Remove Shotgun RNG

(for those of you who know what shotgun RNG is, ignore the first paragraph)
Shotgun RNG is a mechanic that D.VA, Roadhog, and Reaper all have. Every time you shoot, the spray pattern of pellets will all be in different locations, but still within the same circle. This essentially adds total randomness to the characters. It doesn’t really affect D.VA much because her fire rate is so high, but roadhog and reaper can suffer from it.

So what’s the issue? Some RNG is not bad (matchmaking, what enemies you’ll fight, etc), but RNG that affects damage output is often unfair to both the enemy and the player.
If you’ve ever played roadhog, I’m sure you’ve encountered situation where you are firing your primary in a choke at their tanks in close range, and have shots at the same range do drastically different damages, even if no other variables changed (distance to target, aim, etc).
Reaper also has issues with this, as his damage at 5-7 meters can range from 3 shotting you to barely even nicking you.
I suggest that these characters have a set shotgun spread that always comes out when you shoot, as RNG makes their damage inconsistent.

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You’ve explained pretty well how RNG affects those weapons but you haven’t explained why you think it’s wrong or bad for the game.

Personally, I think it’s perfectly fine. Understanding the slight randomness of the weapons and being able to consistently use them effectively is part of the player’s skill.

E.g.
You’re playing Roadhog. You are dueling someone and they’re low. You only have one shot left before you need to reload. The enemy is at a distance where your shot may or may not be enough to finish them. Hook is on cool down so you can’t bring them closer. If you reload they will escape.

Do you take the shot immediately and risk not confirming the kill or do you spend the extra fraction of a second or so closing the distance to guarantee the kill? Decisions like that are what make the game so fun. At least for me.

have you played this game?

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fair i kinda forgot to get to the point.
The point is that this game is supposed to be competitive and skill/gamesense based.
RNG removes that. It’s also incredibly annoying and stupid to have RNG decide whether or not you finish someone off as reaper or roadhog.

I gotta be honest, of all of the things that undermine the competitive nature of this game (and there’s a lot of them), RNG spread on the shotguns is pretty low on the list

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My initial reply explains why I think having shotgun RNG actually adds to the skill required.

Prolly because %90 of the hit boxes are tiny and you need to be in melee range to be consistently effective.

That being said I agree it should be removed… except for Roadhog.

I love the meat shield but his pellets are probably over twice the size of D.VAs and Reapers so it was never nearly as bad as those two. This is coming from personal experience playing them, I get more consistent hits with fat mad max then the bait and edgelord

shotguns IRL are random though. that’s the nature of the weapon type.

Shotguns also have a longer distance than pistols and better accuracy, so no that isn’t true in the slightest. The only Shotguns that aren’t like that are sawed offs and that’s because you literally saw off the rifled long barrels.

Ahhh, shotguns don’t have rifled barrels. Even if they did it wouldn’t do anything.

… you’re mistaken, kind of.

  1. effective range for pistols is about 25 yards. lets define this more, ‘standard’ pistol cartridges can be effective out to 300 yards if you’re using them in one of the many modern carbine platforms. in my friends AR that is setup to fire 9mm its trivial to be on target out to 100 yards and the round itself is lethal out to 300 but not super accurate.

out of a full sized pistol, 25 yards is about as far as you’d ever want to count on. however the rounds themselves if for some reason you hit the target are lethal well beyond that.

  1. shotgun spread is easily calculated. if you google or search youtube for shotgun spread you’ll see that at 50 yards you’re down bellow 50% of the pellets on a man sized silhouette. by 100 yards (a range where a pistol cartridge from a carbine platform is still VERY accurate) you’re just praying you get a single pellet on target.

as for lethality non spin stabilized shot will ALWAYS lose lethality faster but within 50 yards will still suck to be hit with. a spin stabilized 9mm … hell there are a lot of videos online showing .22lr punching through multiple layers of denim and deep into ballistic gel. deep enough you wouldn’t want to be hit by it.

and as jex points out … without rifling to spin stabilize the projectile even swapping in slug rounds doesn’t gain you predictable accuracy … but slugs are super fun to shoot and MUCH more reliable than shot if you’re actually trying to hit something on purpose out to about 70 yards. after that they knuckle ball too much to be reliable.

Okay let me tell you how far 50 yards is; it’s half a football field and if you’ve even glanced at a game of football you should know that it’s pretty long, also some shotguns do have rifled barrels since the pellets are expelled from the shell at the base of the gun and not out, hunting shotguns are fairly accurate for that range.

IRL shotguns are still more effective and ACCURATE than pistols, your agreed about my pistol comment and it’s obvious why due do the longer barrel sized (again AR with 9mm versus a pistol) but game shotguns have an affect range of 2 yards.

i can’t help but notice that a game where a frog heals people with music is not realistic

art imitates life though. all fake video games follow real world examples … even when you’re shooting trans-dimensional demon aliens.

In overwatch we have time benders, rogues, and outlaws.

A fat pig rivals them all with a hook.

It’s a shotgun, it’s supposed to have rng in its spread. Just cause other games in the past didn’t use rng(proly cause it would use 2 much cpu) don’t mean it is the rite way to go about it. Go play something else