TTK, gameplay, and where Destiny should be.

There are lots of calls for reduced TTK in Destiny 2. Primarily, these are due to players perception that they cannot defeat a single opponent before intervention by an enemy teammate, nor can they overcome an enemy’s use of power ammo without power ammo of their own.

With the enhanced walking speed updates in 1.14, along with increased power ammo plus boosted jump speed for Titans and Warlocks, that perception has increased.

Is reducing TTK an easy, simple fix though? FPS games are complex, and it’s easy to make things worse from player perception just by toggling a few numbers. Lets start with some benchmarking. This is going to be best case, hit all your headshot type numbers. I couldn’t find any hard numbers on the Division or Warframe, but I attempted to estimate it from some of the Division 1.8 patch reviews of toughness. As for Warframe, it was too complex to back calculate based on the video for me.

Here are some other popular FPS games and their TTK numbers:
Game Optimum TTK Bullets To Kill
BF1 .27 -.5 s. 5
BF4 .27-.7 s 4-5
BF Ghosts .15-.3 3-5
Titanfall 1 .22-.3 4-5
Halo 5 .7-1.8 3-5
Overwatch 1-8 varies
PBUG .15-.5 2-6
D1 .5-1 2-4
D2 .83-1.3 4-6
The Division 1-2s estimated from video footage

So Destiny 1 and 2 definitely fall on the slower end of the FPS spectrum, but are not technically the slowest, with the Division, Halo and Overwatch falling on that end as well.

Now, players have noted that the faster walk and strafe speed have made things worse, in their opinion, in the Go Fast update. Why is that?

The TTK numbers above are best case scenarios. A player has to land the appropriate number of shots, including critical hits, with the best weapon and in the best range for that weapon. In addition, their opponent has to have the lowest number of hit points.

In some games, you can get gear that can essentially add health points, like in The Division and PBUG. The amount of health gained, and the resulting effect on DPS, differs drastically in game. In the Division, you can extend your health say by 25%, which has an equal effect on incoming DPS, but also causes a knock on effect in that doing so decreases your output damage, so other players will also have a higher TTK, even if they didn’t spec into more health.

PBUG, with it’s vest pickups, doesn’t have that tradeoff. It is a flat health buff with no downward pressure on your damage output.

Destiny also has a health/mobility/recovery tradeoff. For most of D2, the value of mobility has been minimal, so there was no reason to invest points in anything but health and recovery. This then pushed TTK numbers to the higher end of the possible range.

D2 also introduced something that D1 did not, and that is longer TTK on longer range weapons. In D1, your scout rifle had roughly the same TTK as an auto rifle, from .8-1 second. In D2, the scout rifle has a longer TTK then an auto rifle.

In D2, the difference between a zero toughness build, and a max toughness build is usually around .1~.3 seconds. For some weapons it is lower, as hand cannons and scouts have lots of wasted damage on their shots compared to the final round of a sub or auto rifle bullet. The main effect though is that a zero toughness D2 player can die at .8 seconds, where that is the mid to higher end of D1.

So lets look at this again. D2 has systems outside of weapon global TTK that can result in effectively lower TTK, by shifting points from health into movement speed or recovery. In theory, players should be able to play builds that are a pick 2 (tank, fast, recover) and use weapons that compliment that, such as scouts/HCs for a fast/recover build, subs/ARs for fast/tank, and probably pulse/sidearm for a tank/recover build.

Why don’t they do that? Well, the benefits for points in speed are still low. Even with the Go Fast update run speed and super speed are locked in. Using MIDA or a Lightweight perk weapon gives more benefit then points into speed for most players.

Likewise, the difference in recovery is shallow, so players can rely on a few points in recovery and toughness and not notice too much of an issue. With the added boost to jump speed on warlocks and Titans, the need for points in speed is even lower. Those builds can go full tank now, just like D1 with the skating, with no downside. From a game balance standpoint, that is not good.

Lets look at another factor. Hitting all your shots.
Subs, ARs and auto-sidearms are harder to hit headshots with, but missed shots/body shots are not very penalizing due to the high rate of fire. At the opposite end, Hand Cannons are absolutely brutal if you miss a single shot. Yet Hand Cannons exist at the same optimum ranges as some of the lowest TTK archetypes, and lower skill setups in the game. Unlike the ARs, you can’t spam shots outside of your range and do well with HCs, as the bullets are likely to miss, and they don’t disrupt enemy aim due to High caliber rounds or just a minor amount of finch due to the low frequency of incoming shots.

In addition, we have two other mechanisms at play, Bloom and Recoil. Both of these retard a weapon’s DPS to some extent, Boom by causing missed shots, and Recoil moving your aim to cause bodyshots or missed shots. A skilled player will compensate for bloom and recoil by controlling their aim point and pacing shots, both of which will negatively impact TTK even if the player is still hitting all their shots.

So Hand Cannons have by and large fallen by the wayside, less because of TTK and more because they hare far more difficult to use IN THEIR INTENDED SPACE, due to slow ROF, High Bloom, and high recoil, over other weapon types.

Now players can compensate for this somewhat with armor mods for handling and recoil, but these post a tradeoff against health, speed, recovery, and ability recharge times. So a player choosing to use a recoil mod should see a substantial uptick in their ability to land shots, and closer to optimum DPS despite Bloom and Recoil when using said mods. That has not been my impression so far in this game. Hand Cannons, with recoil mods, don’t seem to make much difference. High impact ARs like the Loquitor are controllable enough to do damage without them as well.

So players don’t feel the benefit of trading recoil mods for other, more beneficial ones.

A broad adjustment of TTK downwards will not address these issues. It would in all likelyhood encourage even more usage of Subs and ARs over other classes, with scouts being used as long range pseudo-snipers.

What should we do then?

We want to keep an increasing Risk as players approach one another. We want to encourage mechanisms that allow players to demonstrate skill. We want players to make meaningful choices in their character setup and customization that change how they play.

Rather then just adjust TTK directly, we need the following:

*Recoil mods that significantly reduce recoil for a weapon class moved to the weapon mods slot.
*Armor weapons handling mods should increase aim assist as well as weapon ready time.
*Higher recoil weapons have lower TTK in their archetype vs low recoil weapons.
*Run speed modified by a player’s speed attribute, slide distance increased greatly by a player’s speed attribute.
*better headshot damage on Hand Cannons and Scouts, shortening the optimum TTK but leaving the bodyshot TTK higher then Subs, ARs, and Pulses. HCs should be .8, Scouts .9 if you hit all your headshots and have the mods to control recoil over extra health.