Shotguns, Shuffle and Servers

[Amerika]

[quote=“Watsyurdeal;188607”]Honestly the only thing that annoys me about Shotguns, is how much I suck with them, yet seem to get killed by them in most random ways.

And unlike Amerika, I don’t personally believe Shotguns should be secondaries, because then they become the obvious choice imo.

I do however believe the shotgun’s problems could be solved if we did some tweaking, for one, get rid of damage fall off on them, it’s pretty irrelevant when you consider the fact the pellets spread out so much. Then next, reduce the damage of the pellets, so a full meatshot can kill someone of specific health, but beyond that you need at least 2 consistent sprays of buckshot.

That’s just my opinion however, I’ve seen shotguns be great weapons in other games, but I think given how slow they fire, and how fast everything else can you compared to them, I think it’s clear they are severely underpowered. [/quote]

How do they become the “obvious choice”? I said they would be balanced against machine pistols which means they would become weaker than they currently are. Useful as a secondary but not as powerful as they are now. This would not make them an obvious choice since there are a lot of situations where a machine pistol or even a regular pistol would be a better.

[KUST_LunarTM]

The only time I ever find issues with shotguns is when I try to go melee only and I run into half a team of remburgs. That’s frustrating.

[Orivar]

@Guziol

Every time I find a jumping shotgun aura he\she will hit me 60% of the time because I am moving.
I played sparks today and I can tell you that if you jump with the reviver and shot, you will have 100% accuracy. Or I had luck.

[Guziol]

[quote=“IIIORIVARIII;188630”]@Guziol

Every time I find a jumping shotgun aura he\she will hit me 60% of the time because I am moving.
I played sparks today and I can tell you that if you jump with the reviver and shot, you will have 100% accuracy. Or I had luck.[/quote]

You were lucky even the reviver has way less accuracy when jumping, i tried jumping revivr and it was pretty innacurate. Ironsighting while jumping negates that to some extend but not fully.

[watsyurdeal]

[quote=“Amerika;188613”][quote=“Watsyurdeal;188607”]Honestly the only thing that annoys me about Shotguns, is how much I suck with them, yet seem to get killed by them in most random ways.

And unlike Amerika, I don’t personally believe Shotguns should be secondaries, because then they become the obvious choice imo.

I do however believe the shotgun’s problems could be solved if we did some tweaking, for one, get rid of damage fall off on them, it’s pretty irrelevant when you consider the fact the pellets spread out so much. Then next, reduce the damage of the pellets, so a full meatshot can kill someone of specific health, but beyond that you need at least 2 consistent sprays of buckshot.

That’s just my opinion however, I’ve seen shotguns be great weapons in other games, but I think given how slow they fire, and how fast everything else can you compared to them, I think it’s clear they are severely underpowered. [/quote]

How do they become the “obvious choice”? I said they would be balanced against machine pistols which means they would become weaker than they currently are. Useful as a secondary but not as powerful as they are now. This would not make them an obvious choice since there are a lot of situations where a machine pistol or even a regular pistol would be a better.[/quote]

The only way they’d be safely balanced is if they were 2 shot double barrel shotguns.

Otherwise the damage from the buckshot, coupled with a large clip size, it’d be the obvious choice for a backup to finish people off. The number of situations where the pistol or machine pistol would be better would be few and far between since for medium range, it’s often easier to just back off a bit, reload with a cancel, then go back into it, or start blasting when someone comes around the corner.

[Amerika]

[quote=“Watsyurdeal;188642”][quote=“Amerika;188613”][quote=“Watsyurdeal;188607”]Honestly the only thing that annoys me about Shotguns, is how much I suck with them, yet seem to get killed by them in most random ways.

And unlike Amerika, I don’t personally believe Shotguns should be secondaries, because then they become the obvious choice imo.

I do however believe the shotgun’s problems could be solved if we did some tweaking, for one, get rid of damage fall off on them, it’s pretty irrelevant when you consider the fact the pellets spread out so much. Then next, reduce the damage of the pellets, so a full meatshot can kill someone of specific health, but beyond that you need at least 2 consistent sprays of buckshot.

