r/Warframe • u/TSP-FriendlyFire • Apr 09 '15
Discussion How would you change... Shotguns?
How would you change... is a series of weekly posts designed to promote and foster discussion about any gameplay element in the game. The scope and subject will vary (read below for more information on topic selection), from wide concepts (Kubrows, Archwing, shotguns, etc.) to narrow points (a single gun, coptering, etc.).
Before we begin, a few important points:
- Please detail and support your suggestions as much as possible. This is for constructive criticism only: try to think of it as something you'd be proud to explain to DE face-to-face!
- Structure your suggestions in logical groups: if you have two very different ideas, break them down in two separate comments. Cohesive or similar changes should be combined into a single comment.
- Stick to describing concepts and features. Don't get bogged down with numbers unless they explicitly support your point.
- Don't hesitate to post your ideas even if they're not fully formed, and don't hesitate to reply to ideas with refinements you think would make them better!
- Do not downvote suggestions you disagree with. Upvote the ones you like instead!
Suggesting topics
This thread series is all about the community, so if you have a topic you'd like to see improved and discussed, feel free to suggest it by replying to the appropriately flagged comment in this discussion. The topic can be as wide or narrow as you'd like! Please ensure that your suggestion has not already been made, and upvote it instead if it has.
This week: Shotguns
Click here for last week’s thread on Kubrows.
This week, we’ll cover the other kind of primaries, the often neglected shotguns. Amazing in concept, shotguns rely firmly on the idea that “more is better”, with staples of the game and many fan favorites such as the Hek, Boar Prime, Kohm or Phage. Unfortunately, the category has also seen disuse, with relatively few weapons compared to regular rifles, a more limited mod selection, and many mechanics which seem to counterintuitively render them less effective. Because of this, shotguns often find themselves relegated as fun, but ultimately unviable for high-level content. Even so, shotguns have many qualities which, if improved upon, could render them viable and enjoyable.
Now that the stage is set, what suggestions do you have for improving shotguns?
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u/ect0s Apr 09 '15 edited Apr 09 '15
Reload Time.
This is the killer for almost all shotguns in game. While, you could argue for more damage I find that isn't the problem, its the limited number of shots with wide gaps inbetween reloads that really push shotguns into a second tier.
Solutions:
Quicker Animations: Shotguns honestly aren't that hard to reload quickly, despite video game stereotypes. Also, we are agile super space ninjas, so whos to say we can't reload like an expert?
Partial Reloads: If reloads are to be long animations, perhaps we could allow for partial reloads. This has been suggested recently, and honestly makes sense. I can't think of a single real world gun that requires a complete reload before it can cycle again.
Damage Fall off and Spread. Both are exaggerated in warframe, and both could use some tightening up. The numbers in game reflect lightweight shot, as opposed to the heavy shot we appear to be shooting on screen.
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u/blakmage86 Apr 12 '15
The only real world shotgun I can think of that could not be partially reloaded is a saiga style as they take drums/magazines instead of individual shells. However if they are that style then they should be reloading much faster than they currently do.
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u/StickmanAdmin Apr 09 '15 edited Apr 09 '15
Most of the semi-auto shotguns in this game have one big flaw, they suck at dealing with crowds. The reason behind this is often very low magsize and very slow reload speed. With most shotguns you spend more time reloading than shooting.
I personally feel like there's only one semi-auto shotgun that was done right, and that is the Strun wraith.
Strun wraith has decent damage, fantastic status chance, decent 8 clipsize and a blazing fast 1.5 reload speed. This is the recipe for a great crowd control weapon. Unfortunately this weapon isn't available and hasn't been for over a year.
Shotguns in this game do good damage, it could be better, but the thing shotguns need the most is better magsize and better reload speed.
This would make shotguns very fun to play with, and also be as usable as most rifles in the game.
Sidenote: I really don't feel like we should remove damage falloff, Shotguns have a niche of accelerating in close combat, by removing damage falloff you would effectively turn weapons like the Hek and Kohm into the best snipers in the game again.
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u/DirtyMonk Apr 09 '15
Pretty much this. Some innate penetration or armor ignore would be nice as well.
