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playboi carti

does the super shotgun break the weapon balance?

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hello guys, after playing some wads recently and going back and forth between ultimate doom and doom 2, it seems that maps that utilize the super shotgun seem easier to finish rather than ones without it. maybe this is just me, but i feel like the super shotgun is pretty damn good. in fact, so good it can very well be used above all other guns in the game, other than the BFG. this is obviously just my opinion, however i would like some debate and hear what you guys think about it.

 

i notice a trend in some mapsets that the super shotgun gets placed when apporaching hordes of monsters (large packs in this instance, not so much slaughter tier) whether it be revenants, hell knights, or even barons.. but can't help but notice that it largely dimishes the difficulty of facing high and mid tier monsters. imagine if you will in this same scenario, the super shotgun were replaced with say, the rocket launcher? it would seem like it would provide the best firepower along with splash damage needed to face packs, yet i hardly see some scenarios like this play out. it usually ends up with the fomer, a lone super shotgun and a box of shells.

 

i wanna say that in no way shape or form am i complaining (hell the super shotgun is my favorite weapon) , but playing mapsets at 4AM in the morning, while running on 5 hours of sleep leads to me provoking thoughts like this regarding difficulty. sooo.. thoughts?

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In the type of mapsets you are speaking of, rockets and cells are as a general rule parceled out carefully, enough so that you can't spam them with abandon, whereas bullets and shell are a relatively common ammo type. So if you compare the maps with a shotgun, chaingun, no SSG, and carefully rationed rockets/cells to the maps that have that but also a super shotgun, you are going to get through the latter much more smoothly. This is not really a case of the SSG being overpowered, but rather the SSG happening to be the tool that uses a large chunk of the map's common resources (in this case shells) a lot more efficiently than the alternatives. 

 

But the SSG's DPS isn't particularly high. In vanilla the SSG does 142 damage/sec. The plasma rifle does 262.5, and the rocket launcher 385 before splash damage. There are some tactical and situational tradeoffs that prevent one from simply dividing those numbers by one another to establish the difference in their power quantitatively, but it doesn't take much experience to recognize that the RL and PR much stronger weapons on average than the SSG. So if you play mapsets that ration out the ammo types more evenly or that are willing to throw a greater density of monsters at you (not just slaughter but also cramped gameplay), it'll become clear that the SSG fits snugly between the SG and the RL/PR as a middle-class weapon and is appropriately balanced. 

 

2 hours ago, playboi carti said:

imagine if you will in this same scenario, the super shotgun were replaced with say, the rocket launcher? it would seem like it would provide the best firepower along with splash damage needed to face packs, yet i hardly see some scenarios like this play out.

Play some mapsets by skillsaw: Vanguard, Lunatic, Valiant, and Ancient Aliens. You'll find rockets aplenty. 

 

Edited by rdwpa

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Good mappers force the player to make use of all the weapons by rationing the ammo and using monsters properly.

 

If you are ambushed by 10 lost souls will you use the SSG or the chaingun? If there are imps on a platform in medium distance? If there are scattered zombiemen all around?

 

In all these cases using the SSG would be a waste of shells and the map should punish you for it by leaving you without shells, shooting at hell knights and Mancubi with the Chaingun or trying to Chainsaw them lol

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I think a similar question was raised for the monster beastiary when Doom 2 introduced Pain Elementals, arachnatrons, archviles and mancubi. Without a super shotgun id imagine the gameplay to be very rocket launcher and plasma gun heavy, which isn't always fun. And the regular shotgun only gets you so far before suffering the same problem as the pistol/cacodemon grind of E3M1.

 

also its an amazing deathmatch weapon.

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"Break" Weapon balance? Na, it's strong as hell, and fueled by one of, if not the most common ammo type, can easily become the prime goto, But I've never felt it flat out broke weapon balance. Even when looking at the SG there are slight nuances where a Shotgun would be preferable to the SSG.

 

I've thought about the SSG in Doom,  more than I've thought about any weapon in any other FPS in the aspects of balance, because how close to the edge it is. I think one of the key things That ramps the SSG so close to the mark is the way Doom handles Shotgun pellets, and that is that any leftover continue to move on to the next target. Which is a genius idea and keeps the shotguns from being completely obsolete from the other weapons as the game (or wad) progresses.

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Depends on the WAD imo

 

Doom 2 has a lot of demons in it, so the Super Shotgun is absolutely necessary

 

while Doom 64 has fast gameplay, it's not as fast as Doom 2, so the Super Shotgun is rarely used. It just becomes a waste of ammo

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If anything, the Super Shotgun feels like one of the most necessary and best additions to Doom. With the enemy variety of Doom 2 having around some high health, having the Super Shotgun helps in having another weapon for the player to consider taking them out. Of course it could be said that just using shotgun shells to take out enemies would be tedious, but the same can apply with rockets and cell ammo since all you would be doing is spamming the Rocket Launcher and BFG.

