Another Shotgun Thread, How Do We Truly Buff Shotguns?

[StickyBaseline]

Because the more we talk about it DE will hopefully give it more attention.

 

Ok first off lets discuss the problems that the shotguns has. 

 

The biggest problems with shotguns is that enemies do not react to being shot, which doesn't make sense since shotguns deliver a tremendous amount force upon impact if most pellets hit. 

This doesn't have much to do with just shotguns, this is just how DE designed their enemies to be bullet sponges.

 

Shotguns doesn't really have an issue with Damage in my opinion, but the fact that you have to use mod slots for utility mods, that should be base stats, like Punch through and faster reload speed.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

OK how should we buff each weapon? We don't want to make shotguns OP by just adding a lot of more damage (I hope DE doesn't do this because this will cause more problems than it fixes). 

 

I can only speak of shotguns that I own.

 

The Hek: A nice fix would be adding about 0.4 - 0.8 meter punch through so we can hit at least 2 - 3 enemies per shot, Increase status chance like the buff for snipers (or knockback on every shot), and lastly possibly 0.2 - 0.4 seconds less reload speed or increasing mag size by 2. This would not make this weapon OP since it delivers the same damage, but it is now also par with rifles.

 

The Sobek: This shotgun deals less damage, is fully automatic, has a large clip so it doesn't really need punch through to deal with crowds. But this weapon do need lower reload speed, and higher status chance (or knockback on most shots).

 

The Drakgoon: This weapon already deals good damage, and has a lot of base punchthrough if charged. The Drakgoon needs a lot more status chance (or knockback on every shot).

 

Please give me your opinions and add to the discussion. 

Edited September 21, 2014 by StickyBaseline

[noveltyhero]

I remember the good ol' Hek days :)

 

Please DE give those back to us

[Noble_Cactus]

 

The biggest problems with shotguns is that enemies do not react to being shot, which doesn't make sense since shotguns deliver a tremendous amount force upon impact if most pellets hit. 

This doesn't have much to do with just shotguns, this is just how DE designed their enemies to be bullet sponges.

 

^This.

 

Apparently shotguns actually used to cause a bit of ragdolling/knockback on kill. Now it just feels like I'm tossing a handful of pebbles at my target. Returning that ragdolling would give shotgun kills the ncessary "oomph" needed to make them more satisfying.

[X3Evanescence]

Shotguns should have an innate Blast proc or something that knocks enemies back on impact. That would make close-quarters combat even more viable for shotguns, turning them into CC machines.

[VKhaun]

1) Get rid of Heavy Caliber. Trading accuracy for damage on what people consider a mandatory mod for so many weapons brings assault rifles down into shotgun territory to directly compete with them, and gives them the damage to do so. If we nerfed Boltor Prime and deleted Heavy Caliber Shotguns would immediately jump in usefulness.

 

2) Improve utility. Shotgun's nightmare mods are crap. Blaze just makes fire mandatory and accelerated blast is biased. Shotguns have no access to Punch-through, reload speed or mag size without dropping a slot for 0 damage. Given the high cost of Seeking Force this is a big deal for a lot of players who can easily put Shred on a rifle.

[armedpoop]

1) Get rid of Heavy Caliber. Trading accuracy for damage on what people consider a mandatory mod for so many weapons brings assault rifles down into shotgun territory to directly compete with them, and gives them the damage to do so. If we nerfed Boltor Prime and deleted Heavy Caliber Shotguns would immediately jump in usefulness.

 

2) Improve utility. Shotgun's nightmare mods are crap. Blaze just makes fire mandatory and accelerated blast is biased. Shotguns have no access to Punch-through, reload speed or mag size without dropping a slot for 0 damage. Given the high cost of Seeking Force this is a big deal for a lot of players who can easily put Shred on a rifle.

1) No. To all of that. Never delete a mod from existence. Especially a 10 rank rare! Do not nerf Boltor Prime unless it means increasing the mastery rank requirement. 

 

2) All of my yes. 

[Silent293]

Taking away heavy calibre would mean nerfing mk1-braton :(

[VKhaun]

1) No. To all of that. Never delete a mod from existence. Especially a 10 rank rare! Do not nerf Boltor Prime unless it means increasing the mastery rank requirement. 

 

2) All of my yes. 

