CoD Warzone keeps promises and increases the time-to-kill – but in the worst possible way

On By Garmin Philip

Call of Duty: Warzone talked about upcoming balance changes. There has been an increase in the time-to-kill in the room for a long time. It is now known what the developers are planning as the first major change and MeinMMO author Maik Schneider thinks this is the wrong way to go.

  • In June 2021, the developers of Call of Duty: Warzone promised a general increase in time-to-kill
  • Then came a major balance update that reduced the time-to-kill of the best weapons. After that it became quiet about the topic
  • Now there was a new statement on the time-to-kill. There should be further increases and in the first step the general ADS pace will be reduced.
What is time-to-kill (TTK)? The value is often used in shooters and shows the time in which you can kill an opponent.

In Warzone, the time-to-kill is often given for hits on the chest and shows the time in which you can deal 250 damage.

To calculate you need the damage of a weapon and the rate of fire. Since players often only start firing when they are in their sights, the “time in sight” can also be added to the time-to-kill.

Increasing the time-to-kill would be good for Warzone

As a Warzone player from the very beginning, I’ve seen all the crazy surgical weapons and what an extremely low time-to-kill can do with the Battle Royale.

And in general I would say: Warzone was a lot less fun when there were surgical weapons with an extremely low time-to-kill.

In the phases when Warzone had a higher time-to-kill, battles played differently. You could experience this in the “Iron Trials” mode, in which the basic health was significantly higher than in the standard mode.

But also shortly after the start of the caldera map in the Vanguard modes – the Vanguard weapons have not yet been specially converted to the Warzone values.

CoD Warzone brings Iron Trial ’84 with hard rules – This is how you survive

In such phases and game modes, the battles were more fun. My game skills made a bigger difference. Battles sometimes end with a team fleeing because the fighting wasn’t over after a few seconds.

Instead of losing 2 team members in the first hail of bullets, they all make it behind cover. You can regroup, use a tactic, start flanking and cover fire. A whole new way to play Warzone.

Currently it is often the case that you can hardly get to the next cover before the balanced laser setup of the fully automatic meta weapon nips the change of cover in the bud.

That’s why I would like to see a general increase in the time-to-kill in Warzone. It would give the battles more dimension – more space to shine with insane movement techniques and to play off opponents with tactical considerations.

But not every TTK increase is helpful

The way in which the general increase in time-to-kill in Warzone should now be achieved, however, pisses me off. The developers write on Twitter:

[…] we become the base pace [der Waffen] decrease to target all tracks [CoD MW, Cold War, Vanguard]. This increases the time-to-kill somewhat, as aiming times should be taken into account when calculating the actual TTK values.

In addition, it will give us space to highlight the differences between the weapon classes.

Raven Software via Twitter

The time-to-kill should be increased by reducing the aiming speed. We will then take longer to target and that will actually increase the time-to-kill a little.

But that often doesn’t feel like it and it affects the feel of the game in other ways as well.

If you get caught by an enemy you haven’t seen before, you won’t feel the increase in time-to-kill. You only notice when you are fired at that someone is targeting you and … exactly: He’s already being targeted.

At this point the TTK increase fails. The reaction window in such “battles” remains small and there are still situations in which one is “deleted”. So you have no chance to react to your opponent before the gulag calls.

In addition, reducing the tempo when aiming affects the feel of the game in an area that has always been a lot of fun in Warzone: the movement.

CoD weapons are already sensitive to small changes in the aiming speed (ZV speed). Milliseconds determine whether a gun feels tangy, okay or like ketchup. Decreasing the aiming speed also means that Warzone will become less lively.

Conclusion: TTK increase – yes, please. But right!

It is currently unclear whether there will be further measures to increase the time-to-kill. But the approach shown now does not satisfy me:

  1. The noticeable TTK doesn’t really go up because the damage remains the same
  2. Movement is lost due to the longer aiming times

Because on the one hand the change misses the target a bit and on the other hand a system that feels good may be negatively influenced by the adjustments.

I am in favor of increasing the time-to-kill in Warzone. It doesn’t have to go up to 1 second. But from the current values ​​around 500 – 700 milliseconds (without aiming time) it could go up to 650 – 850 milliseconds.

However, this increase would have to come over the damage values. And with more than 100 weapons now, that should be quite a mountain of work.

We are happy to read your opinion on the topic in the comments. Do you feel like me or do you have a completely different opinion?



Reference-mein-mmo.de