Shot pistol needs balanced

I like how you guys don't discuss anything open map related because seriously, almost any commander map is open and shotgun pistol is useless in mid range combat. Cmon, skill in close combat, really. We have mortars, rockets, melee upgrade and shotgun pistol which all kill with one mouse click with little to no aiming required.

Jesus, we are discussing a weapon in a game that is about strategie and tactics. This isn't fucking CS or CoD. Get your asses off that emp_district trip and stop talking about "skill" required to use a weapon in that one case. Skill in this game is measured by how much of a help you can become for your team/squad and commander in my eyes. Not how many kills you can get in a round of escort or district. Of course you need infantry that keeps other infantry away but since you guys have issues with the skill involved to kill someone with it, I suppose you guys really don't give a shit about the aspect of balance between the two teams, NF and BE. i.e. NF APC has no 2nd useful seat.

Shotgun pistol is excellent in close combat but bad in any other.
Magnum is good for any range with a bigger magazin.

Maybe increase spread by a bit but else it is fine.

 

Actually I find the shot pistol to be pretty effective up to quite long range. Given the choice, as NF I will very rarely take P1

 

For the record, saying that an OP shot pistol is fine simply because we already have other things that are OP that we accept is a logical fallacy.

 

Pretty much this. At 1.5 barracks lengths, I found that I've been "sniped" by the shot pistol for about 40 damage. If the shot pistol is insta kill at close range, I couldn't care less, but it could use a bit more falloff.

 

See, wealthy and hexi get the idea of the balance issues. Thank god there is still people like this. Not just "OP nerf it cause it takes no skill.".

Btw, in the earlier version of the shotgun pistol was almost useless. 2 shots werent enough most of the time because lag and the spread. Not to mention the reload took forever. Just reduce the range or increase fall off cause really it never was meant to be a mid range weapon.

 

Okay, if you want to discuss shotty in open maps, here I go.

Yes, in comm maps we sure have all the fights happening when we are at least 20 meters away from enemy, when shotty is useless.
*Sarcasm overloaded, system mulfunction detected*

IF you want to ignore canyon(all chokepoints), coast(mid at least), mvalley (dam), slaughtered(S bend), crossroads, cyclopean(City), Isle(all chokepoints), money(mid and some infantry chokepoints) and like ten thousands of other specific circumstances. Not to mention infantry maps, which is still sadly a part of Empires, but we are ignoring them as your wish.

The point is, we actually hold the similar thoughts/opinions.
We are trying to make the shit balanced.

When we say it's OP, it's obviously that we meant it's OP in close combat and should be nerfed about it.
We are not simply trying to state : "OMG IT"S TOO PRO NERF IT IN ALL WAYS"
FOR CLOSE COMBAT, it's simply too OP for a secondary weapon. Mortar is a primary weapon. Rocket is a primary weapon and require a lot of skill to kill infantry with it. Melee upgrade is a skill and it's useless even when enemy is only 5 meters away from you(When shotty is still highly effective), and it's not that easy to use.

My idea is to give shotty more rounds per magazine, but lower the max damage of each shot to a point that you can't one shot kill with it in close combat anymore. This shouldn't be the only change of course.

 

Incidentally, 20 meters is actually quite far, and the shotty does become relatively useless at that range. But yeah, I can (sort of) see your point. Most infantry battles take place at close range.

But despite all that, you can't simply call for a nerf because a shotty is a "secondary" weapon and therefore "ought" to be super weak. It's reminiscent of people calling for a nerf to the mortar because it "ought" to be used to fight vehicles/buildings. Certainly, a shotty can insta kill two targets if you click on their heads at a somewhat close range, but then that's that. That's where it differs from a "primary weapon". You can mow down 4 people with a clip of the BEHR, 5-6 if you're good. With the NFAR, you could kill 3, maybe 4 people if you're lucky. The mortar has splash damage, and I've gotten a few lucky triple kills by landing a mortar shot on a bunch of dumb engineers circlejerking trying to heal each other behind a wall. Hell, I've even gotten 3 kills in a clip with the pistol1 just by clicking on the enemy heads. But nothing of the sort can occur with the shotty. Yes, you kill the enemy a bit faster, but considering that you can kill at most 2 enemies (I suppose you could get a "collateral", but that's pretty rare in Empires), I think that that constitutes a "secondary weapon". The only way I think that your argument could hold validity is if we reverted the pistols back to 2.24 values, but that would essentially be a stealth nerf to grenadiers, scouts, and engineers (assuming the scout and engie use the smg2)--basically, any class that relies on its pistol to output damage at range or pick off damaged targets.

