DRL > Requests For Features

Suggestion for some shotgun-related changes

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thelaptop:

--- Quote from: gunofdis on September 15, 2011, 02:32 ---Modeling buckshot sounds both overcomplicated and likely to cripple the area effect uses of shotguns.  What's next, modeling a conical spray out of the burst fire weapons, rendering them near identical to the shotguns?

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I think you are missing the point.  The current shotgun mechanism basically strikes everything within the conical arc, which is ridiculous.  Have you tried smacking down 3-deep lost souls surrounding you with a double shotgun?  Almost everything just gets blown away, which is not quite right -- there really isn't that many shots to crush all the lost souls that way.  I think the theory of conservation of damage should be preserved: if a weapon is said to do nds damage with projectiles, then I expect the total direct projectile damage done by that weapon at any one time be bounded by [s,ns], which is violated by the current shotgun rules (splash damage is a secondary effect that is counted a little differently).  The modelling of buckshot is just to ensure that we limit the reach of the shotgun and make it more doom-ish, as opposed to the current really overly powerful form.  In fact, this will make the Agility mods more useful for the shotgun.  Shotguns were and are designed to be close to medium range weapons, but there has to be a limit on how much area dominance it can do.  The traits for shotgunners will make up for the shortcomings of the shotgun and make it a viable end-game weapon of choice.

action52:
I don't think it matters if the weapons are unrealistic. All that really matters is that they work in-game as effective weapons. It seems to me that shotguns work fine as they are, and both the proposed solutions seem over-complicated. As long as it works well as a game mechanic, I see no reason to change it.

I do think the shotgun's lack of usefulness is a problem, though. Moving the combat shotty to dlevel 6 as made people use the shotgun more, but it's still a placeholder. As soon as you get the combat shotgun, pretty much everyone dumps their regular one. How about instead of an alt-reload option, an alt-fire option? My idea: the face shot.

When wielding a shotgun, if you press alt-fire, you will then be able to target an adjacent square, similar to the rocket jump. If there is an enemy there, you get a message like "you shoot the demon right in the face!" and the attack will have a bonus of +1 (like having a power mod) and do piercing damage. So a regular, unmodified shotgun would do 9d3 damage, and a power-modded elephant gun would do 13d3! This attack would have a 75% damage dropoff rate, making it to a little collateral damage to adjacent enemies but only truly effective as the equivalent of a melee attack. I think this would make the regular shotgun a valuable weapon to have even until the endgame.

It might sound overpowered, but remember that you have to be right next to an enemy for it to work--it's basically a melee attack costing one shell that is stronger than the chainsaw but weaker than a double chainsaw or artifact melee weapon, and is unaffected by berserk, brute, etc. So I think overall it's pretty well-balanced.

Game Hunter:
There are a couple of ways that one could potentially go about changing shotties from the conical, drop-off effect we have now to the more inspired projectiles-within-cone weapon it tends to be (as displayed both as the real weapon and as the weapon in Doom). The first is essentially what Malek said: turning the Xd3 attack into a 1d3xX one, keeping spread the same. For combat shotguns this wouldn't be much of a problem, since the spread is quite tight, but for shotguns and double shotguns you'd likely end up with a very scattered attack. Ultimately this would cause FURTHER reliance on the combat shotgun in most situations (ie, those that have one or two enemies), with the shotgun and double shotgun used either for very close quarters or hordes of enemies. Naturally we can change around the spread and such (perhaps designing each weapon specially so they definitely have their own unique uses) although the overall sparseness of the weapons might make them quite difficult to balance. That is, unless the spread itself is constant, with every pellet always going at a particular angle, the accuracy itself will widly fluctuate, making the weapons unreliable (which is roughly the opposite of what they are now).

The other possibility is to take pellets to a more extreme level, such that there are many more pellets than normal but always deal one damage. As a matter of resistance/protection, pellets would have to work differently (for instance, protection could prevent NxP pellets from causing damage, where P is the reduction value and N is a scalar multiple), but this would effectively make the shotguns what they are now, the big difference being that the damage is dicrete rather than continuous-linear. It's something I would find quite interesting as a weapon, and it certainly keeps the shotguns in their current position.

However, I don't really expect this kind of change in DRL and hope to see it in DRL2 instead. It's a DRASTIC change to the game's balance, and it could take a very long time before the weapons and projectiles are at the right place so that we aren't seeing underpowered/overpowered result. Still, if there's enough support for it then I wouldn't mind the possibility. (As a matter of fact, if one of the devs could work on a generalized scatter flag that works for any spread/shots, we could very well begin testing in a modding environment.)

MaiZure:

--- Quote from: thelaptop on September 15, 2011, 08:13 ---The current shotgun mechanism basically strikes everything within the conical arc, which is ridiculous.  Have you tried smacking down 3-deep lost souls surrounding you with a double shotgun?  Almost everything just gets blown away, which is not quite right

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Ever open a door in doom2 to find 15 formers packed in behind it? Notice how the double shotty kills them ALL in one blast? Maybe not realistic, but certainly Doomish! More importantly...


--- Quote from: Game Hunter on September 15, 2011, 10:54 ---However, I don't really expect this kind of change in DRL and hope to see it in DRL2 instead. It's a DRASTIC change to the game's balance, and it could take a very long time before the weapons and projectiles are at the right place so that we aren't seeing underpowered/overpowered result.
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Gotta back up this point. There are probably a dozen other directions we could devote our effort to the improvement of the game. Changing shottys would be both time consuming and I feel the result would only be a tweak at best.

DeathDealer:
If hits are calculated before damage (i.e. the game tracks which targets are nearer or at least records them in order of distance from the player...) then why not have a drop off of a single die per unit hit by the blast? So the first target takes full, the second takes 1d3 less and so on.

Maybe an alt fire for the single- and double-shotty for a slug which drops off at a rate of 1/2 of the dice instead of 1 die per target and does bullet (single) or piercing (double). So that only three targets in a row could be hit for full, 2/3, and then 1/3 damage max.

I do think shotguns are pretty perfect the way they are, but if they were to get a little modification I'd prefer something less drastic to more drastic. I think there should at least be an assembly that creates a "slug" firing weapon out of one of the shotguns.

[Can we get a new mod like Duct Tape pack? Quadruple shotgun anybody?]

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