 

Sorry, delete was the wrong word. I meant remove it from the comparison of the two not from the game. A heavy recoil increase, maybe have Heavy Caliber cause reverse falloff where you only got the damage boost starting at some minimum range and scaling up, with the range to get the full boost was significant. The goal would be to make rifles more rifle-like with the drawback, rather than more shotgun-like.

 

Boltor Prime needs a nerf. It's clearly a weapon that was supposed to be balanced by drawbacks. Slow projectiles, ammo consumption, poor accuracy. The Prime version has projectiles so fast, such high base damage as to make it ammo efficient and such good accuracy that these are totally negligable. Something has got to give somewhere. It can't just sit there and make the whole game irrelevant forever and the alternative of adding more strong weapons would just split the whole game into two gear tiers, making every existing weapon except Soma obsolete.

Edited September 21, 2014 by VKhaun

[armedpoop]

Sorry, delete was the wrong word. I meant remove it from the comparison of the two not from the game. A heavy recoil increase, maybe have Heavy Caliber cause reverse falloff where you only got the damage boost starting at some minimum range and scaling up, with the range to get the full boost was significant. The goal would be to make rifles more rifle-like with the drawback, rather than more shotgun-like.

 

Boltor Prime needs a nerf. It's clearly a weapon that was supposed to be balanced by drawbacks. Slow projectiles, ammo consumption, poor accuracy. The Prime version has projectiles so fast, such high base damage as to make it ammo efficient and such good accuracy that these are totally negligable. Something has got to give somewhere. It can't just sit there and make the whole game irrelevant forever and the alternative of adding more strong weapons would just split the whole game into two gear tiers, making every existing weapon except Soma obsolete.

The game basically already has gear tiers, which is a good thing. Not every weapon should be viable everywhere. Like I said, just crank the MR requirement. There is no reason to nerf Boltor other than not wanting long T4's to be a thing. This is totally off topic so this is all ill say on the matter.

[Eudamon]

First of all, forget what you saw in the cinema. People being hit by shotguns (or pretty much any type of gun) do not fly backwards twenty meters.

 

Otherwise the person holding the gun would be facing the same force as recoil.

 

Sniper Rifles work different than shotguns - you deliver one bullet to a precise target. This tends to do more damage than getting hit by a shotgun. You have deeper penetration, for starters. So calling for a buff just because sniper rifles have been buffed is silly.

 

However, I am all in favor of adding shotgun mods that give increased utility.

 

- Have a mod that gives your shotgun cinematic ragdolling on a critical hit. You score a critical hit, your enemy goes flying.

- Have another mod that allows you to swap your damage type around. Want slashing damage for that annoying infested? Put in a mod that swaps your highest damage type with Slashing damage (plus have mods for Impact and Piercing, of course).

- Have a mod that replaces your damage with a pure status - you are shooting napalm jelly rounds. You don't do much damage, but the enemy has a 100% chance of being on fire.

 

Edit: And of course Shotguns have punch-through. It is called Seeker. I am using it on my Phage with great success.

Edited September 21, 2014 by Eudamon

[StickyBaseline]

However, I am all in favor of adding shotgun mods that give increased utility.

 

- Have a mod that gives your shotgun cinematic ragdolling on a critical hit. You score a critical hit, your enemy goes flying.

- Have another mod that allows you to swap your damage type around. Want slashing damage for that annoying infested? Put in a mod that swaps your highest damage type with Slashing damage (plus have mods for Impact and Piercing, of course).

- Have a mod that replaces your damage with a pure status - you are shooting napalm jelly rounds. You don't do much damage, but the enemy has a 100% chance of being on fire.

 

Edit: And of course Shotguns have punch-through. It is called Seeker. I am using it on my Phage with great success.

I think you misunderstood me, I said that shotguns needs to have this utility as base stats. Such as punch through and high status so we can focus on adding high damage through modding. Adding more utility mods is not a solution.

[Eudamon]

I think you misunderstood me, I said that shotguns needs to have this utility as base stats. Such as punch through and high status so we can focus on adding high damage through modding. Adding more utility mods is not a solution.

 

You are right. Plus they should have an automatic kill chance of 95%, regardless of how much damage they do.

 

Shotguns are usually using a small handful of pellets that do damage over a larger area. They spread out - but the do not penetrate. Now, a sniper rifle could be assumed to have enough power to punch through the target - but shotguns don't. If you want to load up your shotgun with depleted uranium, be my guest - but that would be a mod.

