The Great TTK Debate

@benz said in The Great TTK Debate:

This would also encourage teamplay from the 5 players, as taking you on 1by1 would be WAY more risky than taking you 2on1. Prove: CSGO.

Prove: R6S. High TTK, yet 1v 5s can still be won (usually as defender). If I clutch a 1 v 5 its very rewarding. If I could just 1 pop everyone, 1 v 5s would be won much more often and it wouldn't take as much skill or positioning.

@cyoce I kind of agree with your last post, but this simply proves that ttk isn't in need of tweaking but other mechanics.

last edited by thehappybub

@thehappybub said in The Great TTK Debate:

but this simply proves that ttk isn't in need of tweaking but other mechanics.

There is so much wrong with this game... the more I play, the more I lose my hope this will actually be a competitive game tbh.

@benz someone on another thread mentioned that NWI prolly knew they were gonna push back release for months now. Honestly, that guy's gotta be right. This game still feels almost like early access. I know its a beta, but betas are supposed to be basically the final product with some balance tweaks, not a game that barely runs well on medium-tier PCs, with shit AI, and a host of other problems.

@thehappybub well, too be honest a lot of problems this game has make me question how capable NWI actually is, not from a technical standpoint, but from a design standpoint.

After reading all the TTK threads I've come to this conclusion:
0_1538281387619_Headshot Zones.png

@amurka I agree with your second image, however armor should mitigate that and make it into the first picture. Having it still be the second picture with heavy armor on is dumb. The only weapons that should be like the second picture even with armor should be the high velocity snipers (bolt actions).

@Benz , @cyoce

Both parties in this conversation (Cyoze & Benz) have several valid points. And I am not writing this to criticize any of you, just thought it could be interesting to make a list with some statements mixed by both your ideas and my own, and hear your thoughts if you feel like it. None of the statements are meant as counterarguments to what you have previously said, they are just views that I believe are valid, some banal and some maybe don't.

I. Skill ceiling/floor: The more complex behavior the player needs to manage/master, the higher the skill ceiling. The skill floor will be how fast you can master one or several of these behaviors dependent of how complex the game is, and therefore having any relevance on your team.

II. With a lower Time To Kill, there will be less need for repeated hits on your opponent, thereby lowering the timeframe it takes to kill any given opponent, this will lower the skill floor in a 1v1 situation regarding aim, as the less skilled player can have worse aim but get a lucky spray.

III. The more skilled player will not need to follow up his shot(s) with several more successful shots, so the skill ceiling will be lower in the skill to control recoil and aim in the 1v1 situation with lower TTK.

IV. The ability to learn from a moment of bad situational awareness will exist with both a low TTK and a high TTK, but with a low TTK you learn by keeping a higher situational awareness after respawning again, as it is less forgiving. That does not mean it removes the players room to improve, but it delays the room to improve until after respawning. It removes the room to improve at that exact moment, thus making the game less forgiving, changing customer segmentation.

V. With a low TTK the skill ceiling will be higher regarding the need to maintain situational awareness, as the punishment for not doing so is more severe. Therefore the emphasis is moved further in the direction of situational awareness, and away from repeated hits in any encounter. It just means that the focus of this trait is more vital in a game with low TTK without comparing to any games in particular. If you compare it to a game, the point is more pronounced the higher the TTK is in the comparison.

VI. If opposing players of equal skill meets in an engagement 1v1 with low TTK, the timeframe it happens within is reduced and the emphasis is moved away from repeated hits at one opponent and towards faster gameplay as the winning player can change their focus to the next task in a shorter time frame. Players with the same skills in aiming will have the same opportunity to kill each other regardless of the TTK in a 1v1.

VII. With a higher TTK the time you fire your gun on each opponent will be within a longer timeframe, therefore is is harder to remain undetected or attract unwanted attention due to sound or muzzle flash from third-parties, being very obvious on night maps.

VIII. Teamplay plays a greater role with a higher TTK because the possibility to both change the odds and having successful solo attacks decrease when outnumbered with a higher TTK. Teamplay is still vital with a low TTK in equally skilled teams above a certain skill level, but more free roaming appears in casual pugs.

