Combat shotguns currently feel bad, especially for havoc. They were passable for auric, but as has been pointed out before, they feel clunky. I have a ton of real life experience with shotguns, and I feel part of why they feel clunky has to do with their implementation. I do not mean to make that sound like an insult to whoever designed them, because they did a lot of things right. So please take this as a meaningful critique I hope will come across as positive and informative feedback. I will do my best to make it easy and enjoyable to digest.
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First off lets discuss what the combat shotguns actually are - as far as I can tell through all of the animations they are pump action shotguns (though, as someone once pointed out they could be through some form of techno magicka a semi automatic that is akin to a spas-12 that can alternate between pump/semi auto - but since there are no controls to allude to this I doubt it). Length wise they seem to be about 18-20 inches long, which with 2 3/4" shells would put their capacity somewhere between 7+1 to 8+1. Based on sizing comparison from the rejectâs shells to their hands, weâre dealing in the realm of 2 3/4 inch shells. The combat shotgun is a bottom fed, side ejecting model with a single tubular magazine. It does have external charging handle mounted to the left side, but it has no use as far as I can tell. Possibly mounted on the back of the shotgun is a forend release that allows manual operation of the forend?
What are the shells?
Iâll have to count holes but Iâd wager the there are between 7-9 pellets per shot. So Iâm guessing itâs implied to be 00 buckshot. For the standard load on each gun.
The zarona special shell, is not a special shell at all. The pellet count is 7, and the shell, through some form of techno heresy is capable of shooting in a perfect horizontal line. The real world equivalency would be that the shotgun has some form of an adjustable duck bill choke⌠But none of that makes sense.
The agripinaa special is a rifled slug. Nothing too special about it, slugs tend to have more recoil than buckshot. They are just a solid mass as opposed pellets traveling down a barrel. They come in a variety of shapes and sizes.
The accatran special shell essentially a dragons breath round. A dragons breath round is honestly a pretty insane round (especially with how often hadron is begging us not to damage things). It is a shotgun shell filled with magnesium shavings. Once lit magnesium burns super hot and the force would definitely embed magnesium into skin and would burn its way through carapace if it made it into the cracks in the armor. Where it would fail irl is where it succeeds in game - it would not penetrate a bulwarkâs shield⌠It ainât plasma. But hey it should absolutely cook exposed and decomposing flesh. Magnesium fires arenât your typical fires, I mean, look at magnesium flares, they stay lit underwater.
(best not to shoot them in the woods⌠or near anything flammable.
The 4th - magical shell that is the in the game is a âflechetteâ - though the concept behind it is mind boggling. Through the power of a blessing, scoring a critical hit on an enemy restructures the chemical composition and shape of of your lead buckshot into steel fin stabilized penetrators. Which causes bleeding damage.
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So what feels bad about it? Iâll be addressing this from a veteran/zealot perspective
#1. loading a special shell consumes any reload speed boost. Youâre allowed to quickly reload a single shell - honestly I donât think that the special shell should consume this bonus - it feels bad when it happens - alternatively a solution could be to simply make one time reload bonuses last a specific time frame (for reload talents like sainted gunslinger)
#2. The Combat shotguns have no means of dealing meaningful damage to carapace - except through critical hits or through the agripinaa slug special. Critical hit chance can only be upped through talents like critical chance boost and deadshot - forcing shotgun to take deadshot to have an unreliable chance against carapace feels bad. Alternatively, special shells could be the path for carapace damage for all 3 varieties; give zarona flechette shells to bleed through carapace, let accatranâs dragons breath rounds cool through carapace and let agripâs point blank slugs punch holes.
#3. Unnecessary animations - Despite the fact that a round would be in the chamber, after completing a standard reload animation the character racks the forend - which would ironically eject that round from the chamber. Any time that a shotgun has a round already in the chamber there is never a reason to rack the forend. THIS specific issue could be very easily addressed by implementing what I will discuss below about breach loading.
#4. Suppression at close ranges doesnât feel meaningful enough on game modes like havoc, but seems almost comedically strong on lower difficulties
#5. The tubular magazine holding ~13 shells leads to long reload times
#6. The Zarona special deals less damage than itâs primary fire. It knocks back but its use is wonky.
#7. The Accatran special shell has little to no knockback - but has infinite cleave⌠For a close quarters gun Iâd probably accept limited cleave and an upfront damage profile closer to the standard shell. Currently the special shell should rarely be loaded unless a specific for it arises, that kind of feels since it youâve loaded it and you encounter say a mutant, youâll be wasting your special shell, and shooting 2-3 standard rounds into the mutant anyway.