 

Shotguns are very powerful weapons at close range. They are very useful in that capacity. Considering that you get a status chance PER PELLET, a shotgun has a huge advantage vs a sniper rifle. The Vectis holds one bullet. A shotgun holds 6 shots each containing a large number of pellets - so if you are shooting something at close range, your status chance goes up, because every single pellet will hit that enemy. If you only strafe him, though ... less status chance.

Edited September 21, 2014 by Eudamon

[StickyBaseline]

Shotguns are usually using a small handful of pellets that do damage over a larger area. They spread out - but the do not penetrate. Now, a sniper rifle could be assumed to have enough power to punch through the target - but shotguns don't. If you want to load up your shotgun with depleted uranium, be my guest - but that would be a mod.

 

Shotguns are very powerful weapons at close range. They are very useful in that capacity. Considering that you get a status chance PER PELLET, a shotgun has a huge advantage vs a sniper rifle. The Vectis holds one bullet. A shotgun holds 6 shots each containing a large number of pellets - so if you are shooting something at close range, your status chance goes up, because every single pellet will hit that enemy. If you only strafe him, though ... less status chance.

It's a shame that that realism would not work at all in this game. This thread is for suggestions that would make Shotguns as useable as any other weapon in their respective field. 

 

Most Shotguns don't shoot many pellets per shot, and Status functions very weird on shotguns. Even if your shotgun has 96% chance to proc it still doesn't proc very often.

Edited September 21, 2014 by StickyBaseline

[painterman]

Most Shotguns don't shoot many pellets per shot, and Status functions very weird on shotguns. Even if your shotgun has 96% chance to proc it still doesn't proc very often.

 

Its kind a bug, and it skyrocket once you hit 100% status(0% displayed , so its buged) all the pellets will proc, u cant try it whit boar p, and other hig status chance shotguns

Edited September 21, 2014 by painterman

[Xana_Skullsunder]

First of all, forget what you saw in the cinema. People being hit by shotguns (or pretty much any type of gun) do not fly backwards twenty meters.

 

Otherwise the person holding the gun would be facing the same force as recoil.

 

This is a gaaaaaaaaaaame. We're not basing the argument on realism, we're basing it on "shotguns need to feel fun to use."

 

Shotguns are always portrayed as short range cannons in other media, and it's a big part of what makes them so satisfying to use.

[Eudamon]

This is a gaaaaaaaaaaame. We're not basing the argument on realism, we're basing it on "shotguns need to feel fun to use."

 

Shotguns are always portrayed as short range cannons in other media, and it's a big part of what makes them so satisfying to use.

 

As I said, they are powerful at short range. Just don't expect to do much damage at long range.

[Xana_Skullsunder]

As I said, they are powerful at short range. Just don't expect to do much damage at long range.

 

... Is that not exactly what I said in my second line? What are we even arguing about? You didn't say anything that disagreed with my statement.

[VKhaun]

The game basically already has gear tiers, which is a good thing. Not every weapon should be viable everywhere. Like I said, just crank the MR requirement. There is no reason to nerf Boltor other than not wanting long T4's to be a thing. This is totally off topic so this is all ill say on the matter.

 

That's total MMORPG logic and has no place in an action/rpg third person shooter.

 

Every weapon should be viable everywhere in an action game for the sake of variety. Note that when you say the opposite, you have no reason for it. There is no benefit to gear tiers in an action/rpg game. It is purely a destructive condition that reduces variety in play.

 

If you want to say that there are upgrades of the same weapon, like normal->prime, that's fine because the variety is left intact, but the idea that every gun the devs have ever put in is useless for anyone who puts together boltor prime or future weapons that are that powerful, annihilates variety and choice with no benefit to game play what-so-ever. Gear tiers eliminating variety have NO BENEFIT to the game, save a small niche for noobie weapons where you want players to move forward and learn the mechanics of finding and crafting.

 

Starting to type an argument already?

 

THIS THREAD

 

Q.E.D.

 

I think what the devs are planning to do is use conclave rating to balance all this, but the cost they've imposed is still too low to keep people from using it and conclave is not used widely enough if it's just going to be the odd alert. From the perspective of a newish player it's still just a matter of getting to Boltor Prime's rank requirement and building it, and then everything else is mastery grinding for the sake of mastery grinding. This is not an acceptable condition.

 

Adding more weapons that strong does not fix all the weapons it makes irrelevant.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As I said, they are powerful at short range. Just don't expect to do much damage at long range.