That’s just my opinion however, I’ve seen shotguns be great weapons in other games, but I think given how slow they fire, and how fast everything else can you compared to them, I think it’s clear they are severely underpowered. [/quote]

How do they become the “obvious choice”? I said they would be balanced against machine pistols which means they would become weaker than they currently are. Useful as a secondary but not as powerful as they are now. This would not make them an obvious choice since there are a lot of situations where a machine pistol or even a regular pistol would be a better.[/quote]

The only way they’d be safely balanced is if they were 2 shot double barrel shotguns.

Otherwise the damage from the buckshot, coupled with a large clip size, it’d be the obvious choice for a backup to finish people off. The number of situations where the pistol or machine pistol would be better would be few and far between since for medium range, it’s often easier to just back off a bit, reload with a cancel, then go back into it, or start blasting when someone comes around the corner. [/quote]

Assuming nothing changed in balance/power. But I am pretty sure I explained that they would be balanced in accordance with other secondary weapons a couple of times now.

Trying to balance a shotgun as a primary weapon has too many issues in a game like DB. It’s just flat dumb to do it because it creates scenarios like we currently see. The devs are in a corner. They can’t nerf them so they are less annoying due to them being a primary weapon as they have to try and compete with other primaries. Making them better or giving them more range would make the game even more annoying to a huge amount of players. But they also can’t buff them to allow them to be a real choice at the higher levels because it would make the game unbearable.

The two solutions I can think of is either make them all like the Ahnuld and be mostly slug shooters, which would make all three guns too similar (already an issue in the game). Or make them secondaries and reduce power/range to make them more balanced with other secondary weapons. The second solution fixes a ton of issues for the devs and players overall. You can make the guns way less annoying while also fixing the nearly 2/3 of the cards for a few mercs in competitive situations.

[watsyurdeal]

[quote=“Amerika;188650”][quote=“Watsyurdeal;188642”][quote=“Amerika;188613”][quote=“Watsyurdeal;188607”]Honestly the only thing that annoys me about Shotguns, is how much I suck with them, yet seem to get killed by them in most random ways.

And unlike Amerika, I don’t personally believe Shotguns should be secondaries, because then they become the obvious choice imo.

I do however believe the shotgun’s problems could be solved if we did some tweaking, for one, get rid of damage fall off on them, it’s pretty irrelevant when you consider the fact the pellets spread out so much. Then next, reduce the damage of the pellets, so a full meatshot can kill someone of specific health, but beyond that you need at least 2 consistent sprays of buckshot.

That’s just my opinion however, I’ve seen shotguns be great weapons in other games, but I think given how slow they fire, and how fast everything else can you compared to them, I think it’s clear they are severely underpowered. [/quote]

How do they become the “obvious choice”? I said they would be balanced against machine pistols which means they would become weaker than they currently are. Useful as a secondary but not as powerful as they are now. This would not make them an obvious choice since there are a lot of situations where a machine pistol or even a regular pistol would be a better.[/quote]

The only way they’d be safely balanced is if they were 2 shot double barrel shotguns.

Otherwise the damage from the buckshot, coupled with a large clip size, it’d be the obvious choice for a backup to finish people off. The number of situations where the pistol or machine pistol would be better would be few and far between since for medium range, it’s often easier to just back off a bit, reload with a cancel, then go back into it, or start blasting when someone comes around the corner. [/quote]

Assuming nothing changed in balance/power. But I am pretty sure I explained that they would be balanced in accordance with other secondary weapons a couple of times now.

Trying to balance a shotgun as a primary weapon has too many issues in a game like DB. It’s just flat dumb to do it because it creates scenarios like we currently see. The devs are in a corner. They can’t nerf them so they are less annoying due to them being a primary weapon as they have to try and compete with other primaries. Making them better or giving them more range would make the game even more annoying to a huge amount of players. But they also can’t buff them to allow them to be a real choice at the higher levels because it would make the game unbearable.

The two solutions I can think of is either make them all like the Ahnuld and be mostly slug shooters, which would make all three guns too similar (already an issue in the game). Or make them secondaries and reduce power/range to make them more balanced with other secondary weapons. The second solution fixes a ton of issues for the devs and players overall. You can make the guns way less annoying while also fixing the nearly 2/3 of the cards for a few mercs in competitive situations.[/quote]

Part of the problem with them is because of the TTK and range vs the other guns.