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#1. Breach loading is needed. Okay, so what IS it? Breach loading is a method of reloading a shotgun that has an empty chamber by loading the shell directly into an open ejection port. The forend is racked back to open the ejection port, the single shell is loaded, then the forend is racked forward. Here is an example of a breachload:
The most important part about this subject is exactly how the order of operations should go for this:
Once a shotgun is empty, the forend should be racked back to open the breach
Once you are out of ammo the reload animation should always be a breach load into the chamber and the forend racked forward
If there is a round in the chamber the reload animation should always be a bottom fed shell through the loading gate, until the capacity is maxed out. There is absolutely no need to rack the shotgun since there is already a round in the chamber
#2. Special shells should be rethought. Itâs just a wonky concept - from the perspective of how they are executed. Lets say my shotgun is fully loaded and I press the button to load in a special shell. SOMEHOW my character is able to find room in the shotgun to load one more shell - the implications are 2 fold here, firstly that my reject is too stupid to fully load the shotgun and has been purposefully screwing me on capacity OR secondly that my reject has access to a pocket dimension.
#3. Flechette should not be a blessing, it should be the special shell of the zarona(formally lawbringer shotgun) - A flechette is a type of ammo, it is a different type of ammo than buckshot. It is a shell loaded with hardened, fin stabilized steel penetrators. If it should be anything, it should be a special shell that is designed around breaking through armor as that was its original intent.
#4. Shotguns should not have a separate aim down sights damage profile. Given that shotguns are more geared towards close quarters combat, most of the time people just arenât aiming down sights when using them. That action seems odd anyway.
#5. The ammo stat should be removed in favor of a close quarters combat rending/damage bonus. Shotguns have fixed magazines. The magazines shouldnât extend as you level up - thatâs weird. They should have an ammo profile similar to the revolvers.
#6. Shotgun magazine ammo should be 8-9 shells. Based on my estimates, the rejectâs tubular magazines shouldnât really hold more than 8 or 9 shells, and you guys have had to balance damage numbers around the capacity that youâve allowed, which has made guns like the zarona feel very lack luster. Ammo count should probably be 8-9 in the gun, 100 for reserves.
This is a KSG with a 18.5" barrel, it has a magazine capacity of 14 with 2 3/4" shells, +1 in the chamber.
it achieves that capacity by having 2 magazine tubes.
This is a mossberg 500 with a 20" barrel, it has a magazine capacity of 7 with 2 3/4" shells, +1 in the chamber for 8
This is a mossberg 940 pro with what iâm guessing is a 24/26" barrel and a magazine tube extension. I pray you guys are following along - it takes silly shotgun length to reach silly capacity.
This is an agripinaa with a 13+1 capacity
A lawlbringer with a 11+1 capacity
Long story short, technological heresy and my autism aside, 7+1 with better damage to offset the lost capacity would feel better
#7. Personally I wish you would ditch special shells as a concept to allow shotguns to run flashlights or just give us a version that has one mounted. This is my personal preference. I think it would save you a lot of headache in the balancing department as well. You could make your 3 (maybe 4 or 5) shotguns fire ONLY a specific type of shell, and give all shotguns flashlights for their special activation.
#8. Blessings could use revisitation. Right now the best blessing combination for the agripinaa is âfull boreâ and âno respiteâ - the idea being that are going to land every âpelletâ of your slug when you hit so youâll be able to do some nice full through damage since the target like got knocked down. For zarona/accatran it is âmanstopperâ and âscattershotâ - the idea there being that youâll be able to generate infinite cleave down hallways or against hordes. Revising blessings really should have you asking yourself âwhat role should shotgun have?â. Well, blessings should support those ideas - if it is to be a gap closer perhaps toughness generation on pellet hit, or suppression based on pellet hit. If you want it to be a close range armor breaker how about some brittleness or bleed effects based on pellet hit count (consistent ones, not random crit ones). If you want a shotgun to be special shell focused why not give us a unique blessing for quick loading special shells?
#9. Combat shotguns feel like they should be strong against exposed flesh, but they arenât. This problem has more to do with an intuitive feel about how shotguns should work than a math/balancing issue. 3 point blank rounds to kill a mutant feels awful. Most times I feel better off meleeing bosses than using a shotgun. That doesnât feel right, point blank shotgun shells should feel meaningful against unarmored targets.
I will continue to edit and add to this as I come up with more kark