Shotguns Require And Have Required Changes For A Long Time: They Lack Damage, Range, Have Poor Pellet Mechanics

[MechaTails]

Nah. I've used most of the shotguns and they're monsters, they don't need any tweaking. But everyone wants them to be rifles so DE will probably cave.

 

If the problem is that they can't last to wave 70+, well, that's an entirely different problem and it's not with the game.

 

 

the way this game works it's amost suicidal getting too close.

 

Yep, at least with melee you can block and counter attack, even stun and proc your way to safety.

 

The only thing shotguns need is a guaranteed Impact proc (stagger) on every enemy you hit, making close range shooting much less suicidal.

 

TL;DR;I dun care what u think Tails:

The problem isn't that shotguns are weak in this game, because they definitely aren't. The problem is that shotguns are close range weapons in this game, and that's usually a very bad place to be considering the million lasers flying at you. Players dont like to be in that position so they lash out at the weapon. Might as well remove shotguns entirely and replace them with a new type of weapon.

 

Then again, I use Banshee and her tissue armor and do fine with shotguns lol

Edited October 29, 2014 by DarkTails

[Noble_Cactus]

I do fine with shotguns too. But I still think they're really boring and feel underpowered compared to other weapons, outside the Phage.

 

Note that when I say feel underpowered, I mean the actual feel of the weapon. As in, no stagger, few procs, few crits, no knockback, etc. They do fine damage against Lv1-40 content, but then again most things do and that's just a sign of the game's scaling being all out of whack.

 

Also what is this "make shotguns into rifles" thing you keep bringing up? Sounds like a strawman to me, since nobody is implying that at all. In fact, most people want shotguns to feel unique among the rest of the game's weapons because they feel like gimped rifles as it is.

 

 

 

I've got a question for those of you keeping up with that sort of stuff. How many times has DE mentioned shotgun buffs as coming?

 

Once.

 

Twice if you count them fixing falloff taking damage mods into account a month back. Which is a bit disappointing, since that seems to mean that they're fine with the idea of falloff :/

Edited October 29, 2014 by Noble_Cactus

[Kthal]

One thought about damage falloff...

 

What if it was made perpendicular? So that the damage per pellet is reduced proportionally to how far it has deviated from the crosshair.

 

 

 

I just want to be able to run a max Vile Precision build on my Boar so that I can use it as a long-range, precision weapon.

[MechaTails]

Also what is this "make shotguns into rifles" thing you keep bringing up?

 

You guys want to remove the damage falloff even though there's no need for it. What other conclusion am I supposed to draw, aside from you guys want them to be rifles to hit things much farther away?

 

Let's say the damage falloff is removed, then what happens? How is that going to change how you guys use the shotgun?

 

Removing falloff would in theory make them more forgiving to use, but the pellet spread would still reduce the damage you do at long range.

 

Shotguns aren't bad, they just aren't a good fit for the long range nature of the game. You can use mods to help with that though.

 

Also:

 

Also what is this "make shotguns into rifles" thing you keep bringing up? Sounds like a strawman to me, since nobody is implying that at all.

 

I just want to be able to run a max Vile Precision build on my Boar so that I can use it as a long-range, precision weapon.

 

rofl, thanks K.

Edited October 29, 2014 by DarkTails

[Kthal]

rofl, thanks K.

 

It's not about making a powerful weapon, but about making one which, while extremely unorthodox, suits me perfectly.

 

 

No idea about this shotgun->rifle thing, but if shotguns end up sharing the mods with rifles, they will become extremely overpowered. Damage dropoff removal of some sort is all that's needed.

[Arunafeltz]

I have little to say cause everyone pretty much said everything. But I still cri everytiem...

 

 

*cradles Hek*

[MechaTails]

I understand, you want the shotgun to function like a rifle, that's what I'm saying. Every time these shotgun topics pop up the general vibe is players want them to work like rifles, dealing full damage at long range. And that's fine I guess, I don't think it's necessary, but the world wont end if/when it happens.

 

(im not talking about mods, sorry if I was confusing)

[Kthal]

I understand, you want the shotgun to function like a rifle, that's what I'm saying. Every time these shotgun topics pop up the general vibe is players want them to work like rifles, dealing full damage at long range. And that's fine I guess, I don't think it's necessary, but the world wont end if/when it happens.

 

(im not talking about mods, sorry if I was confusing)

 

Spread should still nerf them into the ground if you are trying to snipe with them, but the option to mod-that-out should be there.

 

I am very pleased with projectile speed becoming a moddable stat (fix Buzlok please...), and having more degrees of customisation is a move in the right direction.

