Love the deadly power of the shotgun in Destiny? You're in for a ghastly surprise. Bungie has announced that it is seriously nerfing shotguns to let players explore other tactics in the Crucible.
In its weekly update post, Bungie says it has received "unanimous" feedback from players who say the previous weapon rebalancing the game developer rolled out with last month's Destiny 2.0 update is not enough to tone down the deadly power of shotguns.
In its desire to create better weapon balance, Bungie previously decided to decrease the power of shotguns by nerfing two shotgun perks: Rangefinder, which increases the range, and Shot Package, which limits the spread of projectiles and increases the chances of hitting the target. But Jon Weisnewski, senior designer at Bungie, says the perks are still too deadly that players may still push their luck too far with the shotguns.
"Our piece of community feedback has been that has been unanimous is that the changes to Shotgun perks were not enough to curb their lethality at extreme ranges in the Crucible," says Weisnewski. "The prevalence of Shot Package on almost every long-range Shotgun has effectively redefined the close-quarters combat experience."
In fact, Weisnewski says Shot Package is so commonplace that Bungie has decided to remove it. Beginning next week, when the game developer releases Destiny Update 2.0.1, players will no longer have the Shot Package perk on all shotguns. To compensate, Bungie promises all nerfed shotguns will have Close and/or Personal, Crowd Control or Knee Pads, depending on the exact type of shotgun players have.
"With the deployment of Update 2.0.1, we will wholesale remove the Shot Package perk from all shotguns," Weisnewski says.
For players who are worried about the impact this might have, Bungie says the weapon rebalancing does not negatively affect gameplay in PVE testing. Shotguns will still be effective in the Crucible, says Weisnewski, because PVP maps have lots of flanking routes and game modes such as Control, Salvage and Rift that require players to fight in the map's numerous tight spaces.
Even so, Shot Package may still have a second chance at life, with Weisnewski saying the removal of the perk is simply a "time-out" to help the developers reconfigure the most effective balance of range and power.
"This is where we fight over the elusive quality of balance," says Bungie's David Dague, also known as DeeJ.
