Shotguns and elitists

:Begin Sportsball:

It's a deeply flawed analogy though. You've obviously put in the Sky Knights as "Team 1", but you've actually reversed roles there. In Planetside, it isn't Team 2 that's trying to change the rules.

Properly built, your analogy would have Team 2 (let's say, the '96 Vancouver Grizzlies) practicing the established rules of basketball and Team 1 ('96 Chicago Bulls) practicing rules where the hoop is 18' up, and they only move the ball through passing - no dribbling. Further, we'd have to say that the Bull's coach had gone so far as to petition the NBA commissioner to replace the commonly used basketball with an American football, in order to make dribbling outright impossible.

Sure, the same outcome applies: The Bulls will generally win regardless of ruleset because they are measurably better players. But again, they won't win as much as they want under the regular rules because they don't practice under those rules. And the Grizzlies will be almost completely shut out under the modified rules because they are both foreign and much more difficult to operate under.

The difference to keep in mind here is that it isn't the Grizzlies trying to handicap the Bulls. This is an effort by the Bulls to create a subset of basketball they're much better at, because they enjoy it more than the actual game.
:End Sportsball:

I'm not sure where in the Oracle of Death you pulled your stats from, but I'm seeing different results in the Monthly Stats section - at least for VS (I don't know what the TR/NC starter shotguns are so I didn't look them up). The Thanatos (VS default shotgun) looks to be middle-of-the-pack. The KPU is bad but KPH is 2nd only to the PrOrion, which scored the highest overall of course, but that should come as no surprise due to the HA Shield.

KPU KPH
Thanatos All BRs 6.64 17.04
Thanatos Q4 9.66 24.79
Solstice VE3 All BRs 7.61 13.59
Solstice VE3 Q4 9.43 15.09
Pulsar VS1 All BRs 7.69 16.59
Pulsar VS1 Q4 11.83 23.85
Orion VS54 All BRs 11.44 26.29
Orion VS54 Q4 15.49 36.66

That would be the Mauler and the Barrage, according to the stats (i.e. - shotties with > 1000 uniques).

Interestingly, it looks like Shotty usage is pretty consistent with other weapons. For all the starters, the Q4 BR makes up about 10%-ish of the uniques. Considering that for the non-defaults shotguns, Q4 BR uniques are often over 50% of the uniques brings up some questions.

Are people buying shotguns with anything other than certs?
Are the low BR shotty users just the Koltyr alts of BR100s?
Is it amusing how middle of the road Shotguns are in the stats, or hilarious?

I think this conveniently ignores the the fact that most planetside 2 infantry combat happens within 15-20 meters, which in most cases, especially indoors, is unavoidable.

This statement is repeated almost as often as it is wrong. But even if that was true, that would help SMGs and CQC carbines, not shotguns, because shotguns go from passable to trash right around from 3m to 3.5m.

Okay, that maybe exaggerating it a bit, but there is indeed a stone wall of range beyond which shotguns become absolutely useless, unlike CQC automatic weapons, which are at least somewhat usable beyond their effective range.

I'd like to emphasize his usage of the specific ranges 15-20 meters. Which, being pretty much optimum SMG/Carbine range, is well outside even Baron or Jackhammer range.

The very best you can get for range is only about 12 meters with the Baron, others range from 10 down to 4 meters.

Dear Liberty, you have no idea how shotguns are used and the effort it takes to use them.

Let's use your own sports analogy:
Team one uses regulation height and size hoops.
Team two uses a regulation size hoop, but the hoop is four times as high forcing the basketball players to always stand as close as possible before a throw, but if they throw they are allowed to throw twice and any hit is a 3-pointer.

Team two needs a ton more skill to get in range of the hoop compared to team one, but it can hardly be blocked once they get in range.

Shotguns are not skill-leveling weapons that level the field between pro's and newbs. On the contrary even! On the ranges where you want to hit and have benefit of the high potential DPS of shotguns it's a hit or miss situation. You aim just off the body of your enemy and you might have 2 pellets hit. Don't aim dead-center on an enemy and you will have 2 or 3 pellets miss, causing your DPS advantage to go to zero instantly and any Carbine can out-DPS you again.
See, the RNG you think levels the playing field between pro's and newbs is actually just a disadvantage. Anyone relying on that RNG to put a few accidental hits on his enemy will die because they will be out-DPS'd by anyone. This means that the only way to be effective with a shotgun... Is to be highly accurate, to be able to press the button at the exact right time in a twitch-based setting where firing one frame later can mean the difference between a full hit and a full hit.

Iridar has a wonderful video of this, where he attacks a Heavy and has several shots in a row while his aim is just an inch away from his enemies body, and he barely hits him!

Err... I'd have to go through all my alts but I'm pretty sure I have at least 4 auraxiums worth of kills with various shotguns. Not including NC MAXes which probably gives another 3K Kills. Sadly this is the only account that is updated at the moment.



Though the only time I really bust one out is when a base is super zerged and I have to dive a lot of 3 to 5 v 1's but don't feel like pulling a MAX suit.

Thanks for your opinion on the matter though.

He's been using Uniques, rather than KPU and KPH which don't tell anything really.

Uniques is the amount of unique players that caused any kill.
KPU is Kills Per Unique. Or in other words the amount of kills divided by the amount of uniques. This means that if there's 2000 people using and and they've got 4000 kills, it's a KPU of 2. however, what people forget is that they could have died 10.000 times to get those 4000 kills. This is no KD stat!
Then there's KPH, Kills per hour. Which is just the amount of kills divided by the playtime. This again ignores the amount of deaths you have before you get a kill.

