Shotgun Buff Idea

[Sixty5]

Hey guys, another spur of the moment write up.

 

Shotguns are the weakest sort of weapon in this game right now, their mods scale terribly, they lask utility and they don't even put out all that much damage. If you want more than that, I have a whole topic explaining it here

 

But enough of that, the other night I was thinking about what could be done to make shotguns better, that was more than simply ramping the damage up to 11. 

In doing so I came up with a rather simple idea that i rather liked, so here it is.

 

The first pellet that hits an enemy will do 50% of your base damage, regardless of range, if you can hit it, you can hurt it.

The remaining pellets from the weapon will then deal the remaining damage divided up evenly.

 

So say you have a Tigris that deals 200 damage per shot, with each shot you fire 4 pellets (IIRC) 

The first pellet would deal 100 damage regardless of range with the remaining 3 pellets dealing 33.33 damage each, still with the damage falloff.

 

Effectively this is a low end damage buff, your maximum damage has not changed, but the minimum that you do has increased drastically.

 

What this would mean is that shotguns would actually have a niche as weapons for dealing decent damage to entire crowds, as you'd deal 50% of your base damage to any enemy you hit, hip firing a Boar Prime into a crowd of enemies at mid range would go from throwing confetti to firing off a barrage of flak.

 

Shotgun sniping would return to a degree, but given the discrepancy in damage between shotguns and rifles/snipers/bows I doubt it would be too much of a problem (The hardest a shotgun can currently hit without crits is about 7.8k, dealing half of that to a target across the map is nothing compared to the numbers other guns can put out)

 

So anyways, lemme know what you think 

 

 

[Rorgal_Sina]

Hm... this would actually make shotguns more powerful in PvP too, all those running around. So as long as one pellet hits, you shouldn't worry about the lack of firepower...

 

While this is decent solution, I'm sure most players would prefer a straight-up removal of damage fall-off.

 

Edit: Regarding the post below me, a 100% proc chance within a certain range would be.... delicious.

Edited September 17, 2014 by Rorgal_Sina

[smithf]

I am not really convinced of "first pellet" idea. It seems to have no believable basis other than to increase damage. I feel that shotguns with fall-off feels more appropriate. But perhaps the fall-off idea can be used in reverse as well:

 

ie. we scale UP the damage when closer to target (i.e. there is a distance that if we fire the gun below that range, impact proc chance increases above normal)

 

The end result? if we fire a shotgun in the face of an ancient, there should be greater damage and a much higher chance of sending it flying back than if we shoot it at 20m.

 

In this respect, perhaps instead of a flat increase in damage, we can have a "kill zone" within which the damage increases?

e.g.

> 20m damage falls off

5-20 m damage consistent (the listed damage in arsenal)

<5m damage increases

 

Another way of proving the shotgun experience can be with the status chance.

e.g. give all shotguns some form of innate impact proc (above normal procs), to make shotgun more adept at CC. i.e. even if damage are not necessarily higher than other weapons, shotguns has a better chance of sending enemies flying back.

 

This idea can be combined with the above "negative fall-off" distance. i.e. say within 5 m, shotguns will get an increased impact proc.

 

The numbers above are just for illustrative purposes. Actual game experience should be balanced further.

Edited September 17, 2014 by smithf

[Vaskadar]

I know this is completely unrelated to damage and or buffs, but I miss when shotguns would send your enemies flying.

 

On topic: Key things that should change: Hell's Chamber should cap out at 180%, being 30% per rank. Point Blank should cap out at 120%, being 20% per rank. Magazine size (Ammo stock?) should be double what it currently is (Capping out at 120%). Reload speed (Tactical Reload) should also be double (capping out at 60%).

 

I can deal with falloff being a mechanic. That's not the problem with the shotguns, but rather, the distance that the falloff starts. It should start at approx 25 meters (minimum falloff starting range), which is where shotguns (realistically) begin to lose their kinetic energy, and reduce the falloff exponent multiplier to 1.5 instead of 2 or something.

 

Post #2000!

Edited September 17, 2014 by Vaskadar

[Marthrym]

Damage fall-off was overdone. Fall-off is a valid mechanic, just cranked up a tad too high on our dear shotties.^^'

Also, short-range/point blank damage is underwhelming, rifles can do better (and not just Boltor Prime). Just saying.^^

Edited September 17, 2014 by Marthrym

[Quizel]

I think the OP is interesting.  It'd open up unique strategies with punch through mechanics and vicious spread. But it's a little goofy logically thinking. Devs seem to at least try for logic.

