Measure
Time-to-kill
You might say: TTK
Time-to-kill estimates elapsed time from the first valid attack to target defeat; a baseline is hits-to-kill times attack interval, but misses, cooldowns, travel, recovery and encounter context can change it.
- What it does
- Connects combat maths to pacing, pressure and the time a player has to respond.
- Ask
- How long does this exchange occupy, and what can each side do during it?
- Typical
- seconds from first valid hit to target defeat
Sources
- Daniel Cook, Building Tight Game Systems of Cause and Effect, Pacing: short versus long lapses between cause and effect
Short time lapses between cause and effect.
Unverified: No opened source in this run defines a universal TTK convention; this is a practical derived measure using the cited mitigation formulas.
Use it on your project
teardown-apply: hold "Time-to-kill" (time-to-kill) from the teardown at https://teardownatlas.com/game-design/ against my project
Paste it into a coding agent that has the teardown skills.
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