Time to Kill is one of the most interesting aspects of how the pace of a shooting game is understood. You look at blazing fast games and you think of how quickly you can melt opponents in contrast to slow games that force careful positioning and smart gunfights. How long it takes to kill a single opponent affects how players have to approach 1v2 situations and so on. It affects every interaction because player interactions always involve a gun or two. TTK undoubtedly helps define the pace of a game, but it isn’t the end all be all.
Call of Duty Vanguard is a game that has an extremely fast TTK with almost every weapon. At the fastest end of this spectrum is the AS44 assault rifle and Welgun smg with base TTKs of 195 – 260 ms and 182 – 273 ms respectively. To put that into context, that is just over a quarter of a second to kill an opponent at the longest ranges assuming you land every bullet. Given that the average reaction time is 273ms according to Human Benchmark this doesn’t give players a whole lot of time to react to getting shot. In fact, most humans wont even be able to process getting shot before they die. And despite this Vanguard doesn’t feel like a fast paced game. Sure, its quick when the guns start firing but other mechanics in the game goes against the pace that the TTK tries to make.
That discrepancy is interesting, because despite this inhuman TTK that Vanguard has, it feels slower than other shooters while Titanfall feels incredibly fast, despite being functionally slower. While outdated, this graph gives us a good indication of Titanfall’s general Time to Kill speed. While some of the better weapons have optimal kill speeds similar to or faster than that of the AS44 and Welgun, gunfights feel completely different. Even though the CAR has a faster headshot TTK at 140ms (40ms faster than the Welgun) dying to it isn’t as frustrating as dying in Vanguard. This is for a number of reasons.
Mechanically speaking, Titanfall is a harder game than Vanguard. Pilots fly across the map at crazy speeds, a skill unto itself, and this makes it hard to shoot them. The aim needed to shoot a pilot in Titanfall is inherently harder than the aim needed to shoot a grounded “realistic” soldier from Vanguard. Namely because one of them has a jetpack and the other does not. (But I digress) By increasing the mechanical skill needed to kill an opponent, the fast TTK isn’t out of place, but a natural decision to remain in line with the rest of the game.
As a result the pace of a gunfight in Titanfall isn’t defined by the TTK so much as the map design and movement system. Being able to take cover, reposition, and dodge makes players feel like they have much more time to react to opponents shooting them despite the fact that it should theoretically melt them in milliseconds. It’s hard to land your shots on someone going Mach 5, but doing the same could be said of the person trying to shoot back, and that makes the players feel more in control of the pace of the game. Everything is fast in the game and that makes it hard. Its the great equalizer that forces other aspects of gameplay to become relevant beyond aim. And if you do get outgunned by someone who hits optimal TTK with a CAR, there isn’t much to do but tip your hat.
In line with that train of thought, TTK isn’t the reason Vanguard feels weird. The real reason is that this fast TTK isn’t in line with the rest of the game mechanics. Because of the “realistic” nature of the game, movement is mostly grounded. Running, jumping, and short slides are the extent of Vanguard’s movement options. Running is noticeably faster than walking, but not to the point where it’s particularly hard to stay on target, so there’s no outrunning the bullets. Plus you can’t shoot while running, so there isn’t much benefit to running away from a fight unless quite literally right next to cover. Jumping and crouching is neat since that gives you options to engage in fights at different elevations but doesn’t do much mid gunfight consistently. Additionally Bunny Hopping isn’t really a thing beyond a jump or two, preventing any advanced movement tech outside of the initial peek. Sliding can give a quick boost of speed but doesn’t have the maneuverability to the point of allowing any matrix style bullet dodging. Its useful as a GTFO move to get behind cover or maybe a slight juke, but that’s about it.
The maps are designed well enough, but being caught out of cover is a death sentence simply because you die so quickly without viable responses. Simply put, Vanguard’s other aspects of game design aren’t in line with a fast TTK, so gunfights are decided by who shoots first rather than a player’s ability to reset the situation or counter attack effectively.
This is something so notable about the game that I couldn’t stop noticing this fact while watching CDL Champs. Even the best of the best can rarely do anything about getting shot first because there literally isn’t any time to react. Even if you can react there isn’t anything to be done. You can’t dodge effectively nor can you shoot back faster, your survivial relies on the opponent making a mistake in a game thats easy to aim in with low recoil guns. Now the same could be said about Titanfall but the difference is that Titanfall gives players tools to try and force errors out of the person shooting first. Faster movement speed, advanced movement techniques to throw off aim, tactical abilities to reset the situation like Phase Shift or Stim. But for Vanguard this isn’t an option because the game has to be grounded in reality. The game can’t offer these crazy mechanics to counteract the fast TTK because they aren’t realistic…Only thing is, the games aren’t exactly realistic in the first place.
A good example of this is actually a balance decision from an older CoD title: Modern Warfare 2019. In this game there is a secondary pistol called the 357 Magnum, and one of its modifications was called Snake Shot. This effectively turned the gun into a shotgun with the fire rate of a big iron. One that could be dual wielded thanks to the Akimbo perk. Which is all fine and dandy gameplay wise, except the real world function of Snake Shot makes the damage in MW impossible. Its best summed up by this clip from Russian Badger:
So if CoD supposedly can’t balance the TTK or change mechanics to make them in line with the guns because its meant to be a realistic FPS, I’d say that ship has already sailed.
Anyways, this is just a little rant that I thought about while watching CDL Champs during my vacation. Because of the fines Activision Blizzard imposes for badmouthing the game, players can’t say much on the state of the game for fear of repercussions, but highlighting exactly why part of the game sucks is important. Mainly because MW 2019 coulda been great without the 725’s initial damage, the snake shot, and dragons breath slugs- Actually, the game just had issues when it came to shotguns now that I think about it…