So, as it stands right now its somewhere around x2 (orks are lower, although i don't know by how much). Playing all the factions for this patch (except eldar cause cant find a match) and with the current oddball mix of really new players and hardcore veterens, folks just get melted by headshots. Even myself with mediocre aiming skills wackamole players in 1-2 tracer images (not sure what the tracer count is relative to rof) by aiming about the head, but it feels like less than 1/4 of a second. Maybe a way to reduce this really short TTK and help the newer players not be at such a major disadvantage is adjusting headshot damage multiplier. Added a votepoll with some multiplier options that maybe people feel would be more appropriate. Sorry for lack of options only get so many possible responses to add, so pick whichever number is closest to what you think is good.
There are better ways to help new players, such as changing the starter loadouts, giving gold&bronze armor faster. But reducing the overall skillcap is not the way to go.
I'm with Smor here. Its a shooter game. There will ALWAYS be a skill gap between new player and veteran. Should veterans have an advantage? OFC they should, they play much longer and have all the advancements. However gear becomes pretty irrelevant if you go for headshots. Noobs would be completely crushed with anything lower then current. Why? Because gear would suddenly have a whole LOT more impact. And last but not least, veterans know how to play and cooperate, noobs are noobs and will just run around in random directions without any coherency while all you have to increase your chances greatly against a veteran player is to stick to another player from your team.
I know 40k isn't really an ideal setting for logic, but here's my tuppence: All of the warriors in the game are wearing some form of armor which prevents them from getting downed by a single hit from a standard firearm. Bolters, shootaz, shuricats... most will need a couple of hits to chew through the armor. So, while an unarmored individual - be it superhuman, ork or elf - may be killed by a single penetrating shot to the chest just as easily as one to the head and central nervous system, the armor prevents penetration at first. With penetration being delayed by the armor, we still have blunt trauma to consider: non-penetrating blows to the head often cause more effective incapacitation than the same blows to the trunk or limbs. Et voila, we have a logical justification for the headshot multiplier to remain in place. As for protecting players from a short TTK, I don't think that reducing the headshot multiplier is a good solution. I'd say increase survivability across the board by adding around 10-25% armor or health, depending on race.
TTK is fine in this game and headshots currently reward a tac player greatly. It doesn't need to be changed at all. The dbash nerf and melee changes were enough as is to keep tacticals in line.
Lets remove headshot damage, and while we're at it can we add AOE incendiary damage to all guns just incase you miss your target's body aswell.
I'd say a reduction is in order. This game was originally built around inaccurate weapons. Aiming for the head would not only not guarantee headshots, but also make you miss some shots. It had a risk associated with it, and if you wanted consistency you'd aim a little lower (More towards the body). Nowadays, after the great spread change, all you do is aim and you suddenly receive a guaranteed 2x damage buff. This means that in an experienced players hand, all TTK's are basically halved. This is insane. The difference in TTK is just absurd. It's basically turning this game into a, well, pub shooter. I actually vastly preferred when TTK's where high, because the game needed a lot more tactics. Being with your squad was important. Having proper coverage of strengths and weaknesses was important. Instead what we have now is that I can run to a point, and as long as my aim is the best, I can one-man army my way through any obstacle. I mean this is super cool and makes for great montages, but it's seriously undermining the original intent of the game. I guess I'm more against lower TTK's than headshot reduction, but if headshot reduction increases TTK's, I'm all for it.
And I hope we never see this again, what's the point of training your aim until you are pinpoint accurate but you cannot do anything with it because the game decides that you're not allowed to hit that many headshots? You are talking as if all players have a built in aimbot that always aims and hits people's heads if they want it, this is simply untrue and a unfair way to balance. Should I go off saying Melee TTK is fine just because I managed to forsee my enemies abilities or one shot him in the back? Experienced players will always beat new players, there is no reason to go about trying to reduce skillcap or "nerf" experienced players. That generally meant spamming JPA. Then it is the enemies fault for failing to use the tools they have at hand, a Bolter player can easily get zerged down by melee or instagibbed by a Tempest launcher.
And it was dumb and horrible , melee is already stupid enought i dont want to see the alst bit of skill in this game disapear Oh so if we look at your stats you must have 100% headshot accuracy right ? I bet yours is below 10% so no when you aim you dont ahve 2x garenteed damage buff (and orks only take 1.6 so ). Nobody here has an accuracy of 100% so nope veterans dont have ttk halved and even then a brain is still more usefull than aiming (grenade burst , cover , roll ect...) Oh yeah sure bring the melee !! with knife nerfs Now melee will be able to spam lmb to the win ! Devastators and tacticals will be useless and everyone will be spamming JPA ! What a wonderfull idea ! It's a shooter .... the one with the best aim is the one that should win ...
'inaccurate weapons' Nice meme but no. This game was never designed around inaccurate weapons. The weapons were accurate - some more so than they are now - at long range but they dealt less damage in practice because the hit registry on the old engine was awful, in practice the TTK never really changed on headshots as the damage values are the same, the only thing that changed was the consistency with which the server recognized headshots. I mean, here's some footage of Valrak playing tactical during those days, he's not the best player mind but you can see the accuracy of his weapons - it spreads a bit more when you roll or get suppressed but when firing? practically zero spread even without ADS. Jump to 2:50 in the below video to see a pronounced example of what I mean. Regardless of his inability to control his recoil or aim properly, watch his crosshair. Almost zero spread, in fact less than we actually have in-game now in ADS if you fire 30 rounds from a bolter without waiting for spread recovery. 'guaranteed 2x damage buff' So learn to aim for headshots, that's how skill works in a game. Those who put in the time and effort to practice and improve are and always should be rewarded with the ability to outperform their teammates and opponents by a significant margin. A game that does not reward skill is a game that does not retain players for long, not that it'd make a huge difference to EC - you'd just see all the skilled players drop out so about half of the population - down to a cool 60 - 140 players per day. Give me the MMO version of EC, and I'll agree with that first point. It's why I enjoyed Planetside 1 - an individual player could still tear shit up through clever play (explosives to ambush and then light up the wounded opponents with an MG) but strength in numbers greatly overpowered a skilled individual, a skilled group of players could beat a numerically superior force but only if that numerically superior force could not bring their numbers to bear, mostly through the smaller force using force multipliers like tanks, airstrikes & mines. In a game like EC however, I'd argue that we've never seen a system where high TTK resulted in better tactics being required simply because melee exists, melee by its nature completely nullifies that because if your TTK is too high, melee spam becomes objectively superior as not only do you prevent a ranged opponent from fighting by disrupting them, you also have to deal more damage than them per hit by a significant margin to justify being limited to short range, as a result you get what we had during the JPApocalypse, nothing but melee spam because enemies cannot die to ranged weapons (2.4s TTK iirc) and melee is so much easier and more effective. If your opponents on the capture point are really bad then sure you can rush into a point and mow them down because they will shoot everything but you due to piss poor accuracy but if you try and do that in a GvG or skilled-player environment? no chance. You'll mow down 1 guy and die simply because if 3 people shoot you at the same time you cannot bring your 'superior' skill to bear. The reason why Leroy causes as much havoc as he does in his montages is because he is either fighting clueless players that don't know how to use the mini-map or he uses positions that neutralize the numeric superiority of their opponents - funneling them into choke-points where grenade tricks and headshots can quickly mow them down faster than they can gun him down if they attempt to rush him, though they can still rush him head-on and win pretty reliably if they outnumber him by 3:1 or more.
