We want the one hit kills.

Well I disagree with that.

A lower TTK is simply rewarding different skills than a higher one. Those skills are related to things like:

  • Awareness
  • Positioning
  • Aim
  • Tracking
  • Aiming Speed

@mefirst You are moving in cycles here disregarding everything that already has been said. Either you don't understand it or you don't want to. It's pointless.

People have already established why a lower TTK lowers the skill ceiling. You can't deny facts.

None of the skills you mentioned are getting devalued with a higher TTK. People have also already clarified that.

Dunno what's so hard to understand about that. No one in this thread/forum has given us a single argument or example that you can't counter with logic and facts. No one.

The only valid reasons for a low TTK are these:

  • more fun for low skilled players, because they don't have to aim well
  • puts emphasis on tactics lower on the range of skill

In a high(er) TTK game tactics are getting more and more relevant the closer people get mechanically, as proven by higher skill ceiling competitive games such as CSGO and Quake. Fact.

Yeah, why do i even explain this again? Apparently saying that is somekinda witchcraft.

last edited by Benz

@benz have you even played insurgency before?! One hit kills/low TTK is what makes the first game so great.

last edited by Zwenkwiel

I think 1 hit to kill an unarmored guy, 2 to kill light armor, 3 to kill heavy armor is the best way. Headshot always kills with one shot.

@Benny, Insurgency focus on strategy skill and not aiming skills like most arcade shooters.

u2 are arguing nostalgia and habit instead of gameplay. at least i can respect those reasons.

@benz

I simply don't agree with some statements you made and some of your positions and that's it.

A high TTK does not mean that something is a bad game (it is just different). But people who have been playing the game since the standalone or the mod are used to a very different TTK and a different approach on how to be successful at the game. At the end of the day Insurgency Sandstorm is a small game from a small developer and it is as a matter of fact a niche game. Leaving that niche will leave the game without a real player base since it will not hit the spot for anyone at all.

The old players will not dig the game and the other target audience will stick to games that are more accessible and more shiny. So I think the game should stick to it's roots and should improve things that were already great and trying to fix some issues the previous games had. One example is to take out AP Ammo because it was literally a "non-choice". The same should be done with how currently heavy armor is working. Heavy Armor is currently the same as AP. You pick it or you will put yourself at a substantial disadvantage. So this is one of the systems that needs a complete rework or should simply be taken out. Personally I would not be angry if they take out armor at all and also reduce the loadout points to that.

All that said. I am still convinced that a lot of issues with the TTK are hitreg/netcode related but this needs definitive answers and just guessing.

@benny exactly all the guns will be useless expect for the ones that can have the highest fire rate with the lowest recoil everyone will just run an smg and spray ppl down because you only need a single stray bullet to kill anyone. It will definitively not encourage people to use semi auto it will just cause the adverse affect make full auto spraying a even more viable thing

@strawberrynim that's why you see people basically only bursting and full-autoing in VODs of pro matches and fragmovies. It's literally already a thing. 😃

@coachon The issue isn't the bot's difficulty. I recently played a Co-op game where I shot a bot about 5-6 times in the chest with the SKS only for it to turn, rechamber a round (it was using the Mosin), aim and fire, killing me with one shot. Even with INS2 and DOI, it was all about shot placement. You shoot someone in the legs, they're wounded, screen turns a little red, and they're weakened, but not dead. It should be the same for this. Certain shot placements should be one shot. Chest to head = one shots unless armored or hit with AP rounds with bolt actions and sniper rifles while armored. I've shot enemies in the head with the pistols for them only to survive and turn around and kill me. A head shot with any gun should be a one shot unless wearing armor. This particular bot was not. It's things like that. One shots in games should be used sparingly to avoid people running around and wildly shooting through walls but it should also be used far more often then it is now. I think it's less of a need for consistent one shot kills and more of consistent hit reg that is needed. A lot more one shots would occur if they fixed that. People just don't realize because it's so out of wack at the moment. Also, if you're using a bolt action, use the long barrel. It helps with the hit reg issue for whatever reason.

