Balancing shotguns : is it possible ?

(Eox) #1

It’s a question I kept having myself lately : is it possible to allow shotguns to be as playable as any other weapons in competitive, without making them broken in pubs ?

If you know how looked like the pre-nerf Phantom, you’re not a stranger to the issue. While Phantom was considered as “playable” in competitive, he was an absolute pub stomper. This had for effect to make the public games extremely unpleasent to play, until the nerf came. If you think about it, it’s the same with any shotgun merc to a lesser extent : it’s awesome for destroying new players, but totally trash if you try to fight decent ones. Why shotguns then to be hated in pubs ? It’s simple : they are extremely damageful, to the point that some can one shot low hp mercs in a single blow.

Yet that power falls off VERY QUICKLY over the distance. Their DPS fall quickly the farther you are from your target. There’s even a point where shooting the head is far less rewarding that shooting the body, because you would miss so much pellets in that area that shooting the body is actually far less rewarding. You can only get the full powers of headshots at point blank, while any other weapon should allow you to spit all of its bullets in someone’s face at a much greater distance.

Why should we do then ? More damage ? It would make new players even more angry. Do we care about them ? Yes actually, because they make the game live. More spread then ? Not yet the good answer, new players would al got angry at being one-shotted from across the map by something that is not supposed to be a sniper. Is actually making shotguns viable in comp possible ? After thing about it a bit, I think it may be possible, but at one cost : they should NOT one shot low hp mercs anymore.

Here’s how I would do it :

  • Spread way tighter. Some balance have to be reached. The should still be less ranged than SMGs, but without being hopeless at great distance. You have to be able to hit those full headshots at ranges that are a bit longer than low
  • Burst damage nerfed. No more one shots if you don’t headshot. This is needed so newbies won’t complain that much.
  • In order to make sure that shotguns will keep a decent enough damage output, their DPS has also to be adjusted. This would be done by tweaking their RPM value.
  • If needed, tweak the ammo and reload time.

The objective here : shotguns become low to mid range weapons, with around 25% less the effective range than SMGs. They hurt a lot in a single blow, but all of your shots should matter if you want. Actually you should consider them a bit like snipers that have a low range but are firing faster… It does not make sense maybe, but I understand myself.

It would be better to get some testing first before thinking about changing anything though : being able to see at what distance we are still able to put max damage headshots, to see at what distance we can’t hit all the pellets anymore… That kind of thing. Do anyone have some data about this yet ?

EDIT : just though about this : shotgun’s damage is scattered around every pellets : how about reducing the number of pellets, and increase the single pellet power ? This could work, or at least be something to work around.

(watsyurdeal) #2

One thing I think that needs to be looked into…damage ramp up and fall off…is that even a thing in this game???

(Eox) #3

Not sure and pretty doubtful for ramp up, but falloff is a thing as far as I know. The values you can find on the DB spreadsheet are more or less a proof that there’s falloff in DB (showing minimal bullet damage). There was also that update that buffed Ahnuhld and Hollunds effective range (giving them less falloff from what I understood).

On the dirtybomb wiki from gamepedia, on the weaponstats page, there’s values for a weapon “max range”. I suppose this is the range where the weapon will be at the lowest damage per bullet. Anyway, the best way to be sure that falloff is a thing, is to grab a friend and test in game… I did the test a long time ago : if I remember well I noticed falloff. I did the test with a Simeon. Feel free to do the test again so we’ll be fixed.

(Samniss_Arandeen) #4

The individual pellets’ damage should each be multiplied by the number of pellets that hit. Then the head pellets can double on top of that for headshots.

This means you would get exponentially stronger in close but quickly lose power as SMGs start to become more viable options.

(Eox) #5

[quote=“Samniss_Arandeen;82972”]The individual pellets’ damage should each be multiplied by the number of pellets that hit. Then the head pellets can double on top of that for headshots.

This means you would get exponentially stronger in close but quickly lose power as SMGs start to become more viable options.[/quote]

Not sure if I understand. Wouldn’t this make shotguns absurdly powerful a close range, creating more people upset againt those weapons, without fixing the main issue ? :confused:

(Samniss_Arandeen) #6

[quote=“Eox;83648”][quote=“Samniss_Arandeen;82972”]The individual pellets’ damage should each be multiplied by the number of pellets that hit. Then the head pellets can double on top of that for headshots.

This means you would get exponentially stronger in close but quickly lose power as SMGs start to become more viable options.[/quote]

Not sure if I understand. Wouldn’t this make shotguns absurdly powerful a close range, creating more people upset againt those weapons, without fixing the main issue ? :/[/quote]
It would make them slightly more powerful at close range and severely nerf their performance as they connect less pellets, turning them into weapons that reward getting close enough to achieve their full damage potential.

(Szakalot) #7

we had this discussion a few times. Imo two things can be touched that raise skill ceiling, and allow you to balance teh weapon for pubs and comp:

  • recoil
  • headshot multipliers - going for head should be more rewarding, as at this point its almost alway better to go for juicy bodyshots, which promotes their relative OPness against weak players.

there was also an idea to distinguish between the inner and outer pellets of the spread, with inner pellets having a higher HS multiplier, to promote good aim.