF right now? I haven't played these in a long while and skipped a few CODs and BFs, so I can't really make fair comparisons. I'm here because I love INS2 and I put a lot of trust in NWI, since they took amazingly good care of INS2 in post launch support. Absolutely stellar work, adding new maps for free and still improving it deep into the dev-cycle of INS:SS, far exceeded my expectations. Anyone coming from other shooter franchises doesn't have that bias, what does Sandstorm offer them that no other shooter has?

@jensiii: I played a full match with unbound ADS key and had 5:3 k/d, our team won both rounds, endscreen showed objectives secured 4, but no offensive capture time as I was playing rather defensive for obvious reasons. Together with some teammates I've successfully stormed and secured two objectives that were being capped by the enemy where I've made a kill each time. All the times that I've died I didn't see it coming and would have died either way. Never during this match did I engage in a hipfire attack and then got shot by that enemy. My weapons were FAL and MK17.
Before the full match I dropped into an almost finished match on "crossing", where I had a 1:2 K/D, but to be fair that must be the worst map to try something like this.

At range ADS certainly is still mandatory, but when I'm inside a small building I don't really see a reason to ADS at all. I feel confident enough in my hipfire control. The free-aim system is very intuitive for me, but in the old game I always felt that it was much harder to aim with it, because the range of angles you could be aiming at was wider and maybe even recoil was higher.

The hitreg fixes are good, and that's a step in the right direction. The armor nerf, however, was a bad idea. A lot of players asked for it because they thought armor was OP even though hitreg was just fucked.

Armor already didn't do much before the Sept. 6th patch. Light Armor allowed you to tank an extra shot of maybe some pistol and intermediate rifle calibers, and Heavy Armor tanked an extra shot of everything up to .308 AP. The M24 doesn't even one-shot Light Armor without mods and I'm pretty sure that's a bug.

Now, however, armor makes absolutely no difference for intermediate-rifle calibers and even some pistol calibers (namely the Makarov's 9x18mm, both Colt .45s, and the L106A1) for shots to kill and equipping a Long Barrel on a G3A3 or FAL allows you to one-shot a player with Heavy Armor at close range. Shotguns absolutely destroy players regardless of armor equipped or ammo type used. Heavy Armor will only save you from these weapons:

-> A single extra shot of an FAL or G3A3 (if the gun doesn't have a Long Barrel / the shot is at medium range or further, it's worth noting that Light Armor will actually tank a G3 shot /w out a Long Barrel mod).
-> One extra shot of any 9x19mm pistol except for the L106A1 at close range.
-> One extra shot of an Uzi (maybe; I haven't tested this).
-> One extra shot of a SCAR-H (haven't tested if the Long Barrel makes this gun one-shot Heavy Armor).
-> One shot of an M24 (even Light Armor saves you from this one; definitely bugged; in fact, Heavy Armor might actually tank two shots but I don't recall if it does or not).

Yep. Unless I forgot any weapons in Sandstorm, that's it. Three supply allows you to, in CQB, take one extra shot from nine different guns, and three of them (M24, G3A3, FAL; possibly the SCAR-H but I haven't tested it again) still one-shot you in CQB if it has a Long Barrel equipped.

last edited by MarksmanMax

@grotesqueshadow said in New damage models are horrendously broken:

Today I did this: I was standing still behind a building and looking towards an objective, suddenly a damage marker appears pointing directly behind me, I flick around 180 degrees and mow down the security soldier who was shooting at me with his 5.56 mm rifle with my fullauto AKM hipfire spray. And I thought "this shit is exactly what I'm talking about on the forum, where no one believes me that it happens". That dude was like 2 meters away from me and I was standing still, there is no way he only hit my legs or something like that.

Sorry, but without proof i don't believe this kinda stories, simply because that never happens to me. Literally never, unless i get extremely bad hitreg, but hitreg and TTK are different issues.

Even if: if he couldn't kill you, he is bad. He got punished. He will learn. That's how learning works. You make mistakes, you learn.

I'm pretty sure that a big part of this is that there is not enough flinch and slow on-hit.

On a related note, I think a lot of people would agree that a player should be 'punished' for being in an exposed area and getting hit (such as where they might be running across a road). Instead, right now, I feel like there is not enough risk to leaving yourself exposed. This may change after competitive and playing against similarly skilled opponents.

