Gears of War 3 stats show shotgun domination; sawed-off weakened

I agree it's not as bad as 2 but I feel it should still be weakened. If you can effectively kill people with the gnasher from what seems like 10 ft then its an issue.

@sammo21

10 feet....it's pretty close....

Reply

@sammo21 10ft?
Dude, a 12Gauge at 10ft is just like at 15ft or 20ft. Now, if you have a choke, you can go further.
But the sawed off, that should work 10ft or less with the damage. Anything further and its wounds, not gibbly gibbfest.

What was the beta for, other than Golden toys...???

Eff you CliffyB!! :P

Reply

@sammo21

Wait I'm confused

Didn't all those charts show that the gnasher is significantly outperforming the DBS... so they're nerfing the DBS?

/boggle

Reply

@sammo21
Why people don't believe a shotgun would annihilate a human being, minus the gratuitous gibbing in reality, from 10ft, is beyond my understanding.
Compared to reality, the range is incredibly short.

Reply

Can I get that graph template for my next Excel/PowerPoint presentation?

I mentioned about shotguns being overpowered and over used in the beta and I got downvotedto oblivion. I haven't played the full game yet because my brother keeps playing it but I will pretty soon.

What you actually meant to say was "This isn't going to make DBS griefers happy".

In reality though, it's a pretty minor change, but anything to tone that gun down is for the better.

To expand on the last little tidbit you mentioned for people that haven't seen the whole article, it's actually the lancer that makes up the most kills in ranked matches, not the shotgun (which has the edge in the more casual quick matches where people are more focused on just having fun and less focused on being super serious and keeping people at bay).

Also, there is a built-in bias to the stats toward the shotguns because some game modes (execution) require kills up close and hence have almost zero rifle kills (if you down them from a distance and run up and kick/execute them it does not count as a kill for the weapon you downed them with) even though the rifles are still heavily used/effective.

Finally they nerfed that stupid weapon. As for heading into a "ranked match", good luck waiting for about 15 minutes to do so.

@Pennoyercraft It really takes you that long ? That's strange I always get in as soon as I search for a ranked game. is your nat closed ?

Reply

@Pennoyercraft

"As for heading into a "ranked match", good luck waiting for about 15 minutes to do so. "

Actually, I have a good connection and live in a populated area, so it doesn't take me more than a minute or two to connect to a Ranked Match for me. And that's for King of the Hill or Capture the Leader. Team Deathmatch Ranked Matches rarely take long at all to find.

Reply

@Pennoyercraft
No wait for me. Less than 2 mins. at any time of the day.

Reply

Hrm...not sure how I feel about that. I hate shotgun rollers in Gears games, but the sawed-off's saved my ass many a time as some tool comes hurtling around a corner...

Bout time. Now how about throwing a little more recoil on that lancer?

@baby sea tuna eh, I feel that its so weak and easy to get out of the way of that it evens out.

Reply

The problem with the shotgun is that it ruins the cover-and-shoot mechanic of the game. It makes cover useless because people just run around and shotgun everyone. They should continue to gimp the shotgun to emphasize at range lancer play.

However, I know there are a lot of people who want to play snipers and shotties and never pull out the lancer. So I can imagine it is hard to balance those groups out.

@Lou3000

They could do a separate game type, maybe, like they did in Halo? I know what you mean, though, since I'm a down-em-from-a-distance-with-a-hammerburst type of player and that almost always ends with somone else stealing my kill...so I get why non team-players tend to use the shotgun. While ineloquent, it certainly is effective.

Reply

@Lou3000 , and @ baby sea tuna, couldn't have said it better myself. It frustrates me to no end the constant, constant shotgun kills. The Gears of War series brought cover mechanics into the mainstream for the current generation of systems, spawning countless copycats. But hop into multiplayer, and that wonderful system is completely thrown out the window.

I agree a different, no-shotgun game mode (seriously) would be just the ticket for me actually playing Gears 3 competitive. Make it so players either don't have to be executed (so long range down = long range kills), or, you have a certain amount of downs before you can't be picked up by a teammate.

There's an amazing *tactical* multiplayer game hiding in Gears of War 3. Epic just needs to encourage players to find it.

Reply

@baby sea tuna

@Lou3000

Read my post below, which works as a reply to you.