 

... Is that not exactly what I said in my second line? What are we even arguing about? You didn't say anything that disagreed with my statement.

 

I think the omission here is that they are supposed to be powerful ENOUGH that there is a reason to choose them over rifles when you intend to play at short range. That's not happening right now. If you have any mid tier assault rifle you can use it just as well at close range and obviously much better at long. Heavy Caliber is not the only thing to blame for that, but it encourages the behavior.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think you misunderstood me, I said that shotguns needs to have this utility as base stats. Such as punch through and high status so we can focus on adding high damage through modding. Adding more utility mods is not a solution.

What's the difference between adding utility / damage mixed mods, and adding free utility? I would rather put more choice in the mod system and let people choose pure damage if that's what they want. There need to be multiple builds, not just "stack damage and the devs give us free stuff". If we get free utility, there should be another divide creating build choice besides just swapping elementals so that people still have something to consider and weight, so that depth is still added. Charge speed based on firing rate for example, or a crit damage weapon (headshots favored) with accuracy problems when using Vicious Spread.

Edited September 21, 2014 by VKhaun

[Paradoxbomb]

I'm surprised there's been no mention of damage fall-off yet, I'd imagine removing this would be a good start. After all, is being able to headshot someone with a Hek from more than 10m away really that big of a deal given the plethora of even more broken mods and weapons powercreep has brought us? And if it's really that big of an issue just decrease their accuracy a bit more. Shotgun damage is already reduced past mid-range by the fact that the pellets spread out, why hit them with a double-whammy and further reduce their damage past snuggling distance?

 

On the other hand, the player should still be encouraged to get in close, but rather than penalize them for not doing so, they should add incentive to do so (other than better accuracy), say a substantial bonus chance to deal critical damage or proc a status effect? (that would make up for the rather underwhelming crit-mods) At the very least their should be a guaranteed impact/blast proc at point blank (as mentioned by others before me) in order to at least make it feel like you're actually using a gun with some serious kick.

 

I'm not entirely sure if Shotguns need innate Punch-through or faster reload speeds, maybe they do, but in a way it seems like shotguns are actually fairly balanced from a modding standpoint seeing as they actually do have significant drawbacks in things like magazine size or reload speed, meaning if you mod for pure damage it actually comes at a price (unlike the majority of rifles). Even so, shotgun mods do tend to flat out suck, so I wouldn't argue against things like a shotgun version of Shred, or removing that base damage from Blaze and adding it to Vicious Spread (and look at that, now shotguns have their own Heavy Caliber).

Edited September 21, 2014 by Paradoxbomb

[Noble_Cactus]

^I agree with Paradox above me.

 

1) Get rid of Heavy Caliber. Trading accuracy for damage on what people consider a mandatory mod for so many weapons brings assault rifles down into shotgun territory to directly compete with them, and gives them the damage to do so. If we nerfed Boltor Prime and deleted Heavy Caliber Shotguns would immediately jump in usefulness.

 

2) Improve utility. Shotgun's nightmare mods are crap. Blaze just makes fire mandatory and accelerated blast is biased. Shotguns have no access to Punch-through, reload speed or mag size without dropping a slot for 0 damage. Given the high cost of Seeking Force this is a big deal for a lot of players who can easily put Shred on a rifle.

 

Not sure if I can get behind the first change, unless HC was changed to cause massive recoil at max rank, or unreasonably high spread. Though that would look odd on beam weapons like the Synapse and Amprex.

 

EDIT: Oh, I skipped over the post where you suggested high recoil on HC. My bad.

 

I completely agree with the second suggestion. Shotgun mods are in a weird place because they seem to have been made for a very early version of the game, where the devs didn't give Point Blank more than a 90% damage boost for fear of making shotguns overpowered (didn't stop the Hek days), and somehow being forced to use Fire on Blaze for increased damage was a reasonable tradeoff.

Edited September 21, 2014 by Noble_Cactus

[Arabaxus]

That's total MMORPG logic and has no place in an action/rpg third person shooter.

 

Every weapon should be viable everywhere in an action game for the sake of variety. Note that when you say the opposite, you have no reason for it. There is no benefit to gear tiers in an action/rpg game. It is purely a destructive condition that reduces variety in play.