On the TTK discussion, you could have a longer technical TTK while not having some less desirable side-effects of longer TTK. And with noticeable differences in flinch and slow, you get another axis on which you can balance different calibers and armor.

last edited by nonsequiturist

@marksmanmax To be honest, this is probably what most players complaining about TTK want - for armor to be useless and for one shot kills to be the norm.

I find it quite bothersome how folks are so quick to demonize even a slight increase in TTK (seriously, it's not even that long...) while refusing to see any gameplay merit to it and simultaneously refusing to see any gameplay drawbacks with a "Everything's OP and kills in one shot" style of balance.

@quadsword said in New damage models are horrendously broken:

@marksmanmax To be honest, this is probably what most players complaining about TTK want - for armor to be useless and for one shot kills to be the norm.

I find it quite bothersome how folks are so quick to demonize even a slight increase in TTK (seriously, it's not even that long...) while refusing to see any gameplay merit to it and simultaneously refusing to see any gameplay drawbacks with a "Everything's OP and kills in one shot" style of balance.

Thank fucking god someone finally said it.

As an Ins2014 vet with about 1400 hours logged over three years, I absolutely do not want AP ammo back (or any sort of attachment that increases weapon lethality with virtually zero drawbacks). People act like the TTK is Escape From Tarkov levels of too high and I honestly don't get it at all.

Was AP ammo fun to ues? Yes.

Was AP ammo balanced? Absolutely fucking not.

@grotesqueshadow said in New damage models are horrendously broken:

Today I did this: I was standing still behind a building and looking towards an objective, suddenly a damage marker appears pointing directly behind me, I flick around 180 degrees and mow down the security soldier who was shooting at me with his 5.56 mm rifle with my fullauto AKM hipfire spray. And I thought "this shit is exactly what I'm talking about on the forum, where no one believes me that it happens". That dude was like 2 meters away from me and I was standing still, there is no way he only hit my legs or something like that.

This clearly has nothing to do with TTK. If a player can't kill from 2 meters and gives you time to do that, he blew his chance 🙂 1-hit kills don't remove these situations: a player can still miss his first shot and the target players does 180 and takes him down. This alone proves that 1-hit kills is not going to somehow fix this, because the situation exists after the "fix". I'm afraid this is a playerskill issue and the only fix is for the player to improve.

Hipfire from 2 meters is completely fine, I can do it IRL easily and I bet most people could do it as well. I know this is a game, but some reference should be taken from real life, if we want any sort of resemblance of realism in Sandstrom.

Do you think INS2 is a broken game? Not every weapon is a 1 hit kill there, but plenty are. And I'm not asking for lowering TTK below INS2 levels, I would just like to have the balancing back that I liked INS2 for.

I think INS2 is a good game but it could be a lot better. Plenty of weapons 1-hit kill in INS2 because of AP ammo and that wasn't balanced. AP and other ammotypes were removed in Sandstorm. I think that is a really good change towards improving the game from INS2. There are other people who agree on this as well. Now some people want to lower the TTK back to AP ammo level in INS2. And then just say it's somehow balanced now, even when the situation is exactly the same it was in INS2.

Also, the TTK cannot really be lowered beyond 1 hit-kills, unless you have people dying when they enter your FOV 🙂 BUT! This would actually fix the situation you describe above!!

Okay, that was just meant as a extravagant joke to make a point 🙂

You tell me, what does Sandstorm do better than COD, Squad and BF right now?

For me, Sandstorm is a very immersive tactical infantry combat shooter that is easier and faster to get into action than Squad or Arma. I don't know the latest CODs and BFs features that well, but they look much more like arcade-shooters than a tactical shooter, that's why I haven't been interested in them.

I put a lot of trust in NWI, since they took amazingly good care of INS2 in post launch support. Absolutely stellar work, adding new maps for free and still improving it deep into the dev-cycle of INS:SS, far exceeded my expectations.

I agree, NWI has done a great job!

Anyone coming from other shooter franchises doesn't have that bias, what does Sandstorm offer them that no other shooter has?

I guess it would the same as it was with me: not a single feature but a mix of features that I liked and not having a lot of things I didn't like. Different shooters might have good features, but then they have features that turn me away. It's not that Sandstorm had anything that is not in SOME shooter in the world already. It's about the mixture.

I also once found INS2 after having played a lot of other shooters. I also played a lot of Quake and Unreal Tournament. That didn't mean that I disliked INS2 because I had been playing action shooters. Quake and Unreal Tournament have their place for me, but they won't satisfy my tactical shooter appetite.