 

 

Alternatively, perhaps a mod or mods reducing damage dropoff (base cost 10, 10 ranks, 9%/rank?) would satisfy a portion of the community.

[Duch99pl]

mods are to weak,

even if a shotgun had like 20-30% crit its not vailable as the mods at maxed gives like 60% crit chance I believe ..........

[hijinks_the_turtle]

The thing is shotguns need something that the other weapons don't do.  Also, I think the damage fall off should be out the window, shotguns are being overshadowed by the others who do their job better.

[Kthal]

Another thought on shotgun dropoff mechanics:

 

Why not have each pellet do slightly less damage depending on the number of pellets which missed. If, for example, a 5 pellet shotgun had a 5% penalty per pellet, that would be a -20% damage if only one impacted, making the damage somewhat trivialised, and augmenting the natural dropoff caused by spread. (I think it might also statistically simulate shotguns having a much higher pellet count in the same spread area, instead of buffing the pellet counts massively at the cost of processing power)

 

This would also make multishot mechanics in shotguns more unique, as the effective dropoff would increase with more multishot. Following the above example, if you ran +120% multishot for a total of 11 pellets, if only one connected, you would end up with a -50% damage on that single pellet. This would make multishot a double edged sword.

Edited October 29, 2014 by Kthal

[Noble_Cactus]

I understand, you want the shotgun to function like a rifle, that's what I'm saying. Every time these shotgun topics pop up the general vibe is players want them to work like rifles, dealing full damage at long range. And that's fine I guess, I don't think it's necessary, but the world wont end if/when it happens.

(im not talking about mods, sorry if I was confusing)

So I missed one person who specifically said they'd like to use them at long range. Perhaps he is the exception rather than the rule.

Anyway, I think most people who want falloff removed understand (and are fine with the fact that) pellet spread will prevent shotguns from becoming precision rifles. You even said it yourself:

Removing falloff would in theory make them more forgiving to use, but the pellet spread would still reduce the damage you do at long range.

So answer me this: if we want to use shotguns at longer ranges, and you admit that it won't turn them into rifles because of the pellet spread, what is the issue with removing falloff?

-

Individual pellets may still one shot Lv30 enemies at range. However, this isn't a shotgun issue as it is a damage issue with all of the game's weapons. Bottom line is that falloff makes shotguns un-fun to use for many players, regardless of how strong they might actually be.

Hey, I have a great idea: Let's put a restriction on precision rifles that makes them do less damage to enemies within 10m? After all, they shouldn't be doing such high damage at the ranges where shotguns should dominate.

See how silly that sounds?

Edited October 29, 2014 by Noble_Cactus

[MechaTails]

The fall off doesnt have to be removed, theres no need for it, because shotguns are working exactly the way the developers intended, as devastating close range weapons.

Yes, the spread would reduce the damage anyway, so why even bother removing the falloff if the result is the same? Waste of effort.

Again, its going to happen anyway because players want to use things in weird ways, and thats fine i guess

Edited October 29, 2014 by DarkTails

[Kthal]

The fall off doesnt have to be removed, theres no need for it, because shotguns are working exactly the way the developers intended, as devastating close range weapons.

Yes, the spread would reduce the damage anyway, so why even bother removing the falloff if the result is the same? Waste of effort.

Again, its going to happen anyway because players want to use things in weird ways, and thats fine i guess

 

The difference is between dropoff proportional to x^2 (spread) and x^3 (spread + forced dropoff).

 

The difference is between shotguns being ineffective at range, or being crippled at anything over 10m.

[LtZefar]

Remove damage fall off.

Let the spray pattern do it's job on reducing the amount of pellets that hit on range.

 

Shotguns will be balanced at this point.

 

It's not like they will break the game.

[MechaTails]

Being ineffective and crippled is the same thing in this case. Shotguns are ineffective at range because of spread and dropoff and damge being distributed through the pellets. All that amounts to shotguns being crippled at range because you may hit with 2 or 4 pellets, doing a fraction of total damage. You might as well throw a Lato at them lol.

Removing dropoff wont help with that at all, so why bother

[LtZefar]

Being ineffective and crippled is the same thing in this case. Shotguns are ineffective at range because of spread and dropoff and damge being distributed through the pellets. All that amounts to shotguns being crippled at range because you may hit with 2 or 4 pellets, doing a fraction of total damage. You might as well throw a Lato at them lol.

Removing dropoff wont help with that at all, so why bother

But the shotgun Hek has a pretty good accuracy on range. So it will help shotguns. Also some bosses are larger targets and we have to get up close and personal with these bosses to do some damage. This is silly because a shotgun has an effective range of like 200 meters.