 

If you want to say that there are upgrades of the same weapon, like normal->prime, that's fine because the variety is left intact, but the idea that every gun the devs have ever put in is useless for anyone who puts together boltor prime or future weapons that are that powerful, annihilates variety and choice with no benefit to game play what-so-ever. Gear tiers eliminating variety have NO BENEFIT to the game, save a small niche for noobie weapons where you want players to move forward and learn the mechanics of finding and crafting.

 

Starting to type an argument already?

 

THIS THREAD

 

Q.E.D.

 

I think what the devs are planning to do is use conclave rating to balance all this, but the cost they've imposed is still too low to keep people from using it and conclave is not used widely enough if it's just going to be the odd alert. From the perspective of a newish player it's still just a matter of getting to Boltor Prime's rank requirement and building it, and then everything else is mastery grinding for the sake of mastery grinding. This is not an acceptable condition.

 

Adding more weapons that strong does not fix all the weapons it makes irrelevant.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think the omission here is that they are supposed to be powerful ENOUGH that there is a reason to choose them over rifles when you intend to play at short range. That's not happening right now. If you have any mid tier assault rifle you can use it just as well at close range and obviously much better at long. Heavy Caliber is not the only thing to blame for that, but it encourages the behavior.

 

 

 

 

 

 

What's the difference between adding utility / damage mixed mods, and adding free utility? I would rather put more choice in the mod system and let people choose pure damage if that's what they want. There need to be multiple builds, not just "stack damage and the devs give us free stuff". If we get free utility, there should be another divide creating build choice besides just swapping elementals so that people still have something to consider and weight, so that depth is still added. Charge speed based on firing rate for example, or a crit damage weapon (headshots favored) with accuracy problems when using Vicious Spread.

 

1. Completely wrong. Weapons should have tiers. No tiers means literally no linear progression, which Warframe clearly suffers from. Why do you think locking powerful weapons like Boltor Prime behind Mastery Rank would make more sense? Because as of right now, Mastery Rank literally means nothing. The way to acquire mastery is also flawed. It is a great concept but bad execution because it locks progress through getting new weapons, ranking them to 30, and tossing them.

 

2. Also completely wrong. You are simply maintaining a narrow mindset when you look at weapon in terms of sole DPS. There are many weapons that outperform Boltor Prime in their own ways. Boltor Prime is simply the strongest automatic rifle, and justifiably so because it is the rarest, just like standard MMO mechanics. Amprex is arguably the most powerful continuous weapon, and is almost on par with Boltor Prime on DPS, has ridiculous status chance, more consistent status procs because of innate elemental damage, and a chaining effect at the cost of some DPS and ammunition economy. Latron Prime/Wraith are the strongest Scout/Marksman rifles that outperform automatic rifles when you capitalize on headshot Critical damage multipliers, which deal 4x the damage of a regular Crit. Each weapon niche has its own pseudo-tiers defined by statistical numbers and performance. It gives you something to work towards, or else in the case of precision weapons, you would grab a regular Latron and would have no compulsion to change precision weapons because they are all equal. This also limits the enemy progression because if the weapons are all the same, the enemies would be the same difficulty in terms of level, health and damage scaling. If you want to argue that automatic rifles are the "best", note that using each niche of weapons properly, Scout/Marksman Rifles, Bows, Continuous weapons, etc. with the same tier weapon equates to equal and greater performance than automatic rifles, because it generally requires more user skill, and a higher skill ceiling equals greater performance. But all are just as viable in any of the hardest content we currently have.

 

3. The mindset of "grab Boltor Prime first and everything else is mastery fodder" is a personal mindset caused by themselves and is a byproduct of introducing a trading system without fixing first the Mastery Rank requirements for Prime Weapons. Even if previously the Boltor Prime were MR 2 locked, a MR2 player theoretically would not have the resources to clear the void missions to acquire the parts without having someone carry, which would make working around this system highly inefficient. Again, this is not an issue with a weapon being good, but a combination of a personal mind-set and a byproduct of an otherwise liked system, which was suggested by the community in the first place.

 

4. This point, however, is completely relevant. What shotguns are lacking is that they should outperform rifles in some aspects, what I would imagine in Burst DPS. An ideal shotgun would be strong at close range. Take off damage falloff, because the spread of the firing cone should already be enough to discourage use at long range, and buff Point Blank. Even with Blaze, Point Blank + Blaze equates to +150% damage, which is less than one Serration and much less than one Hornet Strike. If you consider Boltor Prime, with 18k Sustained DPS, if every single pellet theoretically hit an enemy, the Sustained DPS of an equivalent Prime Shotgun should be well over 23k, because the more pellets you miss, that is, the further you are, the lower this number becomes. 

