Shotgun Balance Update

[Kittaa 18]

I don't understand how you move forward with applying these outrageous changes based on no data, as no one is even entering the test district.

 

And you guys said you would be reverting the changes made to Shotguns to pre-LO 2017 versions. Those versions of shotguns were the most balanced ever with a tiny little fixes needed for newer shoguns and that's it.

 

Now you are using the 2017 versions as a base to mess with the stats of shotguns even more and give us another unwanted balance that is more or less a nerf to all shotguns against other already insane weapons with higher TTK and DPS.

 

Please just stop this mess, and roll the 2017 Shotgun stats live and call it a day already.

 

The CSG with these changes will be the most useless shotgun against any other shotgun or other cqc weapons. 

 

As it comes only in Preset versions and cannot be Modified, it's unfair to go up against 3- Open Slots weapons that can benefit from additional modification to make them even better. 

 

Revert it's damage back to 652 and fire interval to 0.68 so it can be competitive against other weapons and have a chance at killing Kevlar 3 users.

[CookiePuss 5373]

1 hour ago, Kittaa said:

I don't understand how you move forward with applying these outrageous changes based on no data, as no one is even entering the test district.

Testing IS being done internally.

Unfortunately, there isn't much to be done about players not caring enough to test or offer feedback.

[SkittyM 287]

2 hours ago, Kittaa said:

I don't understand how you move forward with applying these outrageous changes based on no data, as no one is even entering the test district.

I've seen people enter the testing districts on the first day of every patch, so I'm not sure where that assumption comes from.  Not to mention these changes come from the opinions of everyone that writes something for the most part.  Assuming you write more than "CSG sucks" that is.

[Therustee 9]

Shotguns in a third person game is pretty pointless anyway.as most of us do we literally corner camping and shit on players by surprise.and as its only a video game logic not real life shotguns should not have ridiculous range.and that mainly applies for the nfas which is fucking broken.its so easy to use and if you have ir3 and extended mag3 u ll be sitting on peoples easily up to 20metres or even a bit longer but in closer ranges its very hard to counter. But hey LO is making this unnecessary changes and all that bullshoot with absolutely zero knowledge of the game. You can comment on my comments like ohhh rustee you silver noob you trash u bad etc etc i dont give a shit. But the game is more broken these days. LO took it over unbanned all the cheaters,made stupid gun changes and fucked up all the servers. Thanks matt Scott cant wait till the next live shotgun changes when everyone become a shotgun main player

[dr0zone 15]

looks really good!

 

the only 2 different things i noticed from original shotguns are the CSG / shredder fire a bit slower (like 5%) .

 

I don't see any reason to not go live with the new test stats immediately and work upwards from there.

[FriendlyFires 13]

Man just bring back old shotguns like they were before LO with old hitreg
 

[gurrensama 0]

still left the pay 2 win ogre as is I see? alright i get it you guys have to make money somehow right? Inappropriate language removed.    - Azukii

On 2/4/2020 at 10:20 PM, CookiePuss said:

Testing IS being done internally.

Unfortunately, there isn't much to be done about players not caring enough to test or offer feedback.

Yall expect us to all conglomerate as a collective and just simultaneously attack shotgun issues across the board and globe???? Offer some INCENTIVE to test weapons for you instead of just shrugging your shoulders when we don't want to figure your game out for free. We have BEEN shouting what needs to be done to shotguns for a near decade please don't begin to shed tears about internal testing. 

[FriendlyFires 13]

why would u spend so much time on balancing shotguns when u can:
-use preLO shotguns stats
-balance pmg
-balance cars? (make some others be more competitive against vegas)
-actually take a part or help somehow to prevent griefers atleast in evenst and tournaments/arranged games (yes yes) that that smol commutity tries to make. If u cannot arrange some really interesting events for players, where everyone could take a part instead of just running after some GM on cheats through the whole map.
 

