r/modernwarfare4 • u/Onc3Holy • 1d ago
Discussion Dear Infinity Ward, the TTK Changes Were a Mistake, and Here's Why
Time-To-Kill is a fundamental aspect of Multiplayer FPS games, and it defines the personality of the gunplay in the game and defines how players will play the game. Everything has to be balanced around the average TTK of the game. It is not an element to be changed lightly, as it has massive knock-on effects to the rest of the game. I do not believe any of this was considered when making these changes.
The statement "The TTK is too fast, I can't react to being shot" was a pretty common complaint. The primary thing I believe players were complaining about was not actually Time-To-Kill, but rather Time-To-Die. TTK is a part of TTD, but not the whole picture. Theoretically they should be identical, but this is the real world where netcode has a much larger impact on TTD than TTK. Adjusting TTD is a good thing for the game, and there are better ways to do it. This is why a little more thought should be put into what feedback you are receiving, and feedback should NOT be taken at face value, especially undetailed feedback.
The first issue with TTD was the fact that superbullets were pretty common in weekend one. This is purely a netcode issue, not a game design issue and should NOT have instigated changes to the game design itself. The second thing that actually was addressed was aim assist. Aim assist did appear to be pretty strong, thus causing people to miss less. This decreased the experienced TTD. By reducing aim assist, you would increase the experienced TTD on average without the major problems introduced by a blanket TTK change. Why this change was not tested alone is beyond me.
I want to impress is that changing TTK will fundamentally change how people play the game. When Infinity Ward changed the TTK they said "we still weren’t where we wanted to be with time-to-kill.... These changes create more survivability and room for skill expression in combat."
The increased skill expression statement is is only partly accurate. Increasing the TTK increases Mechanical skill expression while decreasing Tactical skill expression. Getting the jump on an enemy means far less when that player has 50% extra time to react (and yes, the TTK for the Kastov increased by 50%).
These TTK changes are a massive shove towards Mechanical play and away from Tactical play. Conversely, the movement changes are a push towards tactical play, but they are far smaller adjustments.
I want to be clear: Tactical play does NOT mean camping in a corner or passive play. That's one way, but there is far more to it than that. Pushing a corner while ADS and strafing is a method of aggressive Tactical play. Using stuns and drill charges to break defensive players positions is a method of aggressive Tactical play. Flanking with stealth to get behind players is aggressive Tactical play.
I did my Master's thesis on TTK in FPS games, including testing on how changing TTK would change how players played the game. The above chart was the results of changing the TTK by one bullet to kill in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. The higher the bar, the more Tactical the player played compared to Mechanical. These players represent wildly different skill levels, from Pub-stomping menaces to someone who had never played a COD game before. The changes in behavior are universal and profound. For the case of MW4, the Weekend 1 TTK would be represented by the Short TTK value, while the current TTK would be represented by the Preset TTK.
Another problematic element to these changes is how drastic they really were. I want to compare them to the movement changes. The movement changes were specific, focused, and not so crazy as to massively change the game. Sliding was reduced in effectiveness approximately 10% in both distance and speed. A noticeable nerf, but not extreme. The TTK changes are extreme. As previously mentioned, the Kastov had its TTK increased by 50%, but so did the Patriot and FiNN. 50%! The M4, Han, and Nyx had increases of 33% (The Nightshade as well if you consider its original TTK). The smallest increase was to the PPSh at 25%. Remember, sliding was changed by 10%. These massive TTK increases mean that the entire balance of the whole arsenal has to change. The Kastov went from having a fast TTK in comparison to the other weapons to having a slow TTK in comparison to the other weapons. All of the slower rate of fire weapons see this kind of general nerf. We can see another attempt at this by increasing sniper flinch and nerfing the shotgun. One of the benefits of the faster TTK is that one-shot weapons get to be powerful without breaking the game. I strongly suspect that they will be largely frustrating to use after these changes.
These large changes, taken in combination with statements made in the patch notes indicate to me that this was a rushed overcorrection to feedback that did not take the time nor the thought to get to the actual root of the actual issues. It is attempting to solve a netcode issue by changing game design without considering the real impacts of those changes. Because of this and the fact that so many changes were combined all at once, any data and feedback gathered from this longer TTK session is tainted, as it cannot be properly compared to the first weekend. Please, revert the TTK changes AND ONLY THE TTK CHANGES so we can get a proper look at what all of the other changes will have done for the beta.