 

I still think shotguns should kill enemies with one shot, which is why in another thread I suggested a pump action shotgun with paltry fire rate but something like 400-450 base damage spread over 8 pellets. DPS wise it may not be much better than regular guns, but you would get more consistent one shot kills.

 

Again in terms of fixing current shotguns I will reiterate: remove damage falloff. This is pointless because spread already makes pellets inconsistent in hitting at range, and with damage falloff, what little pellets that do it are meaningless. This basically is a double penalty for something that doesn't require two penalties.

 

ὅπερ ἔδει δεῖξαι.

Edited September 21, 2014 by Arabaxus

[VKhaun]

ὅπερ ἔδει δεῖξαι.

You didn't prove any of those things... you stated a conflicting position without backup... Why in the world would we want a game based on linear progression? Why do you think DE is making one, if Boltor Prime is MR2? Why would you choose to omit upgrades already in-game like primes and wraiths?

 

"We should have nuclear grenades that auto kill all the enemies because PBAoE nuke powers don't scale well!"

This is not me making a point. This is me ignoring design direction and asking for an arbitrary solution to a self-invented problem.

 

 

1. Completely wrong. Weapons should have tiers. No tiers means literally no linear progression, which Warframe clearly suffers from. Why do you think locking powerful weapons like Boltor Prime behind Mastery Rank would make more sense? Because as of right now, Mastery Rank literally means nothing. The way to acquire mastery is also flawed. It is a great concept but bad execution because it locks progress through getting new weapons, ranking them to 30, and tossing them.

Because you say so?

 

 

2. Also completely wrong.

Which is why every void game has no Boltor Primes, but instead a bunch of people using marksman rifles and continuous weapons?

 

Tenno, please.

 

 

 

3. The mindset of "grab Boltor Prime first and everything else is mastery fodder" is a personal mindset caused by themselves..

Which every player shares and should not be an acceptable condition to DE. Focus Testing.

 

You go on to talk about the same thing mentioned in #1, which is an unsubstantiated assertion that the game is supposed to be a linear progression of weapons. You have not established this as a good or desirable idea and nothing DE has done indicates this is a significant part of progression. Even including upgrades like primes, the mod system is filling 99% of this role and every other devstream they're telling us this or that wouldn't be added because it's the role of mods.

 

 

 

4. This point, however, is completely relevant. What shotguns are lacking is that they should outperform rifles in some aspects, what I would imagine in Burst DPS. An ideal shotgun would be strong at close range. Take off damage falloff, because the spread of the firing cone should already be enough to discourage use at long range...

 

That sounds good for a specific shotgun's config... maybe Tigris and Hek... but IMO that's too narrow for a whole classification of weapon. If that's all we were going to do with all shotguns for all time, then they don't even deserve to be their own class of weapons. A solution has to differentiate shotguns entirely. Spread can't do that because you obviously lose the option of making them accurate. Sometimes you want to be accurate at close range, too. Sometimes you might want a shotgun to fire pellets in a specific pattern.

 

You could do crazy things with the shape of the spread, like have it spread on a curve, but that's forcing a square peg through a round hole. I like damage falloff personally. It lets you do whatever you want with accuracy and still get the damage degredation, leaving options open for a wide variety of shotguns with different degrees of falloff, accuracy, pellet spread patterns, etc.

Edited September 21, 2014 by VKhaun

[Arabaxus]

You didn't prove any of those things... you stated a conflicting position without backup... Why in the world would we want a game based on linear progression? Why do you think DE is making one, if Boltor Prime is MR2? Why would you choose to omit upgrades already in-game like primes and wraiths?

 

"We should have nuclear grenades that auto kill all the enemies because PBAoE nuke powers don't scale well!"

This is not me making a point. This is me ignoring design direction and asking for an arbitrary solution to a self-invented problem.

 

 

Because you say so?

 

 

Which is why every void game has no Boltor Primes, but instead a bunch of people using marksman rifles and continuous weapons?

 

Tenno, please.

 

 

 

Which every player shares and should not be an acceptable condition to DE. Focus Testing.