Just want to re-state that while I don't think TTK should be lowered, I like how it is at the moment, I don't like requiring more than 4 bullets to kill. 1 shot with everything is bad IMO, as I stated before, and 2-3 bullets is a nice middle ground. I don't want to drop immediately, but I still want to drop fast. High TTK has its pros, just another way to play a shooter. However I'm not into insurgency for that. Like I said, aside from hitreg issues, heavy armor perhaps needs a balance fix, it might be a bit too good, but otherwise when I shoot other tiers of armor, people drop fast and that's great.

@zagorith14
Apart from the difficulty thing I think you already agreed with me. I mean the example you state was with armor, right? Either you couldn't aim or that bot had heavy armor. I have no problem downing bots in non-heavy apparal. Agreed with everything else though.

@benz Wrong, it means the game encourages full auto spraying rather than precise gunplay. Closer to Call of Duty's gameplay than it is to Insurgency2014. Totally unfun.

@malarki83 Because for the last 4 years in Insurgency2014 that's how they game has been, and we've come to love it over other systems other fps games have.

@cyoce said in We want the one hit kills.:

"Insurgency" Sandstorm needs to embrace its roots instead of trying to appeal to a more casual audience

"Insurgency" Sandstorm needs to embrace its roots instead of trying to appeal to a more casual audience.

"Insurgency" Sandstorm needs to embrace its roots instead of trying to appeal to a more casual audience.

I love how cancerous this thread is. How people can just ignore fundamentals and smooth gameplay.

Mad cuz bad I guess.

@benz indeed. These guys just want to play ins 1. Imagine getting shot from 200 feet, tapped by a pistol and dying lol.. thats what they want. Heavy armor is as it should be. headshots stop that.

@slazenger said in We want the one hit kills.:

@benz Wrong, it means the game encourages full auto spraying rather than precise gunplay. Closer to Call of Duty's gameplay than it is to Insurgency2014. Totally unfun.

Just because you fire less bullets on average doesn't make you a better player. Just because i fire a third of my teams shots fired per round doesn't make me worse. There are legitimate ways to judge an aim skill, this isnt one of them.
Also at least Call of Duty has the courtesy to give a team assistance if they're getting spawn killed, which is far superior to the average ministry game where you peek spawn from the stairs and mow down 6 or so people at a time with no real skill.

@shadoware said in We want the one hit kills.:

@Benny, Insurgency focus on strategy skill and not aiming skills like most arcade shooters.

Don't know what game you're playing, i just run into enemy spawn and just out aim everyone, either insurgency game doesn't involve any overall strategy any more then other cookie cutter Rush gametypes, cs go probably has more strategy with it's use of smokes, positions, rotation, etc.

@strawberrynim said in We want the one hit kills.:

@benny exactly all the guns will be useless expect for the ones that can have the highest fire rate with the lowest recoil

Or you just use the gun with the lowest ads time (a pistol) and abuse one shot, im sure that will be fun for all the 2x scope, m16 toting, crouchwalking, hip aiming pub plebs out there currently.

@slazenger said in We want the one hit kills.:

we've come to love it

We haven't, or this discussion would not be happening

I think the TTK is kinda similar to source if you get a game without hitreg issues, like i did a few times last night. make sure you're not using a gun with a low pen value, pick up the G3 if you can't keep a 2 round burst on target to save your life and if that's still hard, crouch, the recoil bonus is so large for being crouched in this game atm.

making the time to kill any less then it is will 100% force pistol abuse meta, im very confident after not playing with hitreg issues, that or something like the Mp7 with a quick ADS time. That being said, i think Heavy Armour should make you a touch slower then what is currently.

last edited by biass

If you prefer slow TTK Military Shooter , there are so many other options for you.

Call of Duty , Tom Clancy's , Battlefield , Counter Strike , and etc.

I prefer fast TTK Military Shooter.

Insurgency is the only option for me.

Stop trying to take away my only option.

You already have many other options.

Why are you trying so hard to get rid of my only option ?

Insurgency is unique Military Shooter because of the fast TTK.

If you take away fast TTK from Insurgency , what will make this game different from other Military Shooters ?

last edited by Nick Kim

@mefirst said in We want the one hit kills.:

Well I disagree with that.

