RE: Shotguns

Slugs m80

"A shotgun slug is typically far more massive than a rifle bullet. One common .30-06 bullet, for example, weighs 150 grains (10 g). The lightest common 12 gauge shotgun slug is the 7⁄8 oz slug, which weighs approximately 383 grains (25 g)."

You get one or the other for purposes of balance, basically, though a range extension for most games with shotguns would be nice.

Whoops, pic related

Shotguns IRL do actually do piss-all damage after five feet. Well not five, more like fifty, but yeah it applies. Pellets carry fuck-all worth of momentum and immediately lose it all to air drag. 50 yards is pushing the limit for a buckshot and you'll barely be able to seriously wound a deer at that distance, for birdshot you're limited with like 20 yards. That's with absolutely zero protection but the skin, if target is wearing clothes (esp. leather i.e. jacket) then your effective killing range with buckshot is like 15 yards. And yeah then there's also spread, for a shotgun that's normally 1" of spread per 3' of distance. Good luck even fucking landing pellets on your target to begin with at 50 yards.

You say that like it's not an extremely easy thing to balance while staying realistic.

Buckshot is 100% stopped by soft armor, while even non-AP intermediate cartridges swiss cheese kevlar.

maybe action movies lied to us…

Yeah but then you'd have to add in an armor mechanic, just to balance a "realistic" shotgun.

OP was talking about pellets.

There should be a proper armor mechanic regardless.

Shooting at a dude in full fucking kevlar and plates with 9mm or .45 should do less than dick, yet they're perfectly effective in shooters.

Well actually yeah. Go play Insurgency. The devs said "fuck it" to ballance and just put in there as realistically represented IRL guns as they could. The only thing of ballance there is that different shit costs different amount of loadout points, with automatic and accurate shit costing more to equip. But otherwise it's the whole ballance is just your own situational awareness, which weapon to use best for your current playstyle.

Then what's the point of using any other weapon? You're right to complain, but it's for all the wrong reasons. Shotguns just need their spread dramatically reduced, E.Y.E. was decent if just for that alone.

Hurg

Speaking of shotguns, I've wanted someone to bring in a gun similar to the UTAS UTS shotgun. Two barrels, 7 rounds in each. You can fire only the right or left barrel, or alternate. The idea of having one barrel filled with slugs and the other with buckshot or something else has always appealed to me.

There is a reason why the army supplies soldiers with rifles rather than shotguns you know.

What exactly are the benefits to using a shotgun in any sort of vaguely-militaristic setting?

On the other side of things, though:

Extremely high chance of a 1 shot stop when gunning down unarmored civilians.

Trench sweeping and similar scenarios. Extremely effective and easily put all other arms to shame in that application.

The Flamethrower would like a word

And how are you going to proceed through the fiery blazing trench you just have swept you dipshit?

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Vidya shotguns are just melee attacks and have little to do with actual shotguns.
I like them that way.

There were called trench sweepers during WW1, Germany considered their use an illegal act of war:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winchester_Model_1897#Military_use

The was the day I knew that game was forever awesome when I could outsnipe snipers with a shotgun with no scope.

Someone with a basic sense for game design and balance.

Kill yourself realismfag.

Go play some 7.62.

Because shotguns ARE a melee range weapon, you ignorant faggot.

They are designed for fucking up people in close quarters combat, like exchanging gunfire inside buildings, not for getting bullseyes at 100 yards.

Good game designers did.
If it was realistic there would be absolutely no reason to use any other weapon.

Depends on the type of shot you're shooting, faget.

Using birdshot as an example at long-range shooting against humans is like using rubber bullets to say that 9mm isn't lethal.

ebin

People who don't understand pic related or why its weapon balance was so perfect.

Namely because fuck realism the whole game so if the way a weapon worked didn't make any sense the experience wasn't so aggravating, but more importantly because weapon switching was fast while the action was slow and ttk was high. With one or two exceptions nearly every weapon was essential, and many encounters with other players would require the use of several weapons. Switching to the super shotgun at the right moment was very important.

True to form, the lesson every other developer took away from this experience was "shotgun so powerful, must be short range or it's not fair."

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If games were realistic you wouldn't even go in to begin with. Just send a drone and have the chairforce handle it like we normally do.

My brain is telling me this is bubba.
My dick is telling me this is beauty.

HELP

Why not both?

Because it looks like hot shit but it's just smelly shit, the only thing you'll manage to light with that is dry grass

This is from Wikipedia, so take that with a grain of salt. Salt is the antithesis of Spice.

Temperature is never a problem if the heated part has a high enough heat capacity. Anything that contains water, like your skin, is safe from short but intense heat.

Like real life, right? You guys are fucking stupid.