For example, SMGs and Rifles, in the time it takes for me to fire two blasts with the Ahnuld, a player of equal or better aim, will have killed me. So my first blast better kill him, or I am basically dead. Couple that with the limited range, and you end up with a gun that’s severely outclassed.

Now if the weapons TTK on average was a little slower, with the shotguns being somewhat unchanged, they could actually have a viable role. But as it is, they simply don’t, it’s statistically impossible for them to match up to the raw versatility of the M4, Crotzni, BR-16, or Grandeur even.

But making them a secondary wouldn’t work either, unless, as I said, they are essentially a weaker Super Shotgun from Doom. Black light Retribution and Call of Duty both were games where shotguns were secondaries, and I pretty much NEVER used anything else for a secondary.

[Amerika]

[quote=“Watsyurdeal;188662”]

Part of the problem with them is because of the TTK and range vs the other guns.

For example, SMGs and Rifles, in the time it takes for me to fire two blasts with the Ahnuld, a player of equal or better aim, will have killed me. So my first blast better kill him, or I am basically dead. Couple that with the limited range, and you end up with a gun that’s severely outclassed.

Now if the weapons TTK on average was a little slower, with the shotguns being somewhat unchanged, they could actually have a viable role. But as it is, they simply don’t, it’s statistically impossible for them to match up to the raw versatility of the M4, Crotzni, BR-16, or Grandeur even.

But making them a secondary wouldn’t work either, unless, as I said, they are essentially a weaker Super Shotgun from Doom. Black light Retribution and Call of Duty both were games where shotguns were secondaries, and I pretty much NEVER used anything else for a secondary.[/quote]

Your wording has me confused. You either just said that you want to make shotguns weaker in order to make them better (wuh??) or that you want all weapons to kill slower but leave shotguns how they are now…which doesn’t solve much and drastically changes the whole game just to make shotguns viable without actually fixing their main issue…range.

And, again, this is Dirty Bomb. It is not CoD with CoD’s time to kill. The shotguns range could be decreased and the power brought down significantly but still be useful as a secondary weapon. They would not work like they currently do. Just because you always pick a shotgun in CoD and use it constantly doesn’t mean it will work like that when balanced right in DB with DB’s TTK. Also, there is a loadout system. So it’s not like you can simply pick the shotgun at will.

Balancing a short range weapon as a primary in a low TTK game like DB just doesn’t work with the ranges we typically find ourselves in. A shotgun primary will always be overpowered or underpowered when balanced against other primary weapons. And the devs can’t do anything to fix these issues because of the style of game that is DB. Shotguns work as a primary in other games because of how they are designed. The flow, ranges and time to kill all work with a shotgun in some games as a primary. It just doesn’t fit in Dirty Bomb and games like it.

How do you suggest you fix the issue that is the shotgun without drastically changing every weapon in the game? ECHO data shows it’s one of the weakest weapons in the game…but SD can’t buff it because it’s already incredibly annoying to the point that people think it’s OP. You can’t nerf it though because many of the mercs mostly or only have shotgun options in their loadouts and it would severely gimp them. So there is a deadlock on what can be done about shotguns in regards to their effectiveness as a viable weapon for serious players and it’s annoyance factor.

[watsyurdeal]

@Amerika

The point I was trying to argue is that by the numbers, statistically speaking, Shotguns are inferior in every way to other primary weapons.

In terms of range, obviously SMGs, Rifles, all win. In terms of damage output, the Shotgun will almost always kill slower, assuming the player with the Rifle or SMG has good aim.

Let’s just use the M4 as an example, to kill a Skyhammer, it takes 5 shots, so roughly it takes roughly 224-448 ms to kill most mercs, compared to the Shotguns 663 ms. Plus the Shotgun user has to worry about range, spread, and the damage consistency for limb shot. The Rifle user doesn’t, he just has to aim for the head and he’ll kill reliably every time. In order for shotguns to be viable, their TTK has to be increased to match that of the other weapons.

The only way I can see that working is buffing the rates of fire and then reducing the damage and tightening the spread to compensate. This way you know ok, I need to hit 2 meatshots to kill people. The limitation would be the range and the way pellets spread out, even with fall off completely removed from these calculations. I honestly don’t care if that pisses people off, cause these days it seems everything does. If were going to have shotguns as primaries they need to be buffed to be viable with other weapons.

