Shotguns spoiling infantry combat.

the amount of noob PA shotgunners I kill is hilarious, I think i die more often to the saw or tmg-50 in one serious battle than the total of deaths due to shotguns. ARs, Carbines/SMGs, and LMGs all the way.

I never said they are ruining the game for me nor that shotguns make up the majority of my deaths. I am however saying that Shotgun balance is making a mockery of Infantry vs. Infantry combat.

A rifle burst that kills someone is usually short enough that you don't have time to turn around. Lag, bad hit detection, and screwing up your aim can make it possible anyway. But the same is true for the shotgun user. One hit kills are unreliable, streaky, sometimes almost rare. If the enemy is moving and aware of your presence, lag, bad hit detection, and humans not being perfect 100% of the time, make two or even more hits necessary more often than not outside theorycrafted scenarios.

And how do you suggest the shotgunner gets to the capture point ? Appear out of thin air ? If a capture point is camped by snipers and HAs with rocket launchers, so you can't park your sundy right next to it, you'll have to make the trip from your sundies cover way over there to the capture point way over here. Guess what ? That's a long range battle you're pretty much forced into. Have fun going in there with a shotgun.

Waiting behind cover is the easiest way to get yourself killed. Due to network latency, the enemy rounding the corner always has the advantage, and can easily kill the waiting enemy before he even realizes that the fight is on. The secret to successful cqc is NOT waiting, but staying on the move. Most of the other noobish no-skill shotgun users I encounter seem to have figured this out. I wonder why it is always the superskilled machine gun users that don't seem to get it.

And as for the difficulty of killing at long range. This may be true at sniper ranges. At medium to long ranges, I never had much problem getting kills with an lmg. Now I admit I don't have the greatest experience with long range fighting. I do however have a lot of experience with getting caught out in the open with only a shotgun to defend myself. In my experience, there's hardly anyone showing problems picking me off at range. Maybe the difficulties you describe are more of a personal matter ? (and please don't take that as an insult. everyone has his weak spots. I for example am grotesquely bad at piloting esf)

No we have not, and you havn't either. Shotgun on a medic or engineer is rather questionable due to their role. And on a heavy ? Outside the jackhammer, which just rocks hard, I'd always prefer to get some more range for every scenaro where I'd actually use a HA, since I don't even have to kill targets on my own when fighting with a squad or platoon, and can much easier assist/focus fire with a weapon that has some range. Shotguns are just like c4 best used on a LA due to their improved ability to get those weapons close to their targets. So unless you want to claim that all infantry combat consists mostly of Light Assaults, Shotguns are definitly NOT overall the best weapon for infantry to use.

New players don't have access to heat, he, daltons, rocketpods, lock on launchers, av turrets, or dual bursters. Not having a shotgun isn't much of a limitation compared to those.

Theorycrafting at it's best. But with your suggestion of a vehicle based strategy ... do you actually ready these forums too, or do you just post ? So the defenders team will need a couple of burster maxes to create the famous no-flight-zone in a radius of 3 hexes, a couple of engies with av turrets to kill any ground based vehicle that dares to leave cover, supported by HAs with OPed lock on launchers, that can also deal with any approaching infantry. Checkmate!

Nope. They just got owned with weak vehicles against OPed AV spam, and short range infantry against long range snipers entrenched in a base. At the moment, they look like pretty bad players to me that didn't bother to read the relevant forum whines - the latter meaning they are probably pretty smart anyway.

Sorry, but these are no solutions, even if we completely disregard the fact that there is no problem in the first place. I understand that you just want the bad shotguns to go away, so they can't hurt you anymore, which making them strictly inferior to machine gun damagewise would achieve. This would however create an actual imbalance, which is exactly the opposite of what balance efforts should try to achieve.