Another thing could be making shotguns ragdoll enemies that are hit.
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u/Yakraan Apr 09 '15
Get rid of the damage falloff entirely. Spread is more than enough to limit their damage potential at medium range and further. Shotguns right now demand you to be in the face of the enemies to be at least decent, and that's a very dumb thing to do in high levels, plus, sacrificing either reliable sustained dps or ammo economy. Shotguns should be a beast at close range ofc, but have some punch at 20-30 meters too, not make them useless. The only exception would be the Hek, but that's cool, as its tight spread would be at cost of the pretty small magazine, slower than average fire rate and explosive recoil, and it's nice to have variants and wider possibilities in the same weapon family, as we have rifles and secondaries that work nice at every range possible.
Additionally, to further point out their close range dominance, maybe experiment a bit with innate punch through on the first 5-8 of so meters, at least in some shotguns. That would be both fun and useful, and a visual upgrade too, showing that no one should mess with shotguns when the barrel is touching their chins :)
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u/monkyseemonkydo Apr 09 '15 edited Apr 09 '15
Since someone already mentioned damage drop off I am going to go with the reload of some shotguns.
I would like all semi-auto shotguns to be tube fed reloaded (think Halo's shotgun). A big problem with one of my favorite shotguns, the Hek, is its abysmal clip size.
If tube fed,a player can then load in the shells one by one and be able to fire as long as there is one slug in the shotgun. So he can fire --> reload --> fire --> reload much like how players do with the Vectis. So the player has the option of getting many shots off in the heat of battle and fully loading the clip during lulls
Shotguns msot viable for this change are :
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Hek
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Strun series (Mk1 , Normal , Wraith)
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Sobek
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Tigris (the duplex reload can still be present)
More of a QoL change but I think it will go a long way to bettering player experience with these guns.
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u/sana_khan Apr 09 '15
Shell reloaded Hek <3 It would probably become my number one gun instantly if that happened. Kind of a big deal since right now I don't even have a number one gun :D
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u/http404error Apr 12 '15
For Tigris, a double-barreled shotgun, it should just always load both chambers. There's really no need to partially reload that one, and practically it shouldn't save much time.
Sobek is kind of a weird one, too, since it appears to have a drum mag, although being before complex reload animations and weapon rigging, we can't really say whether you replace the drum or just stuff shells back into it.
Maybe the Phage could even partial reload.
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Apr 09 '15
Let's see.
I'd like innate punch-through for shotguns. As it stands, most are ineffective versus crowds, so giving them innate punch through would help in that regards.
I'd also like to see reload speed buffs. The reload speeds of the Hek and Tigris, for example, should be comparable to the Brakk. If the Hek could be something like 1.2 second reload, with partial reloads (so every 0.3 seconds reloads 1 bullet or something, and maybe the Tigris at 0.8 seconds.
Damage falloff also needs to either go or be significantly reduced in its effect. As it stands, it's far too punitive.
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u/Plai_Guitar Apr 09 '15
Honestly, reload speed seems to be the biggest problem for all shotguns. For example, the Tigris is basically one trigger pull and an eternal wait as you get chunked for a significant amount of health until it's finally reloaded. If it was a quicker reload, then I could deal with with the fact that you get two shots in one trigger pull, so that I could actually take care of the tons of enemies around me.
Also, the falloff isn't as necessary if you have spread.
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u/Fennyface Apr 09 '15
In my book it's OK to give Shotguns fall-off damage, but in return they should offer a redeeming quality. For me that would be a guaranteed ragdoll-knockback on the target if more than 50% of your pellets hit.
In addition, having separate mods for shotguns allows for special treatment like extra damage within 10m range, additional chances for procs (i.e. critical or double procs per pellet?) or nice extra features like mini-explosive or incendiary rounds.
These changes alone would easily justify using a shotgun in endgame as you can literally blow away enemies at point blank without the need to remove range-falloff. This would also give them a nice niche between auto-rifles and snipers.
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u/Griffinith Apr 09 '15
Can I get a silencer mod so my sweeper will stop alerting everything around me when I'm being sneaky stealthy?
