SHOTGUNS: The Right Tool for the Wrong Player

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⍜ Timestamps
00:00 - Intro
01:22 - The beginning
05:48 - Sticking Stick
08:09 - The Stats Part
14:24 - Luck?
18:05 - The Brothers Return
20:38 - Ew...
23:57 - Conclusion!

Arch is a channel that releases high quality videos on media like games, series and movies... aside from the shorter ones I guess :)

[RawBerserker]

I think there is no more satisfying gun to use in a game than a well functioning shotgun. Even if it's not the "optimal" choice, I'd go for it every time.

[Verbose_Mode]

A huge thing for balancing shotguns is actually _the number of pellets._ More pellets makes it more consistent, with a missed pellet meaning less.

Edit: Dividing the damage between pellets is more complicated than my initial two sentences implied. Lets say your shotgun deals 100 damage total. The spread is 1m at 50m range.
If it only shoots 5 pellets at 20 damage each (buckshot), the odds of all the pellets hitting at longer ranges falls. Each one that DOES hit will chunk something, but it might be possible for every shot to cartoon-outline your target. This is _volatile_ damage, high highs and low lows.
If it shoots, say, 20 pellets at 5 damage each (birdshot, basically), the spread is going to be more even. Yes, less will hit at longer ranges, but the odds of cartoon-outlining your target are WAY lower. You'll always get SOME consistent damage in.
Where this gets really interesting is when damage reduction mechanics, specifically flat damage reduction, come in. Lets say the damage is reduced by only 2 points per instance of damage. Suddenly, the buckshot damage is much better, because it does 90 damage on a meatshot, while the birdshot is utterly shafted and only does 60. While realistic that birdshot is terrible to armor, this could cripple your game balance without special consideration.
There are a lot of levers to adjust, number of pellets being one of them.

[SaltSpirits]

Fun Shotgun Fact: While your average 12g shell will come in a variety of colours, from your standard red, to blue, green, and everything in between, they will *never* be yellow. This colour is reserved for 20 gauge shells and acts as a warning sign to help prevent one from loading the wrong shell into the wrong gun.

[thedomainofsealteamaqua]

the "shotgun" is basically the equalizer: even the newbie's can use it, and the pros fear it.

[shanweeboy]

The spas-12 was made to be a police shotgun. It had the pump mode on account of the non lethal loads not having enough chamber pressure to cycle the weapon in semi auto mode. They did the pump mode for those shells.

[russellhassan]

i love how shotguns function in high ttk shooters like team fortress and quake; when shotguns don't/can't easily one shot, they become a very skillful weapon since you need to hit all your pellets to maximize your damage output.

[Trashedac]

The slug idea is pretty smart in my opinion it wouldn’t fit perfectly in every game but I still think it’s a good idea

[GoobertNoobster]

Doom eternal: like it or not, you're playing with it, bucko

[tabula_rosa]

i replayed Doom 2 recently & realized part of the reason the shotty feels so good to use is that the damage falloff isn't artificial, it fires a bunch of pistol shots with the same damage & range as a pistol, and how much damage it does depends on how many of the pellets lands -- if you're close enough to cluster the enemy you do full damage, no matter how far they are
means not only can you chunk single enemies but if ur firing into a crowd and each pellet hits someone ur still doing full damage, even if ur 40 feet away circlestrafing their fireballs

[chowbox]

Battlefield 4 made an interesting solution, they had 2 zones where random pellets could land. Most would land in the center, say 5 of the 8 pellets. Then the other 3 are spread in an outer circle, so that when you’re in point blank range you’ll likely hit all or most of your shots but as you go out, you have to be more careful aiming, utilizing the consistency of the inner pellets to get headshots

[samuelantoniocastillomeza]

As a former owner of a Mossberg 500, I'm already loving this! Pump action shotguns are so satisfactory.

