Admittedly, these often turned into headglitching sniper campfests on clash.

This never happens in practice. I virtually never am in say, a pulse rifle engagement only to lose because the opponent rushes forward and shotguns me. I die to shotguns when they can close on me and not be shot. Around corners. Jumping from below obstacles. That kind of thing.

The game you describe is not the game I have been playing, at least in my experience. Plus fusions are the counter to shotguns. Still love them and always have.

Agreed.

The only way someone starting from Sniper range (which I'd count as from B on Shores of Time to the sniping point beside C or from one side of the waterfall sniper lane on Pantheon to the other) kills me with a shotgun in the open is if I was in the other room grabbing some more Dr. Pepper.

As long as I have a clear line of sight, I can kill them with my sidearm nearly every time even if they start pretty close (say... from C on Black Shield to that stack of pipes at the C door or even a little closer).

In my post you'll note that I call "shotgun range" 20 meters or closer. What you're describing is well outside of that and I would expect you to win against a shotgunner all day, every day in those situations.

Where shotguns get me is when someone uses a 90 degree turn or a doorway to lure me in. Or when they use cover then pop over or around an obstruction. Basically, when the enemy plays to their advantage and I don't properly counter. (Sometimes properly countering means backing off and leaving them camping)

Yes, agreed.

I still think Destiny's real weapon problem is we have three or so main engagement distances (Short, Medium, Long) but too many weapons vying for relevance within those zones. Like, what is a Hand Cannon but a short range Scout Rifle that feels more and more iffy as you move past its intended range? If my heavy Scout Rifle and Hand Cannon both kill in three shots... why ever use the Hand Cannon?

The whole thrust of my post is that short is the vast majority of encounters, and shotguns excel in those ranges. 0-20m is most people you see in this game. Medium is 21-25 m, and long is 26m+ So you have a distance that you can close in less than half a second that is your optimal hand cannon distance. The honest difference between scouts and HCs is that scouts tend to zoom in more than some people are comfortable with. That's about it. I agree, why ever use most of the primary weapons in this game? This is Bungie's failing here. There aren't enough ranges at which primaries are the correct choice, and the maps don't provide much opportunity to stretch the ranges with weapon changes. Rather, if weapon ranges were expanded across the board, long range weapons would become completely useless due to how tight the maps are.

Maybe Hand Cannons should be merged into the Sidearm group, have their range pulled in a third and their power upped a third so they're two shot kill heavy Sidearms? Make them feel loud and powerful and distinctive (I always like the Bioshock Infinite Hand Cannon, for instance) but meant to be used in close instead of being in a primary slot where most other primaries just outrange them...

This would be okay, but what it's really doing is eliminating a primary option rather than fixing the fatal flaw of the game - players can close distance too quickly and the maps don't generally force players to engage at long ranges.

Its such a tricky problem though...

Hence why I said Bungie can't get it right. They literally cannot. The movement is so good that it kind of screws the options when it comes to gunplay.

This never happens in practice. I virtually never am in say, a pulse rifle engagement only to lose because the opponent rushes forward and shotguns me. I die to shotguns when they can close on me and not be shot. Around corners. Jumping from below obstacles. That kind of thing.

The game you describe is not the game I have been playing, at least in my experience. Plus fusions are the counter to shotguns. Still love them and always have.

You may be the rare player who doesn't let himself get out of position. Though a shotgunner jumping up to meet you should not win that engagement. You can brain him with your shotty before he can hit your feet with his.

http://destiny.bungie.org/forum/index.php?id=119746

I don't think the crucible can ever feel "balanced" without addressing these issues.

You're right though that there's not much extra at the Lighthouse. Which makes it even stranger (imo) that the general attitude is "Lighthouse or Bust".

This never happens in practice. I virtually never am in say, a pulse rifle engagement only to lose because the opponent rushes forward and shotguns me. I die to shotguns when they can close on me and not be shot. Around corners. Jumping from below obstacles. That kind of thing.

The game you describe is not the game I have been playing, at least in my experience. Plus fusions are the counter to shotguns. Still love them and always have.

Agreed.

The only way someone starting from Sniper range (which I'd count as from B on Shores of Time to the sniping point beside C or from one side of the waterfall sniper lane on Pantheon to the other) kills me with a shotgun in the open is if I was in the other room grabbing some more Dr. Pepper.

As long as I have a clear line of sight, I can kill them with my sidearm nearly every time even if they start pretty close (say... from C on Black Shield to that stack of pipes at the C door or even a little closer).

Where shotguns get me is when someone uses a 90 degree turn or a doorway to lure me in. Or when they use cover then pop over or around an obstruction. Basically, when the enemy plays to their advantage and I don't properly counter. (Sometimes properly countering means backing off and leaving them camping)

I still think Destiny's real weapon problem is we have three or so main engagement distances (Short, Medium, Long) but too many weapons vying for relevance within those zones. Like, what is a Hand Cannon but a short range Scout Rifle that feels more and more iffy as you move past its intended range? If my heavy Scout Rifle and Hand Cannon both kill in three shots... why ever use the Hand Cannon?