That having been said, if someone gave the shotty 4 bullets, made it fire a bit faster, and reduced the damage output a bit more, I couldn't care less. I find myself dying to rifles more than anything else at the moment.

 

We don't have to nerf shotty to the degree that makes it super weak, and I never requested such.
Simply deprive its ability to one shot kill would be perfect enough, having considered this, I am fine if you want to make it a bit more powerful at mid range or whatever.

Again, secondary weapon doesn't have to be super weak. However, when it has the ability to instant kill someone, and a lot of people are using it over their primary weapon under a lot of circumstances. Then I am telling you, something is fucked up.


A maximum number of 2 kills is perfectly fine for a secondary weapon. Although the problem with shotty would be its ability to score each of the kill instantly.

 

Pistols should not be able to instant kill when the other person has full health.
And the fact it can do this some distance away, proves the versatility over melee upgrade.

 

Here we go again... ok, I will stop arguing. It's no use. Just nerf it. I will just stick to my OP rockets and jeeps (If I ever get to play again/ want to play again).

You guys just keep discussing it. GLHF.

 

I. REFUSE.

 

So now Security and Teef seem to be suggesting that the shotty is simply too powerful for a "secondary weapon". I have a great solution to that!

Move the mortar, the rifles, and the hmgs to the secondary weapon slot, and replace the slots with the shotty! Nerf the rifles and hmgs and mortars to the point where they actually fit the conceptualization of what a "secondary weapon" ought to be, remodel them to look like secondary weapons and do the same to the shotty to make it look less like a pistol, and we're done!

Implement y/n?

I vote y.




Seriously though, the idea that something "ought to be a secondary weapon and it therefore ought to be weak" isn't a very sound argument. I can see where you're coming from--it's unintuitive that a secondary weapon is an insta kill, but so many other gameplay mechanics in Empires are unintuitive, such as, say, the ability for people to accurately hip-fire.

 

i dont think its a sound argument to say that the argument isnt sound for those reasons

 

The concept of a secondary weapon is that it isn't supposed to be able to be used as a primary weapon. It's a weapon that should be used in lieu of reloading a primary weapon if the primary weapon needs to be reloaded and there isn't enough time or there's no ammo for it. And a secondary weapon should be able to be used effectively in the right hands almost on par as a primary weapon, but with two equally skilled players, one using a primary and the other using a secondary weapon, the one with the primary weapon should win a vast majority of the time, or the secondary weapon should have very limited use.

I'm not arguing whether the shotgun pistol meets the criteria for a primary weapon or a secondary weapon, I'm just saying what I would imagine a secondary weapon to be.

Also, hip-fire is incredibly intuitive, especially when you consider that Empires was most certainly created around the time that hip-fire was the norm for shooters. I believe it's still not a minority of games that make hipfire incredibly inaccurate.

 

The issue is people are using it as a main weapon, and using their primary as a secondary weapon.
Though I rather have the shot pistol attacking me than the ray gun.

 

If a rifleman is honestly using the nfar as a secondary in lieu of the shotty pistol, or a grenadier is using the mortar as a secondary in lieu of the shotty, then those are generally going to be bad riflemen or bad grenadiers.

And yes, Candles I concede to your point about hipfire. I change my example to "it's unintuitive to think that you can micro-crouch to quickly fire the mortar but you can't do it at all whilst standing".

However, based off of your definition of a secondary weapon vs a primary weapon, the pistol 1 +smg 2 combo has a lot of scenarios in which the pistol 1 is used as a primary at long range, and the smg 2 is used as a primary in close range. So your criteria, that "with two equally skilled players, one using a primary and the other using a secondary weapon, the one with the primary weapon should win a vast majority of the time, or the secondary weapon should have very limited use" would, at the very least, break down when it comes to this. If you have an open ground and someone with the pistol and someone with the smg2 stand somewhat far away, the pistol 1 guy would win, and vice versa, as the range closed in, or as cover became more prevalent. The same can arguably go with the shotty--nfar at far range, shotty at close range, although this is mitigated somewhat by the fact that the NFAR is still by far the primary weapon, and used in close range.

 

Flasche, when was the last time you played the game? Armour has been nerfed a lot.

 

ITT people complaining that the weapon of choice in close quarters is the close quarters weapon, rather than a rifle/mortar.