Edited February 5, 2020 by FriendlyFires
for fun

[CookiePuss 5373]

11 minutes ago, gurrensama said:

still left the pay 2 win ogre as is I see?

It is going to be hard to take anything you say seriously after reading this.

12 minutes ago, gurrensama said:

Yall expect us to all conglomerate as a collective and just simultaneously attack shotgun issues across the board and globe???? Offer some INCENTIVE to test weapons for you instead of just shrugging your shoulders when we don't want to figure your game out for free. We have BEEN shouting what needs to be done to shotguns for a near decade please don't begin to shed tears about internal testing. 

First off Im just a player homie, I can't offer you anything.

 

I've been playing for many years now, so I don't expect anything more than the norm from players... that is for players to do nothing but complain.

I also don't expect players to pay enough attention to see that no one agrees on anything in regards to balance.

[yungflyninja 4]

None of the people above have a clue what they're talking about. Keep it up little orbit. 

 

I think after weapon changes, you should look into character mods. 

[Zatro 49]

Is there any reason for using the Strife over JG/CSG anymore?

Yes, the Strife is more accurate and can deal consistent damage to enemies in distances where other SGs can't. But they are both still 2 STKs, now their max damage output isnt even THAT different, and strife is still (almost) twice as slow as JG/CSG. I don't think that that extra effective distance is worth it at all.
I don't care about one-shotting fragile users. The damage it used to deal was enough for the game to forgive you if you didn't land >75% of pellets. Now it will be like "land both shots almost perfectly or don't get the kill", and you already had the JG/CSG for that, only that they shoot 3-4 times in the same time frame the Strife shoots twice.

I remember when they talked about shotgun balance in July, they said they would nerf the Strife's damage, but buff its Fire Rate. Now it's just the nerf. I'd say that if they are going to nerf its damage, they should at least take the fire rate from 1.25 to somewhere around 1.05. Either that or make the other SGs a 3 STK so the Strife is still an option to consider. I understand that would be shitting on the other SGs users but really, there's no point in using Strife now

Edited February 7, 2020 by IS2APBR

[mojical 159]

Test districts were populated after the patch so it was possible to get a decent picture of how the changes work in practice. 

 

The JG, Showstopper and Shredder seemed alright. Thumper looks like it is also in a good spot but I do not currently have one.

 

However the NFAS, Strife and CSG are rather weak compared to the above.

 

While NFAS is a monster on live, this is mostly due to per ray scaling, so the huge damage nerf compared to 2017 stats was not really necessary. I would give it the Thumper's 444 damage value, which would still leave it below the (certainly not meta) pre-LO NFAS. On current prototype stats what would have been easy kills with live stats sometimes require the whole magazine. However, 396 damage does seem appropriate for the Ogre provided nothing else changes on it. 

 

Strife is also very underwhelming, if a damage buff is not an option I could see its spread lowered to 85cm, as otherwise it is hard to justify picking it over other shotguns. And also, while not relevant to the balancing itself, I would fix the typo in the description ("piece" instead of "peice").

 

CSG is the most frustrating one, as I looked forward to it becoming less underpowered compared to other shotguns as it is now. The removal of center pellet inaccuracy allows for jump shooting, but this feels gimmicky on a weapon with good mobility to begin with, and the rest of its stats are a downgrade from 2017. I don't see a solution besides increasing its damage to a maximum of 630 or even 651 by slightly upping per pellet damage, to further compensate its firerate reduction compared to pre-LO.

 

 

[Lign 361]

Feels a bit underpowered to me, I couldn’t two shot the guy who sits right at front of me without moving hitting him at center of the body. Sometimes I had the feeling 'I hitted him perfectly in the center how is it only 38 assist'. I like the idea of shotguns being unforgiving at two shotting and high skill ceiling comparing to what we have on live but I feel like it’s too much unforgiving. A bit better accuracy for jg and csg and maybe higher damage for csg and it will be good imo. 