Maybe Hand Cannons should be merged into the Sidearm group, have their range pulled in a third and their power upped a third so they're two shot kill heavy Sidearms? Make them feel loud and powerful and distinctive (I always like the Bioshock Infinite Hand Cannon, for instance) but meant to be used in close instead of being in a primary slot where most other primaries just outrange them...

Its such a tricky problem though...

To his credit, Cody has gotten considerably better at Trials. Carrying him to the lighthouse is not the daunting task that it once was. :V

Also, there is still not much reason to demand the Lighthouse, especially when you can get three Gold packages per day for the four days that Trials is around. Lighthouse weapons just have Snapshot as an intrinsic perk, and all of the Ornaments look like crap. Everything else is a gold package drop.

In that case, maybe you could help me get to five wins a couple times this weekend? :v

I really want the Master Chief/Scarab titan helmet.

To his credit, Cody has gotten considerably better at Trials. Carrying him to the lighthouse is not the daunting task that it once was. :V

Ahaha. I appreciate the sentiment.

Also, there is still not much reason to demand the Lighthouse, especially when you can get three Gold packages per day for the four days that Trials is around. Lighthouse weapons just have Snapshot as an intrinsic perk, and all of the Ornaments look like crap. Everything else is a gold package drop.

Cause everyone "has" to go Flawless.

I actually think the Flawless thing is an overall negative for Trials. Remember that first week, before we knew about the Lighthouse? When going 7-4 or 5-4 was okay cause you got your package at least, and trying again didn't seem too daunting because you had some wiggle room? You coukd enjoy it and get rewards even if you weren't perfect.

I don't remember that actually, seeing as how I made the lighthouse within 90 minutes of trials launching and posted it for everyone to see on this forum :-p

I actually think the Flawless thing is an overall negative for Trials. Remember that first week, before we knew about the Lighthouse? When going 7-4 or 5-4 was okay cause you got your package at least, and trying again didn't seem too daunting because you had some wiggle room? You coukd enjoy it and get rewards even if you weren't perfect.

Trials now is all about the Flawless. One loss on your card? Might as well start over. No point even playing if you're not going to the Lighthouse.

Which isn't true! The Lighthouse is meant to be only for the best of the best. Its supposed to be okay to just go 7-4. But everyone has to Lighthouse or why bother. It's part of why Trials is so sweaty, I'm sure. And definiteky why it's so obnoxiously stressful.

I played a card recently with no intention of Lighthousing and had a lot of fun (even though we sucked), but the draw of the Flawless is so strong for most groups most of the time. It really negatively impacts Trials overall I think.

The game you describe is not the game I have been playing, at least in my experience. Plus fusions are the counter to shotguns. Still love them and always have.

Because they occupied separate slots you could carry both at once, but the size and bulk of them made your reloads suuuuuper slow as you awkwardly loaded an item from your back into a large pipe. The alternative was to have a teammate carry the ammo for you. They'd lose their backpack slot, but the tradeoff was lightning fast reloads as they simply stood behind you and popped another rocket into the back of the launcher when needed.

To pile on one more awesome example: mounting up an anti-vehicle team in Battlefield. One support, one recon w/ the recon thing that tracked vehicles, and two engineers with Javelins. Would absolutely smash nearly any vehicle assault on maps like Caspian Border.

More of that, always.

Yes. I love it when games present intuitive team play opportunities and reward players who take advantage of them. I miss the warthog.

The practical application did. I hold no beeves with that. The use of "realism" (see, historical accuracy) for use of arbitrary game logic doesn't hold up. I don't consider that a middle ground, that's reasoning that doesn't follow its own supposition. It's a semantic pet peeve that I have, that's all.

I personally like the way CoD games balance themselves while maintaining relatively flat TTK. So I'm rustled by the game design solutions. Just the reasoning.

This was a CoD game, and arguably the FPS game we have to thank for modern FPSes where different "classes" have different speeds of movement ADS times, and so forth (many credit team fortress 2, but that wasn't until 2007, whereas cod bro was 2005. TF1, which had classes, didn't change any of their speeds of movement, only their abilities). As far as I'm aware, this game was the first FPS ever to make those sorts of adjustments. Both Sony and Microsoft sent us concerns about how the game seemed to make their controllers behave oddly because their in-house people had never seen a game that messed with look speed before.

Anyway, I get that ballistic gel is not the same thing as actual "damage" to a target, but our guy chose to use penetration into gel as his model for per-round damage. That's just what he did. It wasn't a wholly arbitrary decision, but I imagine it was close enough for your purposes. That being said, the rates of fire and ammo capacities were wholly accurate. We could have made the BAR just do no damage (because of the high RoF and mag size) but that wouldn't have made sense. In the end, we got a gun whose use in-game closely resembled it's use in the real world. It was a squad support weapon that worked well as a street sweeper but not so well as a full-on assault rifle.