Mark Jacobs has the right ideas about combat, and Anet has the tools to do something about it.

[Swagger.1459]

https://camelot.gamepedia.com/Combat

“Renée Machyousky (answering the question about TTK - time to kill): "This is a rather loaded question and a lot factors into this. For instance, clearly some characters will be far more vulnerable (lower HP and resists) than others. I can at least say this, we are not over fond of insta-gibbing. We want battles to be hard fought, with plenty of give and take."

https://mailchi.mp/citystateentertainment/unveiled-camelot-unchained-newsletter-35?e=015d899047

“Usually, this question is asked with regard to the pacing of combat. To provide a comprehensive explanation of combat speed, we need to talk about health, movement, and ability use.

Health, relative to damage, determines how long fights will tend to last. A game that has low health compared to damage output will tend to have fights end very quickly. A game with high health compared to damage output will have fights that take longer, as characters are able to sustain more damage before being killed. There are of course additional factors to consider, such as armor, healing, buffs and debuffs, and the difficulty of successfully landing attacks against a target in the first place. With careful design, however, it is possible to maintain an expected range of variance for the time it will take one character to kill another. The shorthand term you will often see for this time is TTK, or Time To Kill. When designing a combat system, TTK is an important value to keep in mind, as it greatly influences the way players will feel about the speed of combat in the game.

Since TTK is a range of expected times, what tends to be most important for taking TTK into consideration is the minimum, or the fastest one character can kill another. Regardless of the amount of variance, the fastest time in which a character can be killed tends to be a breaking point. It sets the lowest amount of time players will have to respond before they are killed. In some games, this time can be instantaneous, which is where the term “one-shot kill” comes from.

For Camelot Unchained, we have decided to try and minimize the potential for one-shot kills. To accomplish this, our target minimum TTK needs to be set to some number of seconds above zero. During early testing, we have set this minimum value to around 10-15 seconds, which will continue to be adjusted as testing continues. This means that a high-damage-output character with well-crafted gear shouldn’t be able to kill a freshly-created character with starter gear anywhere near instantly. This number might seem high at first, just for that purpose, but for the sake of large battles we want to provide a little extra buffer for when multiple characters are attacking the same target.

Months or even years after the game launches, we want new players to be able to go out onto the battlefield full of highly progressed characters and contribute to the war without being instantly killed. Every rule has its exceptions, so there will no doubt still be cases where characters immediately die, such as getting focused on by many enemies at once, or being crushed under the rubble of a collapsing building. The vast majority of the time, though, there should be an allowance of at least a few seconds when your character is attacked to respond with an ability or two before being killed.”

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Upcoming-Changes-to-Skills

“A message from the PvP Team:

Hey all,

We have a number of skill splits (and some global changes) that will be accompanying the launch of Season 5 next week. Read on to see what’s in store for December 13.

Over the past few releases the PvP team has been working closely with the Skills team to implement some PvP-only skill splits. Moving forward the PvP team will have more opportunity to make these skill splits as we see fit. It’s important to understand that skill splits should not change the core functionality of a skill. Players should be able to use a skill in PvE and have it do relatively the same thing in PvP, though it may be more or less effective depending on the game mode. This means that when we are looking to split out a skill, the changes are limited to the following areas:

• Recharge• Damage multipliers• Healing multipliers• Number of conditions/boons applied• Duration of conditions/boons applied• Skill cost (energy and initiative)

A lot can be done with these knobs, but there still will be cases where we identify a problem skill or trait that we feel cannot be addressed without a functional change. In these cases, we are continuing to work closely with the Skills team to find a solution that makes the most sense as a global change.”

Low TTK issues in GW2, and all of the above info, gave me the inspiration for these suggestions... And it’s finally time to come up with real solutions to problems facing pvp modes.

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/28024/increasing-ttk-undoing-old-split-changes-and-eliminating-skill-splitting

[Psycoprophet.8107]

So am I to assume the lower hp/low resilience classes will have a shorter ttk ratio or just be classes zero people end up choosing? Lol just curious how their balancing classes as au unchained may be the one prospect to draw me away from eso.

[Strider Pj.2193]

MJ May have the right idea, but given the release pace of the game, I know he doesn’t have the ability to execute.

I DO wish the tenets expressed though would be adapted to this game.

If it did though, let’s be honest: there would be a mass exodus from PvE.