Balance / higher skill ceiling. By making the shotguns highly situational they make it a high skill weapon, noobs will either avoid it or use it at too longer range while skilled players will only use it in very tight quarters where long range engagements are unlikely or avoidable.

Personally I prefer shotguns done realistically with maps big enough that they are still range limited compared to other weapons.
ARMA is a great example as the shotty is effective to ~100m but rifles are effective to ~600m keeping the shotty a situational weapon. It's fine for CQB but not so great if you have to cover an open field.

Thats why you need to change it up a bit.

turn it into a napalm round

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It's a map size issue, if the map doesn't have plenty of open spaces over 100m across then there is not disadvantage to using a shotty. In reality large open spaces are common, in vidya not so much.

You know what I like? When shotguns fire individual bullets, each with mediocre or low damage individually but massive damage when combined, and a spread that isn't too large. That way the range is decent and against large enemies the shotguns are still effective

They are actually used by a lot of militaries because when you are going through a door having something that will drop someone without armor on the first hit is useful. While rifles are lethal they generally kill through blood loss which gives they guy you just shot 1-2 minutes of still being able to operate his weapon when all he needs is a couple of seconds.

This thread makes a lot of good points, but for me it mostly comes down to this:

With a rifle or whatever, it can hit things point-blank and at some range. Shotguns are only good point-blank, more or less. Thus, to me, rifles and such are objectively overall better for being less situational, and I rarely ever use shotguns at all, unless I absolutely know for certain I am ONLY going to be fighting things really really close, which basically means replaying a section I've already been through. Nobody says other guns are broken for covering a variety of situations with one gun, so why would it break shotguns? As far as I'm concerned, the average vidya shotgun isn't balanced by having no range, they're the worse choice for it. I just want a balanced shotgun. If that means giving it half decent range at the cost of less huge damage point-blank, I'd be fine with that. I don't care about realism, I just want a shotgun I want to use for once.

I can't think of any game I have played where I couldn't use the shotgun effectively. It's normally just a case of using cover to close on enemies instead of engaging from where I first saw them.

The hardest time I have had using a shotty was the first checkpoint in STALKER SOC but even then they give you slugs that will reach out far enough if you are willing to take your time.

Except vidya shotguns never have even close to 100m effective range in the first place. And nobody's asking for that kind of range anyway, just for shotguns to be useful past spitting range.

yeah thats why i got a 3rd degree burn on my finger from lighting a match wrong

shotguns are effective at 100 yards. theyre good for hunting birds. slugs are good upto around 150 yards.

rifles are good for 300+ yards.

having a shotgun function like a slightly longer melee weapon is stupid. also, shotguns dont spread that much. especially with something like 00 buck.

There have been many games to pull off a successful shotgun. battlefield and rainbow six titles. also swat 4.

All you need is an underslung chainsaw, and the right protective gear to protect your eyes from guts and your ears from the screams of the innocent .
God damn, I want to play a game where you just chainsawshotgun through hordes of enemies out in the woods.

Being able to sneak up and blast works in STALKER, no question. But considering that you can also be sneaky and line up a headshot from further range with practically any rifle or half-decent pistol and get the same "one shot and it's done" results, I still never found shotguns worth using. Plus, when you do get noticed and bandits or whatever are running around, with adequate skill you can still headshot them at midrange with most guns. But shotguns are useless beyond a certain point no matter how good your aim is.

It's not about being able to use shotguns at all, it's that most of the time, the tradeoff between damage and range is so steep that overall, they're the worse choice. They loose more utility for the extremely short range than they gain for the high damage where they shine. I only ever bust out the shotguns in STALKER when it's time to go into labs or tunnels and I know it's gonna be lots of very short-range fighting. And even then, I don't really feel they're better, it's just that I got lots of shotgun ammo stored up, might as well use it where it's the closest to worthwhile.

I would recommend using some gloves to prevent yourself from cutting on that edge though.

I thought that spoiler was going to be a rifle from Gears of War

I see your point and agree, I suppose I'm somewhat out of touch as I mainly play vidya with realistic shotguns so I don't have to deal with the worst of it.
If you want to try some semi-realistic shotties I recommend Insurgency, RO2 and ARMA.

Did you light yourself on fire? Are you posting from beyond the grave?

get drunk start chain-smoking with hotel matches and find out

Are you retarded or just pretending? I was specifically referencing buckshot the whole time, the biggest baddest shot load. The only bigger load than that is a slug, but slug is essentially singular big ass shot pellet, it still not comparable to rifle bullets in terms of range and retaining energy with distance traveled.

Spot a fag who never fired a gun.

100 yards my ass, holy shit look at this faggot.

What type of buckshot? 00, 4/0? Normal or magnum?

There's a million different varieties of shotshells, "buckshot" doesn't tell me shit.

