The solution to the great TTK/Damage Model/Armor Debate.

@cyoce It does not matter if the assessment "in the mind" is random if the only possible results are.

Moreover, this does not change when interacting with mechanics that are discretely RNG, like my suggestion.

The only relevant thing is that the player has incomplete information. It does not matter if that incomplete data was damage ranging from one to three or whether it was whether a person was hiding in room A or B.

The end result is that the RESULT is not totally player determined. And this is play people are wary of RNG mechanics. But this should not be confused with RNG itself. RNG is just a fact of life. The question is whether a mechanic adds too much randomness such that it renders the player just a bystander.

@suspensionsystem The result is player determined with a room A and room B. This is the key point: whether an enemy is in room A or room B is determined by the enemy player's decisions: the guy who shot you from the spot you didn't expect chose to be there. No individual player has complete control over the game, but the game is completely determined by the combination of all the players' decisions.

last edited by cyoce

@cyoce No it is not.

The decision to go into room A or B would be based either on a random guess, or an informed guess. Choose the wrong room, and you die. You could make the best decision based on the available data and still lose.

If you know that a gun kills in 1 to 3 shots, or 1-9 etc, this is a data point that you can use as a player to make decisions. So the result is just as determined by player actions as it would be if you did not do this.

Because all this amounts to, in either case, is a in game situation where the player has to make decisions based on incomplete data.

That is all there is to it. It does not matter if every mechanic is totally deterministic, since the player cant interface with all of those mechanics anyhow. It is not relevant from the perspective of the actor involved.

@ziggylata Ah yes, more copy pasting of whatever the currently popular mimetic explanation is. If someone mentions Hitler, we can be sure to get a link to Godwins law.

last edited by SuspensionSystem

@suspensionsystem True, you could make the "best" decision and still die, but only because someone else made a decision you weren't expecting. That's not random. If you played that match again (and erased any memory of the match), the results would be the same.

I'm not talking about the perspective of the player. The player treats things as random for the purpose of their decisions. That doesn't make their actions random, nor does it make their enemies' actions random. From their perspective, their enemies' actions are unknown, which they must treat as random for the highest probability of success. In this example, the player is dying as a direct result of his decision to enter room A and his opponents' decision to hold in room A. With a random damage model, the outcome is not purely determined by player actions. That's the problem I'm talking about.

tl;dr: unknown != random

@cyoce Right, unknown means probabilistic decision making. And what I am saying is that this is not a problem since you are going to have it anyhow. And its worth having so long as it is not excessive and adds to the game in other ways.

So lets analyze the specific suggestion I made. The damage itself is not totally known. But the damage is still generally very high, with most weapons have close to 50% 1 shot kill probability.

Depending on how complicated the rest of the model is, you still have to calculate many things as the player. Shot placement, armor considerations, range, recoil etc. This all still comes into play. This is obviously a chance that you could do all the right things and lose, but this would really be the case anyway.

But we for the tiny cost of some slight RNG that can be largely mitigated by the player, we have added several new player skill regimes.

  1. Because the damage is variable, players have to compensate for this, which is its own skill. Knowing you always kill in X number hits is a less complicated decision than knowing how to mitigate for variable hits.

  2. Weapons are more varied, meaning the choice of weapon and associated tactical decisions are less obvious. Which means choosing the perfect DPS etc is harder to do and less formulaic.

And more along these lines.

Rather than basing everything on chances, a more advanced damage model will be appreciated, but again Insurgency is nowhere near a milsim, this kind of system will work better on games like Arma, Squad, EFT (EFT already has it, Damage is calculated by different body parts, organs.) The closest thing to implement in INSS is a similar damage model from RS2 which character has several sweet spots will lead to one hit kill.

I'm kind of turned on at how this originally stupid thread has now gone off on a game-theory/philosophical, fate/choice/luck tangent.

In the mean time. New patch boys...

last edited by AMURKA

@ctbear1996 I agree this is not a milsim. ARMA 3 actually has this very problem however and considers itself to be one. In fact I know of no Milsim shooter with anything like this, except the RO example you just gave.

Realistic or no, I think this solves the debate that is being had about this. Or you could do something like the RO system and get pretty similar results tbh. Id be fine with either.

But ultimately what you want to retain, which would make both groups happy to broadly generalize, it to have both significant differences in projectile damage characteristics while ALSO having a high degree of 1 shot kills going around.

