Shotguns and Elitists, Part II

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by Gundem, Jan 20, 2016.

  1. SpartanPsycho

    Heavies are frustrating to die to.
    Maxes are frustrating to die to.
    EMPS are frustrating to die to.
    Snipers are frustrating to die to.

    See where I'm going with this?
    Logic is frustrating to die to.

    Your insight into shotguns was a good read.
  2. TheRunDown

    I thing I hate most about shotguns, is the reload animation to being able to fire again when reloading a multi cartridge shotgun..
    Got 7 shells in the shotgun.. use all of them, you start to reload.. get about 3 in the chamber.. then a guy run up to you..
    You tab fire, nothing happens.. the Animation finishes putting in the shell before you clicked fire.. the animiation continues to **** the shotgun.. then the animation still continues to put the shotgun back in the hip position.. So it's 1 second to stop the reload process.. 2 seconds to finish the reload animation and half a second to put the shotgun back in to the default hip position.. and by this time you're dead.. and didn't fire a single shell of the 3 you have in the shotgun..

    This is why I hate the Barron..
  3. EclecticDreck


    Quarter second TTK + client side is, effectively, an instagib. To achieve that, a player must chain headshots.

    Most players cannot chain headshots. Most players, in fact, get headshots only by virtue of generally bad accuracy. They don't intend to hit the head and are simply satisfied with hitting the target.

    In the right moment, pump and semi-auto shotguns can achieve a 0.0 second TTK. Pump shotguns do not demand hitting the smaller head hit box. Stand close enough and body shots will do the trick.


    The simple reason why I favor SMGs over Shotguns is that SMGs are the more flexible close quarters weapon. An SMG is still viable at ranges where a shotgun is defanged. You give up true instagib power, sure, but that's the price I'd pay for a gun that's still plenty lethal at 8 - 15 meters.

    You can't argue like this. You literally open by pointing out that a theoretical perfect player can instagib with an automatic and then point out that you, an imperfect player, cannot do the same with a shotgun. You either talk about perfection or you talk about practicality.

    The perfect player in the perfect spot has a TTK of zero with a shotgun. The imperfect player is somewhere higher than that. Bring in what particular players can do and it stops being a thing we can talk about concretely; it becomes a discussion about preference.

    I personally do not use shotguns because I prefer automatics. I do not like a style of play where position is so dominating and where a mistake on that front means I've got a cotton candy canon.

    You approach the problem incorrectly. Most players with shotguns are terrible just like most players are terrible. That good player doesn't notice all the times some scrub with a shotgun failed to kill them. They do, however, notice when the BR 10 lays them out because that low level player lucked their way into a good spot with the right gun. This isn't a fallacy, it is a bias.

    You're actually failing to factor in a second relevant value: shots per kill. LPK is, effectively, a measure of damage per shot. By looking at that value in isolation, you ignore the part where that average player spends 80% of a magazine shooting at something *besides* the target. Sure, they might only need 11 or 12 shots to kill, but they had to fire 60 or more rounds to get to that magic number.

    That average player thus has a gun that they can reliably hit a target with. It might not be for a lot of damage but, then, it wouldn't take much to overcome the near random spray at and around a target that they'd do with an automatic.

    The average bad with an automatic has terrible TTK because of god awful accuracy. The average bad with a shotgun has better TTK because spread means they'll hit with something more often than nothing.

    Basically, you keep conflating good players with average players and using the idea of a fairly skilled player to point out that the unskilled player with a shotgun is just a bad with a shotgun.

    You're still doing it here, actually. A *good* player has a competative TTK because they have reasonable accuracy in a CQB engagement. The bad player does not have good accuracy and thus their practical TTK is going to be extended well beyond the theoretical. When it comes to bad players, what we're looking at is marginal success. One can hit with part of a pelet spread but one cannot hit with part of a bullet. When your average bad is only landing 1 in 5 shots, the idea of being able to land 3 of every 7 pellets fired suddenly looks pretty great.

    Shotguns allow for marginal success where an automatic does not. At the high end of skill, shotguns and their impractical use conditions mean your average "elite" player chooses a more flexible weapon for the reason you keep dancing around. Most of the time, the automatic is going to have the better TTK. That plus a negativity bias (the tendency to remember the times a scrub killed you with a shotgun out of nowhere more readily than the times you slaughtered a shotgun scrub) is the actual answer you seek.