I often see the argument that an ESF shouldn't be forced to use decoy flares (which according to some, it currently is, due to lock-on spam). I don't see why that same argument doesn't apply to shotguns. If you are up against a shotgun in CQC, you must pick up a shotgun to counter it. You don't have to pick up a shotgun, just like you don't have to use decoy flares - but if you want to be effective, you must do it.

Pump Action shotguns should have used the same mechanics as the other shotguns (6x143).

10 and 11 Pellets is bad because isntagib is bad.

Change them to 6x143, slightly more damage than the existing shotguns at 6x135 but still not a oneshot kill.

Now adjust them to give them a tighter pellet spread.

Make one a 2.5 Spread, 6x143 at 100 RPM and the other 2.0 Spread 6x143 at 86 RPM.

Pump action shotguns are now good weapons that blur the line between Carbine range and traditional shotgun range with out being one shot weapons.

Yea, how about all of them. That would still leave OSK with a pump action possible, but much more rare.

Flaws in a game do not justify each other. That is all.

I agree that the pump action shotguns are ridiculously powerful. However, I completely disagree that infantry combat is being ruined by them. All weapons are still viable even in CQC. The shotgun is FAR from the "best" infantry weapon. FAAAAAR from it. I hate these threads as they blow shotguns way out of proportion and make them seem way worse than they really are. Honestly, the shotgun:carbine ratio I see in game is about 1:20. Most people are using carbines.

http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/february-pump-action-shotguns.82983/

People can argue for the PA all they want, but if they read the roadmap thread it's pretty obvious how the community felt about that style of gun for Planetside. It's a gun where people can abuse the high latency of the game to pull off cheezy lag kills. Yes, it's situational, but I can tell you it's very easy to make the "right" situation happen. Granted, I do think the PA nerf increased the skill cap to get a OKS, but a high latency game that uses centralized servers and has a questionable processing delay probably isn't a good platform for an infantry OSK weapon. Too many ties (where I probably should have lost TBH).

I totally disagree with your assesment. Shotguns recieved a considerable nerf to there ranged effectiveness with the last tweak. SMG's are just as effective at CQB with great range.

The problem with this game is the majority of players are HA. They already have massively too much utility with the ability to be 1 man tank destroyers and machinegunners and demolistions experts! If you wish to be more effective in CQB get a shotgun or an SMG. Dont ask for other things to be nurfed so that your machine gun can dominate close quaters as well.

Sorry the forum is no place for your entitlement issues. Go blow up a tank with your lock on launcher. You will feel better.

Guess I'll chime in and say shotguns didn't ohk you in planetside 1. The signature shotgun was the jackhammer and unless you got hit by its alt fire mode it was an actual fight instead of an instant death. This must've come from one of the BF or CoD games because it def wasn't from the planetside universe.

'How about the rambos with a pump-action, who one shot everyone in a room before anybody even realizes they're there. Conveninet how you're ignoring those rambos.'

Seen this, an uppercut can easily clear a room of 5 without much trouble.

And when you look at the killboard of the people that use shotguns you can see the pattern of weapons/vehicles they choose to use to pwn with.

The majority of which are 1HK, no chance to react to or aircraft/tank versus infantry.

Not much you can do against players like this, they specifically spend 95% of their time using 1HK weapons out of choice and the developers give them that choice.

What a game this would be if every player thought like that.

And can I add that a LA with nano 5 and an NC11 can match/beat a normal heavy as that is what I play.

1000 certs on nano 5 is a lot, but it gives me a chance to aim at and kill them, whereas on 4 they would in most cases kill me with 10-20% of their health left.

In cqc, if a PA misses me he is usually screwed. If he doesn't I am (of course more and more strafe dancers are figuring out how to exploit the game deficiencies to make you lose sight of them for a moment). I believe with the net lag issues this game/users suffer from, it would be better served with a slower TTK. As is, weapon variety is really pigeonholed to a very narrow band that truly restricts weapon diversity. I also agree it can be annoying to die without even getting the chance to retaliate in a straight up fight.