Any system that cant make both of these things happen is going to result in a very obvious solo pwn mobile type of weapon, or a game of 1 shot kills only.

@suspensionsystem I really don't think the variable damage model enhances anything. Shooting a guy until he's dead isn't any harder than shooting him a fixed number of times. In fact, since you can't be sure how much damage you're doing, you lose the skill required to count hits (to assess whether that last shot you fired hit or missed, then subtract that from the number of times you have to shoot him) in favor of just shooting until he's dead, which doesn't require determining whether your shots hit because it doesn't matter. Neither of those are significant skills, however, so I think this point is moot.

So what do we get out of this? Purportedly better weapon balancing, at the cost of adding true RNG into the core of the game. But I don't even think it would help weapon balance, because a lot of people would just pick the gun with the highest chance of killing in one shot so they can approach consistency.

At the end of the day, I remain unconvinced that any form of true RNG is not bad for the game. You may argue that it is not very significant, but it is still degrading the experience in order to achieve gun balance despite the dozens of potential balance systems that don't involve RNG.

The number of engagements that would be decided by this RNG mechanic is quite high. Let's say two people are facing off with the same gun. Player A gets the drop on Player B, landing the first shot to the chest. He gets unlucky and doesn't kill in one shot. Before he can fire a second shot, Person B fires back and gets a one shot kill. The RNG system gives an unfair advantage to one party in every engagement where their damage rolls are not equal.

last edited by cyoce

One-shot kills have been in place with lower calibers since day one. Hint: shoot the face.

People were already complaining about ROF spray getting "lucky" headshots, we most definitely do not need RNG to supplement that and further reward bad aim.

@AMURKA I'm fine with the crouched recoil reduction bonus time to kick in later, that is actually something I forgot to mention. However I'd also like for the overall crouched bonus to be lowered, even if slightly lowered. But that's me.

What a great thread, I won't repeat what's already been hounded over but by the way...

If you can't write well, spamming caps and full stops in literally every sentence doesn't help. It's like having a really bad car with fancy rims: instead of looking poor, you look poor and stupid.

I like the crouch time until the recoil reduction bonus but 5 seconds is a LONG time in game.

@biass Yeh 5 seconds is too long. Probably somewhere between 1.5 seconds to 2 seconds.

1.5-2 seconds is too fast. If you crouch (go ahead and do it) do YOU feel settled and stable within 1.5 seconds? hold something in your arms to simulate a weapon and pretend to aim it at something (either once your knees hit the ground or try to hold your aim at something all the way down). See how long it takes for you to hold a steady bead.

I'd be willing to bet the average is around 3 seconds and up. Now do it with a backpack loaded full of books.

last edited by AMURKA

@amurka That may be realistic, but 3 seconds in a fast-paced game (especially for this sort of mediocre payout) feels like an eternity.

@cyoce Well at this point I think we're counting our chickens. Let's debate the proper length of time for this feature if and when it gets added to the game 😃

@AMURKA 1.5s-2s is not fast lol. When you refer to 'ME', I'm not a trained solider lol. They could do it in 1.5s-2s easy. Right now for players in game, the bonus is instant. So 1.5s-2s is a great starting point for game-play. There is no point debating about ME or YOU trying to do it IRL, that's just ridiculous. The variables aren't the same and never will be.

Heavier weight values could mean a longer time to receive the bonus.

I don't agree with something. Therefore everyone else is wrong.

Your idea is broken as hell if I understood it correctly.

7.62x51---------------50% 1 shot stops. 25% 2 shots. 25% 3 shots.

So you want a 50% chance that one shot with the the caliber will kill the target in one hit. So what you suggest is basically RNG which is a terrible mechanic for shooters. It is already bad when RNG is happening with recoil. Remember when Siege had a RNG element to its recoil? They made the right decision to give guns specific recoil patterns.

My personal suggestion is.

  • Take Armor out of the game.
  • Add a third and medium option for carrier rigs
  • The choice of the carrier rig should have a effect on the stamina a player has. The more you carry, the less stamina you have. Meaning you can or cant sprint for longer than people with a different carrier.
  • Headshots should always be lethal.
  • Pistols should kill with 3-4 hits on the center of the torso
  • Assault rifles should kill with 2-3 hits on the center torso
  • Give bigger calibers like 7.62 better penetration and better performance on medium to longer ranges.
last edited by MeFirst