Suggestion for dealing with Shotguns...

[PixelTwitch]

In a break from the norm I decided to look at making the shotguns better overall in order to balance them… My concept kinda makes all the shotguns have more overall damage output but handled in such a way that should encourage a change in play style rather then out right nerfing them. The reasoning behind this is that when dealing with a shotguns balance you do not have the ability to do small tweaks as the rate of fire is so low. Basically, removing their ability to kill someone in a single shot or two actually makes the character far weaker as every other Merc in the game has the ability to kill a shotgun class (excluding Rhino) within the time it takes to fire a second shot. Obviously taking into consideration a players reaction time does muddy this and is the reason why “back rage” will always be a trade off in terms of balance. Simply removing proxys ability to one shot someone in a face to face fight actually reduces her effectiveness far to much…

However, you can increase the skill required pull off quick kills…
Before I go into my ideas I thought I would also mention one way of balancing that is much easier than what I am about to suggest and could be considered the ideal way of doing so. In theory you could reduce the effectiveness of a shotgun when shooting someone in the back. Even if its just by 20% you would prevent the “back rage” and still keep the 1v1 fights at the same balance. It would also give a player the ability to turn and run from a shotgun at range without taking quite as much damage.

Anyway…

The core concepts.
1, Damage drop off is removed and replaced by a Range Bonus.
2, Centrer pellet will always hit the crosshair and is the only pellet effected by Head Shot Ratio
3, Bonus damage is added for multiple pellets hit.
4, Additional hit beep is added after a certain number of damage.
5, Designed to work for multiple spread patterns. (Future attachments?)
6, Only centre pellet is effected by damage fall off

So, how does it work?

FIG.1

FIG.2 (Random, Star, Duckbill)

The cone system works pretty much as it does today except I would change the damage values of each cone ring to balance out damage at different ranges. This could be used to make a shotgun more focused for different skill levels and circumstances (ie, increase damage on outer pellets to give a more effective experience to people that are unable to hit accurately, consistently). This could also add decent variations based on attachments.

I also feel that giving bonus damage based on multiple pellets will both reward range and accuracy without using head shots.

The centrer shot trace could maybe do with having a range limit on weapons with high spread as that hit beep would be off putting to the player and having a high spread weapon you can still always do damage with at range is a little silly… However, on weapons like Fletchers I feel it works well.

I believe a new hit sound should be added for when you do more then 40-50 damage with a shotgun as part of the inconsistency feeling from players is due to hearing 3 shots land and only doing 20 damage currently. Letting them know the difference would help greatly the feeling of impact.

I also feel that ironsights should continue to reduce the spread of a shotgun like it does currently… However, I also feel that the shotguns ironsights should take much longer to lift in order to prevent quick shotting. I think slowing it down by around 400 - 500ms should actually make the gun FEEL stronger just though the animation.

The bonus range damage is used to make the shotguns better at certain ranges and allowing them to keep their power at stupidly close range but not making 1 shot at distance. Also you could have certain shotguns starting to work better at medium range without it being OP up close.

Lets get to the nitty gritty… I suck at this so my math is most likely useless but this is what I came up with when testing the damage output potential at ranges.

cs - Center Point Shot
gs - Green Cone Shots
ys - Yellow Cone Shots
rs - Red Cone Shots
Ta/Tb/Tc - Tick 1, Tick 2, Tick 3 - (Performance???)
hsr - Head Shot Ratio
shd - Multiple Shots Hit Damage
bd - Bonus Damage
br - Bonus Range Damage

cshsr+(gsgsd)=Ta
ysysd=Tb
rsrsd=Tc
bd=cs+gs+ys+rs-1shd
Ta+Tb+Tc+bhpbr=

Here are a couple of example images…

These are based off
cs = 10
gs = 5
ys = 4
rs = 3
hsr = 2

However I think they are both 2damage off due to a silly error I made…

All in all I think the way to balance the shotguns is by making them stronger… Not weaker… Just make it require a lot more skill to get that last bit of power out to enable a 1 shot kill. In return for making it harder you make it easier and better at longer ranges and actually allow the shotgun to become a real viable weapon.

[tokamak]

Yes, letting pellet damage accumulate seems not only sensible but also realistic.

[potty200]

I feel the otherway about shotguns. They deal too much damage over distance. Spread over distance needs upping. Close quarter damage is fine

[tokamak]

That automatically happens once damage per pellet accumulates. The difference between long range and short range will be much more substantial this way.

[Sun_Sheng]

I’ve been playing shotgun a fair bit recently due to the increased movement speed, which I like, rather than the weapon choice. In that context i’d rather keep the shotgun as it is although you could potentially nerf the effective distance which would be a good move. What i’d like to see to balance the role is, combined with that nerf, an increase in damage at range for the machine pistol or whatever it is she carries.

When playing that role, I tend to feel like anything other than close range, i’m screwed. As you say, a one-shot kill if your aim is good, a free re-spawn if it isn’t. Good shotgun accuracy at a guess is probably 50-60%. If say half of that is headshots, then roughly 1 in 4 or 1 in 3 battles you’re going to lose. Swap to the secondary weapon and that generally feels a lot better for 1v1, but although it has a decent rate of fire, the damage is so small that you can’t actually do anything useful with it unless you’re up close and personal, in which case you should probably be using the shotgun.

I tried a flanking move last night only to be blocked by someone in a deep covering position. I hit him with 5 headshots according to the feedback noise, and I still went down and he had something like 40% health left. Ok, maybe he had medpacks down or something like that, but even so, I get pretty much the same feeling on most long range 1v1’s.

At the same time as saying all this, the other thought that comes into my mind is that if I was playing in a match situation rather than a pub, these things wouldn’t matter as i’d play with decent backup and the different shortfalls of each character would compensate for the others so no change needed. Having said that though, I think my ideal shotgun class would be a duplicate of the COD BO2 shotgun whereby fire rate and damage are enough that in a room you can take out 2 or 3 people in relatively quick succesion (more if your luck’s in) but go outside and you won’t last long enough for the last rites to be read.

To do that would mean maybe boosting the shotty fire rate and swapping the machine pistol for a spud gun, but it could be a worthwhile trade-off in terms of balance and role

[Glottis-3D]

I would like to see much more pellets in a shot, so that dmg would be more statistically predictable. We’re not using idtech3 after all, the game is laggy as hell, we have 2 rely on statistix more

[BomBaKlaK]

More pellets with less damage for each pellet and a fallof to balance the range.

[PixelTwitch]

That is kinda why I wanted to suggest having multiple ticks used per shot otherwise you would stutter when firing with too many pellets… I don’t know if they already do this but if not it should mean they COULD add more.

[Glottis-3D]

It is an obvious thing. If you have wide spread point’n’click weapon, and you have hard time balancing its range, spread pattern and damage, you need every single shot to hit what it is supposed to hit. Especially with hitboxes being tight as unexpected porno metaphor
Plus, with more pellet, it will be easier to make ‘aim’ cones. More cones allow proper damage spread. Etc.

[Glottis-3D]

And yes, you dont have show all the pellets in a shot. Just count them in. Show and render only 10-15 pellets for the sake of visibility