[Knighthonor.4061]

@Psycoprophet.8107 said:So am I to assume the lower hp/low resilience classes will have a shorter ttk ratio or just be classes zero people end up choosing? Lol just curious how their balancing classes as au unchained may be the one prospect to draw me away from eso.

Think that game has a Trinity so damage isn't the only important role like it is in GW2.

[Iozeph.5617]

@Swagger.1459 said:Mark Jacobs has the right ideas about combat, and Anet has the tools to do something about it.

There's no taking away from him that he had some groundbreaking concepts twenty years ago- both in his MUDs and in DAoC. I'd still love to see what modern engines and graphics could do to bring the world of dragon's gate to life. That said, he was every bit as inattentive and money-hungry as the clown show here. So bad that he allowed his groundbreaking feature- RvR to be riddled with cheaters/radar hackers and, as a result of being acquired by one of the bar-none, most soulless corporations in gaming, he triggered a diaspora of talent from his company that only benefited most of guild wars two's major competitors today. Most markedly among them ESO.

So it would take one hell of a huge leap of faith -probably as a chaser to a major head injury- for me to trust him after what he did with allowing second account, afk buffbotting, and his abortive attempts to turn his game into another EQ when it was originally sold as not being EQ. Sort of similar to how a lot of people here were duped several years ago by the 'great mmo migration.'

Not saying he's a complete villain but I won't go rushing out to buy his new game either.

[roamzero.9486]

Does Camelot Unchained have a downstate like GW2 has? Does this TTK factor in 1vX? Because to me there seems to be a lot to account for before you can begin to say the ideas for CU can be applied to GW2?

[Ensign.2189]

CU can have a high TTK as is being built for mass world PvP and not high action small scale combat. GW2 necessarily has high lethality due to the nature of its action combat and the ease at which skilled players can avoid or mitigate damage.

This is exacerbated by the addition of healers to the game. The more sustain, especially targeted sustain in the game, the more burst it needs if people are going to die at all.

Even worse, GW2's featured PvP mode strongly rewards not dying. Whenever lethality has dipped too low in GW2 it has decayed quickly into static fights on point where the first one to cap or score a kill wins.

The game needs to be very lethal. Go watch a high skill PvP match and count just how many kills there are. This game is not very lethal when played well. So if you want a higher TTK on top of that, you are looking at truly massive changes to the game.

[Bladestrom.6425]

Not sure I agree with this, great pvp players allways last longer due to counterplay skills. I am certainly no expert and don't play a meta build, but allways get between 10 and 20+ kills, that doesn't suggest there is a problem with sustain. Too much lethality, especially 1 shot burst potential destroys pvp unless its a paced shooter with fast respawn.

Balance for me = good sustained dmg with some higher non lethal spike potential and optional sustain that when targeted in a build can track just under this level, so tanking can only be sustained for short periods.

[LetoII.3782]

Anet used to say stuff before gw2 launched, too.

[Knighthonor.4061]

Also another thing is Time To Kill will be meaningless since like in GW2, most fights will be Zergs not 1v1. You will get rolled in a zerg fight regardless.

[Knighthonor.4061]

@LetoII.3782 said:Anet used to say stuff before gw2 launched, too.

Dreaded Manifesto

[Psycoprophet.8107]

Oh noooooo don't bring up another mmo In a gw2 forum, unless of course ur saying how bad it is compared to gw2 lol.Even if its clearly superior lol.

[Cobrakon.3108]

Higher TTK only works with low healing. Otherwise you can outplay someone and still stalemate the other person with bunker builds. Higher TTK has been a problem for a long time ever since the golden triangle was implemented for raids, and of course all those healing skills transfered over to pvp modes. Unfortunately in GW2 atm for the pvp scene you are more fighting the class and build rather than the person using said class and build. There are simply to many spam abilities. It needs to be brought back in line so that it mimics more a side scrolling fighter game like street fighter. If we are going to have sustain in the game it needs to be more skill based (dodge for instance ).

If you want to see how many trash abillities in the game there are... walk around in the arena in the mists when there are 5 or 6 people hacking each-other up... notice how your health goes down when no one is even trying to engage you.

[DeceiverX.8361]

@LetoII.3782 said:Anet used to say stuff before gw2 launched, too.

Bingo. The manifesto was empty promises, and I sincerely doubt we'll see much of a difference from other studios.Given CU's horrendous pacing, I'm not holding my breath for anything.

[Kylden Ar.3724]

Why are we comparing to meme-vaporware?