 

As Rorgal_Sina said, would be fairly beefy in PVP but who cares about pvp for the moment.  Damage fall off should stay as it makes many of the shot gun type weapons unique.

 

I agreed with the point blank dmg buff (not talking about the mod here) when closer than 10m or something ( 0-5m triple dmg, 5-10m double dmg-something like that but maybe not so high of a dmg increase-distances can vary shot gun to shot gun). Wouldn't have much use current end game though where ur trying to keep as much distance as possible (no clue how to address that logically with shot guns unless you play loki -balance game around lvl 30 for now anyway >.<). Could be fun though if the point blank dmg was adjusted significantly enough.  

Edited September 17, 2014 by Quizel

[Sixty5]

I had considered the damage bonus for being right up close, but chose to skip over it due to the fact that it would become redundant later on (no one wants to be close to an Eximus unit)

The reason that I like the idea I had in the op is that it makes shotguns amazing for dealing with weaker fast moving enemies, if you even hit them a little it is going to hurt.

The problem with giving shotguns a straight up damage buff is that unless said buff is to the point of dealing 20k damage a shot on something like the Tigris they will still not compete with other weapons.

And even then because of pellet mechanics and drop off, you are not going to realistically deal that damage anyway.

I'd much rather have the low end damage boosted so I can deal a decent chunk of damage when I do hit something

[JerZeyCJ]

Honestly, I think shotguns needs:

1. A general all around damage buff

2.  Punch through for some of them

3. The ragdoll/knockback effect on enemies killed with it

[smithf]

TL;DR: Add Point Blank Range mechanics to Shotgun, making shotguns less effective than rifles at long range, comparable at mid range, but potentially more effective at short range. CC (status effects like ragdoll/punch etc) bonus within the point-blank range as well.

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Point-Blank Range

How about introducing point blank range (PBR) as a general shotgun-only mechanics in addition to the fall-off range (FOR) where:

- if distance falls within point blank, damage scales up (as opposed to being static mulitplier). This point blank damage multiplier (PBDM) multiplie will be scaled from range at 0 to the PBR.

- along with PBDM, introduce point blank status multiplier (PBSM), which is similar to PBDM, but multiplies the status chance instead (PBDM and PBSM are kept separate so that different shotguns can be assigned slightly different characteristics: e.g. some that do greater damage within PBR versus others which gives a status chance boost)

- The listed damage in arsenal refers to the expected damage between PBR to FOR. (assumed consistent).

- Introduce special shotgun-only mods (including some existing)

   - mods that adjusts the spread of projectiles (either narrow down or more spread out)

   - mods that modifies the PBDM and PBSM (for example, if a mod increases PBDM by 10%. the damage between the range PBR to FOR remains the same, but if an enemy is hit within the point blank range, it will multiply the damage).

   - possibly "corrupted" mods that trades off between damage and status chance within the PBR only.

   - mods that adjusts the distances PBR and FOR. E.g. mods that either reduce/extend the effective range of point blank range, or the fall-off distance)


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Example of point blank projectile damage computation
(the formula for the following are just for illustrative purposes. It is probably too simplistic to be used by itself)

Base Projectile Damage : expected damage of a projectile within the range of PBR and FOR (after computation of all the damage/elemental mods)

Target Distance : distance to target

if (Target Distance < PBR)

  Point Blank Ratio = (Target Distance / PBR) /// how close we are to max point blank multiplier. max when ratio is 0, 1x multipler when range at PBR
  Final Point Blank Multiplier = (1 - Point Blank Ratio ) x PBDM + Point Blank Ratio /// using linear scale here. could be replaced with other scale
  Final Projectile Damage =   Final Point Blank Multiplier x Projectile Damage

(The above can be used to compute the Final Projectile Status Chance as well)

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note exactly related, more like another "shotgun" related refactored.

Hand-Cannons

In addition to "projectile damage falloff", (assuming projectile loses kinetic energy after a distance or something), the spread of the shotgun projectiles themselves also has a "falloff" of a sort, where assuming shotgun projectiles are packed tighter when close and more spread-out with distance, more projectiles should hit a target at closer range.

Hand-Cannons (Brakk, Detron etc) are special kind of shotguns with very little projectile spread, so they can concentrate their projectiles on longer-ranged targets (higher percentage of projectiles will hit a single target on longer range compared to other shotgun types).

Expressed in terms of the mechanics mentioned above:
- little to no spread in projectiles.
- lower Point Blank Range/Multiplier compared to other shotguns.
- higher Fall-Off Range