IX. Facing multiple enemies solo (the Rambo style) I believe we all can agree has a lower success-rate with higher TTK when skill level is equal, and higher in the opposite case. Still there is moments when even the most skillful players don't always pay enough attention and can be taken by surprise. An example could be in Insurgency district map 5v5. There is simply not enough players on each team to have full control/lockdown at all times. A low TTK will increase the chance of a successful lurker getting more kills, without it ending up as a trade. Lower timeframe to kill = more time to move away from the scene, getting a better position.

X. Regarding the example provided by Cyoce and commented by Benz, I will provide an example from my own experience from Insurgency 2014 that mostly applies to example two and thereafter speak loosely about some other stuff like skill ceiling I felt like addressing.

5v5 firefight. Ministry, last man standing defending Charlie (garage), situated by the van on insurgent side on point a few years ago. Why I remember this so much later was because it was against and with one of the earlier competing teams in Insurgency, and I had no business playing against them, but was a bit exited having watched all the pro matches. I have no video proof this happened, and you really don't need to believe it anyway for the example to work, as the essential point is that I felt like an underdog in the situation having trained mostly in random pugs.

Enemies had just capped A by killing my last two teammates, and our plan (in a casual pug, not matchmaking as it was not a thing yet if I remember correct) of me capping C alone while my last two teammates stalled or killed enemies on A, went down the drain.

I managed to kill all 5 who rushed my position from different angles, and yes the enemy team was more skilled than me, as it was their team and friends playing on both teams, and way above me in skill as well, but they felt confident, while I had a heart rate with the rpm like a techno nightclub and was ultra focused due to the pressure.

Now in this scenario you could argue that they were unfocused or did not approach the situation in an optimal manner, as a 5v1 situation normally have only one outcome - And you would be correct.

Still I would argue that I could not have won this situation with a high TTK as it all happened in a very short time frame with highly aggressive attackers. Would the skill ceiling be lower because I managed to hold the ground or would it be more accurate to say that the skill floor was lower? The second option is what i believe is the case, as they had the same opportunity to outplay me as with any TTK, but with the focus of the skill revolving less on aim skills and more on situational awareness at all times - Even if I did not face players of considerably lower skill, but the opposite.

Still it was impossible to win if not close to all shots fired were landing home, but with their shared health pool the odds would have been much higher that I had lost due to being fixated with the aim on one opponent while being killed from another one or caught off guard changing guns or reloading, or attracting unwanted attention by sound/muzzle flash.

You could off course also argue that it only takes 5 headshots, and that would be correct, it would just require a higher aiming skill level on my part - but the skill ceiling is not the top of your individual skill - It is the maximum skill you can have across all abilities as a player combined in general, which is rare even amongst the best players in the world. They often have different roles based upon which gameplay they individually exceed in, and train within the certain role for so many hours that they often suit that role the most - Off course there is probably many exceptions, but hitting the skill-ceiling and having nothing to improve was not an issue in Insurgency 2014 even with a lower skill-ceiling than for example CS:GO, because you can always improve team tactics if you are in the position of mastering the other aspects of the game.

I know CSGO and it's predecessors have had more skilled players through the years of existing and have more complexity both because of the recoil patterns, the higher TTK and the amount of players who have played it for a long time all exceeds Insurgency, but having the highest possible skill ceiling should maybe not be the goal in itself, as the complexity of a first person shooter is not exactly rocket science, nor does it need to reach for always higher complexity, as the time invested to master such a game also raises. In CSGO you will need to practice in the timeframe of about 10 hours a day to maintain a pro level according to a video from Shroud (I am not gonna try to find the correct video as proof, as that would take forever, but there is plenty of statements by other pro players that mirror similar training needed).

Being accessible for the most amount of players by being entertaining, without being to generic and loose relevance, is what matters from both an economic viewpoint and popularity. If the niche hits home with exactly you is a matter of taste, but conflicting views are not invalid if it don't.

As an end note said in a previous post: I am satisfied with the TTK as it is even if that is irrelevant for this post in my opinion.

It's interesting to share thoughts about a game in development that many of us share a lot of excitement about. If you could refrain from answering in a rude manner, it would be much appreciated. Dealing with toxic behavior is both tedious and does not promote our shared goal of discussing the aspects of this game.

I am not trying to prove anything here, just sharing my ten cents on the subject.