In short, without shotguns the game would completely not work. Characters have too much health and are too large. The way you pop out of cover and shoot until your health is low and then pop back in cover to heal is just the same thing your opponent would do in MP and matches would be endless stalemates of pop-and-heal.

You only have a target to shoot at because the shotgun is a carrot on a stick for people to come out and actually play the game rather than just sit behind cover all game long. If there were no shotguns then those guys you're shooting at would just be sitting behind cover the same way you do and no one would ever kill anything.

Reply

@Vcize
That's why he said tactical. If you get flanked, your chest-high wall isn't going to do much good from bullets flying at you from 2 directions.

Reply

@aristokrat

You're letting your dreams of being an elite army commando cloud your vision of reality.

Most of the maps have the majority of the map visible to you. If you play checkout you can see the whole map from any point in cover. Most have plenty of spots you can get to where there is no flank, and obviously you're not playing the game alone (IE you have teammates watching your flank). It's not the real world where there are endless positions you can go to. Every spot on the map has only a limited number of ways to get there and all those ways can easily be covered by multiple people hunkering down.

People like to throw around words like "tactical" and "flank" as if they're some badass army dude, but the reality of the situation is the guy sees you roadie running over to the righ and adjusts his gun angle 12 degrees in that direction and he's done with it.

Trust me, Gears of war with *only* rifles would be insanely boring. I *promise* you that. If you don't believe me get 9 friends together and try it out (I have). It's unimaginably terrible, even for my buddy who pretty much never puts away his hammerburst in the normal game..

Reply

@Vcize

You're right, in theory...but nobody ever waits long enough to use a shotgun as "plan B."

Reply

@Vcize

You seem to be forgetting about the weapons that spawn on the maps.

Hunkering down in some un-flankable position would eliminate any chance of picking those up. You miss out on picking up the digger/frags/mortar and your cover is useless.

I real feel the designers had intended for the MP battles to be sort of like a chess game. Each team making strategic movements to ensure they get the upper hand. Its unfortunate that the majority of players have just strayed from that and made it just run and gun.

Reply

@The Pork

Please tell me you aren't being serious. The only game type that requires executions is Execution. Try playing Warzone if you want to be able to kill people from a distance. You can kill people who are downed and I think all game types have 3 downs and they are out permanently. Have you even played the multiplayer?

Reply

@Lou3000

Cover is useless? I know shotgun samurai can be annoying be saying it makes cover useless is asinine.

Reply

The shotgun mayhem of previous gears games is why I haven't picked up gears 3 yet. I think its a rental for me

Full stats
e DBS now no longer will gib outside of Gnasher range.

Gnasher outweighs the DBS 81%-19%

Lancer outweighs the Retro and Hammerburst 74% - 17% - 9% respectively.

Ranked Kills: Lancer (47%) / Gnasher (22%) / DBS (12%) / Retro (11%) /Hammerburst (8%)

Ranked Downs: Lancer (44%) / Retro (23%) / Gnasher (21%) /Hammerburst (11%) / DBS (1%)

Quick Match Kills: Gnasher (45%) / DBS (27%) / Lancer (16%) / Retro (8%) / Hammerburst (4%)

Quick Match Downs: Lancer (38%) / Gnasher (30%) / Retro (21%) /Hammerburst (10%) / DBS (1%)

@Aclos09 grrr stupid double post

Reply

YES FINALLY! HOPEFULLY THEY POWER DOWN GNASHER A LITTLE MORE KUZ IT IS WAY TOO OVERPOWERED

Really, I'm just tired of getting sawed-off.......

I want to like multiplayer in GoW3 so bad, but the majority of my deaths are coming from people rolling with sawed-off shotguns.

@krngq81 so it is just like GoW2 then?

Reply

@gordeaux

Y'kno, I wouldn't really be able to accurately answer that because I've always avoided GoW multiplayer until GoW3. Now, if GoW2 was filled with a whole bunch of yokels running around using the shotty as their primary weapons (Lancer, Retro Lancer, Hammerburst as a secondary), then yes, it's just like GoW2.

Reply

@krngq81

Then you need to change your strategy. Seriously, avoiding the SO is very easy most of the time. Look for the cues, you can usually see an elbow sticking out from a corner, when you do you know that guy is just waiting for you to run into his shotgun. Also it has a huge light on the side of it so there is no mistaking it for the SO.

