So You Really Want To Fix Shotguns De? Read This.

[TheBulitt]

First off I will start off by saying Im biased when it comes to shotguns, I think they are the most effective weapon at all but the furthest distances that are present in most maps of Warframe. They get misrepresented in almost every game including so called "realism" shooters like the frostbite engine.

 

Recently shotguns got a buff to their "damage per pellet at range" and I think this is misreading/understanding of what shotguns mean at range.

 

There are a few youtube videos that can describe a tradeoff with range and damage that appear with shotguns but first I would like to point out the critical difference between shotguns at close range and shotguns at long range.

 

http://youtu.be/SqfyysHejxk

 

A shotgun is comprised of two distinct characteristics, extreme muzzle energy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muzzle_energy at close range due to the shot cup or the "wad" holding the shot together like a "slug" or "cut shell". At long range it only spreads to a maximum pattern and loses velocity fairly quickly. But the difference being its accuracy is usually higher at achieving any kind of minor wound(at range).

 

Dont change the damage per pellet change the spread (tighter, much tighter like 1-2m for a good distance without continual spread) and the damage at close range should spike and fall off around 10meters pretty rapidly. That is the tradeoff that shotguns give you.

 

So slug-sized maximum damage out to 10m then fall off to about 50-70m where it achieves maximum spread and maintains damage for another 80-100m where it drops off significantly due to each pellet not having any mass and being slowed by the aerodynamics. In a way it behaves almost like a rocket launcher that shoots little bullets.

 

As a fan of shotguns I would also point out how most of them use tube magazines for a reloading mechanic. Both semi automatic and pump shotguns give you the capability to do something called a combat reload:

 

This would prove highly effective and move shotguns into a whole new, more accurate role as a close range very versatile and effective crowd control weapon. As far as I can tell, all of the primary and secondary weapons in the game including bows use a unified box magazine reloading system where no matter when you reload you must reload the gun to full. With a combat reload, the tradeoff of reloading the whole magazine or one at a time applies to the gun at any capacity. When enemies are slowly coming in you can top off the magazine extremely fast if it is only missing one round or 5 or more with speedloaders

it doesnt have to cripple you in speed over the standard box magazine load times, although it wont be anything like Brakk it can still be fast. It can even be THIS fast:

thats 12 rounds in 5 seconds. Edited December 14, 2014 by TheBulitt

[MrNonApplicable]

I want this. DE plz give.

[VKhaun]

This looks like a big TL;DR version of the argument already repeated over and over:"Remove falloff, the spread does that!" which only makes sense if the game uses the same shells for every shotgun with these conventional spreads. As soon as you want to make a shotgun that is throwing anything but ordinary 12ga this whole thought process goes out the window. Tainted Shell would also turn every shotgun into a sniper rifle or bow.

[Burns2PvP]

Would be nice. Kind of shameful how at 7-10 meters the strun / strun wraith does absolutely no damage thanks to its drop I found.

[JerZeyCJ]

That last part is why I want a pump or lever action Shotgun to come along with (the very much needed) shotgun and shotgun mod buff. Aside from Lever/pump action shotguns just being plain awesome, being able to only reload one shell, fire that and to keep fighting, leaving a full reload until a lull in combat would be nice. It would be a good way to off set the rather long individual shell reloading sequence that the gun would most likely have.

 

 

Shameless self promotion of my Tenno Pump-Shotgun design, I call it the "Carrion":

[EHenderson]

That last part is why I want a pump or lever action Shotgun to come along with (the very much needed) shotgun and shotgun mod buff. Aside from Lever/pump action shotguns just being plain awesome, being able to only reload one shell, fire that and to keep fighting, leaving a full reload until a lull in combat would be nice. It would be a good way to off set the rather long individual shell reloading sequence that the gun would most likely have.

 

 

Shameless self promotion of my Tenno Pump-Shotgun design, I call it the "Carrion":

 

 

Do you have a page in the fan concepts section for this?

[FATEdPondera]

http://www.nerfnow.com/comic/image/748

What else needs to be said?

[Gahrzerkire]

COME ON FOR GODS SAKE FIX THE SHOTGUNS

[JerZeyCJ]

Do you have a page in the fan concepts section for this?

