Why is the shotgun so... useless?

[diosoth]

My last save file was from 5+ years ago, so I decided to load the game up again. I'm going in with no mods(I only ever installed the Classic Doom E1 remake level set, which I don't believe tinkers with the default weapons in the vanill agame) and having mostly forgotten the intricate details of the game.

 

So the pistol seems woefully underpowered- 6-8 shots to kill a basic zombie and damage on the machine gun seems to vary, anywhere from 20-40 bullets to kill an imp. And the lack of pain states on anything means I'm getting shot by z-secs and imps that I'm pelting with bullets. This is all on the easy setting too so it feels even weirder(honestly if not for taking so little damage on this setting it would be much harder). That shotgun though... the spread is so wide that anything other than point blank barely does any damage. If I'm not point blank there's no point in firing it, even the medium distance that the original shotgun can still be somewhat reliable at is just no good here. It feels like a poorly-implemented gun that should be more powerful than what we ended up with. I have an odd feeling more of the weapons will feel underwhelming as I move on. I don't recall the game's weapons being so pitiful but maybe I've played too many games since then that did things better.

 

(I would bring up the severely muffled gunshot sound effects but my ears honestly prefer not being pelted by noises akin to real-world firearms, though admittedly they are quiet compared to classic Doom's gunfire)

 

(and the 2-shell reload, which I don't understand, even if it does speed things up)

[snapshot]

I tried making it more effective at mid range but that made it too overpowered, decreasing its damage didn't help much either. I can only assume it was a deliberate choice to make engaging in fights riskier, you can kill low-tier monsters (and mid-tier if you're careful enough) fast using it at the risk of getting close to them, but then again you can also just switch to other weapons so I'm not sure.

Edited January 20, 2020 by sluggard
misspelling

[seed]

Yeap, the shotgun is basically useless if used at anything other than point-blank range, the spread is insane.

 

Unfortunately the weapons simply aren't that great in Doom 3, the machine gun and Plasma are some of the better weapons, but the shotgun is the worst of the lot, and the SSG added by RoE is not better either, that one is still useless unless it's used at point-blank...

 

I'd suggest using other weapons apart from the Shotgun, as well as grenades and especially the Soul Cube you will get later on. Doom 3 Phobos had a pretty useful shotgun though.

Edited January 20, 2020 by seed

[snapshot]

27 minutes ago, seed said:

Doom 3 Phobos had a pretty useful shotgun though.

Phobos felt tougher than the original Doom 3 to me, It had a pretty good shotgun that felt well balanced.

Edited January 20, 2020 by sluggard

[seed]

2 minutes ago, sluggard said:

Phobos felt tougher than the original Doom 3 to me, shotgun felt pretty good and balanced there.

 

Indeed, and yeah it definitely was more difficult since some enemies are more aggressive now, even the Imp is a threat.

 

But the origins of the pistol really pissed me off, they should have gone for an iron sights system if they really wanted that, the way the animations are currently makes it horrible to use, it obstructs my view quite badly.

Edited January 20, 2020 by seed

[High On Berserk]

I was disappointed with shotgun to the point where I figured throwing shoes at demons would be more effective. One day I came across the comment made by Arl on Moddb. Opened pak000.pk4 with 7zip, extracted file called weapon_shotgun.def from the folder 'def' to desktop and started looking (using wordpad) until found "spread" and its default value that was 22 (pretty high for shotgun if you ask me). More digging led me to information that shotgun's spread value for multiplayer was 11. To me it seems id nerfed player's weapons in single player intentionally. As for pistol and machine gun I always go for head shots so it those never appeared as underpowered or underperforming as shotgun. My advice is to aim for the head, use chaingun, grenades, plasma gun more in later levels or find def file for each weapon and modify damage, spread and other stats to your liking.

[Avoozl]

The problem with it is the spread, point blank range shots do seem to be more effective with it.

[seed]

4 minutes ago, Avoozl said:

The problem with it is the spread, point blank range shots do seem to be more effective with it.

 

It can kill enemies easily that way, but that basically means deliberately putting yourself in harm s way just to use it efficiently, which is horrible...

[snapshot]

Most of the enemies have very predictable movement and attack patterns so it's fairly easy to kill them with the shotgun if you just sprint towards them and hit them a couple of times without even getting hit (or 1 shot for low-tier), except occasionally for when the game decides to place zsec on the far side of a corridor and you can't reach them quickly. The bigger guys take a couple more shots to kill so I just switch to Rockets or Plasma to kill them. I think most people don't realize that and just switch to other weapons they feel more effective.

 

You can beat the whole game using only the shotgun if you just decide to lower the spread a little, this game's weirdly balanced, the encounters don't seem to be designed with a lower spread shotgun in mind, guess that's broken beyond repair.

Edited January 21, 2020 by sluggard

[diosoth]

I recall having fun with the game back on Xbox before I had a PC that could run it, but now, and I see I'm not the only one noticing it, these weapons are badly nerfed compared to what you'd expect from an FPS and the monsters rarely, if ever, having pain states makes it even less impactful to shoot things, makes me think they aren't even feeling it which doesn't go well with the lower-than-expected damage output.

 

The rather low-poly models on default heads really stands out worse now, especially on Swann or Betruger where they get very pointy, and those mitten hands were... outdated even in 2003. Though with a new video card coming I may look into the BFG Edition and see if it offers any real improvements, and I should look at some of the current overhaul mods.

 

I actually wasn't too sure if headshots did more damage, I had to read up to confirm that- though it's weird that headshots actually work on the HEADLESS zombies, but they also drop brains when gibbed upon dying too. Looking at Doom 3 now, playing it again today, while I still feel it's an okay game, it didn't age as well as 93 Doom did. I think even some of the N64 era games aged better. Doom 3 was supposed to be an impressive new shiny title but in many ways the PC tech wasn't advanced enough to meet the dream and some decisions were made during development that didn't work out as they wanted. RoE certainly did some things better with monsters & pacing, yet while the SSG is just as useless at range, it's perhaps overpowered point blank(I am aware, of course, that real shotguns can do severe damage, but here it's about double the power of Doom II's SSG)

[Eurisko]

20 hours ago, High On Berserk said:

I was disappointed with shotgun to the point where I figured throwing shoes at demons would be more effective.

 

 

[xdarkmasterx]

Useless my ass, he kill the HK two shots on nightmare (does difficulty effect health in this game?) if you aim at the head :p

Edited January 25, 2020 by xdarkmasterx

[Boaby Kenobi]

On 1/21/2020 at 1:19 AM, diosoth said:

I may look into the BFG Edition and see if it offers any real improvements, and I should look at some of the current overhaul mods.

 

I wouldn't bother with the BFG reissue as it doesn't really offer anything new apart from being able to have the flashlight and a weapons equipped simultaneously, but there are modifications for the original Doom 3 that allow that too.

 

Some of the lighting effects in the BFG edition are inferior to the original.

[Adekis]

I quite like the Lost Mission, so that's one thing the BFG Edition has that the original version doesn't. I mean, it completely lacks the enthusiasm for the software that Doom 3 had, and there's absolutely no sense of horror at all, but... I don't know, I still have fun.

 

As for the shotgun, I always used it as a highly effective close-range super-punch, and using it in that way, I never had anything to complain about. Sure it's got pretty exponential drop in effectiveness when you've got a distance between you and the foe, but well, I don't use the shotgun then.