P.S. just make nfas 4stk with bigger magazine capacity. Just do it

Edited February 6, 2020 by Lign

[Noob_Guardian 417]

On 2/4/2020 at 2:36 AM, WaltanMari said:

This news looks like press "F" for strife.

 

Hey STRIFE users, can we unite and do something whith it?

@LO Max health damage per shot for the strife imo would be best "at minimum" 850 if you're going to nerf it to prevent death to fragile users. If you decrease damage further then I suggest a TTK to decrease as well. Without cover it suffers in CQC drastically and easily gets melted waiting for its next shot, and as others pointed out, other shotguns simply out ttk it and can manage 3 shots almost by the time the strife can fire 2, and can fire 4 by the time strife fires 3x. This is excluding the amount of free time OCA,PMG and every other weapon has to fire to kill the strife user.

 

The strife is the "HVR" of short range with high damage, slow ttk, and high risk. I can understand being weary of reducing its ttk and wanting to make it feel less powerful, however it's TTK is what balanced its high damage, and it's also what causes the biggest risk while in cqc. With less damage, the TTK should decrease, even slightly.

 

People do not use fragile in general because clotting agent is generally better, not because of strife. I think out of these several years since strife came around, I may have seen one person switch off of Fragile while I'm using strife. So I don't feel that using the fragile as a backdrop for the strife nerf is really a good argument.

[illgot 379]

On 2/3/2020 at 11:31 PM, Solamente said:

who's ready for 2012 meta again

Nano C being OP?

[Flaws 1033]

First and foremost, I believe that no shotgun in the game should require Improved Rifling like it does in current live. CSG for example is completely useless without IR3 on live. I'd much rather have good base range and all preset variants of the CSG that have IR3, replaced with some other mod, but I digress.

 

I'll start with the CSG as I got most time in with it. I mainly used the Speed-Dater to see how well non-IR CSG does with the current prototype changes. It felt very inconsistent because I would need to 3-shot players at point blank range, even if I'm perfectly centered on their hitbox: https://i.gyazo.com/dd3a04fb6167171c04469e6fda97b6a9.mp4 (I have plenty more clipped examples of this)

 

And on some occassions I actually had to 4-shot people?: https://i.gyazo.com/5558f9fac03f93fba8146db4238dc4a7.mp4

 

But then other times I could 2-shot players with the exact same weapon: https://i.gyazo.com/9cbc7a18913288e8e03cee344c35685a.mp4 

 

The first time I went in to play there, the district was full to the brim so I figured that the large amount of people could be causing issues with hitreg and consistency so I blamed it on that. I went to a remote spot with @Mojibaked to test the damage drop off (range) of the CSG and I was able to 3-shot him at 20m (with CSG RT1 which in terms of range and accuracy is identical to the Speed-Dater, as it has no accuracy/range mods on it). (See here for footage of that test: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/547290930?t=2h4m40s). But I still had to 3-shot players a lot of the time in point blank with the exact same weapon. What's also interesting is that CSG PR1 (which has IR3) did feel a bit more consistent but that makes no sense as the 3-shot kills I was getting were well within it's base range so I'm not entirely sure what's going on there.

 

The JG (without any accuracy/range mods on it) felt significantly more consistent than the CSG in terms of point blank but that could be credited to the higher damage and maybe even the higher spread to an extent.

 

Conclusion:

I believe that the CSG should be the more consistent 2-shotter out of the CSG and JG and it should feel more reliable as it always was the longer range pump-action.  I think that the CSG's damage should be upped to 650 and it's firerate made identical to the JG. What the JG would lack in range, should be made up by slightly higher damage and larger spread for higher efficency in closer range as it was intended to be. However, due to the nature of APB being a third person shooter where you can look around corners and corner pop shoot, I also do support potentially making pump actions 3 STK and maybe some other adjustments to kill corner popping as it's an incredibly overpowered and unfair tactic. If that is something that you would approve then we'd need to test that out as well.