But I could play Sandstorm just for it's sounds!! 🙂 This is a big improvement on immersion over INS2.

@grotesqueshadow said in New damage models are horrendously broken:

@jensiii: I played a full match with unbound ADS key and had 5:3 k/d, our team won both rounds, endscreen showed objectives secured 4, but no offensive capture time as I was playing rather defensive for obvious reasons. Together with some teammates I've successfully stormed and secured two objectives that were being capped by the enemy where I've made a kill each time. All the times that I've died I didn't see it coming and would have died either way. Never during this match did I engage in a hipfire attack and then got shot by that enemy. My weapons were FAL and MK17.
Before the full match I dropped into an almost finished match on "crossing", where I had a 1:2 K/D, but to be fair that must be the worst map to try something like this.

At range ADS certainly is still mandatory, but when I'm inside a small building I don't really see a reason to ADS at all. I feel confident enough in my hipfire control. The free-aim system is very intuitive for me, but in the old game I always felt that it was much harder to aim with it, because the range of angles you could be aiming at was wider and maybe even recoil was higher.

Great that you actually tried this! 🙂

I also use hipfire inside a house most of the time, this makes much more sense to me, but I would like a nother step here between ADS and hipfire. When I did my military service and we trained CQB, we didn't ADS inside a house 😃 But we didn't hipfire either. We aimed down the barrel. This way I retained a better vision while still knowing where my shots go and I can hold the weapon more steady for better recoil control.

This is missing from Sandstorm. Currently hipfiring is more closer to realism than ADSing with scope when inside a building. But hipfiring is definately not reliable even if I can get some kills using it. I would aim down the barrel when inside, that would be more tactical 🙂

@jensiii said in New damage models are horrendously broken:

@grotesqueshadow said in New damage models are horrendously broken:

@jensiii: I played a full match with unbound ADS key and had 5:3 k/d, our team won both rounds, endscreen showed objectives secured 4, but no offensive capture time as I was playing rather defensive for obvious reasons. Together with some teammates I've successfully stormed and secured two objectives that were being capped by the enemy where I've made a kill each time. All the times that I've died I didn't see it coming and would have died either way. Never during this match did I engage in a hipfire attack and then got shot by that enemy. My weapons were FAL and MK17.
Before the full match I dropped into an almost finished match on "crossing", where I had a 1:2 K/D, but to be fair that must be the worst map to try something like this.

At range ADS certainly is still mandatory, but when I'm inside a small building I don't really see a reason to ADS at all. I feel confident enough in my hipfire control. The free-aim system is very intuitive for me, but in the old game I always felt that it was much harder to aim with it, because the range of angles you could be aiming at was wider and maybe even recoil was higher.

Great that you actually tried this! 🙂

I also use hipfire inside a house most of the time, this makes much more sense to me, but I would like a nother step here between ADS and hipfire. When I did my military service and we trained CQB, we didn't ADS inside a house 😃 But we didn't hipfire either. We aimed down the barrel. This way I retained a better vision while still knowing where my shots go and I can hold the weapon more steady for better recoil control.

This is missing from Sandstorm. Currently hipfiring is more closer to realism than ADSing with scope when inside a building. But hipfiring is definately not reliable even if I can get some kills using it. I would aim down the barrel when inside, that would be more tactical 🙂

This isn't PUBG. Keep that Aim keybind in PUBG.

@marksmanmax Yes, this is Insurgency: Sandstorm (not INS2 btw 😉 ).

I looked that up, because I haven't played PUBG, so I had no idea what you were talking about. They seem have 3rd person and crosshair in their "aim" mode which looks crap. So that is definately not what I meant.

I am not a run and gun guy. I usually use large caliber guns at long range. It doesn't seem to matter weather I am using a ,30 caliber gun or smaller all shots take 3 to 4 shots in torso and some head shots take more than one and doorway confrontations never drop on the first torso hit and the dam bullet will be the size of a quarter after blowing through a vest and it will defeat most trauma plates at point blank range. If the .30 bullet did not defeat the trams plate the subject would be down out of the fight for some time, which is the reason for tagging subjects in fire fights or building clearing opps. Power penetration and range is the reason you pay the weight and recoil penalty of a large caliber rifle. JK

@jensiii They need a shoulder option for building clearing for both rifle, shotgun and pistol, its how its taught and done. you wouldn't move through a building looking down your sights as that would block to much of your vision. But you move with your gun in battery looking over it. jk