>it has worse range and damage than the melee attack

ABSTRACTION
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Damage falloff is proportional to the spread of the shot at distance

If you know your shit about firearms from Wikipedia, you shouldn't engage in arguments about it, really.

How ironic.

Only a faggot who doesn't actually knows his shit about shotguns wouldn't know what's implied under the "buckshot" here.

Nice downwote tbh fam.

I've made shotshells with something very similar to what that fellow described. I really don't recommend shooting anything that may catch fire. In fact if you want fire just rig up some 37mm fireworks for a "Flare" gun.

In Buttholefilled 3, I destroyed the fuck out of people using a scoped 870 with slugs. Too bad about the game sucking my goddamn ass, and being an abomination.

Nah, that's just because you're an idiot that can't even light matches properly.

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it's bizarre to think that the modern battlefield games did anything right, but their shotguns felt pretty good. not as good as Insurgency's used to be though - Insurgency's shotguns (two, both were pump-action) were basically a guaranteed kill up to about fifty or so feet, and with slugs you could do some long-range bullshit with them. they nerfed them hard for some reason though, so now if anybody's using armour - and everybody is using armour - even slugs are completely worthless

that was a glorious year or so, though, taking down tacticool kiddies with a spray of buckshot and enjoying the fact that the weapon and attachments cost less than the silencer on their M14

ajj lmau

I have never seen a video game where shotguns are useless beyond 5 feet.
I have also never seen a game where shotguns did not outrange melee.

Most video games, shotguns are effective for about 15 feet.
In midrange, they still work but don't have an advantage anymore.
And only until tou get to long range does it become useless.

That's it. Nothing more nothing less than tourneyfags complaining about balance. Look at all shooters pre-tourneyfags and you'll see a shotgun as OP as it needs to be.

Groovy

Because it leads to more enjoyable gameplay situations.

Do you have any idea how severe a third degree Burk is? How did you manage to torch your flesh by one repair with a match? How are you that stupid?

Vast majority of videogames compress distances(among other things) for the sake of gameplay/performance.

Most weapons will have their ranges reduced in proportion to that compression, for example: if a map in a shooter has 300 meters across, weapons that'd normally be effective against an enemy within 300 meters, will have it's effective range reduced to about a third of that distance.

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It's a sad fact of life when Project Brutality has some of the most fun shotgun action of any FPS to date.

I can play for hours just messing around with the three shotgun variants because they are so effective and powerful.

Try Shotgun Frenzy, it's actually my favourite multiplayer .wad ever

You never played Doom? The shotgun is one of your best long range tools.

because in video games shotguns are a gimmick

tbh fam, as much as everyone hates it, FO4 did a good job with combat shotties when you threw a good choke on it.

Yeah, a lot of games miss out on opportunities to make a shotgun a well-rounded utility weapon. It could fill in the roles of DMR and submachine gun. It could definitely co-exist with another shotgun that had enough power to shred enemies to ribbons but piss-poor effective range.

Those doubles have been sorely wasted.

Only two games I've ever played that treat shotguns oddly well despite avoiding realism and isn't FEAR.
Second in a second.

Second.

Seriously though if your shotguns aren't applicable at range SOMEHOW then why would I even bother with it over an SMG and some knives or something, fuck.

Fear succumbs to to the point that if you're in the "OCCULT ENERGY :^)" range, it fucking meat-chunks your target and kills the guy behind him.

I'd agree, except the actual ranges of the levels are conducive to that.
You rarely end up with a scenario where a shotgun isn't a good call.

Well yeah, I can agree to that. It's so fucking efficient that there's no reason to ever swap it out once you get it, it always justifies a slot.

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Slugs in Bad Company 2 made it bearable.

WHAT IS DOOM?

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csgo im looking at you.

Doom's regular shotgun is okay, but falls short damage value wise to most enemies.
Doom's super shotgun is essentially a rocket launcher in damage value at close range, but has spread the size of Wisconsin.
The main reason the super shotgun is useful is because you can run 60 mph, constantly, ensuring that the effective range becomes totally meaningless.

>BF4588164 haha sick meme kiddo
>nobody will play Infinite because muh reboot

checked

those are beautiful

Correct.

if you want an actual answer, the reason is that games want to always focus on combat against enemies very close to you (other than stuff like ARMA). Even parts that are supposedly for snipers in games are really more well suited for a regular assault rifle. This is because people like to see what they're shooting at clearly on the screen, so the range/accuracy of every weapon is scaled down considerably. If shotguns were realistically accurate, they'd be way better in games than anything else in most situations because pretty much every shooter is about mid range combat encounters at most.

And thus in a lot of games I just plain don't use shotguns, the awesome up close damage just isn't overall worth them being basically useless once the enemy's about 15 feet away or more.

Again, nobody's asking for realistic shotgun range though. We just want them to have a little range.