The ability to one shot another player in any competitive game is a controversial topic for obvious reasons. The developers of FPS game Brink, Splash Damage, even went on record to say something to the effect of “OHKOs are detrimental to fun, because while one player might be having a great time, many other players must suffer.” Brink did go on to fail for reasons I’m not going to get into, but that one quote has great relevancy to Destiny today. OHKOs are not fun for the victim; that is a simple truth. The reason why any competitive game is fun in the first place is because there is an exchange, a bank and forth, where the victor isn't determined until the final blow is landed. Where sometimes, that final, clutch headshot brings home the win against overwhelming odds. Remember during Evo when Daigo parried every single hit during Justin Wong's stage 3 super, counter-hadouken'd and -blam!-ing won with 1 HP left? That is the essence of competition. OHKOs, by definition, are opposed to the concept of “the exciting exchange.” The entire exchange was determined before it began by virtue of alpha. OHKOs can make the victim feel helpless, and can make combat more frustrating than necessary. OHKOs aren’t fun, and games are supposed to be fun. So, should OHKOs exist at all? Yes, as a reward for a difficult, skillful feat, most prominently, the sniper rifle headshot. And even then, other weapons must be balanced relative to sniper rifles. If the baseline TTK in a game is 2,000 ms, nothing should be able to OHKO. The problem with Destiny is that many weapons, namely shotguns and fusion rifles, are capable of OHKOs and are not remotely balanced relative to other weapons. The very fact that crucible is constantly plagued by players using nothing else but shotguns and fusion rifles, and actually doing well, is proof of this. Let’s compare Destiny to another FPS game that had fairly balanced infantry combat, Battlefield 3. From now on, I will also refer to shotguns and fusion rifles as just shotguns in interests of brevity. Shotguns were mostly well balanced in BF3. Shotguns were capable at their intended role and offered a high risk, high reward play style rewarding competency and fast reflexes. This is pretty much the exact opposite of Destiny shotguns. [i]“If what you are saying was true, then why did I never see anybody using shotguns when I was playing Battlefield 3?”[/i] First, let me ask you this: “Have you played any of the later CQC infantry maps?” Because shotguns were everywhere, were effective and were tons of fun.” But more seriously, that’s a good question, and there are many reasons. First, in BF3, players were only permitted one primary weapon. If a player wanted an advantage in CQC and opted for a shotgun, it was at expense of all ranged capabilities. This is not a trivial decision as most maps in BF3 catered to longer range engagement distances. Logically, it only makes sense that shotguns were rare sights. Destiny is the opposite. Destiny maps are mostly cramped arenas with narrow hallways and endless obstructions overwhelmingly catering toward short range engagements, where shotguns have advantage. Furthermore, Destiny permits multiple primary weapons, so even if you are forced into a longer range engagement, you still have another, perfectly good primary weapon to use. There are simply no disadvantages to using a shotgun in Destiny at all. [i]“Using a shotgun requires you get close to your target, easily countered by map awareness and maintaining distance; you don’t understand high risk, high reward play styles.”[/i] Wrong. Shotguns in BF3 offered high reward, high risk play style because the baseline TTK in BF3 was already only ~350 - 400 ms. Sans OHKOs, which in BF3 were nowhere as reliable as in Destiny, the baseline TTK for shotguns was ~225 ms, only ~150 ms advantage. Shotguns in BF3 offered a moderate TTK advantage that required clever pathing and juking to take advantage of. On the complete opposite side of the spectrum, Destiny’s shotguns reliably OHKO from surprisingly far distances, and the baseline TTK for other weapons is a HUGE ~900 ms. Purely by the numbers, shotguns in Destiny deliver an overwhelming advantage. Even the best players will struggle to overcome a 900 ms deficit. As for the map awareness and maintaining distance? Destiny offers players incredible mobility. Half the classes can practically fly, two can teleport, another can stealth and everybody can slide like a rocket. Combine these extreme mobility options with claustrophic arenas tailored to CQC engagements, and avoiding an instagib becomes less awareness and more luck. As a result of long TTKs combined with high mobility and shotgunners can tank enough incoming damage to cross remarkable distances to land their OHKO. That's before taking into consideration abilities that can partially negate damage like sliding and blinking. The