I do, but it barely got any responses. It's here: https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/221556-weapon-concept-tenno-pump-shotgun-the-carrion/

[Omnimorph]

First off I will start off by saying Im biased when it comes to shotguns, I think they are the most effective weapon at all but the furthest distances that are present in most maps of Warframe. They get misrepresented in almost every game including so called "realism" shooters like the frostbite engine.

 

Recently shotguns got a buff to their "damage per pellet at range" and I think this is misreading/understanding of what shotguns mean at range.

 

There are a few youtube videos that can describe a tradeoff with range and damage that appear with shotguns but first I would like to point out the critical difference between shotguns at close range and shotguns at long range.

 

http://youtu.be/SqfyysHejxk

 

A shotgun is comprised of two distinct characteristics, extreme muzzle energy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muzzle_energy at close range due to the shot cup or the "wad" holding the shot together like a "slug" or "cut shell". At long range it only spreads to a maximum pattern and loses velocity fairly quickly. But the difference being its accuracy is usually higher at achieving any kind of minor wound(at range).

 

Dont change the damage per pellet change the spread (tighter, much tighter like 1-2m for a good distance without continual spread) and the damage at close range should spike and fall off around 10meters pretty rapidly. That is the tradeoff that shotguns give you.

 

So slug-sized maximum damage out to 10m then fall off to about 50-70m where it achieves maximum spread and maintains damage for another 80-100m where it drops off significantly due to each pellet not having any mass and being slowed by the aerodynamics. In a way it behaves almost like a rocket launcher that shoots little bullets.

 

As a fan of shotguns I would also point out how most of them use tube magazines for a reloading mechanic. Both semi automatic and pump shotguns give you the capability to do something called a combat reload:

 

This would prove highly effective and move shotguns into a whole new, more accurate role as a close range very versatile and effective crowd control weapon. As far as I can tell, all of the primary and secondary weapons in the game including bows use a unified box magazine reloading system where no matter when you reload you must reload the gun to full. With a combat reload, the tradeoff of reloading the whole magazine or one at a time applies to the gun at any capacity. When enemies are slowly coming in you can top off the magazine extremely fast if it is only missing one round or 5 or more with speedloaders

it doesnt have to cripple you in speed over the standard box magazine load times, although it wont be anything like Brakk it can still be fast.

 

I like this idea, except for one thing: you can't compare the ranges in the game to real life because the maps are tiny compared to real life distances.  So in essence the relative ranges of all the weapons have to be scaled down and compressed, but hold relative to each other.

[TheBulitt]

My Model:

 

 

 

Edited December 13, 2014 by TheBulitt

[TheBulitt]

This looks like a big TL;DR version of the argument already repeated over and over:"Remove falloff, the spread does that!" which only makes sense if the game uses the same shells for every shotgun with these conventional spreads. As soon as you want to make a shotgun that is throwing anything but ordinary 12ga this whole thought process goes out the window. Tainted Shell would also turn every shotgun into a sniper rifle or bow.

"the argument already repeated" is misinformed and is blatantly wrong if it says the spread is all that happens to reduce damage at range. The pellets STOP spreading after a fairly short distance, its their (the pellets) velocity reducing, not the spread increasing, that tapers damage over range.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shotgun_shell#Shotshells_and_patterning

 

Edited December 13, 2014 by TheBulitt

[VKhaun]

You're not making sense anymore.

 

Your first post says not to change the damage per pellet and only change the spread and this will cause damage to spike and then fall off.

 

Dont change the damage per pellet change the spread (tighter, much tighter like 1-2m for a good distance without continual spread) and the damage at close range should spike and fall off around 10meters pretty rapidly. That is the tradeoff that shotguns give you.

 

 

 

Your pic then shows the spread stop changing after a point, and yet the damage still goes down... what mechanic is reducing damage if the spread is the same size and the pellets do the same amount of damage?

 

My Model:

 

 

 

Then you're saying "velocity reduction over range" reduces damage which is either lore justification for damage fall-off (A.K.A. changing damage per pellet) or you literally mean it's not hitscan anymore and the shot is literally getting slower... but that doesn't actually reduce damage on it own... you would have to have pellets that do less damage(Fall-off / changing damage per-pellet) or you would have to have fewer pellets hit (spread) to actually have the target take less damage.