    Ultimately, my position on the subject is simple: I do better with an automatic than a shotgun most of the time. As such, most of the time, I'll bring an automatic. I'm not above using a shotgun any more than I'm above using a tank to clear a sunderer rather than trying to kill it with a launcher.
    • Up x 1
  4. Gundem


    While you have good stuff here and there, you missed my entire point.

    The entire point, in case you need a refresh, is that elitists complain when bad players use shotguns, even though the reality is that a bad player shoots himself in the foot for using them.

    For the specific nuances and peculiarities of shotguns for average/above average players, see my first thread. That one is heavily focused on trying to achieve highest-level play on both sides.

    Also, your condescending tone does not befit this discussion. You pretty much pointed out half the stuff we already talked about and agreed upon(The inflexibility of shotguns, LPK unreliability, SMG's), yet you speak like you've gotten this thread all figured out and we're all shotgun bads.

    Basically, it makes you sound like an elitist. I don't know if it was intentional, but as it stands it's what it sounds like. Feel free to correct me if I am making an inaccurate assumption.
  5. EclecticDreck

    This is the point I disagree with. A player who lands 1 in 5 shots from an automatic (a bad player) is very likely going to be worse off with that automatic than a shotgun. Why? Because "miss" is relative with a shotgun. Perfect aim is not necessary to get a marginal hit. A player who lands an average of 3 of 7 pellets (a mix of perfect hits, complete misses, and a lot of marginal hits) has the better real TTK.

    Sure, it might take that player landing 5 or 6 shots to get a kill. The odds that they'll *land* those hits is much higher with a shotgun. That automatic user, meanwhile, takes 12 or 13 shots to get a kill. Except they only land 1 in 5. So rather than firing five or six times, they have to fire 60 or 65 times. The automatic user in this scenario can literally empty the magazine without accounting for a kill.

    You can't just compare *flat* shots per kill because doing that necessarily assumes perfect accuracy.

    I apologize if you feel I was talking down to you. It was not my intent.

    Actually, I'm not. You keep trying to mix the good with the bad to make a point. I'm comparing good to good and bad to bad. A bad shotgun user is just that: a bad player using a shotgun. The player isn't bad *because* of the shotgun. Similarly, the bad automatic user is in the same boat.

    By telling me that a bad player has a higher TTK with a shotgun because it takes 5 or 6 shots to kill while a carbine takes 12 or 13, you are comparing in a peculiar way. If both parties have perfect accuracy, you'd be right. But, someone who's at the upper end of SPK with a carbine has accuracy somewhere between 15% and 25% while a shotgun user is considerably higher - 60% or more.

    As far as having it figured out, well, I do. You've already acknowledged the heart of why elite players use automatics rather than shotguns. That just leaves the reason why "elite" players tend to look down on shotgun players.

    Part of it is that marginal success thing (it doesn't teach you to aim is the common cry), part of it is the potential for instant death (one of the many iWin buttons in planetside), and part of it is simply how common shotguns are among low BR players. The truth is, though, that it is probably none of those things. That's all just after the fact rationalization. The real problem is that you remember that one BR8 who lucked their way into a kill through no real fault of their own far more strongly than you remember all those people who brought a shotgun to the wrong sort of fight and died because of it. There are a few other biases that come into play as well. There are many more players who consider themselves among the elite than there are elite players. That gives you a large body of people ripe for a second cognative bias that gets thrown around a lot. Dunning-Kruger describes the tendency to overestimate ones skill while ignoring the skill in others. In the common case here, the automatic user might dismiss the shotgun user's claim to skill because the automatic user must aim for head shots while the shotgun user does not and instead relies on getting into the right position - a different sort of skill than pointing and clicking.

    The answer to your question is thus succinct. Elite players tend to use automatics because they do better with automatics on average. The hate for shotguns is the result of bias.
    • Up x 2
  6. Unclematos7