 

The N-FAS and Thumper felt slightly overnerfed (underpowered) so maybe up their range or damage a little for the next test.

 

The way I see semi and full-auto shotguns in APB is that just because they are automatic and have massive spread, it doesn't mean that they should be an undefeatable menace that requires no aim or strategy (which is what the current state of live N-FAS and True Ogre are). They should still punish you if your aim is off target and they should only achieve minimum TTK while practically hugging the target.

 

The Showstopper (I was only able to test the short version, as I do not have a Thunder) feels at a good spot right now. It does not have unrealistic range and it's okay for a secondary shotgun, at least from what I could gather. My main focus was on the CSG and JG.

 

Edited February 8, 2020 by Flaws

[Hexerin 1140]

10 hours ago, Flaws said:

First and foremost, I believe that no shotgun in the game should require Improved Rifling like it does in current live. CSG for example is completely useless without IR3 on live. I'd much rather have good base range and all preset variants of the CSG that have IR3, replaced with some other mod, but I digress.

This is something I can support you on. Considering shotguns don't even have rifling, I'd honestly be in support of Improved Rifling losing any effect on shotguns period. Would make balancing them that much simpler/easier as an added bonus.

 

10 hours ago, Flaws said:

It felt very inconsistent because I would need to 3-shot players at point blank range, even if I'm perfectly centered on their hitbox: https://i.gyazo.com/dd3a04fb6167171c04469e6fda97b6a9.mp4 (I have plenty more clipped examples of this)

And on some occassions I actually had to 4-shot people?: https://i.gyazo.com/5558f9fac03f93fba8146db4238dc4a7.mp4

But then other times I could 2-shot players with the exact same weapon: https://i.gyazo.com/9cbc7a18913288e8e03cee344c35685a.mp4

Welcome to shotguns as they were pre-rayscaling. I told you people this would happen, but of course like always you waved me off and ignored me despite my warnings always showing themselves to be what ends up happening in the end...

[Revoluzzer 274]

18 hours ago, Flaws said:

I'll start with the CSG as I got most time in with it. I mainly used the Speed-Dater to see how well non-IR CSG does with the current prototype changes. It felt very inconsistent because I would need to 3-shot players at point blank range, even if I'm perfectly centered on their hitbox: https://i.gyazo.com/dd3a04fb6167171c04469e6fda97b6a9.mp4 (I have plenty more clipped examples of this)

If the bullet impacts are anything to go by, you could have missed almost the entire first and second blast.

 

 

 

I know, I know, the consensus is that bullet impacts do not actually represent where the shot was registered server-side. But I still believe they represent where the shot can go, even server side. Also, if I'm not mistaken, hitreg around ammo vending machines has always been wonky, even worse than shooting someone close to normal obstacles. So it's not entirely unlikely that these were well aimed shots (the first one moreso than the second), which didn't register correctly.

On top it could also be a client-server-communication issue, where what you see is not what you get. Your crosshair-/camera-movement might not have registered server-side the same way it was displayed client-side.

 

The four-shot example shows that some hits also get registered when they really shouldn't, because your opponent is already out of the way. But again, what you see is not what you get there.

 

 

My experience in the playtest was that hitreg still isn't very good across the board, be it "normal" weapons or shotguns. But the latter work fairly reliable in their current state.

Edited February 9, 2020 by Revoluzzer

[Flaws 1033]

3 hours ago, Revoluzzer said:

-snip-

What do you make out of these then?