 

... its their (the pellets) velocity reducing, not the spread increasing, that tapers damage over range.

 

Edited December 13, 2014 by VKhaun

[LtZefar]

First off I will start off by saying Im biased when it comes to shotguns, I think they are the most effective weapon at all but the furthest distances that are present in most maps of Warframe. They get misrepresented in almost every game including so called "realism" shooters like the frostbite engine.

 

Frostbite Engine games? You mean Battlefield 3 and 4? If so, those have never claimed to be Realistic. They just look good and have bullet physics.

 

 

Anyway all they need to do first is remove the damage drop off. NO OTHER gun have that mechanic so why should shotguns be in need of it?

It's not like we can't obliterate enemies on range with various weapons.

 

But first remove the damage drop off and let the spread do the work on balance. If a shotgun is accurate enough to hit on range then so be it. It won't break the game.

 

If someone gonna argue that it loses power on range in real life well that's not really the case. You see the bigger the charge in the shell is the longer they'll travel. A pistol has a small charge and will actually drop rather quickly.

Like Mythbusters showed. Yet we see none of that in this game because it would make pistols rather useless. But shotguns? Oh no we gotta make them useless for the entire year.

[Varzy]

To get this effect, they could eliminate the damage falloff and instead give shotguns an inherit boost in damage within the first 10m (less than the range of synapse, even). Maybe something like a x1.5 boost in base damage and a x2 boost in critical hit damage. This would encourage players to try out more crit builds on shotguns and reward dangerous, close quarters play.

 

And as you say, after this 10m, the pellets start spreading? And after about another 30-40m, they reach maximum spread and they start losing momentum, and there's damage falloff. This would make the effective range of most shotguns around 50m, comparable to our Warframe powers. But the range might need to be a little higher regardless.

 

Perhaps even all shotguns could have their own performance values, just like they all have their own spread and pellet count. Some shotguns could have high spike damage range (up to 15m) but a lower damage/crit damage multiplier, others could have a short spike damage range but a longer sustained damage range, only falling off after 65m, etc.

[TheBulitt]

so funny I try to show everyone how shotguns really are and all I get are post after post justifying the current damage model.

 

The model Im describing will give you MORE hits at range. When I say "dont increase the damage per pellet" what Im saying is each pellet DOES lose damage over range but it doesnt spread as much as the current model does.

 

Im trying to say that DE's recent change was wrong and should be reverted, and the spread pattern should be modified to include a very very tight spread at short range that transitions to a large spread at 10m. They could have left the old damage dropoff model over range, but dont increase the spread past 30-40m because MORE than 1 or 2 pellets SHOULD hit him, but each of those pellets does do reduced damage.

 

I dont know where people get this idea that shotgun pellets travel as fast as a rifle bullet, they infact never reach rifle velocities even as they leave the barrel they are significantly slower than a rifle bullet (1100 feet per second vs 2000+) their damage comes from the WEIGHT (read: MASS) of the COMBINED load held together in flight by the WAD, each pellet on its own literally does as much damage as a BB gun. In comparison a shotgun slug even though it has such a reduced velocity, can carry a tremendous impact for a significant range, simply because of its MASS.

Edited December 13, 2014 by TheBulitt

[LtZefar]

The damage drop off is what make shotguns useless at range. It doesn't matter if all pellets hit as it'll still do crap damage.

 

How do you not see this? :/

[TheBulitt]

why do you want shotguns to be useful at range? They are NOT, the problem is the game doesnt give you enough damage AT CLOSE QUARTERS to justify the uselessness at range. Go shoot a real gun keyboard warrior.

 

video after video confirming my damage model

Edited December 13, 2014 by TheBulitt

[Boondorl]

Im trying to say that DE's recent change was wrong and should be reverted...

 

I think you have a misunderstanding of the "recent" change. They didn't directly buff damage at range, they fixed a bug.

 

At max fall off range, shotguns would lose all base modification damage they had on. This bug had been in the game since fall off was first introduced. This made Point Blank, Vicious Spread, and the base damage portion of Blaze useless. The bug they fixed made it so these apply now. It was never intended to be a buff.

 

 

why do you want shotguns to be useful at range? They are NOT, the problem is the game doesnt give you enough damage AT CLOSE QUARTERS to justify the uselessness at range. Go shoot a real gun keyboard warrior.