A lower TTK is simply rewarding different skills than a higher one. Those skills are related to things like:

  • Awareness
  • Positioning
  • Aim
  • Tracking
  • Aiming Speed

I understand that you and some others might personally like low TTK or even 1-hit kills. I cannot say to you or them what you can like and cannot. I can just try convince you why I (and it seems a lot others here) think too low TTK is a really bad idea for a game. This way you might be able to learn something you were not aware of before. And if you counter my arguments and prove them wrong, then I can learn something! So please prove me wrong, I wan't to learn! 🙂

Yes, low TTK rewards different skills than higher TTK. But do not claim it rewards skill areas that it does not. It was discussed and proven on page 4 how 1-hit kill, as an example of low TTK, does not reward:

  1. Positioning
  2. Recoil control (aiming skill)
  3. Tracking (aiming skill)

It also effectively removes these skill areas from the game and puts a huge emphasis on:

  1. Target acquisition (finding visually and aiming at target)
  2. Reaction time

The discussion on page 4 proves that when TTK is too low, it simplifies the game by removing skills from the skill set required to master the game. So this means that less skills required to master the game = lowers the skill ceiling of the game. And now I want to point out that this specific thing is not a matter of agreeing or not, as it has been proven in this discussion and by denying it, you are just denying facts.

At the moment It is like we proved on page 4 that the the earth is round (facts and proof) and you disagree and say it's flat (just denying the facts instead of providing proof). This leads to what Benny said earlier: the discussion is not going anywhere. Please provide good counter-arguments instead and prove this wrong if you can. I am willing to change my view if this is proven wrong, I have absolutely no problem with that.

Ultimately in my opinion this TTK discussion is not about low or high TTK. It's about finding a balanced TTK to not dumb the game down (by removing skills) and not put too massive emphasis on just a few skill areas.

Raise your hand who want's the game to be more tactical?! How about we push some movement mechanics fixes (refer to page 4) 🙂

Also this discussion about 1-hit kills just reminded about a game mode from Unreal Tournament called instagib. Anyone familiar with that?

So as I've said a few times I love CoD4, it has a very similar TTK to Insurgency 2014 (sorta low) but to insist on how too low a TTK isn't that good, and to agree with post above, I just have to retell how CoD4's hardcore mode goes:

Reduced health. Most weapons 1-shot kill in any body part. With a tiny bit of smarts and skill, it becomes easy to mow down anyone you see. Even those that are camping because my aim is often better.

Like @jensiii said, playing pistol only becomes possible and easy. I can even snipe people across map with it, one shot. And it's not just pub noobs that run around in the open, the great players too (granted, those kill me a lot in return as well).

Now, was it completely bad? No... Was it fun? Sure! Always fun to play something OP and get easy kills. Is it fun in the long run, though? For noobs that enjoy cheap kills all day or the type of person that would hack, yes. These people would get their kick without an ounce of shame. I, however found it gets old quick. So I try using less effective guns to challenge myself, if only to style on them a bit. Honestly very fun to pull off tough stuff, and doesn't feel cheap cause I'm already at a disadvantage... But I digress. In the scope of a competitive game (where skill and challenge are of matter), this kind of leisurely OP fun doesn't quite fit in.

Now how close to Insurgency 2014 was that CoD4 hardcore mode example? Aside from even lower TTK (in CoD4), size of maps and visibility of players, pretty much identical. So give and take what you want from this, but I just mean I've experienced super low TTK both with noobs and very good players, and it still is overall too easy and not fun. Unbalanced I'd say.

Sure the good players had the same advantages I had, but to follow on that unbalanced claim, ever played Smash Bros. with a higher damage multiplier? Or with let's say just 1 type of item? Is it fair? Yes, both players have the same advantages. Is it fun? Yes great fun can be had with that sort of ruleset. Is it balanced, is it fun in the long run? To me, no. I quickly get tired of getting knocked about at the 1st opportunity. I quickly miss normal rules where I can actually put some thought into my gameplay. Kind of like has been discussed before, this situation brings the "promotes target acquisition skill over all" into play. I'm surprising myself as I realize how similar this is to what's being discussed here. I could've used Sudden Death (300% damage, mostly insta-kill) as an example to get even closer. You just want to quickly land a hit, no matter what it is. Characters in Smash can dodge and block, but so can you hide and take cover in INS.

