Bow and Experimental Shotgun Need a Rework

Feedback/Feature Requests
1

Bows:
The bow is extremely difficult to use. It consumes stamina (this game could use a second look at stamina in general as well), has a very low rate of fire, a limited range because of bullet drop, and for all those challenges it doesn’t even do good damage. I normally love bows in most shooter games, but not here. The problem, as I see it, stems mostly from two sources: the draw and the damage. Starting with the damage, it’s just not enough. For a weapon with such a low fire rate, the per-shot damage needs to be much higher. I personally think that the arrows should penetrate armor instead of being weak against it. A medieval longbow could punch through an armored breastplate after all. Moving on to the draw, the consumption of stamina in a game where players have so little stamina is not good. If bows must consume stamina, then I think that they should consume a far smaller amount. Another part of the draw problem is the charge mechanic. I think that bows should reach full draw much faster. If the developers want to make it so that there is a minor amount of challenge involved in firing fully charged arrows, then I would suggest that they take a page out of Destiny 2’s book and add a ‘perfect draw’ mechanic that rewards players for loosing an arrow as soon as it has been fully drawn. This would make the order of charge levels 1 (as the bow is being drawn), 3 (for a split second at full draw), 2 (fully drawn, but after the perfect draw window). Also let players aim through the sights without using stamina. Just make it so that holding fire draws the bow and releasing fire shoots the arrow, basically the same as the experimental Meusser hunting rifle, but without the explosion at the end.

Experimental Shotgun:
I love the concept, but the execution of this experimental weapon makes it less powerful that it’s conventional version. Let’s start with the obvious problem: slugs. Why? Just why? What was the thinking behind making slugs completely useless with this weapon? I’m genuinely curious what the logic behind this decision was. Moving on to the second problem: limited range. One thing that I genuinely love about the way that this game handles shotguns is that it does accurately. It is possible to hit enemies far away with buckshot or birdshot, even if the spread and damage falloff make it fairly ineffective at longer ranges. Unfortunately, the experimental shotgun does away with this by having the pellets detonate after traveling a certain distance. What’s even weirder is that the buckshot has less range than the birdshot. Once again, I would love to know the reasoning behind this decision. The hard limit on range is a devastating blow to the effectiveness and fun of this weapon, but it is not the only one. The damage that the pellets and their explosions do is rather underwhelming. They will take out a gas tank or a car with ease, but seem to struggle to make an impact on machine enemies. The collateral damage from pellets that miss is also considerable compared to their lackluster damage. I think that the fun and effectiveness of this weapon could be improved by increasing the damage of the pellets exploding by at least 50% (but preferably double or more). I want to be able to fire slugs, and I want them to feel like grenade launcher grenades, though perhaps with a smaller blast radius. I want to be able to one-shot hunters about half of the time (considering the randomness of pellet spread and which components get hit). I can two shot hunters with a five crown pump action shotgun, so I should be able to take down hunters with that many shots or fewer with the experimental version. Right now it usually takes more shots and almost never fewer.

Which weapon do you want to see reworked first?

  • Bow
  • Experimental Shotgun
0 voters
2

The bow.

It’s a dlc-fun-weapon that came late into the game.
You can’t compare it with the bow in a far cry title for example.

Last but not least because our enemies are machines.

I would never have expected it to do serious damage, but I was in hope for a good use of explosive and flares arrows. Finally I was disappointed by the explosives and flares also didn’t work as expected in most cases.

I agree with the stamina issue. That’s an overall problem in my eyes. Although you maybe have additional skills for running faster and use less stamina or an augmentation with reduces the stamina consumption, it runs out very quickly.
I feel this should be part of a skill revamp, which was announced without a date about a year ago, but had to be moved to somewhen later because of some more important things like bugfixing.

Additionally I agree that aiming through the scope shouldn’t consume stamina immediatly.
There could be a second bar inside the stamina bar, that slowly fills. It represents the expected consumption of stamina when shooting and just consumes it if the arrow is released. The longer you hold, the stronger the shot. If you abort, no stamina is consumed. By that you could still run away quickly if needed.

Yes, currently it’s more realistic, as charging and holding is what your power consumes, but for gameplay it would be better like I described.

@SR_Carni Would that be possible? Could you think of changing the bow that way?

The experimental 12G.

It’s one of the oldest experimental weapons in the game, without any change since then. It’s somehow weird. I don’t know the reasons, but it seems to be intended that the ranges of the three different ammo types are turned, when compared to the original shotgun.
Birdshot has the longest range with the experimental 12G and is quite useful. But its use is limited in my eyes. It’s perfect for destroying world elements like cars and it can stop machines attacks by making them sway. It can be deadly when used against the machines power cells, but I can’t remember how many shots were needed. Also I can’t for the original shotguns.

It was worth to use in the older days when there were less machines at once in most areas, but the game became so much faster with much more machines… And the shotgun just has a too low range and is too slow to be used against hordes.

I should try to use it again, just for fun.

Currently I don’t see necessary changes on it.
It’s experimental, it’s not a superweapon.

That’s my personal opinion.

3

Most games balance fire rate against damage per shot to try and keep average DPS relatively consistent across competing weapons. One problem with the bow is that the time invested in firing it is not worth the damage it puts out, no to mention the stamina cost. I see the bow as basically only ever being viable as the opening shot of an attack. As soon as you are detected by the machines the bow becomes a liability and not an asset. It just doesn’t seem worth carrying compared to just about every other weapon option in the game.

I understand what the design intention was behind the experimental shotgun, but I think that the execution, and even the idea of reversing the ammo ranges itself, to a certain extent, is just bad. I’m not sure if it’s power creep or what, but the experimental shotgun just feels like it lacks the oomph that other experimental weapons have. With augments added to the game, a five crown pump action can easily outshine and outperform the experimental pump action. I think the idea of a shotgun that fires exploding pellets is so cool, but the lack of both range and damage stops this rendition from being as cool as it rightfully should be.

4

The risks of an evolving game.
The experimental shotgun came before experimental ammo and before augmentations.

A bow with higher damage output would make sense against enemies out of meat and blood, but not really against those machines. Except the explosive arrows should.

But the main problem of GZ is, that new content just is added into the line of existing content, but the game itself doesn’t get a balancing for each new content in general.

And often new added content doesn’t get necessary improvements afterwards.

5

The Bow is so useless so after I’ve tested it with all arrow types I just left in the Plundra.

Exp.12G. It’s effective, if you dare to get up close, realy realy close. But only with buckshots.
And silencer or choke on it - nope.
I agumentted a 5C 12G. and took some fistfulls of random ammo after we got agumentation.
That’s how it should work on a Exp.12G, but better than the agumented 5C then.
Slug with scope and silencer or Unstopable aug. Now it’s fun!

6

I don’t think that machine components like circuit boards, wires, and hydraulic lines would appreciate being punctured by an arrow. I do understand your point about arrows being more effective on targets of flesh and blood, but arrows are able to punch through sheet metal up to a certain thickness. They punctured medieval armor after all. The problem with making arrows less effective on armor is that the bow is really only good for the opening shot of a fight, which means that the target still has virtually all their vulnerable components still covered by armor at that point.

I also understand your point about an evolving game, and I think that you aren’t wrong, but maybe at some point the devs should consider doing a big balance patch to iron out any issues created by layering code on top of code so many times. I played Destiny 2 for a long time, and it had similar issues from time to time, and needed to be properly collated to ensure that the game was growing in a healthy way. The devs are testing out some big changes to the core systems in the public test branch, I hear. So maybe they are already working on it.