Author’s Note: This was part of my writeup on Deceive Inc. Partway through, I realized that a 7 paragraph diatribe about gun balance and the current meta might not be the most relevant for deciding if you want to buy Deceive Inc. That said, I still think this post does make an accurate observation about why Deceive Inc plays the way it does.
Deceive Inc sells itself as a stealth game, but after playing a few rounds, it becomes clear that isn’t entirely true. The dominant strategy used by very high level (300, the level cap) players is much more based around fast movement, while ignoring the stealth aspects of the game to a certain extent.
I think this happens because the guns fairly high time-to-kill. Across the characters I’ve played, and had my friends play, here’s a short list with some approximate damage values:
| Weapon | Body Shot | Headshot |
| Sniper Rifle | 35 | 75 (Charged) |
| Shotgun | 45 | 50 (ADS) |
| Pistol | 10-15 | 20 |
For reference, a player starts out at 100 health, and some in game upgrades can push them up to 115 health at max.
But the important part here is that there is no way to one-shot kill a full health player. Which I think I think makes sense when you game out a bunch of other factors:
Since Deceive Inc is a battle royale, there is no respawning. You have to play carefully offensively, and defensively. Players want to blend in, and they want to be paranoid of anyone who sticks out. In addition, it’s a fairly small player count battle royale, withonly up to 12-16 players in a match.
So if weapons could one-shot, be it a shotgun at close range, or a sniper headshot, the dominant strategy I think becomes something like “Engage anyone suspicious, and try to one tap them.” If the player is correct, and did spot a disguised human, they instantly win the combat, can disengage, and have permanently removed a threat from the game with very little risk to themself.
If they’re wrong, they’ve made themself a target for anyone else nearby to get one-tapped, and also wasted ammo. But because of the risk of being spotted, I still think the right choice is to blast first, ask questions later. And this encourages a super passive playstyle of taking the minimal number of risks at all points in time, to avoid being found and nuked down.
But weapons don’t one shot. So even if you spot someone else out first, and engage them first with a surprise shot, it’s still very possible for the player who is stronger with the gunplay mechanics to turn and kill you.
This is why I can only recommend Deceive Inc to people who like first person shooters. Playing well against other humans requires winning gunfights. And winning gunfights requires strong FPS skill mechanics. Even though most of the game is spent engaging with the stealth mechanics and trying to avoid trouble, without gunplay skills, you just can’t win.