Well, shotguns werent meant to be used by literally every soldier in the first place.
In fact, outside of that testing, they are available for assaulters.
Giving them to fully manned engineer squad was stupid decision… which produced stupid statistics.
Especially since they didn´t mirror this stupid decision to soviet composition too.
As people in my field tend to say: “Garbage in, garbage out.”
Shotguns from past Berlin would be fine weapon for assaulters.
Shotguns in general are only usable by assaulters as far as I know.
They were actual competitive sidegrade to backpack.
Since nerf, they are just an additional weight, and absolute waste of space and tickets.
Shitters could cope with smg’s not bein the absolute meta in CQC and shotguns being a counter, i mostly blame the Russian USSR mains, like when they got Kar98k nerfed into 12.0 base damage during CAT cause the AXIS moscow winrate was a bit higher.
it really wasn´t just a bit higher, but yeah. Instead of fixing (by that time) bugged soviet weapons to motivate players to play USSR, they nerfed everything axis had instead. 
Luckily it was mostly reversed.
I think that “almighty statistics” are mostly to blame, not some “mains”.
They saw that shotgun was one of the most deadly weapons in Berlin CBT (4 engies armed with it, bots were pretty good with shotguns too) and nerfed it into oblivion, without even thinking much about it. Stupid outcome of stupid decision, nothing more.
it wasn’t bugged weapons these speds were literlaly arguing for it on the bases liek the kar haivng better sights
Russian speaking forum
saw multiple posts from there and Russians coming into the english speaking side arguing for it
Soviet SMGs literally didn´t register hits, thus rendering them inferior in any engagements. That was at least the most common complaint.
That snowballed further of course resulting into no one playing USSR, and devs nerfing almost everything axis had.
However, discussion about this is off topic, so lets not delve too deep into this. Or this thread will end up locked
Maybe during some phase of the CAT but the were still stomping in hosueclearing and basck then the cap points were small roomsin hosues which turned em into massive and funny shitshows.
I would like to see the Benelli M4 Super 90 added in Tunisia Italy faction. 
Hello, the reasons for weapon balance changes are not my area of expertise, but I will do my best to provide an answer.
Thank you.
This post was made before Keofox kind of confirmed that devs are going to (eventually?) revisit shotgun issue, however, more information is always welcome.
There’s a higher chance of illiteral aboriginals that haven’t even heard the term coding of fixing shotguns if provided with the code than gaiflow bothering to do it.
thanks for trying
Here you go.
We don’t know if they actually will fix them so they become good alternative for SMGs, but they will make an attempt. Sooner or later.
.> Make an attempt
Shotguns were perfectly fineand they gutted them, it’s called don’t fix somehtign that is not broken, they decided it to gut em and are refusing to restore em.
Don’t mean to sound like a dick however its just bad development to make otherwise non sensical changes that just break a weapon to the point where its not worth using.
However it seems to be common practice nowadays because game developers have about as much sense as a monkey with an ak47.
I really hope enlisted doesn’t become the next H&G because they were well known for doing things like this then not fixing those things for years.
it ia bad developedment, they just pulled it cause certain shitters were cried about their smgs not having comeplete dominance cause god forbid engineers couldn have shotguns and they were effective, so they just gutted them streamdown gameplay further, niot special roles, no rock paper scissors system, no speciality creativeity or cordination just a continious streamlining with everyone rocking select fire laser guns and top of the like smgs in a game with a WW2 skin
to be honest the double barrel shotguns should probably be available for the other classes as even though I have it as a backup weapon on some of my assaulters on certain campaigns i rarely find my self having to use them.
It seems a lot much more worth while taking the backpack slot instead.