    If anything, all shotguns except for the baron and auto could use a slight buff. Right now, SMGs are superior in every area aside from towers for CQC LA.
  7. agrueeatedu

    dreck, you're arguing with one of Connery's resident shotgun HA mains. The dude thinks hes good and that he's right because he uses bigger words and pretends his argument is actually logical sound, while completely ignoring any points that make his hypotheticals pointless. He's also decided to create a strawman "elitemans" where people believe shotguns are OP, which except for possibly the jackhammer, is never, and has never been the case. What is argued, is that shotguns take little to no skill to use effectively. Even the shotgun ****ters lord and savior wrel advocated for a default shotgun for this very reason, because they gave bad players something to fight back with. Why are shotguns like this? It has everything to do with the spread, and a small bit to do with the burst damage. Spread on a shotgun introduces a further element of RNG into the weapon, which helps players with poor aim by and punishes players with good aim, its the same reason things like HE and the MCG (the latter of which is another horrible weapon that I doubt anyone would consider OP and very few would consider to be effective cheese) are loved by bad players and hated by better ones, it quite simply doesn't reward aim, but it also makes it so you can get a kill or two every life without having decent aim. This is the entire problem people have with shotguns, it makes bad players that good players like me are used to rolling over a possible threat, and with the latency and poor hit detection this game has, it makes them a threat that occasionally has absolutely no counterplay, although with how poor the servers have been lately this honestly goes for every weapon if someone is actually hitting their shots.
  8. Gundem


    While I'm flattered that you describe me that way, you'd do well to keep that alternative anus of yours shut until you've bothered to actually read the topic(Unless your eye-sockets are also anuses, to which I apologize and also applaud you for being able to type such a long, unstructured sentence).

    Secondly, if you'd have actually read the entire post, you'd realize that for the most part I agree with Drek, with a few small exceptions, but none the less I actually upvoted his post.

    As I said, read the whole post before you start spewing crap. We have had many skilled players(Iridar51 for example) contribute and give supporting evidence to my claims.

    Also, I don't think I'm good. But according to DA's stats, I am literally one of the best in the game in several demographics.
    • Up x 1
  9. agrueeatedu

    "best players in the game in several metrics"

    Top

    *******

    Kek

    I run into you all the time on live server, you run around as a shotgun HA, and I still dunk you with whatever I happen to be running at the time. You point to one stat, on one weapon, with other stats that are mediocre to awful as some sort of evidence of being good. You don't even have the weapon auraxed, let alone with an accuracy that looks to be anything but padded by shooting at terminals and light vehicles. I actually at the lower end of the "best players in the game", I've played in the small competitive scene this game has had, with shotguns, and without. I've played and still play with some of the best outfits in the game, and I actually have the play time and skill to know what I'm talking about when it comes to infantry. But sure, ignore my commentary because you don't like being called out as the angry ****ter you are.
  10. Gundem


    So what's your character name? I only know of a single character who I've actively spoken with about shotguns, and I assumed we'd come to an understanding. Unless(Assuming that was you), you were feigning agreement in order to act like a condescending little child, in which I'd be disappointed.

    Also, FYI I haven't actively played my VS in almost a month, and if I am on my VS I am driving my Harasser. So unless your definition of "All the time" is highly different from mine, then perhaps it's you who doesn't know the first thing of what they are talking about.

    Also, literal proof of my proficiency: GundemDakka

    CARV-M++ Accuracy

    MSW-R-M** Accuracy

    Cycler TVR-M++ Accuracy

    T16 Rhino-M+ Accuracy

    These are the weapons I've legitimately used, the PDW is the only exception(For which I intentionally farmed S rank accuracy, for ***** n' giggles)

    Let me quote Stats.Dasanfall for a moment:

    • M** (MLG Ready T5, Δ = 3.5) - Top 0.025% of players.
    • M* (MLG Ready T4, Δ = 3.25) - Top 0.05% of all players.
    • M++ (MLG Ready T3, Δ = 3) - Top 0.125% of all players.
    • M+ (MLG Ready T2, Δ = 2.8) - Top 0.25% of all players.
    • M (MLG Ready T1, Δ = 2.6) - Top 0.5% of all players. Highly competent.
    So, by definition, I am literally one of the most accurate players in the game. In fact, my accuracy with the MSW-R is #1 on Connery, #7 worldwide. At the very least, I am "Highly competent" According to DA.

    .

    So, you continually yak your jaw like you know something about the game, pretty much fitting the exact mold of the very elitist that I've called out in these threads, recycling the exact same arguments every other elitist pulled out of their *****, provided no concrete evidence or solid reasoning beyond "Muh epeen" and "****guns OP cus I said so cuz muh epeen", and still have the audacity to call us the "****ters".

    Well played. I genuinely have nothing more to say.
    • Up x 1
  11. AxiomInsanity87

    Gundem.