@pacalis you've churned out quite a thorough analysis and I am quite impressed. If I were to try to come up with something like this I would most definitely skip over a lot of points and not realize until later.

It seems to me that there are more arguments in favor of teamplay and gameplay based on player skill when the TTK is higher. By high TTK, I personally understand this to mean not OSK to armor.

After reading this, I don't think you've actually taken a stance though. Just out of curiosity, do you think that the TTK in Sandstorm is good, needs to be lowered, or needs tweaking in any way?

@pacalis said in The Great TTK Debate:

I. Skill ceiling/floor: The more complex behavior the player needs to manage/master, the higher the skill ceiling. The skill floor will be how fast you can master one or several of these behaviors dependent of how complex the game is, and therefore having any relevance on your team.

That definition of "skill floor" is incorrect. "skill floor" describes how "approachable" a game for beginners is. F.e. Dota2 has a much higher skill floor than, f.e. Quake 3. Quake 3 = join server, run around+shoot. Dota2... open game, be confused about everything, try to work through.

"how fast" you can master stuff is literally describing skill ceiling. More complex mechanics = more time you can spend mastering them.

II. With a lower Time To Kill, there will be less need for repeated hits on your opponent, thereby lowering the timeframe it takes to kill any given opponent, this will lower the skill floor in a 1v1 situation regarding aim, as the less skilled player can have worse aim but get a lucky spray.

Addition: it also lowers the importance of a proper position in a 1on1. The faster you can kill someone, the less important is positioning. It doesnt matter if you have a good position or not, if you enemy can't react and punish you anyways. That's why people with good aim can risk being in a worse position in a "high" TTK game.

V. With a low TTK the skill ceiling will be higher regarding the need to maintain situational awareness, as the punishment for not doing so is more severe.

The punishment is "death" in both cases. High TTK or low TTK. Everyone plays the same game. It's not more "severe". It's both "death".

VII. With a higher TTK the time you fire your gun on each opponent will be within a longer timeframe, therefore is is harder to remain undetected or attract unwanted attention due to sound or muzzle flash from third-parties, being very obvious on night maps.

Yes, with a higher TTK the longer you fight, the more vulnerable you are (and...the more ammo you waste).

having nothing to improve was not an issue in Insurgency 2014 even with a lower skill-ceiling than for example CS:GO, because you can always improve team tactics if you are in the position of mastering the other aspects of the game.

While this might be true, what about "public" gameplay? It becomes super stale and boring very fast. This applies to competitive gameplay as well btw. CS 1.6 got stale after....what? 10 years?! Simply because it had such a high skill ceiling. Once pro players approached the "end" of that skill ceiling.... it became stale. The lower the skill ceiling, the earlier you gonna reach that point. You don't want that for a game that wants to be competitive. At all.

I know CSGO and it's predecessors have had more skilled players through the years of existing and have more complexity both because of the recoil patterns, the higher TTK and the amount of players who have played it for a long time all exceeds Insurgency, but having the highest possible skill ceiling should maybe not be the goal in itself, as the complexity of a first person shooter is not exactly rocket science, nor does it need to reach for always higher complexity, as the time invested to master such a game also raises. In CSGO you will need to practice in the timeframe of about 10 hours a day to maintain a pro level according to a video from Shroud (I am not gonna try to find the correct video as proof, as that would take forever, but there is plenty of statements by other pro players that mirror similar training needed).

I mean...yes? A higher skill ceiling requires more work and practice. That means people are more invested into you game. That's usually want a company should want. Invested customers.

Being accessible for the most amount of players by being entertaining, without being to generic and loose relevance, is what matters from both an economic viewpoint and popularity. If the niche hits home with exactly you is a matter of taste, but conflicting views are not invalid if it don't.

Sure, but this is why i always try to argue gameplay and not personal preference or nostalgia. Otherwise i'd be arguing for quake-level of ttk ;).

Just by going down the list you created here... like... from a pure gameplay perspective: how can anyone want a lower TTK, if they want the game to be good and succeed?!

.........................................

@Benz
Replying to your comments on the list points from earlier.