 

https://i.gyazo.com/731d9af7f07109b6befdf4583ec14b71.mp4

 

https://i.gyazo.com/f1dd0c956e61828be3ef04d036ddcf86.mp4

 

https://i.gyazo.com/a230cd287c9982b32f85ac4e1c87a522.mp4

 

https://i.gyazo.com/0b63788360ed4276b8c5db8e2b827181.mp4

[Hexerin 1140]

13 hours ago, Flaws said:

What do you make out of these then?

https://i.gyazo.com/731d9af7f07109b6befdf4583ec14b71.mp4

https://i.gyazo.com/f1dd0c956e61828be3ef04d036ddcf86.mp4

https://i.gyazo.com/a230cd287c9982b32f85ac4e1c87a522.mp4

https://i.gyazo.com/0b63788360ed4276b8c5db8e2b827181.mp4

I wonder how long until all you who bitched and whinged for this reversion start begging for a reversion to the reversion.

[Flaws 1033]

5 hours ago, Hexerin said:

I wonder how long until all you who bitched and whinged for this reversion start begging for a reversion to the reversion.

I didn't ask for a reversion specifically, just for further rebalancing because right now live is god awful.

[Hexerin 1140]

7 minutes ago, Flaws said:

I didn't ask for a reversion specifically, just for further rebalancing because right now live is god awful.

All they need to do to balance the current live shotguns is adjust numbers. The rayscaling implementation is exactly what shotguns needed, the problem is that they're just overtuned a bit atm because the rayscaling was implemented without adjusting the existing stats (for the most part).

[Kittaa 18]

11 hours ago, Hexerin said:

All they need to do to balance the current live shotguns is adjust numbers. The rayscaling implementation is exactly what shotguns needed, the problem is that they're just overtuned a bit atm because the rayscaling was implemented without adjusting the existing stats (for the most part).

You're wrong. Rayscaling is awful because it's too forgiving, or even rewarding bad aim and inexperienced players generally to basically 2 shot you with little to no accuracy while aiming.

 

The stats were just fine before LO messed with them, and CSG/JG Shotguns only rewarded good aim and experienced players.

 

They can't be 3 stk because that would be too slow of a ttk to be competitive against other weapons used in cqc. 

 

[Noob_Guardian 417]

On 2/10/2020 at 2:42 PM, Kittaa said:

You're wrong. Rayscaling is awful because it's too forgiving, or even rewarding bad aim and inexperienced players generally to basically 2 shot you with little to no accuracy while aiming.

 

The stats were just fine before LO messed with them, and CSG/JG Shotguns only rewarded good aim and experienced players.

 

They can't be 3 stk because that would be too slow of a ttk to be competitive against other weapons used in cqc. 

 

If they have the same TTK as other CQC weapons it wouldn't be "too slow" plus it would provide a slightly faster TTK after shots are fired.

[Yapopal 164]

Dear developers. You need to determine the role of each shotgun, they should be different, like girls. Curly red-haired, spectacular blonde, strict brunette, arrogant hipster, well, you know ... At the moment, all the pistols are one-sided, these are just copies with dyed hair.
1. JG - shotgun, from which the player should expect the classic behavior of a shotgun. 2 shots = corpse, range up to 20 meters, heavy damage from close range, absolute uselessness at a distance of more than 30 meters.
2. CSG weapons for aiming
firing from a shelter, at a distance of 15 to 40 meters. Low efficiency when driving.
3. NFAS one store = one corpse. High firing speed, long reload time.

4. Strife = HVR from a short distance, low running speed, very strong recoil, three bullets in the store. Huge damage to cars when firing at close range Calabria takes serious damage with one shot at point blank range.

5. Schrоder - automatic CSG for aimed shooting. Low reload speed, a small amount of ammunition, accuracy decreases with prolonged shooting 6. OGRE - one clip = 2 corpses. High recoil, long reload time, reduced accuracy during prolonged shooting.

6. OGRE - one store = 2 corpses. High recoil, long reload time, reduced accuracy during prolonged shooting.

Shotguns should have an advantage at a distance of up to 30 meters! And no rifle should have superiority at these distances!

Organize a test. Two players stand at a distance of 15 meters, one uses JG, the other NTEC. Players cannot move, but can crouch. Changing the parameters of the gun can be considered successful when the JG is superior to NTEC.