They will never be secondaries in Dirty Bomb cause the cards have already set things in stone, and even if they were, they could not be the same as they are now. They would have to be essentially the Super Shotgun. A 6 shot pump action shotgun as a secondary to a rifle is always going to beat a Pistol or Machine Pistol, any day. The damage output alone would make it worth it.

As for my other point, shotguns could theorteically work as they are now stat wise, if the ttk overall was reduced, something between Over Watch and Dirty Bomb I’d think. But since that’s not going to happen don’t worry about it. I was just making the point that statistically, THEN they’d be worthwhile options compared to the Rifles and SMGs. If the fastest you could kill with a gun like the M4 was about 448-672 ms, then they’d actually be balanced, their TTK would be super close to each other, so then it just comes down to playstyle over which gun is mathematically better.

But of course, this is all theory crafting. But just looking at the numbers alone it’s not hard to see how outmatched Shotguns are, people being annoyed by something is irrelevant to me. Anything annoys me when I play personally, something being overpowered though is another story entirely. I don’t usually call that unless I can’t figure out how to possibly deal with something. Like Sparks for example.

[frostyvampire]

I have no problems with shotguns
I have a problem with shotgun mercs that don’t use shotguns (Hochfir Proxy and Blishlok Fletcher/Aura), this is my main problem, why can’t Fletcher use Remburg and Proxy and Aura use Ankhuld?

[Orivar]

[quote=“FrostyVampire;188727”]I have no problems with shotguns
I have a problem with shotgun mercs that don’t use shotguns (Hochfir Proxy and Blishlok Fletcher/Aura), this is my main problem, why can’t Fletcher use Remburg and Proxy and Aura use Ankhuld?[/quote]

Because if one merc will have only shotguns most players wont play him.

[Amerika]

[quote=“Watsyurdeal;188710”]@Amerika

The point I was trying to argue is that by the numbers, statistically speaking, Shotguns are inferior in every way to other primary weapons.

In terms of range, obviously SMGs, Rifles, all win. In terms of damage output, the Shotgun will almost always kill slower, assuming the player with the Rifle or SMG has good aim.

Let’s just use the M4 as an example, to kill a Skyhammer, it takes 5 shots, so roughly it takes roughly 224-448 ms to kill most mercs, compared to the Shotguns 663 ms. Plus the Shotgun user has to worry about range, spread, and the damage consistency for limb shot. The Rifle user doesn’t, he just has to aim for the head and he’ll kill reliably every time. In order for shotguns to be viable, their TTK has to be increased to match that of the other weapons.

The only way I can see that working is buffing the rates of fire and then reducing the damage and tightening the spread to compensate. This way you know ok, I need to hit 2 meatshots to kill people. The limitation would be the range and the way pellets spread out, even with fall off completely removed from these calculations. I honestly don’t care if that pisses people off, cause these days it seems everything does. If were going to have shotguns as primaries they need to be buffed to be viable with other weapons.

They will never be secondaries in Dirty Bomb cause the cards have already set things in stone, and even if they were, they could not be the same as they are now. They would have to be essentially the Super Shotgun. A 6 shot pump action shotgun as a secondary to a rifle is always going to beat a Pistol or Machine Pistol, any day. The damage output alone would make it worth it.

As for my other point, shotguns could theorteically work as they are now stat wise, if the ttk overall was reduced, something between Over Watch and Dirty Bomb I’d think. But since that’s not going to happen don’t worry about it. I was just making the point that statistically, THEN they’d be worthwhile options compared to the Rifles and SMGs. If the fastest you could kill with a gun like the M4 was about 448-672 ms, then they’d actually be balanced, their TTK would be super close to each other, so then it just comes down to playstyle over which gun is mathematically better.

But of course, this is all theory crafting. But just looking at the numbers alone it’s not hard to see how outmatched Shotguns are, people being annoyed by something is irrelevant to me. Anything annoys me when I play personally, something being overpowered though is another story entirely. I don’t usually call that unless I can’t figure out how to possibly deal with something. Like Sparks for example.

[/quote]

Shotguns don’t kill slower at short ranges. That’s the issue and what makes them annoying. They one/two shot mercs pretty consistently at short range. That’s why they are viewed as “OP” by so many people even though statistically they are rarely chosen at higher/serious levels of play because the ranges you find yourself in for those matches rarely favor a shotgun.