 

You go on to talk about the same thing mentioned in #1, which is an unsubstantiated assertion that the game is supposed to be a linear progression of weapons. You have not established this as a good or desirable idea and nothing DE has done indicates this is a significant part of progression. Even including upgrades like primes, the mod system is filling 99% of this role and every other devstream they're telling us this or that wouldn't be added because it's the role of mods.

 

 

 

 

That sounds good for a specific shotgun's config... maybe Tigris and Hek... but IMO that's too narrow for a whole classification of weapon. If that's all we were going to do with all shotguns for all time, then they don't even deserve to be their own class of weapons. A solution has to differentiate shotguns entirely. Spread can't do that because you obviously lose the option of making them accurate. Sometimes you want to be accurate at close range, too. Sometimes you might want a shotgun to fire pellets in a specific pattern.

 

You could do crazy things with the shape of the spread, like have it spread on a curve, but that's forcing a square peg through a round hole. I like damage falloff personally. It lets you do whatever you want with accuracy and still get the damage degredation, leaving options open for a wide variety of shotguns with different degrees of falloff, accuracy, pellet spread patterns, etc.

 

1. You and I may not want a game with linear progression, but time has proven again and again linear progression keeps players playing in an effort to improve their characters. Even competitive PvP games such as Call of Duty have linear progression to unlock new weapons. The most successful online MMOs all revolve around linear progression, see WoW, Diablo, PoE, and so on. Even if we don't want it, it has been proven time and time again to be a successful game structure that leads to a successful, profitable business model.

 

2. I don't mean to omit things such as Primes and Wraiths. The best example now is the recent Latron Wraith, which is on par with Latron Prime. Prime's don't have to be the absolute best, but should be on par with the absolute best. Of course, event weapons are to me a form of thanking they loyal playerbase with a shiny new toy, which results in complaints when the weapon is not "good".

 

3. Every Void game has Boltor Prime because people have spread the idea that Boltor Prime is the "best", because they take into account on paper DPS from a build calculator, which always assumes you are simply aiming and hitting the body repeatedly. It does not reflect things such as AoE damage, effects from status, and so on. This is one of the reason why launchers were not as popular as automatic rifles, because on paper it would show a paltry number such as 14k DPS, but the calculator does not accurately reflect that 14k is being dealt to multiple enemies at the same time. The second point, as I mentioned before, is the skill cap. Boltor Prime as a generic automatic rifle is the easiest to use and handle, as rapid-firing weapons punish missed shots less than precision weapons. Meanwhile, because the playerbase has decided that Boltor Prime is the best and spreads this idea around to new players, it becomes more popular because it has effectively been marketed better than the other weapons. Put that together with it being very user friendly, and you have the key to a popular weapon. 

 

4. Again, there may be linear progression through mods, but complaints you can "pay to win" by buying ranked mods is again cause of the trade system. On the same coin, Boltor Prime is thus not overpowered, as all weapons fall off extremely fast without powerful mods. A naked Boltor Prime may not be as bad as a naked MK-1 Braton, but a well modded MK-1 Braton is still leagues better than a naked Boltor Prime. Power drives mainly from mods, which scale on the base damage. So yes, there are already mechanics in place for linear progression. What I am asserting is that we need more, specifically linear progression that cannot be bypassed through purchasing things with platinum.

 

5. With regards to shotguns, I think that's how a semi-automatic, heavy, slow hitting shotgun would work, but I don't know how automatics would work. I've played with Boar Prime but it feels like an assault rifle handicapped to close range. Of course personal bias is at work here, since I prefer single shot shotguns because they usually kill in one shot more consistently.

[Mokkania]

 

lol, seems just like two different approach, but personally I don't consider one better than the other

 

only I didn't understand your point about the BP mentality thing

 

there is an interesting point about falloff that I had never seen mentionned, that if falloff was actually varied among weapons [and also could eventually have its own mod] it could be a work of balance along with accuraccy and spread, interesting.

 

 

mwell getting some other thing, I don't like too much innate punch through if it's on all shotguns, and better reload similarly if all shotguns have better reloads it's a bit strange.

What I'd personally see would be something on impact though I don't have a precise idea yet.

Edited September 21, 2014 by Mokkania

[VKhaun]

I'm not going back and forth with you in these giant exchanges to argue my way out of MMORPG mechanics DE has no interest in implementing in front of a community that hates grind, mandatory gear and wants more variety. It's not constructive, it's not interesting and it's not necessary.