First off, I'm not quite sure where this thread should go. Not quite a suggestion, not quite about tactics, but also not quite random general discussion. If it needs to be moved, do so.
Second, I'm not completely in favor of enacting this, or Tripwire spending time on this. I'm just thinking out loud. Or through the keyboard. Whatever.
Anyway, Support is a beast. And it's not really because of his grenade capacity and damge bonus, or because of his tweaked runspeed, or because of the 101 tricks people are discovering. It's because of his shotguns. As someone mentioned on another thread, if you want to clear a hallway, whip out the coach gun and blast both barrels. Empty hallway. Or a couple of pump/AA12/CS blasts, empty hallway. I've seen plenty of instances where Support will do trash cleaning much better than a Commando, at least at short to medium range.
So I'm wondering how much it would change if we removed shotgun penetration altogether. I don't know ballistics all that well (hopefull Candlejack will pop into this thread) but from what I'm seeing shot isn't all that good at going through things. I've seen people explaining about home defense and saying that missing a robber with a shotgun won't penetrate through walls (much) and kill Bob the Neighbor across the way, whereas a hunting rifle or heavy pistol could.
If we removed shotgun penetration (and probably compensated a bit by increasing the damage-per-pellet) it would make Support a great close-range, fairly accurate damage spiker, (whereas Demo is a medium to long AoE damage spiker who always has the chance to piss off the ninja Scrake while he's smacking around the Fleshpound with the M32). Lack of penetration could also make trashcleaners like Commando and Firebug a lot more important, since Support can't clear a path through trash with a single shotgun blast and whistle while he reloads. Could also teach better target prioritization, since the pellets won't penetrate through Joe Clot and kill the Siren behind him. And so on.
So, yeah, sorry for the TL;DR. Thoughts?
Second, I'm not completely in favor of enacting this, or Tripwire spending time on this. I'm just thinking out loud. Or through the keyboard. Whatever.
Anyway, Support is a beast. And it's not really because of his grenade capacity and damge bonus, or because of his tweaked runspeed, or because of the 101 tricks people are discovering. It's because of his shotguns. As someone mentioned on another thread, if you want to clear a hallway, whip out the coach gun and blast both barrels. Empty hallway. Or a couple of pump/AA12/CS blasts, empty hallway. I've seen plenty of instances where Support will do trash cleaning much better than a Commando, at least at short to medium range.
So I'm wondering how much it would change if we removed shotgun penetration altogether. I don't know ballistics all that well (hopefull Candlejack will pop into this thread) but from what I'm seeing shot isn't all that good at going through things. I've seen people explaining about home defense and saying that missing a robber with a shotgun won't penetrate through walls (much) and kill Bob the Neighbor across the way, whereas a hunting rifle or heavy pistol could.
If we removed shotgun penetration (and probably compensated a bit by increasing the damage-per-pellet) it would make Support a great close-range, fairly accurate damage spiker, (whereas Demo is a medium to long AoE damage spiker who always has the chance to piss off the ninja Scrake while he's smacking around the Fleshpound with the M32). Lack of penetration could also make trashcleaners like Commando and Firebug a lot more important, since Support can't clear a path through trash with a single shotgun blast and whistle while he reloads. Could also teach better target prioritization, since the pellets won't penetrate through Joe Clot and kill the Siren behind him. And so on.
So, yeah, sorry for the TL;DR. Thoughts?