PvE doesn't include any shotgun-friendly tactical situations (Destiny)

by Kahzgul, Friday, February 06, 2015, 22:26 (3375 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY

The situations that the game presents all (ALL) follow these tactical formats:

- Enemies are very far away from you, and have weapons with long ranges. Shotguns are a terrible idea in these situations.
- Enemies are very close to you, but there are scores of them. Shotguns simply don't hold enough rounds or reload fast enough to be effective in these situations.

Shotguns, as designed, are useful for one tactical situation:
- You are in a confined space, and there may or may not be a single, dangerous foe very nearby. You need quick target acquisition and high damage. Shotguns are ideal. As the game is designed, this situation only exists in PvP.

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So how to make shotguns useful in PvE? They will have to be useful in the two sorts of tactical situations that the PvE game presents to you. Since it is highly unlikely that Bungie would redesign their encounters to present different tactical environments (though I wish they would), I'm going to focus on changes to the weapon.

First, shotguns will never be useful in tactical situation #1 (long range encounters). Nor should they be. They are a close-range weapon.

If shotguns were a guaranteed stagger or stun against any non-boss enemy, they would be useful in tactical situation #2 (close range, lots of baddies) as an "oh shit" button, to pull out and stun an enemy with in order to allow for a hasty retreat to cover. This could possibly result in coordinated teams chain-stunning a single enemy, which I'm sure Bungie wouldn't like, but as an individual player, this would be great. Shotguns would not be viable as weapons, however. They'd simply be escape facilitators. That's less than ideal.

Another option would be to give shotguns dramatically larger clips and faster reload times (basically making them short range auto rifles that don't need much aiming). Higher close range damage with steep damage fall-off. Basically an auto-shotty. 12 round magazine, reloads in 1.5 seconds. This would become the weapon of choice at close ranges. A shotgun would have to be equally effective as a hand cannon at close range, but would require less aim, thus rendering it superior in these situations. The damage drop off would prevent the shotgun from outshining hand cannons and medium to long range.

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Here's more food for thought: Modern shotguns of 2015 are way, WAY superior to "space magic" shotguns of Destiny. They hold more rounds, have much longer ranges, and provide superior stopping power. The shotguns of destiny would be more aptly named blunderbusses.