TL;DR: The adrenaline grace period creates a situation where both players end up dead, even if one of them clearly got the upper hand in the fight. It undermines the idea that a lethal shot should give the shooter a decisive victory in a firefight.
This weird mechanic is the root cause of a lot of the awkward, clunky balance issues we see in these rounds.
So, if you’re not familiar, when you take a huge amount of damage all at once that would normally kill you, such as perhaps being magdumped by a rifle, or being shot at point-blank range by a shotgun, instead of dying immediately, you get this little grace period that lasts for about 1-2 seconds where you’re still technically alive before you just fall over dead. This is meant to represent the last moments where a human might cling to life for a few more seconds before they finally expire. The problem is that in HvH, this mechanic means that even if you win a 1v1 fight, you’re probably going to die too. Realistically, this means that both combatants almost always kill each other,
It just feels ridiculous. It’s like, oh, you took a full shotgun blast to the face? No problem, you’ve got a few seconds to keep fighting before you actually drop dead.
I think that this grace period is supposed to add tension and give you a chance to get to safety if you’re mortally wounded, but it doesn’t work like that in HvH at all. When two people go head-to-head, the only thing it does is ensure both players end up dead. It completely ruins any sense of skillful engagement. You could win a fight fair and square, but because of this mechanic, you still end up face-down on the ground right next to the guy you just shot. It doesn’t reward good aim, positioning, or tactics—just some weird limbo state where you get to drag the other person down with you.
Let’s talk about the impact on gameplay. You can’t even use close-range weapons or point-blank tactics properly because you know that, no matter how perfectly you execute it, the enemy is still going to have those few precious seconds to pump you full of bullets before they keel over. It’s just not satisfying at all. You can’t win a fight with skill or positioning if the game is always going to give the other guy a free second or two to kill you back before dying.
I get that there’s some logic behind this mechanic, it works in HvX, but it’s making HVH combat feel off. It’s not rewarding good plays, it’s not allowing for clutch moments where one person barely comes out on top, and it’s just making every firefight feel like a Loose-Loose situation where no one really wins.
Honestly, if it was toned down or even removed entirely for HvH, I think we’d see a lot more strategic gameplay. People would actually focus on outmaneuvering their opponents, taking advantage of cover and squad play instead of just charging in because they know they can drag their enemy down with them if they die. Right now, it’s just a chaotic mess where even if you play perfectly, you still have a 50/50 chance of ending up dead because of this mechanic.