Shotguns were once good. They had good, realistic spread, and meant that they could engage targets in either close-medium distance as a sidegrade to a rifle.
But, for whatever reason, shotguns were nerfed to oblivion, where, despite the relatively long barrels of the shotguns in use for the game, it’s nigh impossible to consistently land 2 pellets next to each other at a range of 10 meters.
They’ve turned from “believably realistic” to “fires nerf pellets past 10 meters”
Why was the nerf introduced in the first place? Why on earth would people complain about shotguns, when:
Bolt-action rifles also down/kill you in short range
You can rapid fire semi autos in short range
No-brain full auto from LMG/SMG
The double-barrel shotguns were, at best, side grades to ubiquitous bolt-action rifles, pre-nerf. Now they’re outright inferior unless you want the ability to fire 2 rounds at once- Something that a semi-automatic can do.
Then there’s the unlock requirements for something like the Winchester 1912, which is objectively worse than a semi-automatic unlocked 9 levels sooner.
There is no intrinsic merit to using a shotgun over a conventional rifle.
That’s why they’re rare to see in-game. In the very least, pre-nerf, they were usable at mid-range combat because the pellet spread meant you can OHKO someone at 30 meters, but you’re lucky to down someone at that range with 6 shots.
I don’t have solid proposals on how to make them useful enough to merit using over SMGs. But to make some chicken scratches:
Reverse the shotgun nerf
Make shotguns more accessible instead of being an exclusive-to-assaulters weapon
Find some creative way to actually make them useful, or have some utility.
Have to agree with this. Make them realistic and even able to wipe out a couple enemies every once in a while with a well-placed shot.
Pretty much every other gun in the game is a 1 shot from 30m. This isn’t COD where every gun is a pellet gun, so it’s okay that we have realistic shotguns that can do real damage. I really don’t see a shotgun buff putting things out of balance with other guns in this game.
At least making them available to other classes, say engineers (or whatever) would make them a lil bit more useful. Because as mentioned, as shotguns are now, they will never beat smgs in term of efficiency.
One of the biggest myths about shotguns is the “ability” of shot to scatter and kill or seriously disable lots of people - and it is nonsense.
A 12 gauge shotgun firing OO shot spreads about 1 inch per yard - say 30mm per meter - but in an irregular pattern that is hard to predict, and with relatively small projectiles that are individually unlikely to seriously wound anyone in the terms of this game - in which a full caliber rifle bullet to the body doesn’t necessarily kill!!
Each OO shot hitting someone at 30 yards (for a 30" spread in order to have any reasonable chance of hitting 2 closely spaced targets) should be about as damaging as a pistol bullet - or less so.
Now I don’t know what shot the game presumes the shotguns to be using, but OO seems to be pretty much the optimum - go smaller and you get more spread but much less damage per hit, go larger and obviously more damage per hit but fewer projectiles.
They were OP so they nerfed both the Damage and the Ammount of pellet per shot and the distance too.
They only should have nerfed one of these not all at once , now shotguns are useless
I’ve seen first-hand what a 12 gauge shotgun shooting 00 buck does to the human body. It’s far more devastating than your post would suggest. At ~ 20 yards, numerous pellets went through the victim’s body, taking chunks of flesh, bone, and internal organs with them.
I’d rather get shot 8 times by a .32 caliber pistol (the diameter of buckshot) than take 8 buckshot pellets.
What can a double barrel do that a bolt-action can’t?
What can a pump-action do that a semi-auto can’t?
It was pointless to use them over rifles, let alone stuff that you unlock far sooner. And that was pre-nerf. Now they’re just junk rifles that can maybe kill someone past 15m with 2-3 shots where either a bolt or semi action can do the job more efficiently, and without requiring a specific class.
I guess the devs are determined to keep shotguns into an auxiliary role, as historically expected, and thus they don’t want them to be good enough to grant lethality past short range while allowing tolerance in aiming, or else players may decide to run around with full shotgun squads. Which would both remove a lot of immersion from the game, and make several SMGs (many of which are later unlocks) pointless.
This remind me mass effect 1 shotgun if you boost him to the max become a sniper rifle wo one kill 3/4 enemy in one shoot and with 10-15 shoot even the final boss
Rendering SMGs pointless how? Shotguns have limited ammo counts. They’re no better than semi autos or bolt-actions.
At best, they’re a sidegrade to conventional, more ubiquitous rifles. Pre-nerf
Historical accuracy has already been thrown out the window when we have AVS rifles in Berlin, FGs available to everyone in Normandy and British homeguard weapons to the allies in Normandy.
The whole “historical accuracy” thing has already been conveniently slapped away that it’s not even a proper argument, any more.
Right now, in game, the main reason to possibly choose a shotgun over an SMG is the instantaneous lethality at very close range, whereas an SMG will usually need at least two or more chest hits to disable a target, giving the enemy precious instants to fire back before getting shot down. You basically can deliver the firepower of 9-10 pistol rounds instantly.
If said instantaneous firepower was made powerful and accurate enough to still grant the same effects at 30m or so, i can imagine people picking a Winchester over an M3, M3A1, Sten and Lanchester (not sure about Thompson), because it would grant faster killing potential in urban environments.
Honestly if I’ve had the jump on someone I’ve never had an issue with not killing them fast enough, except with a pistol, flamethrower, or melee weapon. Especially not because the weapon can’t deal damage fast enough.
And again, I don’t see buffing shotguns throwing off the balance of other guns. I main Axis and so far in all the campaigns there are multitudes of bolt action and semi-auto rifles that can 1 shot at 30-50m. Even after a buff, I wouldn’t choose shotguns to go running through the jungle lol. I don’t think you’ll see any others doing that either.
But you do absolutely want to see a good mix of shotguns and SMGs being used for CQC, not just one or the other. Right now it is almost exclusively SMGs.
No, they are not… before nerfs they were exactly that.
They were OP only in Berlin testing where entire squad had 4 rather accurate Luftwaffe drillings while soviets had almost nothing solid to counter it. That is why stastistics were skewed so much and shotguns received deadblow kind of nerf.
Everywhere else they were very situational at best… for example TOZ-B was barely used in Moscow (ANY PPD does the job too and you don´t need to switch weapons for that), and amount of US Winchesters that I met daily in Normandy could have been counted on one hand .
Now TOZ-B fails to kill or seriously wound on close quarters (even after two shots sometimes), winchester in Normandy is garbage as well, and LD… well I´m not playing Berlin but I presume its the same as TOZ-B.
