Cosgar wrote:Can someone articulately explain why longer TTK is supposedly bad without trying to drag new players into the argument for leverage? Core gameplay and new player experience may be the most neglected things in Dust, but they're two completely different things and should be treated as such. Saying that the current TTK is better for new players is pretty ignorant when everything other than extenders plates (and arguably repair modules) are pretty much a waste of SP. That -10% recharge delay on a militia shield regulator is pretty useless and barely noticeable when you have max skill on a complex. Damage profiles don't matter when you can just stack damage mods on a ScR to deal with a Gallente suit like you had a combat or rail rifle. These are game balancing issues that indirectly affect NPE but shouldn't be brought up in the same sentence.
Having TTK too short - like it is now - is bad because of several factors:
1. It reduces suit variety because stacking tanking mods doesn't provide realistic benefits because even with them, you die faster than you can turn around when flanked or caught from behind.
2. It makes the game too heavily luck and/or twitch based rather than being tactical and skill-based as it has been in many previous builds.
3. It reduces the importance of teamwork because a single AR mag can take out half a team, and having 2 people shoot a target makes so little difference you may as well find your own fight somewhere else.
On the other hand, long TTK like we used to have in DUST can also be bad for many reasons:
1. Part of the reason DUST's long TTK was a problem was - as acknowledged by the devs - a matter of poor hit detection. People weren't dying fast, but it wasn't because they were durable, it was because shots which SHOULD be hitting were passing through their victims or bouncing off their shields for no damage.
2. If TTK is too long, then mistakes aren't punished severely enough, because giving a player too much time to recover when flanked is just as bad as not giving them enough time to react. Getting the drop on an opponent - even if it's a matter of luck - should give you an edge.
3. Even with all the fancy sci-fi tech we're playing with to make ourselves invulnerable, the weapons are highly advanced too, and should be dealing significant damage even to our ultra-futuristic armour and shields. With TTK too long, it will feel like we're firing modern weapons at sci-fi soldiers, or peashooters at guys in kevlar armour. It's just not fun when you don't see any evidence that you're hurting the target.
4. The longer the TTK, the more likely it is that another player will turn the corner, see a nearly dead enemy, and shoot twice to steal your kill.
I know you said not to address this point, but if there are significant differences in health levels as you progress from Militia to Prototype, longer TTK will mean that this difference is more pronounced. Shortening TTK is a way to reduce the impact of these advantages. Really, though, the best method of tiericide is to actually reduce the advantage instead of using short TTK to simulate a reduced advantage. As I said previously, tiericide is good. Using overly-short TTK as a form of tiericide is the wrong approach.