That’s why I said you could turn them all into slug shooters like the Ahnuld but then you end up still having a range issue and you also water down the shotguns and how they differ. The other solution was to drop in smg’s where shotguns were, balance shotguns to be weaker and in accordance with machine pistols and pistols, and have another solid choice for secondaries.

That’s why I’m all for it. Making them a secondary doesn’t impact the way the game is curently balanced much. It fixes the annoyance of shotgun power right now at close ranges. It fixes a lot of the cards not being competitively viable for quite a few classes. And it just makes sense in the context of DB and how it as a game currently plays.

It does have cons in that there are some people who love shotguns how they are now and they would be unhappy with the change. It would dilute primary weapons in the game a bit more since you’d be spreading out smg’s across more classes and it would change up playstyles. So it’s not perfect. But it’s, IMO, the best option to fix the annoying situation and the uselessness situation.

I don’t think massively changing the whole game’s TTK to try and make a shotgun work as a primary is a good idea. In fact, I consider that damn near insane haha. I don’t think any game should do that if they want to have anything other than super high or super low TTK and want to have a lot of areas where you need ranged weapons.

And nothing is set in stone. This is software development. Phantom was changed from when I bought him multiple times. Thunder has been changed from when I bought him. Augments have been changed, dropped or added multiple times. Tons of balance changes have been made. The “set in stone” thing isn’t valid as far as I am concerned because a developer can and will make any change they feel is necessary. And due to the terms of service they can do exactly that.

[watsyurdeal]

There’s no way they’d replace every shotgun with an smg, and give shotguns as replacements for other secondaries.

If could make changes like that before all this time, and lie to us about it, imagine the shit storm that would make with other mercs.

They are way better off just making these shotguns semi auto and reducing the damage by a good bit. Maybe makes everything like the Ahnuld for the the most part but it’s better than the current.

[arcaneCanvas]

[quote=“Watsyurdeal;188642”][quote=“Amerika;188613”][quote=“Watsyurdeal;188607”]Honestly the only thing that annoys me about Shotguns, is how much I suck with them, yet seem to get killed by them in most random ways.

And unlike Amerika, I don’t personally believe Shotguns should be secondaries, because then they become the obvious choice imo.

I do however believe the shotgun’s problems could be solved if we did some tweaking, for one, get rid of damage fall off on them, it’s pretty irrelevant when you consider the fact the pellets spread out so much. Then next, reduce the damage of the pellets, so a full meatshot can kill someone of specific health, but beyond that you need at least 2 consistent sprays of buckshot.

That’s just my opinion however, I’ve seen shotguns be great weapons in other games, but I think given how slow they fire, and how fast everything else can you compared to them, I think it’s clear they are severely underpowered. [/quote]

How do they become the “obvious choice”? I said they would be balanced against machine pistols which means they would become weaker than they currently are. Useful as a secondary but not as powerful as they are now. This would not make them an obvious choice since there are a lot of situations where a machine pistol or even a regular pistol would be a better.[/quote]

The only way they’d be safely balanced is if they were 2 shot double barrel shotguns.

Otherwise the damage from the buckshot, coupled with a large clip size, it’d be the obvious choice for a backup to finish people off. The number of situations where the pistol or machine pistol would be better would be few and far between since for medium range, it’s often easier to just back off a bit, reload with a cancel, then go back into it, or start blasting when someone comes around the corner. [/quote]

Blyad

[Amerika]

[quote=“Watsyurdeal;188751”]There’s no way they’d replace every shotgun with an smg, and give shotguns as replacements for other secondaries.

If could make changes like that before all this time, and lie to us about it, imagine the @$!# storm that would make with other mercs.

They are way better off just making these shotguns semi auto and reducing the damage by a good bit. Maybe makes everything like the Ahnuld for the the most part but it’s better than the current.[/quote]

They didn’t lie. They said they didn’t want to do it because people picked up the cards with certain expectations. I find that weird since they have constantly changed those cards and other things people have picked up in the game. But they didn’t lie saying they couldn’t do it for either technical or legal reasons. They just feel that it could potentially upset people.