I. I understand, just described it with my own words. By mastering a skill I am not saying having the skill maxed out, but simply that you need to be able to understand one skill well enough to be able to support your team. (English is my second language, but I am pretty sure the word is used correctly, I also checked the Cambridge dictionary) An example could be that a new player in Insurgency 2014 quickly dies when joining pvp, therefore quickly after understanding the need to be more careful, and lays down prone to guard a choke point. After a while that player gets better at this, and master the more stationary guarding position, Master meaning being very skilled in this context in the ability to control a choke point. The new player can with this skill now help the team by locking down this choke point even as a beginner. This would be the approach a new player could take in this example, another example could be that he joins without knowing anything about a shooting game and having no training in aiming. So he runs around and shots at both his teammates and enemies and dies all the time, after a while he understands the difference between the looks of his team and the enemies and reads about the rules on the gamemode and approaches the game with an understanding of the game rules. He will now be less of a liability for his team, though he still has a lot to learn about the more complex gameplay. Insurgency can therefore be described as having a high skill floor for new players without experience in first person shooters, but a lower skill floor if a player has previous experience in fps as the ability to understand the concept of locking down a choke point is easy to understand for most players, and the lethality makes even new players dangerous defenders of choke points. How approachable a game is for a new player, or the skill floor, is directly tied up to his or hers ability to manage/master one or several aspects in the game. Both definitions are accurate, but maybe the definition using the word approachable is more intuitive to describe the skill floor,. Approach = to deal with something, so I tried to describe it by changing "deal with something" to managing behaviors which is again a particular way of acting=D

II. The importance of a proper position is still there with a lower TTK. You argue that your enemy can not react and punish you, which implies you already saw the enemy before the enemy saw you, and shot him before he could react, in that scenario you would alreday have played a stronger position by shooting him from an angle that he did not anticipate. How does that change anything about the aspect of positioning, and why could your enemy not react? - The timeframe is lower, that is why you often already lost the fight if an enemy spots you first (when low TTK and equal skill) and therefore making positioning so important. I agree that the aspect of positioning becomes less important during the fight as the fight is almost over before it has started, if that is what you mean. Positioning during fights gets almost eliminated with a low TTK, the positioning I am referring to is the position you have before the encounter and the importance of using positional advantages as hiding, hard cover and leaning (optimally using leaning to the right from a left cover in Insurgency 2014, as your body is more exposed when leaning left from a right cover when facing your opponent, Link has made a good video illustrating this for Insurgency 2014.

V. Lethality (derived from the word lethal as in able to cause death:extremely dangerous) is increased by lowering TTK, a basic concept. This is the trademark of low TTK games like Insurgency 2014. I said the trait was more pronounced the higher the TTK is. I will give an example that may better explain what I mean. If the TTK is extremely high, lets say you need 100 shots to kill your opponent, the situational awareness you have before encountering the enemy means almost nothing, as after you have fired the first 5- 10 shots at you enemy, he knows where you are and can reposition himself accordingly, and the focus changes from having had the best situational awareness, to focusing on being able to manage aim, recoil and movement for the next 90 shots. After the fight is done, off course the punishment is death, but the consequence of having lower situational awareness is more severe as in very serious with lower TTK as the fight takes place in a smaller timeframe thus moving the emphasis away from aim and towards situational awareness. Off course there is still important to have situational awareness with a muc higher TTK if you incorporate the need to control key locations on the map with your team, for example power-ups in the DOOM 2016 pvp. Maybe a better phrasing on my behalf would be the importance of being aware of your close surroundings.

About games becoming stale you have a valid point, and only time will tell if the complexity of Insurgency Sandstorm will reach a skill ceiling where the competitions become stale between the most dedicated players. In my opinion this is not likely to happen i a very long time if the game gains high popularity, as the game seems complex as to being comparable to CS:GO in the department of game mechanics. Yes it is very different, but also very complex as what options and tactics you have at your disposal when playing. Both games have an array of guns and throwables, though Insurgency sandstorm does not fall behind on variety. CS:GO has an economy (buying gear in each round), higher TTK, more complex recoil in both intensity and patterns, which can all be considered higher complexity, though lower TTK also adds complexity in other aspects of the game in my opinion as we have discussed.