 

Pistols have in real life a shorter range than Shotgun. But they can hit targets far far away and still deal the same damage. Even if it's a Bolt from AKBolto. But oh no shotguns are the ones that NEED to have their damage reduced.

 

Merelok hits like a cannon ball on enemies no matter the range. Even more so than the sniper version. It's quite ridiculous.

[MechaTails]

But the shotgun Hek has a pretty good accuracy on range. So it will help shotguns.

 

Hek is very accurate, Drakgoon can snipe, Phage can have pin-point accuracy. All those weapons are already incredibly strong and kill everything, they don't need falloff removed.

 

The other shotguns with wide spreads won't benefit much since pellets will scatter everywhere anyway.

[Sixty5]

A maxed out Tigris will do less damage per shot than an unformad Paris prime, throw in falloff and spread, and you have a weapon that should, to quote Scott, "hit like a truck" merely tickling enemies

I've been saying for a long time that shotguns need a bit of love (the reason it was mentioned on stream was my question).

Removing falloff is a good start imo, but I'd like to see some new mechanics.

The first pellet of a shotgun shot should deal 50% of the weapons damage, with the remaing pellets splitting up the rest of the damage.

If you have a shotgun with 100 damage and 10 pellets, hitting 10 enemies with one pellet each would deal 50 damage to each of them.

Boom, now shotguns are awesome at dealing with crowds AND at killing fast moving light enemies.

[DarthGuy101]

What if shotguns kept falloff with range, but got a damage buff or rampup at close range. What if at some distance, say 15m, they do 100% damage. Further than that, they fall off at a certain percentage. But as you get closer to an enemy, the damage increases by a larger percentage. Shotguns could become the risk vs reward weapon. Get in close to take out big chunks of a boss' health with every shot but be exposed to their retaliation.

 

That and I think shotgun mods could use some buffing. Other weapon category mods can be upgraded higher than shotgun mods can be.

Edited October 30, 2014 by DarthGuy101

[Neocyberman]

In all of this I'm seeing no discussion of the issue of the mods. Part of the reason rifles almost completely replace shotguns within their effective range is that riffle mods are just plain better.

[MechaTails]

 I think shotgun mods could use some buffing. Other weapon category mods can be upgraded higher than shotgun mods can be.

 

That's because Shotguns are insanely strong to begin with.

[Asynaptic2]

Have to agree with the well thought out analysis by the Original Post and the majority of posters here.

Shotguns are in dire need of a fix before they can be brought out of retirement as a useful primary.

I do hope consideration is given to the multiple threads pleading for shotgun rehabilitation.  Shotguns really do need help for all the reasons posted by the thoughtful perceptive and dedicated players here.

Edited November 2, 2014 by Asynaptic2

[Xana_Skullsunder]

I agree with the OP, and would also like to point out how much the Hek and Tigris suck outside the issues shotguns have in general. The Hek has 4 shots, the Tigris has 2. Both spend more time reloading than shooting.

 

My question is, why? The "basic" sniper, Vulkar, has /6/ shots, as does the "basic" shotgun, Strun. I feel like both those guns should get double mag capacity, on top of the buffs discussed here. They're only close range combat, but they suck at it, thanks to all the time spent reloading. You're better off with melee.

Edited November 2, 2014 by XanaSkullpulper

[MechaTails]

 Shotguns really do need help for all the reasons posted

 

...Except they don't need any help because they do their job well. lol

 

Granted, 2 to 4 shot weapons are terrible for a mob-based game, even if they do OHKO things. That's a problem with the weapon type not fitting the nature of the game. You have to compensate either by adjusting your playstyle or mods, IE Punch Through.

 

I can't get used to Tigris, it's cool but at only 2 shots it slows the game down so much on solo.

 

If I had to change anything about shotguns, I'd just go ahead and give them all innate Punch Through, because it feels mandatory to add Seeking Force to handle mobs. I can play without SF, but the game slows down too much.

 

All shotguns would now have 2.0m or PT, and if you decide to add Seeking Force it can totally pierce the entire mob, instead of just 2 or 3 enemies. It could also shoot through almost any cover. If 2.0m is enough, you now have a free slot to add another mod.

 

-----

 

Need to reload? You know you can knockdown groups of enemies simply by jump kicking them, right? You can also slide to cover while you reload? And there's punch through to wipe out mobs, so even if you only have 4 shots it doesn't matter because you kill everything in 2-3.

Edited November 2, 2014 by DarkTails