weapon is an extension of the warrior, and in this case, it means shotguns can have effective ranges of 15 m+. Destiny shotguns don’t offer advantages, they serve up an all you can eat buffet of easy mode kills. But let’s take this to the next step: due to damage degradation and simply missing more at longer ranges, thereby increasing the already fairly long TTK, combined with cluttered maps and high mobility options, it is very easy to disengage from a longer range firefight that has gone south, allowing you to reset the engagement. No such mercy exists for the victim of a CQC instagib, further stacking the game in favour of shotguns. [i]“If I shot you with a shotgun in real life, you would die instantly. Shotguns are supposed to be powerful.”[/i] This is not real life, this is a game. Balance > *. [i]“You have bias.”[/i] Absolutely. My bias is this: I strongly believe a well balanced game is the most fun game. I don’t care that balancing an overpowered weapon negatively impacts your fun or even my own fun. I care that the game is balanced, because then everybody can have fun. Right now, Bungie’s efforts at balance have been a rollercoaster or well-intentioned turds. I don’t use shotguns, but that’s because my play style is focused more on midrange combat in the first place, and players opting for longer range combat are often severely disadvantaged due to map design, mobility options, limited flanking options and the TTK abyss. I do use sniper rifles fairly often, and here’s the thing: I don’t think Destiny’s sniper rifles are balanced either. The best sniper rifles ( Purple Revenge, Patience & Time ), settle a little too quickly, permitting follow up shots a little too rapidly, but the problems with sniper rifles pale in comparison to the problems with shotguns. In fact, just in general, it blows my mind that Bungie would claim to be so concerned about crucible balance, establish a baseline TTK, then throw in a billion weapons that severely undermine that TTK baseline. Why even have a TTK baseline in the first place then? You’ve clearly made a hash of it all. [i]“You can equip a shotgun and be overpowered like everybody else.”[/i] Just because everybody can use a certain item doesn’t make that item balanced. Accessibility is never equal to balance, otherwise, all players would be restricted to a handful of good builds, killing the game’s meta, and ultimately, killing the game. This is a concept Bungie understands. The original intention behind the 1.1.1 balance pass was to broaden the game’s meta by increasing the number of viable weapon choices. Unfortunately, Bungie, as usual, -blam!-ed it up, nerfed autorifles too hard and didn’t nerf shotguns enough. But the bottom line stands: Destiny is not going to be the Clone Wars because nobody wants to fight the Clone Wars. Furthermore, a well balanced game will enable multiple playstyles, with all playstyles being comparably and reasonably successful; a healthy meta. Destiny's current balance greatly favours aggressive, short range combat to the detriment of more balanced and / or longer ranged playstyles. Essentially, because Bungie can't properly balance their game, they have ended up telling us how to play their game when we should be able to choose what is best for ourselves. [i]“How should shotguns be balanced then?”[/i] Any combination of the following: General spread increase to limit range. Spread penalties during and immediately following sliding or jumping. This makes sense not because in real life weapons can’t be used while sliding or jumping, but because all other weapons have accuracy penalties already. OHKO ability removed from shotguns sans a very close range headshot. Shotgun baseline TTK should be ~500 - 550 ms, which will still provide an advantage against the baseline TTK offered by most primary weapons. Magazine sizes and rates of fire adjusted to compensate. This is my favourite, and probably best: Equipping a special weapon penalizes agility, with agility values capable of going negative with the intention of limiting mobility options when using a special weapon ( can only slide half as far, etc. ), thereby emphasizing clever tactics over sheer killing power. Maybe -4 agility with a sniper rifle, -8 agility with a fusion rifle and -12 agility with a shotgun. Spread penalty immediately after switching to a shotgun or fusion rifle, or 1.25 ( sniper rifles ) - 2.5 s. ( shotguns ) switch time to prevent weapon swap cheesing. [i]"Why?"[/i] Because Destiny can be better, otherwise, it's just a race to the bottom. Honestly, it feels like Bungie just dropped a new traversal system into Halo's gunplay without considering how that would alter weapon balance. Thanks in advance for reading. Comment to keep this bumped and relevant, and then, Bungie might care. Also, please don't nitpick too must; I've already cut additional arguments to make the character limit.