How does making them semi-auto do anything about the range issue? Not even changing them all to be like the Ahnuld fixes the range issues. And if you gave them more range then you’d have to tone them down more and also risk turning all shotguns into the Dreiss.

They just don’t work as primary weapons very well IMO.

[arcaneCanvas]

[quote=“Amerika;188770”][quote=“Watsyurdeal;188751”]There’s no way they’d replace every shotgun with an smg, and give shotguns as replacements for other secondaries.

If could make changes like that before all this time, and lie to us about it, imagine the @$!# storm that would make with other mercs.

They are way better off just making these shotguns semi auto and reducing the damage by a good bit. Maybe makes everything like the Ahnuld for the the most part but it’s better than the current.[/quote]

They didn’t lie. They said they didn’t want to do it because people picked up the cards with certain expectations. I find that weird since they have constantly changed those cards and other things people have picked up in the game. But they didn’t lie saying they couldn’t do it for either technical or legal reasons. They just feel that it could potentially upset people.

How does making them semi-auto do anything about the range issue? Not even changing them all to be like the Ahnuld fixes the range issues. And if you gave them more range then you’d have to tone them down more and also risk turning all shotguns into the Dreiss.

They just don’t work as primary weapons very well IMO.[/quote]

my papa always says: if its stupid but it works, its not stupid anymore.
i like shotgun but i cant complain how annoying and uneffective piece of engineering that is.

[KUST_LunarTM]

[quote=“AnotherGuy;188731”][quote=“FrostyVampire;188727”]I have no problems with shotguns
I have a problem with shotgun mercs that don’t use shotguns (Hochfir Proxy and Blishlok Fletcher/Aura), this is my main problem, why can’t Fletcher use Remburg and Proxy and Aura use Ankhuld?[/quote]

Because if one merc will have only shotguns most players wont play him. [/quote]

Poor Rhino. Nobody loves him because he only has shotgun primaries.

[arcaneCanvas]

[quote=“KUST__LunarTM;188781”][quote=“AnotherGuy;188731”][quote=“FrostyVampire;188727”]I have no problems with shotguns
I have a problem with shotgun mercs that don’t use shotguns (Hochfir Proxy and Blishlok Fletcher/Aura), this is my main problem, why can’t Fletcher use Remburg and Proxy and Aura use Ankhuld?[/quote]

Because if one merc will have only shotguns most players wont play him. [/quote]

Poor Rhino. Nobody loves him because he only has shotgun primaries.[/quote]

i cant say i dont love fat wall jumping scout…

[Rixatuso]

@AnotherGuy said:
I don’t care about the other mercs because they require skill, shotguns do not require skill
You guys are blind or something. What is the actual difference between shotguns and sniper rifles? They both have low fire rate but high damage, they both can oneshot a player, so they practically work the same way. But for some reason, ppl think sniper rifles are the hardest weapons in the game and shotguns are “random shit”.
@AnotherGuy said:
they don’t need to 100% HIT WHERE THEY ARE POINTING AT
This is negligible, because such hits will probably do less than half of the damage. Usually its even a disadvantage, you cant just hit an edge of a model and do a full damage, and what is much more important, even exact headshot wont do the full damage because some of the bullets wont hit the head because of spread.
Somehow no one ever complain about snipers, even considering the fact that you have literally NO chances to kill a decent sniper if he is far enough. But you guys start to bitch after you get killed by shotgun at point blank range. Shotguns SHOULD be “overpowered” in cqc, because they are definitely weaker than rifles/smgs in medium ranges and totally useless at long ranges. People say sniping is “hard” but how the staying on the spawn can be harder than going through the whole battlefield to be able to kill that sniper, with a huge chance to get killed in cqc because unlike shotguns, snipers rifles do high damage at any range?
Speaking about shotguns in general, they are indeed a bit more “random” than smgs and rifles, as well as any other weapon with high burst damage. This is fine and it cant be fixed. Shotguns’ dps inst stable, they are risky - if you hit 2 times in a row, you will kill a player even if hes stronger, but if you miss 2 times, you are dead. This is another difference between shotgun and sniper rifle - Proxy risks her life, and the sniper actually risk nothing, he can always hide and retreat. So, they are somewhat “random” on small sample sizes like one fight, but if the sample is big enough (whole match), they are fine just like any other gun - player with better aim will more fights.