When you see them using SO run forward a bit to lure him out, then back up as he blows his load leaving him wide open. Hard aim with the gnasher and he's down before he gets two steps towards cover.

Also, if one guy keeps gibbin you with the SO stop rushing him. It's all about patience, wait for him to get tired of waiting for you. Make him move and then shoot his ass from a distance with a rifle.

Reply

This article makes it sound like they're nerfing the Sawed Off, which they aren't as far as I can tell.

Especially this line: "Effective today, the sawed-off shotgun in Gears of War 3 no longer results in "gibs" at a range further than the gnasher."

What are you guys even trying to say with that line? Nothing has happened today to make a difference to the amount of kills or downs on the game's side of things.

@(Unverified)

The gib range on the sawed off is vertically shorter than it was before, if only slightly.

Before, the sawed off would actually gib (one-shot kill) people from further away than the gnasher did. Now its range has been reduced to the same as the gnasher (though it's ridiculous horizontal 180 degree cone of death remains in tact).

Reply

@(Unverified) Nevermind, I seem to have found the info on epic's site.

Reply

@Vcize Ahh, gotcha. I found the news on Epic's site as well which confirms the one line from Joystiq.

Reply

@(Unverified)
The sawed-off (or DBS) previously was able to instant kill someone from farther away than the gnasher could, despite the gnasher confusingly being more effective at longer ranges. Many people complained about this because it didn't make any sense and also resulted in far too many people rolling with the DBS due to its extreme ease of use.

Now (hopefully) the benefit of an instant-kill weapon that requires no aim (that you can spawn with, no less) has been reduced. Epic stated in interviews that it was a weapon for people new to the game who didn't have the skill for CQC with the gnasher and were afraid of playing gears, but it's been a little too noob-friendly.

Reply

I happy with the sawed off getting weakened. Now leave my Gears 3 MP as it is . It's perfect.

It's balanced pretty well right now. It's pretty easy to keep people at bay with a rifle if that's what you intend on doing.

Do people really want Gears multiplayer to be a ranged cover fest like the campaign? That would absolutely not work in MP. Players have way too much health for that.

The campaign only works with that style of play because the AI is too stupid to duck into cover when they're hurt. You know how in the campaign you pretty much get in cover, pop out to shoot stuff until your health gets low, and then duck back into cover and heal? Well guess what, in multiplayer the other guy would just do the same thing.

Pop out of cover and shoot until health gets low then duck back in. The other guy does the same thing, and you sit there in an endless cycle of shooting and healing with no one ever able to actually kill anyone. The whole reason Gears works is because of the shotgun, because some people who want that up close goodness have a reason to expose themselves out in the open and try to move in so the riflers have something to shoot at. If there were not shotguns, those guys would just be hanging back the same way you do the whole game and every game would end in a boring stalemate.

Gears isn't Call of Duty or Battlefield. People like Gears because it's a different kind of shooter. It's not about who has the best aim or reflexes or who sees the other guy first. It's more about body control than it is twitch reflexes. The best Gears players are the ones who focus on making themselves hard to hit in a fight and let the bullets find their way to the other guy. The worst are the ones that stand still and try to have perfect aim with every shot.

That's why people like Gears, because its the only damned unique shooter left in a sea of the same damned thing over and over. It's a completely different style of play and if you kill off the shotguns (talking about the gnasher here, the sawed-off needs to be a pick-up weapon) completely then it becomes nothing more than another stale campfest that's even more boring than normal because the characters have such high health.

@Vcize yeah, but what's the point of having all these weapons if there is one that is obviously the best choice?

Reply

@gordeaux
You mean the digger, right?

Reply

@gordeaux

You could make that argument in Gears 1 (though many people found that shotty-fest imments amounts of fun and among their all-time faves).

You can't say it in Gears 3, not by a long shot.

Reply

@Vcize Personally, I had never played Gears of War multiplayer until the Gears of War 3 Beta, but I felt that multiplayer actually reminded me more of Call of Duty than Gears of War. Gears of War is one of the games that brought cover into shooters, and is possibly the most prominent.

Multiplayer seems to take that away, and make it a match of run around, shooting whatever you see. There seems to be very little teamwork, its every man for himself.

Reply

@SThompson

Well for starters, the beta was TDM. It saddens me to see so many people playing modes like TDM and KoTH. I kind of wish they hadn't been added to the game. They're good for fun diversions, but so many people play them as their go-to gametypes and think that's what Gears is.