This makes me realize one more thing: what lower TTK really does, is make gameplay faster (duh? Lemme elaborate). Sudden Death in Smash aims to decide a winner super quickly, to slice once and for all because a fight has been ongoing for too long without a winner. It effectively removes one thing that benefits good gameplay: time. When you have time to think about your moves, you can apply a decent amount of strategy (time meaning number of mistakes where you take damage here). When that time frame becomes so small, it effectively increases risk and punishment for mistakes and significantly decreases the time one has to react, leaving it now increasingly more to luck than reactivity.

In Insurgency (or really any good FPS), a "normal" TTK should overall allow you to be able to make very small mistakes (i.e.: survive being shot by a player you took by surprise, but not survive running in front of them). In games with a higher TTK, you're kind of encouraged to play smarter, in order to keep your HP high. Obviously, in all cases you play smarter to not die, but that's because the time to kill is overall still quick regardless. It's still kind of within a "fast kill" range, you're not a bullet-sponge boss. This makes me think of MMORPG raids. There isn't as much mechanical skill involved anymore, as a good old, well planned tactic, because the TTK is now so high. I could even see the overall long-term battle in an FPS as high TTK. The objectives are all slower goals to attain, and the gunfights/encounters are much quicker events. All counting towards the end goal, but in smaller increments. You could then say that, very generally put, the objectives require much more planning than the individual encouters. But again, I'm kind of stretching this out a bit...

Right now I'm just trying to see the extremes and how tactical skill vs reactionary skill fluctuate in between. I'm just theorizing at this point but I think I sort of make sense? In any case this might be a good subject for an essay, which I won't be attempting (tonight).

So to go back a bit to the initial point: how does too low a TTK hinder gameplay versatility? Well I just think there's a point at which the options you have become too limited. Where the gameplay starts to flatten, where there are too few opportunities for turnarounds. I think it is healthy for any game to provide a minimum of forgiveness for mistakes, and the lower the TTK you go, the closer you get to that minimum.You could even make a parallel with a game of chess as an example of the other extreme, where "opportunities for turnarounds" are initially very very numerous. Same goes with a whole Insurgency round, where, similarly to a game of chess, every smaller action counts towards the end goal, and there are opportunities for comebacks.

Now with all that blabbering said and done, what is a good TTK for Insurgency? Matter of preference? Maybe. Appears to be the case, from this ongoing discussion. What should it be? Whatever the devs want it to be. What do I want it to be? I think how it is in Insurgency 2014 fits that game very well, in regards to balance to tactics and aiming skill. I personally don't like to spend too long on a target, I want it to be quick, but don't want to feel OP either. And I want to have time to react, if only to turn around. That means mostly no to 1 hit kills unless you hit torso/head and the target is unarmored. And so far this seems to be pretty much the case in Sandstorm, except for a few thing that could need a fix like movement speed or heavy armor.

~getting off-topic a bit~
I'm personally a fan of the faster movement speed, but it doesn't fit too well in this game, gives too much of an advantage in many situations. As I said in an earlier paragraph, allowing mistakes is good, but this fast movement speed may be a little forgiving, allowing to escape otherwise very dangerous situations. As has been suggested previously quite a few times, making acceleration longer and making it so getting hit slows you down sound like good solutions. They could keep the max speed though. It is fast but doesn't seem unrealistic. It's a good sprint speed. The fact that that sprint speed can be held for so long (indefinitely?) may be the problem here. Otherwise I'm thinking the devs have chosen to make this top speed this fast, so that traveling entire maps wouldn't be as long. Which I honestly like. It just needs to actually have drawbacks (slowed down when hit and sprinting for too long, and longer acceleration). Ugh, and with this I went off topic. Am tired and just spouting thoughts at this point... Will copy this into an appropriate thread tomorrow.

Anywho guess I'm done...
tl;dr: "One hit kills" kills gameplay versatility.
Most relevant to read: paragraphs 1 to 5, and second-to last paragraph. Can skip the rest.

last edited by Coachon