Still Insurgency also possess unique features that adds complexity that is not present in for example CS:GO. Now the game is not finished, and none of us can be sure which features will be present in competitive gamemode after release, but as of now there is vehicles, air support, leaning, gas masks (gas masks are mentioned, as not equipping one in smoke makes your character cough, which again adds complexity by the amount of choices you have) and larger maps that further pushes the importance of situational awareness Lets say you need to prevent the enemy from capping a point at the other side of the map, how do you rush through the map to reach the point without dying and without spending too much time? Just a rhetorical question, as my point is that it adds complexity. There might even be lurkers from both teams competing about controlling key areas between objectives due to the larger maps (like controlling the middle of a chess board even if the objectives are elsewhere).

The developers are not finished balancing and tweaking the game as we know, and have stated that this process will continue even post-release, so we will find out=)

Like I have mentioned elsewhere (click my username and browse my posts if you want my personal thoughts on current TTK), I actually do not want a lower TTK than what it is at its current state as the game is extremely lethal as it is.

I agree that you would want to keep the interest of your customers, that is customer segmentation. You try to find a product targeted at people having a certain kind of traits. What many customers surprisingly want in video games though is not too high complexity because they don't find time to invest - the casual players. The casual players amounts to a significant portion of sales in triple A games, thus as you mention elsewhere, the games needs to find a balance, which is tightly connected to the different types of customers. Having game mechanics that are complex enough to be entertaining and keep being entertaining for the most skilled players (will attract even more casual players through popular streamers and fans evolving around pro-teams), while still being fun to play without the need to invest much time for the casuals.

@thehappybub
Thank you, there is probably still a lot to address that I have not thought of, and the statements are definitely up for discussion in regards to refining them to be more accurate and adding more. Benz have helped me by providing useful feedback, and I have also borrowed ideas from both Benz and Cyote when putting it together=) My personal thoughts about TTK is in another post I wrote, you can navigate to that post by clicking my username and then see all my posts. I am quite new to forums in general, so I did not think about the importance to make headlines if people wanted to look at a specific post 😂

@pacalis said in The Great TTK Debate:

II. How does that change anything about the aspect of positioning, and why could your enemy not react?

Because lower TTK = less time to punish someone for bad aim+bad positioning -> position of the camper is less important.

A good aimer can have a worse position to compensate, while a bad aimer could have a better position to compensate. With a low TTK it doesn't matter. Good position, bad positions. A good player wouldn't be able to react to a bad player, simply because of natural human reaction time. That's good if it takes some effort and skill. I have no problem dying to a clean headshot, as it actually takes some skill.

The only time it starts to matter again is if the camper has absolutely awful aim, but i'm not here arguing what's good for extremely low skilled players, but what's good for a high skill ceiling.

It allows for way different playstyles and enables the opportunity for players to compensate skills. A low TTK doesn't. It simply allows bad players to camp in stupid positions and still get kills. By the time you can react to them, they will already have sprayed you down. It's pointless. That's what i literally witness every time i play Sandstorm. That's not fun at all.

The maps are so large and if you play the objectives you have to move. You don't have freaking time to check every corner and take a ridiculously slow approach. That's also not what Sandstorm tries to be afaik. Play some competitive and you'll know what i mean.

After the fight is done, off course the punishment is death, but the consequence of having lower situational awareness is more severe as in very serious with lower TTK

No, it's not. That's the whole point. If the consequences are the same, they are the same. End of story. It's just more obvious with a lower TTK, but the consequence is not more severe. It's the same consequence.

About games becoming stale you have a valid point, and only time will tell if the complexity of Insurgency Sandstorm will reach a skill ceiling where the competitions become stale between the most dedicated players.

Yes, will be interesting.

Like I have mentioned elsewhere (click my username and browse my posts if you want my personal thoughts on current TTK), I actually do not want a lower TTK than what it is at its current state as the game is extremely lethal as it is.

Hell yes, it's already lethal af.

What many customers surprisingly want in video games though is not too high complexity because they don't find time to invest - the casual players.

That might be your personal perception, but not quite true or rather: black/white. CSGO, Dota2, LoL, Wow.... those games have a ton of players. And they all have a very high skill ceiling/a lot of complexity. So there's that....

@Benz

Yeah, I agree that with the low TTK you get rewarded for shooting first, and that does not necessarily takes much effort or skill in many of the situations. Lethality can be fun for me though, as I have no problem being killed by someone being new even with several k hours in Insurgency and think that any armed opponent should pose a serious threat even with bad aim - I like the feeling of paranoia - Like you can never rely on aim or experience in the game alone, as smart players who are new can pull of some vicious moves=) Thats why the first round in a competitive match often is also about feeling the enemy out, as there is many different tactics and counter-tactics that may be viable options.