[-phamtrungquan]

As a wrong player, I can confirm this is true

[AxiamWolfe]

The roster of shotguns in Titanfall/Apex Legends approaches the design in an interesting way. None of the shotguns have random spread, and you get to choose between:

- Horizontal Spread of Mastiff
- Star-shaped spread of Peacekeeper, with ability to ADS and compress the pellets into a single point
- Funky 8 shaped spread for the Auto EVA-8
- 3 pellets for the Mozambique

[CaptainTechnicalityLP]

Worth noting that TF2 has the fixed pellet patterns for shotguns. Normally this is enabled as a server option, which is usually used in competitive play, however, there is also a shotgun in the game called The Panic Attack that has the fixed spread pattern as a built in stat.

[pychojoe]

I used to hunt with slugs growing up. Was pretty darn accurate with them, too. Always frustrated me when I knew they were in range but the game would say "no" even with slugs.

[stillton]

This is purely a shower thought but:

One part of shotguns that I feel a lot of games get wrong is they include both the bloom, or simulated handling, and spread of the bullets together. I believe a more realistic approach is to separate them into two different circular fields. The outer is supposed to simulate the handling of the weapon by the main character and the inner is the spread of the shells. The inner circle is required to be fully inside the outer circle and the pellets can only be inside the inner circle. The outer circle would tighten or simply disappear when aiming down the sights meaning ADS is most likely needed to even hit opponents at medium to long ranges.

For different types of shells and barrel modifications the inner circle will be our variable. While using slugs, the inner circle would be incredibly tight, allowing for greater prowess at longer ranges at the trade-off of being a huge gamble while hip-firing at anything but almost point-blank. Chokes and other barrel mods will change the inner circle based on the mod. A duckbill mod will change the circle to ellipse or a line with the orientation of the mod changing how pellets will fire. A choke will simply tighten the inner circle and a sawing off the barrel will increase the size of the inner circle.

For stock and grips the outer circle will be our variable. These would mostly be the same with shotguns being able to take one of each kind. Shotguns with grips and stocks would have better simulated handling and usually lower recoil at the trade-off of being less effective in close-quarters combat, but not by much.

Modded shotguns would generally be better for long-range combat and less effective in close quarters combat, rewarding accuracy. The biggest problem I can see with this is the deviation from the nature of shotguns as the close-range weapons that suffers at long ranges, but I believe that some games would benefit from having a more realistic system in place, especially games that try already to appeal to that hyper-realistic gun feel.

[autismusmaximus]

The Shotgun in Insurgency Sandstorm is quite a tale in itself
It is pretty much the most realistic representation of a shotgun in a video game.
You WILL get domed by a shotgunner from 50 Meter away.

In this game, the primary upsides are that Shotgun is cheap, meaning you can run it alongside a lot of other equipment, and that it is light, since it is basically just a pipe that shoots bucks, and you run with only a little ammo to slow you down. Its spread is so tight that you still need to properly aim this gun even at the closest ranges, and the fact that it one hit kills everything is overshadowed by the fact that pretty much every weapon does so.

It's main downsides are that it fires very slow, only a sixteenth of the M4 (detremental when every shot is lethal) and that it has a rather long profile (The shorter the profile of a gun, the closer you can stand at a wall etc. the physical length of a gun is a stat in this game, meaning it is a bad weapon to peek corners or breach doors), which is bad, since the only class with access to the shotgun is the breacher.
I think this is a very interesting take on balance for the shotgun

[mcsmileycorp]

While not realistic I always liked how the titanfall games and apex handle it's shotguns, each gun having fixed and interesting spread patterns useful for different scenarios and rewards high skill players by giving them optimal points to aim for on opponents.

[Zorro]

Shotguns with realistic range are balanced in games with realistic ranges, because you still have a disadvantage at longer ranges in exchange for an advantage at shorter ranges. Combine this with buckshot having much less effectiveness against good body armor, and it becomes a very balanced weapon.

[maxneyney]

that is basically "how to make a balanced game" tutorial you must be rewarded for that work bro