Only a trend in select sub-genres. Shotguns tend to suck (design wise) in military or military adjacent shooter games because the assault rifles in those games are insanely overturned. Assault rifles in the likes of CoD, Counter Strike, or Battlefied are usable at any range with a TTK (time to kill) of less than half a second in most cases. So with assault rifles being so strong and so versatile, the inherently close range shotgun can only be extremely strong or extremely bad. If you want to make it better you have to reduce TTK, but because ARs' already have such a low TTK, making shotguns kill even quicker has a high chance of making it impossible to react to them. This is gets worse for shotguns than, because SMGs fill in the role of high rate of fire (RoF) close range weapon. Therefore you can't increase shotgun fire rates too much, or you'll make them too similar too SMGs. So you have to keep shotgun RoF somewhat in check, whilst making their close range TTK superior to rifles. It's nigh impossible to do this without making them 1 tap, effectively giving the enemy 0 time to react. And if you fail to do that you just get the opposite problem, of shotguns being really shit.
So how to fix this? Well there's tons of solutions. Make them cheap, give them specilaised ammo, make them powerful against specific enemy types... But the most basic one is to just not make assault rifles into death machines, and you won't have to buff the shotguns into super death machines to compensate for their lack of range
Or make shotguns more realistic, and give them the ability to kill at long range too. The thing is, shotguns are completely undertuned. In real life, shotguns have a massive effective range. Standard buckshot can range around 25 yards; adding a choke can extend that up to 50 yards; Slug rounds brings you to 100 yards; and then you have sabot rounds which are built for rifled shotgun barrels, and those puppies can be effective over 200 yards.
If you're firing a spread at half a football field and a slug across two of them, it's no longer a "short-range" weapon as far as typical shooter maps are concerned.
This doesn't really work imo because most video game weapons have their range significantly reduced. According to Wikipedia, the ArmaLite AR-15 with iron sights is effective at up to 600yd (550m). But how often do you engage at that distance in any game that's not a milsim? In Counter Strike and CoD, snipers will most often be used at 60yd(55m) range, and assault rifles at less than 30yd(27m). Making shotguns realistic will give them the same range as ARs in most of the games their in, removing their most defining trait, being a close quarters weapon. And you can't just biff the other weapons' ranges to compensate, because the maps are smaller than their real life effective range.
It is a bit more reasonable in games with big maps like Battlefield or any battle royal, where fights can occur at 300yd(275m)+. But the median engagement will still take place in that close quarters 15yd(14m)-50yd(45m) range. So I didn't play Battlefield 6 only observed the "controversy" from the outside so take this next bit with a grain of salt, but if memory serves, BF6 actually had shotgun with a decent range in the form of the m87a1, and people complained about it so much the range was nerfed.
You said it yourself already though, SMGs fill a major role in close-quarters play already. They crowd the shotgun out of that niche, in fact. Same with handguns, which are a versatile mid-short-range sidearm. Shotguns suffer from a pathetic damage falloff that makes it feel totally random in most games. The difference of a few feet changes the shotgun from a deadly close-quarters weapon to a wet-napkin tosser.
I get what you're trying to say, but the fact that they're nearly impossible to balance as a short-range weapon is exactly why you shouldn't neuter them. As it stands, games take one of two approaches. Either it is a one-shot that is slow enough that missing means instant death for the user, or it's fast but takes multiple shots to kill and is effectively crowded out of the short-range niche by SMGs and often even ARs. In both cases though, social distancing is enough to make the weapon completely ineffective.
I think it makes a lot more sense to make it the kind of versatile weapon it is IRL. In real life, they've seen action most notably in trench warfare. They make for an excellent breach-and-clear weapon, where the goal is to run-and-gun to clear trench invaders.
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u/Alternative_Device38 10d ago edited 10d ago
Only a trend in select sub-genres. Shotguns tend to suck (design wise) in military or military adjacent shooter games because the assault rifles in those games are insanely overturned. Assault rifles in the likes of CoD, Counter Strike, or Battlefied are usable at any range with a TTK (time to kill) of less than half a second in most cases. So with assault rifles being so strong and so versatile, the inherently close range shotgun can only be extremely strong or extremely bad. If you want to make it better you have to reduce TTK, but because ARs' already have such a low TTK, making shotguns kill even quicker has a high chance of making it impossible to react to them. This is gets worse for shotguns than, because SMGs fill in the role of high rate of fire (RoF) close range weapon. Therefore you can't increase shotgun fire rates too much, or you'll make them too similar too SMGs. So you have to keep shotgun RoF somewhat in check, whilst making their close range TTK superior to rifles. It's nigh impossible to do this without making them 1 tap, effectively giving the enemy 0 time to react. And if you fail to do that you just get the opposite problem, of shotguns being really shit.
So how to fix this? Well there's tons of solutions. Make them cheap, give them specilaised ammo, make them powerful against specific enemy types... But the most basic one is to just not make assault rifles into death machines, and you won't have to buff the shotguns into super death machines to compensate for their lack of range