 

Now does it make the regular Shotgun useless? Well you wouldn't use that weapon on Hell Knights or Mancubi anyways so really I wouldn't say so. I still find some use for it with possessed zombies and hey I save some ammo and gain more ammo from the shotgunners, an extra shell for me.

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For me the SSG is a necessary evil. Unless the map is hyper-frugal with shells I never find the need to use the standard shotgun; I'm swamped in ammo, so what do I care if I'm spending two shells per shot on imps and commandos? The only time it's not useful is at long range and in that situation the chaingun- which you should have by the time you get the SSG- is far better.

 

I use the shotgun far more in the slower, tenser Doom 1 style maps (which I far prefer to Doom 2 style ones), but given that most of the time you'll face a crapton of enemies the SSG or another powerful weapon is the only choice.

 

Now if only you could find upgrades of some sort to your basic weapons (pistol and shotgun) I'd use them far more. Maybe converting the standard shotty into an automatic would work nicely. Either that or just phase it our entirely in favor of some type of rifle.

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SSG too strong? Nah not strong enough mate.

 

I want to one shot a Cacodemon if I'm literally at its face, but so many medium to high demons take more than one direct hit.

 

It's a massive go-to weapon due to its common ammo and high damage so it's a matter of when you give the Shotgun not how strong it is.

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I without a doubt use the SSG way more than any other weapon in Doom II , It most definitely reduces the amount of shots to kill Imps and pinky's for sure. But for something like a revenant or a pain elemental it's powerful yes , but way too slow. I wouldn't say its out of balance at all.

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I wouldn't say it breaks the weapon balance in that particular sense of the word, as the Chaingun, BFG, Rocket Launcher and the other weapons are still very efficient in various scenarios that require them (the Chaingun is extremely efficient at sniping enemies placed behind windows and destroying waves of zombie men and shotgunners, not to mention that it generally staggers the enemies and prevents them from counter attacking, especially useful against Pain Elementals as they can't spit out Lost Souls, and Mancubi at close to medium range who will keep moving and never fire rockets for instance), but that being said, it does make life much easier, I use it much more than the pump shotgun and other guns due to its power, and generally there's just a sufficient amount of ammo available in the levels to use it indefinitely, and is very effective against most enemies, but I wouldn't say it's too powerful or renders some or most of the weapons useless, it just works very well most of the time.

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Hello everyone, nice guy from Germany here, it's my first post on the forums. :-)

 

I think it's balanced, firepower-wise, but I can see where OP's question comes from: the Super-Shotgun renders a lot of low- and mid-tier enemies as low threats. In my opinion, from a a mapping-perspective, if you hand out the SSG too early, you're denying yourself a lot of design space. Since the SSG is so powerful, it's a good tool to introduce some sort of progression into your multi-level-wads. Hand it out too early, and you have yourself a power-creep-issue: having Mancubi and Revenants in your maps sure is is fun, but encountering them in EVERY map of your wad becomes predictable and boring. Why not have an early Revenant as some sort of boss-enemy, which you have to kill with the single-barrel shotty? To be honest, I also find the single-barrel-shotty way more fun to use than the SSG; strafing around and pumping away at mid-tier-enemies just feels great. ;-)

Edited by diceman

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The Super Shotgun compensates for its power by being very short ranged, far more so than the regular shotgun. Also, it takes a while to reload, which leaves you vulnerable if you're facing a big horde.

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Its high burst gives people the illusion it has high dps. RL, Plasma and BFG laugh at its damage. Just stop throwing shells like candy and it suddenly shows its ugly face, nothing but a wep to save ammo for the actually powerful ones.

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To be fair, it remains effective on even the strongest enemies. It just isn't the fastest way to kill them. Helps that it has 20 pellets, each one with a chance to trigger the enemy's pain state. For that reason, it's one of the more likely candidates to cancel an Archvile's attack.

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4 minutes ago, MetroidJunkie said:

cancel an Archvile's attack.

Sadly that works only at very close range, or point blank, otherwise...

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That's what I meant. At point blank, 20 pellets hitting the Archvile at once has a good solid chance of cancelling its attack, which could save you if you lack cover.

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it's not too good in a balance vs monsters way, but having the SSG equipped while just moseying down hallways and stuff probably gives you a little too much security vs traps to be a good constant feature in a mapset

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1 minute ago, MetroidJunkie said:

That's what I meant. At point blank, 20 pellets hitting the Archvile at once has a good solid chance of cancelling its attack, which could save you if you lack cover.

Yeah, if there are no or few enemies beside him to get in your way, otherwise he'll most definitely blow you up.