 

People want their shotguns to be useful at range because no other weapon class has this drawback. If all the weapon classes had to suffer from fall off, people would not be complaining nearly as much. There's also the fact that this is a game, and realism is unnecessary. Consistency and balance far trump realism in the video game world. This takes place in a universe centuries after our time, with many space weaponry being produced. Who's to say they haven't fixed spread/velocity problems with shotguns with special chokes/ammo in the future?

 

As a final note, being condescending usually doesn't help get your point across.

[TheBulitt]

I do agree I shouldnt have went that far. All the other guns in the game behave similarly enough to their real-world counterparts to be counted as "realism" but the same reason why shotguns aren't balanced, and they arent effective either, is because they are just too disparate from real world

 

Shotguns should do more damage than ANY OTHER WEAPON within 10 meters. If not more than at least equal to a melee weapon, the reason they suck at long range is the same reason they are awesome in close quarters. That is the mechanic that breaks shotguns compared to other weapons, not playing up their strengths and trying to compensate for their weakness. There SHOULD be a disadvantage at long range compared to other weapons, I dont understand why we are trying to compare a shotgun to a fully automatic submachinegun/rifle or trying to make it behave the same either. They are simply too different to compare.

 

The problem is that reworking how shotguns work would mean having to remove hitscan from all shotguns, unless they are special ones that fire slugs. I think that is the thing that people are afraid to lose, but hitscan for shotguns is a bandaid that makes them unrealistic and also ineffective at any range.

Edited December 13, 2014 by TheBulitt

[Beatrix7hearts]

I do agree I shouldnt have went that far. All the other guns in the game behave similarly enough to their real-world counterparts to be counted as "realism" but the same reason why shotguns aren't balanced, and they arent effective either, is because they are just too disparate from real world

 

Shotguns should do more damage than ANY OTHER WEAPON within 10 meters. If not more than at least equal to a melee weapon, the reason they suck at long range is the same reason they are awesome in close quarters. That is the mechanic that breaks shotguns compared to other weapons, not playing up their strengths and trying to compensate for their weakness. There SHOULD be a disadvantage at long range compared to other weapons, I dont understand why we are trying to compare a shotgun to a fully automatic submachinegun/rifle or trying to make it behave the same either. They are simply too different to compare.

 

The problem is that reworking how shotguns work would mean having to remove hitscan from all shotguns, unless they are special ones that fire slugs. I think that is the thing that people are afraid to lose, but hitscan for shotguns is a bandaid that makes them unrealistic and also ineffective at any range.

Again with the realism comment, this is a futuristic game with future technology on weapons. It's a bit ludicrous to incorporate a realistic mechanic in a world that isn't realistic at all. I think shotguns are quite powerful at close range, and they should be in this game because thats how we see them in real life but you are asking too much to rework a whole system that basically says to other people that want "realism" in this game to pound on DE and ask the same, because believe it or not, i bet theres tons of people who would say they want rifles, snipers and launchers to be realistic as well. While the mechanic of its falloff is not the best, its certainly giving it the property of what shotguns do: Hit hard up close, be weak at long range. A fully modded and formaed hek kills anything up close at ease. A formaed sobek kills ambulas in less than 5 seconds. A pyrana modded potatoed and formaed with thew new slash mod makes sushi out of anything and lets not bring the Brakk which people say that is the most damaging shotgun of them all.

[TheBulitt]

The only thing hitscan works for is rifled bullets, for a shotgun hitscan makes it impossible to balance. It will be too inaccurate at long range and not powerful enough at close range. I don't understand why realism is a bad thing, we should all just use super nukes that kill everything with the press of a button if we want. Or lets just get a dubstep gun from Saints Row IV that just makes all the enemies drop their guns and dance... I don't understand why not SOME realism, especially to match the other guns which are already fairly realistic in this "mandatory unrealistic" world.

Edited December 14, 2014 by TheBulitt

[OriKlein]

Again with the realism comment, this is a futuristic game with future technology on weapons. It's a bit ludicrous to incorporate a realistic mechanic in a world that isn't realistic at all.

 

1) Your argument is flawed.