Now what's the most important part here? That KPU and KPH say nothing about the amount of users. It doesn't matter if there's 20.000 users getting 40.000 kills with 5 minutes usage per player or 2 users getting 4 kills with 5 minutes usage per player, the KPU and KPH stay the same!

Now if we could put it up against DPU (Death per Unique) it would become different... KD stats of all players, good and bad together, will show us how useful a weapon is for farming, and if it takes a lot more deaths to use than other weapons.

I don't have to prove anything when I'm already ******* better than you at this game. Your stats in this game, the game that we're talking about, show me all I need to know. You're not good.

Bringing other games into it is irrelevant. I don't give a **** if you beat NiP 1v5 two weeks ago, you're still ******* trash in PS2.

So you've got some stats with it, you still don't know how it's actually working for players, you've proven that much.

Shotguns aren't default weapons, and shotguns are very situational. Even a moron knows that shotguns aren't typically useful in ranged combat.

A tactical mind who knows how to compensate his failings would know learn how to use other weapons just as well. I don't understand the blatant cherrypicking, here.

So does literally every other weapon in the game, including tanks, max suits and jets. Flanking enemies in this game is NOT hard, either. Get on an LA (the default class), get into a 48v48 and jump on roofs. Instant flank if you don't have a sub-60 IQ.

I have, it's every bit as easy, and is even stronger when you know how to position yourself to your advantage.

I'm convinced you're trolling.

What's your character name?

You get shotguns as a default and people can choose them as default.
And yes, everyone knows shotguns aren't useful in ranged combat, but what they don't seem to get is that it requires skill to get in CQC, just like you don't realize that.

I'm not cherrypicking. We are talking about the average player, and how shotguns are supposed to be easy peasy weapons that are OP. I'm bringing in all the reasons why they aren't super easy weapons, and how they teach better tactics that other weapons because it's not as forgiving.
Also, how the hell is this cherry picking?

I never said other weapons didn't, I've said that shotguns do it much better than any other weapon. Simply jumping on roofs and dropping down is absolutely no guarntee on a kill, in fact it's a guarantee of getting your butt kicked unless you know where to walk and where to jump on the roof.

I'm not trolling. You are, spouting complete and utter bullcrap like this.

Search "GundemDakka" on DA, go to MSW-R filter and check for Accuracy. Currently, my HSR isn't that good but that's because I start at the head and bring it down towards the body.


EDIT: Make sure you press the "Show all" button first, I don't think I show up if you don't.

EDIT II: If you don't believe I go for headshots, according to my Aim Tendency I go for headshots primarily. Just in case

I would add that there is a major difference between pulling out shotguns when it's convenient and trying to main them. I will say yes, it would be easy to arax shotguns if you only pull them in bases where you are forced into shotgun range most of the time, such as tower fights, but if you use them 24/7 it becomes apparent how much of a pain they are.

Like the above poster said about flanking, as a shotgun user you still "can" go on a roof... But you can't kill anyone from up there. And if you jump down, you could kill a guy, but the guy who happened to be 2 seconds behind him is likely to mow you down.

The real issue is that if there is any space between any of your targets, you are probably dead.

Good accuracy is only half of the battle, though. You'll still get wrecked against anyone that can hit headshots.

However, it's also obvious that you're very picky about the battles you take to help boost your accuracy. Your KPH suggests that pretty well.

Also, even though you do primarily go for the head, it's not by any large degree. Headshotters will be Head++ or higher.

Regardless, you're obviously not bad at the game in a technical aspect, even if your KDR is very mid-range.

I don't know about picky for accuracy, I don't like super large battles because it makes my system lag. I also prefer defense, but more out of habit rather then tactical superiority.

I would like to know how you gather that from my KPH though, as I don't really see any correlation between m KPH and how I farm accuracy. Do you mean that I farm target-dense bases?

My lower HSR is more because at first I didn't trust my aim enough to go for headshots, I've been actively working on it and I've gone from a C** To a B++ over the course of a few days. Still nothing to brag about, of course, but I'm working on it.

As for my KD, I play hyper aggressive and it tends to get me killed. Far to ADHD to tolerate any KD farming, part of why I played shotguns in the first place. Even if I try to farm KD, I find myself slowly gravitating towards the most hectic fight without realizing it. Before I know it, I'm in 20v1 and I insta-die

Though my main point was that recoil compensation isn't very hard. Even as an average/above average player who never really used "normal" weapons before, I can get extremely high accuracy without it being very difficult.

What is hard is hitting players who dodge around a lot- One of the points I made about shotguns, being that it's extremely difficult to hit dodging players. With an automatic weapon, as long as your cursor is on point your getting damage. You might miss while they change direction, but you'll still hit them while they strafe. But, with a shotgun(Or any semi-auto weapon for that matter), you have to have your mouse on target when you click, or you'll deal mediocre damage, maybe even non at all. Combine that with a player who is good at ADAD and you'll have a very hard time getting a half decent TTK, since if you don't get a 2-shot kill your TTK is worse then SMG ttk.

Just so we are clear, your argument is "You are more successful with shotguns than 99.5% of the playerbase, but you don't actually know how to use them."

*edit* Also, let me be clear. I don't have a problem with shotguns. They are a apart of the game and ultimately the better player you are the more they limit your kill potential.

What I've tried to point out is there is a reason why many players hate on them. I don't personally hate them but there is a specific mentality as to why people do. (Whether it is right or wrong is merely an opinion and largely depends on what side of the argument you fall on)

The problem I have with shotguns in this game is that is is not balanced around the rest of infantry TTK.

The damage output is unreal on the TTK scale. The trade-off should be just like other infantry games, reduced range gives you higher accuracy chance not extreme damage.