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Damage per pellet: 5D3, despite the vanilla RNG, I'll just take 10 as average damage.

 

                         shots / 30s      pellets / shot    total pellets   total average damage

Shotgun                   28                   7                    196                 1960

Super Shotgun          21                  20                   420                 4200

Chaingun                 262                  1                    262                 2620

 

Well, if just looking at this chart, SSG is definitely OP in damage. However, the loading time and spread are something else to consider. I didn't compare to Rocket Launcher and those kind of stuff because it's not comparable in many ways. Besides the loading time, it being not able to reliably two shot a Cacodemon and three shot a Mancubus is somewhat a problem in running maps.

 

However, I don't really like a map forcing a player to Shotgun a lot of medium-weight enemies, especially when it's just a time wasting monster instead of real threat. For example, given a big room to Shotgun a Baron.

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I know a lot of people would have said something similar before but I bet id software never thought they would receive such a fan base loving and analyzing their beloved projects in such detail.

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Depends on the map design & it's utility. Super shotgun itself is balanced since it does the same amount of damage up close than rocket launcher but the firing rate is slower yet you can shoot up close without taking damage.

 

Fighting packs of stronger enemies with SSG is quite tedium, especially against barons. Trapping player with SSG, enough ammo & smaller enemies is something quite fun.

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15 hours ago, GarrettChan said:

Damage per pellet: 5D3, despite the vanilla RNG, I'll just take 10 as average damage.

 

                         shots / 30s      pellets / shot    total pellets   total average damage

Shotgun                   28                   7                    196                 1960

Super Shotgun          21                  20                   420                 4200

Chaingun                 262                  1                    262                 2620

 

Well, if just looking at this chart, SSG is definitely OP in damage. However, the loading time and spread are something else to consider. I didn't compare to Rocket Launcher and those kind of stuff because it's not comparable in many ways. Besides the loading time, it being not able to reliably two shot a Cacodemon and three shot a Mancubus is somewhat a problem in running maps.

 

Why is it not comparable to reliable and high dps weapons? 

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@PeggI probably should word that differently. Most of the time, while during a run of a map, if you left some rockets or cells unused, there's probably improvable potential there because they save you time. Therefore, I think they are mostly superior than bullets and shells.

 

Talking about this, I was always wondering whether I should use Rocket Launcher or SSG against Cyberdemon, and this is the outcome (This contains errors).

 

Cyberdemon HP: 4000; rocket damage: 20D8 (average: 90)

 

                              average damage per shot     shots needed    shots / 30s    average time needed

Super Shotgun                         200                           20                   21                   28.57s

Rocket Launcher                        90                         44.44                 53                   25.15s

 

Well, I was wrong all the time because I think SSG is faster. However, consider Rocket Launcher usually works better against other enemies, trading this 3.4 seconds for other stuff could be more optimal.

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There is no such thing as weapon balance. Each weapon in doom has its own "power level" and its own "behaviour". You will find situations in which the chaingun is better than the SSG, and you will find situations in which a rocket launcher is better than the plasma gun or vice versa. That's just how it is.

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2 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

You will find situations in which the chaingun is better than the SSG, and you will find situations in which a rocket launcher is better than the plasma gun or vice versa. That's just how it is.

Basically.

 

I also previously gave some examples for when the chaingun is most efficient:

 

On 1/11/2018 at 1:51 PM, Agent6 said:

(the Chaingun is extremely efficient at sniping enemies placed behind windows and destroying waves of zombie men and shotgunners, not to mention that it generally staggers the enemies and prevents them from counter attacking, especially useful against Pain Elementals as they can't spit out Lost Souls, and Mancubi at close to medium range who will keep moving and never fire rockets)

 

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27 minutes ago, Agent6 said:

the Chaingun is extremely efficient at sniping enemies placed behind windows and destroying waves of zombie men and shotgunners

In very niche cases like Reality runs, regular Shotgun is actually better than Chaingun when sniping hitscanners :D  but overall, you're right. Another high pain chance monster is Arachnotron (the highest pain chance IIRC), so basically you can stunlock an Arachnotron with no problem.

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33 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

There is no such thing as weapon balance. Each weapon in doom has its own "power level" and its own "behaviour". You will find situations in which the chaingun is better than the SSG, and you will find situations in which a rocket launcher is better than the plasma gun or vice versa. That's just how it is.

I agree. This isn't Counterstrike, there doesn't need to be a balance. The mappers just need to "force" the player to use different weapons for different circumstances.

 

You use a couple of BFG shots to clear out a difficult Demon+Revenant ambush? OK, but now you have to dance around the Cyberdemon a long time until you kill him with rockets and the SSG.

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And this is beautiful about Doom and its weapons - each of them has its uses, with the pistol being overshadowed by the chaingun once it is found.

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