I don't recognize feeling cheated by a bad player in a bad position though (why is it a bad position if he owns you anyway), at least not that often, as in most cases when dying it is due to not checking corners and windows etc before moving through an insecure area. It would be interesting if you could provide a specific example from Insurgency 2014 if that would be okay (either by writing or pulling down a video from youtube that you see fit as describing the problem, so I could understand better what you mean and give my thoughts on the situation.

Like the first thing that comes to mind for me is the push gamemodes, 16v16 as they often result in many deaths, still all the hiding spots can be fragged or prefired or smoked, and when the game doe not work in our teams favor, its mostly due to lack of communication and team tactics being too weak, I rarely felt the game mechanics were broken except for when when playing Buhriz and Sinjar push, as with equally skilled teams those maps are very hard.

But I admit that I am a fan in general of games where you get owned a lot, as I also love games like Rising Storm 2: Vietnam where you get killed from all directions at all times without having a clue until playing quite a few hours. I think that I logged above 100 hours in that game before I finally got 68 kills playing Cu Chi which is one of the more popular maps. That game is quite a good comparison to Insurgency Sandstorm in my opinion, still different, though I would say it is even less forgiving, with at least as low TTK and even larger maps, though mostly working great in push mode. I do not know if you played that game or similar games, but very skilled players exist in those games as well (BreakTheVices is great at that game)- though it is actually the norm to get killed from time to time in those types of games, even if you are a skilled player. If you are more seasoned in games where the most skilled players die more seldom, maybe it also just takes some time to get used to the new type of gameplay? I can definitely tell by your comment about getting sprayed all the time that you still have some room for improvement, if you are not enjoying yourself at the same time while imroving, that would off course not be good - Try mix your game up, get out of earlier patterns, don't take the game so seriously and think about after 50 more hours in pvp if things feel different then.

Like unless you are the best player in Sandstorm right know, and still gets frustrated by getting owned, that would maybe be a sign that it did something wrong, but its a pretty aggressive playerbase that has moved from the old Insurgency to this one, and all the players who enjoyed camping in push mode will probably drag their lethal habits into this game, the hours many players have spent defending objectives in the previous game should not necessarily be written off as newbies even if they camp. If you have a look at the pro matches in Insurgency 2014 on youtube (you definitely should if you have not already, some beautiful plays here and there^^ ), you will see that camping also is a natural part of the game. When you get killed in Ins Sandstorm, do you know where you are shot from? Have you checked your corners and used smokes and air strikes? Have you moved up while communicating with your teammates and made sure they get the trade kill if you get shot?

As stated in another post by me, I tried pvp for only a few matches in this game (have in mind that i ran the last insurgency on minimum graphics to avoid lag and unnecessary details, and I need a new laptop before I can test this game properly current MSI GE70 only 8GB ram) Even if I don't mind being killed by less experienced players, it is a shitty feeling dying because of stuttering all the time and being called drunk by your teammates afterwards because they don't know how bad the game runs for me 😂 - But even then I still had a decent K:A:D stat, so its at least for me too early to say what I think of the state of the game, but it seems really promising from what I've played and seen!

As we have discussed earlier, same set of rules apply both ways, so if you are up against campers locking down your spawn, do the same with them. I also prefer fast game play as it seems you do, from the video I provided below it does not seem like that is any problem to pull off though.

I tried to find an example about getting caught off guard and found this one. At 5:28 Shroud already know he just got owned, and if you notice its not a problem for him, as he just tells his team so they can do the trade kill. if you watch at 8:50 he attacks a camper and beautifully predicts the counter shots.

EDIT: video just to demonstrate these two points, I am no fan of this kind of streamers.
Youtube Video

last edited by Pacalis

I honestly can't believe that some people want THIS to be how the snipers handle. In the video he doesn't land a SINGLE shot on a head or chest. It's knee, shoulder, leg, arm, and the last one looks like a total miss, but hey...it's an AWP.

Gee wiz this low TTK sure looks fun! /s

Warning. Loud idiotic announcers.

last edited by AMURKA