Any game attempts to ground itself in fictional pseudo-facts and rulesets in order to be playable for the player and to balance realism and fantasy in a way that makes the game FUN. Because if it is not fun, then the players don't want to play it.

Following your rationale, why bother giving descriptions to abilities and trying to make them seem any least bit of logical? Why not make Radial Disarm affect its 'void magic' on Infested as well and stop them from being able to attack?

 

 

2) Realism versus fantasy is not the issue here, anyway.

Shotguns currently are ineffective and non-optimal for the Warframe gameplay.

Extremely close range you get the full brunt, afterwards the shots start to miss and maybe a few will hit.

You and I may see big numbers with our completely polarized x4-6 shotgun and full finished mods which render the hits sufficiently hard to kill things, but any other normal players, or the beginners, who are not in the end game will discover shotguns to be severely lacking and worthless.

Shotguns should register damage at long range, even if all they do is is a 1hp scratch per pellet.

Shotguns should be very effective not only in very close range or extremely close range, but in medium range as well.

You should be registering hits, even if all you can amount to is back-paddling and chipping away at the enemy's health until you run out of ammo.

Via the current model, even at short ranges not all pellets hit, as they should, and you get rather low damage compared to the weapon's potential and at long range you barely get hits at all.

The model needs to be changed so that at close upto medium range the spread is tight and maximum damage potential is maintained, as per TheBulitt's diagram, and medium range the spread widens while still maintaining sufficient damage to cause injury (not kill) and at long range it becomes death by a thousand stings.

Best Regards,

Edited December 14, 2014 by OriKlein

[Boondorl]

The problem is that reworking how shotguns work would mean having to remove hitscan from all shotguns, unless they are special ones that fire slugs. I think that is the thing that people are afraid to lose, but hitscan for shotguns is a bandaid that makes them unrealistic and also ineffective at any range.

 

What you're asking for sounds similar to Killing Floor's shotguns. I'd agree with that. All the shotguns in that game use projectiles that move at a set speed (so they don't slow down after time). They seem to have a spread that starts wide and then becomes static after a certain distance. They come with innate puncture to make up for the downsides of slow-ish reload speeds, small magazines, low ammo pool, and travel time unlike the other weapons. They're also powerful and incredibly satisfying to use. Damage fall off isn't needed IMO as aiming at enemies far away takes a degree of skills the rifles don't require, and even then you're not guaranteed a kill since a lot of the enemies feel tough without being bullet sponges.

 

I'd love something similar in Warframe. Higher spread at range, innate punch through, high damage, breakable reloads, and travel time to keep it reasonable and so targeting enemies at range is more difficult. It'd also make the Tigris on the projectile speed mod make sense.

[00zau]

Yes, shotguns are unrealistic. However, I think they need to be. Otherwise they end up performing very similarly to semi-auto or burst rifles. Even though it's not how 'real' shotguns work, I think they should act as classic street sweepers, massive damage in a wide arc at close range. They still need a buff, but rather than remove falloff and tighten choke, do this;

*Massively increase both spread and pellet count. Low pellet count weapons would have damage per pellet reduced slightly, but get a larger increase in pellet count compared to other weapons. After the increase, most shotguns should have something like 500-1000 base damage, 50-100 pellet count, and a 15-25 degree firing cone.

*Damage falloff is kept, but reduced, and damage ramp up is added. Within 5-10 meters, 125% or 150% damage, and damage after 20 meters falls off to 66% to 50% damage at 40 meters, but no lower, The wide spread will do most of the falling off.

(This could vary based on weapon; a shotgun meant for a bit more range could have a longer distance before falloff starts and have a higher percentage of damage remaining at the end of falloff)

*Reduction in fire-rate across the board, and a massive increase in recoil. These weapons hit like the hammer of Thor now, and they damn well ought to feel like it. This also helps make them a bit more difficult to use. Automatic shotguns might keep the fire-rate, but in exchange not recieve as massive a damage buff.

*High, innate punchthrough. Let's hit this dude and splatter his guts all over the guy behind him as well.

 

Basically, this would turn shotguns into the shortrange version of sniper rifles. Massive single shot damage, hitting multiple targets through spread and punchthrough, but ineffective at the longer ranges where rifles still rule. This gives shotguns a niche to rule, instead of trying to make them realistic and thus having to compete with rifles for the same jobs.