    That was really good

    How many more episodes until season III of shotguns and elitists?
  12. Gundem


    Depends. I actually have content planned for a Part III and a Part III(gdanmnit Mustarde), but I'd like to make absolute sure this thread has ran it's course. Since it keeps coming back in little spurts, and the first one made it +10 pages, I'll refrain from posting part 3 for a little while at least.
    • Up x 2
  13. AxiomInsanity87

    Lol it's a good read.
  14. agrueeatedu

    You want my stats? Sure, if you'll stop pretending you're actually good at the game and try pulling yours on random noobs.

    Connery TR

    Connery NC

    Connery VS

    Emerald TR

    Emerald NC

    Emerald VS

    You are nowhere near as good as you seem to think you are, and while that doesn't take away from any of your arguments you've decided to base upon strawmen and some hilariously poor assumptions, the fact that you're the one actually trying to use your stats to belittle others while accusing others of the same is probably the most ironic thing I'll see this year, seeing as your supposedly good stats are incredibly mediocre. If you're going to be an ******* to random noobs that disagree with you, have the stats and ability to actually back it up.
  15. Mustarde


    I'm really disappointed to see that your Emerald TR character hasn't used the hailstorm. At least stick to your gimmick!
  16. agrueeatedu

    I actually haven't unlocked it yet :( I kinda wanted to start certing out LA first so I wasn't stuck playing HA 24/7
  17. Gundem


    Pathetic. Simply pathetic.

    Show me a straw in this argument. There are none.

    Elitists say that only noobs use shotguns and that they are low skill. I have provided extensive evidence as to why that simply isn't true.

    I don't give a **** about your stats, all I wanted was your character name, which BTW, I've never seen you before in my life. So as to how you've kicked my *** on a regular basis(In which I remind you I haven't been active on my VS for quite some time), that remains a mystery.

    The only reason I bring up my own stats, is to prove elitists like yourself wrong when you bring out the good old "mad cus bad" or "Just a shotgun ****ter who can't aim" argument.

    But since you've chosen to attack me based on my stats rather then my argument, let's play your game.

    My accuracy grade is top .5% of players worldwide. This is by definition, not "mediocre".

    My HSR is B++ grade. While not fantastic, it's still technically "above average". But my aim tendency is also Head+, which shows that I intentionally aim for headshots most of the time. But getting headshots kills, the only way to inflate your HSR, isn't a reliable process for TR LMG's.

    Interesting, for the one TR LMG with a consistent recoil pattern, the TMG-50, my HSR is at 36%. But I digress.

    My KDR is 1.8 for IvI. Since for every kill there must be a death, the worldwide average for KD must be slightly below 1 accounting suicides and people logging out. Therefore, my KD is once again, by definition, at least "Above average", and by no means "mediocre".






    Also, better still, you haven't provided a shred of genuine evidence supporting any of your claims.

    I am literally the 7th most accurate MSW-R user in the world. That is a fact.

    For stock shotguns, it is a fact that only the top 25 players can manage an LPK under 3. Not a single player for the Chaos, the VS's Araxium shotgun(The one you'd expect people to be really good with) can manage an LPK under 2.5. Both are facts.

    We have claims that while anecdotal, are supported by multiple skilled players, as well as video evidence and even mathematical deconstruction of the scenario.

    Simply claiming that my argument is based upon strawmen, isn't an argument at all.

    So here we are, your having no evidence and my having it all. Either own up and admit your bias, or come up with a legitimate argument. Otherwise, this conversation is over.
  18. Gundem


    Wait, people actually use the failstorm? :eek:
  19. agrueeatedu

    Oh really? Lets look at that MSW-R leaderboard. Oh look, you aren't even on it. And please stop trying to pretend that being above average in this game means anything, the average player doesn't even seem to know this an FPS where you shoot people. I came in here simply because I saw some mad scrub who thought he was good trying to bring his mediocre stats into an argument with a player who disagreed with him. I've already explained what I dislike about shotguns, even if you refuse to acknowledge it. There are no good players that actually think shotguns are overpowered, they aren't. What they are are crutch weapons, they're easy to get half decent results with but they're going to hold you back and stunt your growth as an FPS player in the long run. This is what frustrates people the most, that people would rather take the short easy way to being decidedly average rather than putting in the effort to become an actual good, effective FPS player. It's quite simply insulting to those of us that actually try to improve our play, rather than sit jerking off to our one decent stat and trying to pretend that because we're better than the average it means we're good.
  20. agrueeatedu



    Why yes, people do, because if you can actually aim its a good gun. It's definitely the worst SMG in the game, but its still a very good gun if you can actually hit what you're aiming at.