Execution/Warzone are what Gears is. That's what the game was built around, and that's what the game plays best in. When people can't just respawn instantly they're less prone to just run around like idiots with their shotgun hoping that they kill someone before they die in a blaze of glory.

Playing ranked execution is like playing a totally different game. Team Deathmatch may as well just be called "Team clusterf***".

If people are looking for a more drawn out, tactical game then it's sitting right in front of them, they're just not playing the right game mode.

Reply

@Vcize

Sorry, but the game is better with TDM and KotH. The main reason I hated Gears1 MP was because I died quickly and then I got to watch other people play for 5 minutes. Kind of hard to get better when you have to wait 5 minutes for every mistake.

You still have your Warzone/Execution so I don't understand why you think it's worse because other people have a choice?

Reply

@fohf

I don't have a problem with it existing, it's just that people are misusing it and asking for broad game changes to get what they want, which already exists.

Warzone/execution are slower, more tactical, rifle centric gametypes.

TDM/KoTH with constantly full battlefields and people spawning behind you are more chaotic gametypes that naturally trend more towards shotguns because it's more difficult to keep tabs on when people are getting close to you.

Don't play the faster, chaotic, shotgun oriented gametype and then complain that the game is too shotgun centric. If you want slow tactical rifle play then it's right there for you. If they nerfed the gnasher to appease people trying to mis-play KoTH as a slow tactical gametype then it would ruin the more balanced gametypes like execution/warzone, which I enjoy playing with the current weapon balance.

Capiche?

Reply

@Vcize
Finally someone who makes sense. Obviously vcize your an old school gears player like my self. No one seems to understand why the shotgun is such a big part of gears mp. Gears was never a game where you just sat behind cover. Ever since gears 1 people have "danced" with gnashers. It seems to me that all the people saying gears should have a tactical cover based mp are new to the series. For everyone who is sick of getting destroyed by shotguns - welcome to gears

Reply

@Vcize
Yeah, I guess that makes sense and as I get better maybe I'll want to jump into Warzone/Execution to find the more tactical game play.

For now though, I need some respawns cause I still suck.

Reply

Gears of War 3

Gears of War 3 stats show shotgun domination; sawed-off weakened

Reader Comments (79)

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 10:55AM sammo21 said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 2:44PM Mechazawa Prime said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 4:14PM MassDragonEffectAge said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 4:31PM Jenks said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 6:18PM RequiemDogma said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 10:59AM Rollins said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 11:00AM Mustang Fanboy said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 11:00AM Vcize said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 11:00AM Pennoyercraft said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 2:06PM Stuwie said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 2:11PM jrr said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 4:02PM GamingColt said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 11:01AM TheChezDispenser said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 11:03AM baby sea tuna said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 11:27AM sammo21 said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 11:03AM Lou3000 said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 11:10AM baby sea tuna said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 11:18AM The Pork said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 11:21AM Vcize said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 11:25AM aristokrat said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 11:32AM Vcize said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 11:35AM baby sea tuna said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 11:46AM ZombieFever said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 12:49PM theBrayn said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 2:47PM Mechazawa Prime said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 11:03AM GuardianLegend2 said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 11:08AM Aclos09 said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 11:09AM Aclos09 said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 11:12AM Aclos09 said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 11:09AM infamousgamer said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 11:10AM krngq81 said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 11:19AM gordeaux said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 11:24AM krngq81 said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 1:31PM fohf said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 11:13AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 11:17AM Vcize said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 11:18AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 11:19AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 11:22AM aristokrat said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 11:14AM cleopatrudo said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 11:15AM Vcize said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 11:20AM gordeaux said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 11:27AM aristokrat said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 11:34AM Vcize said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 12:15PM SThompson said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 12:21PM Vcize said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 1:45PM fohf said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 2:04PM Vcize said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 5:27PM Maynird said

Posted: Oct 12th 2011 5:54PM fohf said

Gears of War 3 Info

Description

MSRP

Release Date

Genre

Developer

Publisher

Rating

Breaking News

WB conjures up Harry Potter for Kinect this fall

Featured Stories

Weekly Webcomic Wrapup is a stranger in a strange land

Silver Lining: I Am Alive's unfeeling world

Game Of Thrones and the paradoxes of adaptation

Engadget

TUAW

Massively

WoW