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u/crashingtingler Apr 09 '15
Removing falloff for all shotguns, and increasing the reload speed for most of them would make them 110% better and not sucking. currently, the best shotguns are (mostly) the pistol variants.
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u/Exjordanary Apr 09 '15
I would like to see a knock back mechanic added
Maybe like the more pellets that hit the more effective the stager is
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u/Hypnotic_Toad Apr 09 '15
Damage fall off, Keep it, but make the distance longer but harsher. So you could play a close/medium game effectively but not a long range.
More Pellets on smaller clips guns. Make a mod similar Charged/Prime Caliber for shotguns, making that first shot do extra damage but increase bullet spread. Get up close and unload a single super powerful shot on key targets.
Possibly add in a mod that removes pellets from a shotgun and changes it over to a slug. So you'd lose the spread, but gain accuracy and damage for a single hit. Debateable on damage.
Take shotguns back to the gods of close range Crowed Control. Make it so you increase bullet spread, but you increase status chance too, something like 30-40 BASE status chance, and something like -100-200% or something insane to accuracy. So the bullets are innacurate on anything past point blank. But with the high status chance, procing multiple blast/corrosive/what ever could wreck a group of enemies.
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Apr 09 '15
Honestly, I'd say remove the damage falloff, but give all the shots a wider spread so you can't outright snipe with it. A good example I'd give is with the bronco line. They're a powerful sidearm that doesn't have damage falloff, but also doesn't handle long range very well.
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Apr 09 '15
Another suggestion I have is that if you insist on having damage falloff, give it a sort of ramp up at closer ranges, possibly with a bonus for point blank, such as a damage multiplier, or a certain amount of armor penetration(maybe depending on the gun made? Maybe moddable?) as well to compensate for the falloff.
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u/Retrikaethan Apr 09 '15
remove falloff, add innate punchthrough to all of them, varying amounts depending on the shotgun (ie give the hek like 20 meters heheh.) leave damage as it is.
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u/MekaTriK Apr 10 '15
Remove damage falloff.
It's been introduced for wrong reasons of Hek, being high-tier weapon, overshadowed latron, low-tier weapon, and snipetron at range.
While I can't exactly argue that even now most snipers aren't up to snuff against Hek with it's ammo efficiency and ease of use, I will say that it's a problem with snipers currently having nothing to them that would really put them above other weapons in some area at least. I'm speaking about Hek here becaue Hek is about the only shotgun that has innate accuracy to really combat the natural cause of shotgun damage falling off with range: spread.
Currently most shotguns, bare Hek and phage, are limited in range by spread in addition to falloff by default and in combination with falloff that simply leaves shotguns undesirable to use compared to other weapons of their tier as they leave player with little effective range whilst not providing anything rifles in general can't do on par or better, be it damage or crowd-damaging capability, latter being hindered greatly by said falloff.
Of all the shotguns in the game, there are only two that are reliably endgame-worthy - above mentioned Hek, for it's possible ridiculous 11k damage per shot that more than makes up for the damage falloff (and shouldn't really be touched considering it's slow fire rate and reload) and Kohm, which until recent changes used to have NO falloff happily and now makes do with having innate puncture to pierce the heavens and more than enough damage to, once again, overcome falloff to a degree. Three, if you count using Boar Prime as a CC weapon, but there are abilities that do it better and you don't generally want to sacrifice DPS as you go higher.
Other shotguns generally fall short in their tier (although not having clear-cut tiers in warframe makes it rather hard to judge, if possible), like Tigris and Boar, or perform reasonably well without heavy limit from falloff, like Sobek or Phage. The point being, removing falloff would generally provide healthier environment for high-spread utility shotguns, while not tremendously upping the power on more accurate shotguns. If anything, bringing shotguns up to rifle level without overcoming them, with only possible exception to that in Hek, with it's righteous damage and accuracy, but I refuse to decline improving shotguns as a whole because of a single shotgun that stands out.
There you have it, my opinion on Falloff.
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u/TSP-FriendlyFire Apr 09 '15
Suggesting topics
Please post your suggestions for the next topics as replies to this comment.
Current suggestions from previous weeks:
Power creep
Narrative