I found that the pistol was a wonderful complement to the shotgun. Even if you weren't point-blank with the latter, it was much easier to bring imps down if you fired a couple bullets on your way to a close-range buckshot. It still didn't guarantee a kill from 5 feet away, but it guaranteed a point-blank. Once I figured that out (in following playthroughs!) the gunplay got a lot better.
I like how every time you gib an enemy with the shotgun a brain just appears and falls straight down Like, not only did Doomguy completely shred apart an entire torso with a single shotgun shell, but that shot had to have so much force behind it that the entire rest of the head *immediately disintegrates* at such a speed that the inertia from the body flying backward doesn't reach the cranium
Fun fact! The spread on this shotgun - which is supposed to be a shotgun from *the future* - is actually greater than that of a common blunderbuss from the 1600's, which would start to "depattern" (e.g. spread aggressively) after about 25 feet. By contrast, Doom 3's shotgun starts to depattern in under 5 feet... which makes the accuracy of this shotgun about 400% worse than a 17th-century Blunderbuss.
Here's an example of how insane the spread on this thing is. While I was replaying Doom 3, I reached the pit with the shotgun and zombies. I shot the closest one at nearly point blank range but did not kill it, however the one behind and to the right not only died but was insta-gibbed. John Carmack works in mysterious ways.
I've had this same thing happen, but with Trites. I can count on both hands the number of times that I shot at a group, killed two way in the back or side, and the one in my crosshairs stayed alive. Mind, Trites die with two pistol shots, that's how frail they are. Wacky stuff.
Its funny how the original doom had a decently realistic shotgun in terms of its range, being able to bop demons from a good range and then doom 3 has the most cartoonishly short range shotgun in the history of gaming
But the problem is then that's basically the only weapon you use the entire time. At least that's what I did playing the ps1 version as a kid. I barely touched anything else.
@@zekeram129 tbf doom 1 shotgun does genuinely carry you through most of that game. there's really not a whole lot that makes you want to use rockets or plasma till episode 4
@@zekeram129 i played Doom and Doom 2 UV as a kid and i _almost_ exclusively used the shotgun and SSG i don't say that as a brag, but i'm just saying that _it's not so unbelievable_ that you could go through the whole game with only the shotguns. _they were just that good._ that said, i didn't have Ultimate Doom, TNT, nor Plutonia back then. maybe i would have been forced to use the other weapons more often in those map packs.
The reason that the shotgun reload animation only loads 5 shells is because in the leaked Doom 3 beta, the shotgun only held 5 shells. They changed the animation for first person but not for third person for one of two reasons 1. they never expected anyone to see doom guy in the third person or 2. they just forgot to change that animation, but I think that's unlikely. So yeah, it's a leftover from the Doom 3 E3 beta.
If you're talking about the 2002 alpha build, you're mostly wrong. The shotgun in that version is near identical in function to the retail one, the only difference being that it reloads one shell at a time, like the player animations would imply. If you have footage of it only loading up to 5 shots, I'd be interested to check it out
@loltheno what I was trying to say was that the shotgun in the Doom 3 Alpha could only hold 5 shells, whereas in the final game, the shotgun holds 8 instead. So the animation where Doom guy only loads 5 shells was probably a holdover. Also, in the third person view, Doom guy should load 4 shells, not 5, because since he loads them 2 at a time, 5 would be 10 shells, not 8. At 2:26 is the part of the video that I am talking about. The video is Doom 3 Alpha (full gameplay) at 4:54.
@@RichterBelmont2235 Not necessarily, I think itd nerf some shotguns frankly. But yeah, it was done to test raw power with spread not being a factor, and it was insane, very, very broken.
@@leeshang6419 he literally just stated in the video that speedrunners will use a more consistent weapon against targets that are barely able to be killed via shotgun for that reason
Halo 2’s shotgun is ass. But it does extreme bonus damage against the flood. It’s the second best weapon against them next to the energy sword. But against anything else, it sucks. There’s a really good weapon tier list video by the Vengeful Vadam that goes into the finer details of every weapon. He talks about the absolute weapon damage, all its strengths and weaknesses. It’s very insightful if you got the time.
@@Ckoz2829 nah, lets be honest, even sucks against the flood on low-mid range encounters The Halo 2 shotgun just sucks ass compared to the first halo shotgun, Now that is a good shotgun
It was probably just a drastic over correction seeing how strong the CE shotty was. Hell as soon as the shotgun is given to the player it’s a weapon that will never leave your arsenal for the rest of the game. Either that or with an increased weapon roster it just got lost in the shuffle.
As someone who has beaten Doom 3 on nightmare at least a dozen times with more and more ridiculous handicaps... The Doom 3 shotgun is one of the most strange shotguns in all of gaming as it's a touch melee weapon instead of and range weapon. The low range is meant to compensate for the cramped levels and force you to dodge the enimes slow moving projectiles. It's the main workhorse gun for the player and creates artificial challenge thru a silly high spread. It's max ammo is a joke and you couldn't run out of ammo for the gun even if you wasted half of your shotgun ammo each level by shooting a wall and ran the whole game with just that weapon. The reload animation doesn't make any sense since it shows one shell at a time but each one counts as two. The shotgun soldiers can pick you off across the room while you have to touch them with it. I love the shotgun model they used for it and once you get used to the stupid problems of the shotgun in Doom 3 you can see why they went with the design and function it had. But It's still one of the worst shotguns in all of gaming.
@@boomerkobold3943 I think defaults is 22 so I think I lowered to 18 or 20 it's been awhile I don't remember. I remember I had to do some testing to see what felt right. I remember that 15 was too much it turned the shotgun into a sniper rifle.
I lower the 22º spread to 7 or 8º. But at the same time, I also knock down the projectile count per shot (in the script file) to 7 or 8. It's a bit more open than the classic Doom shotgun but it works super well in the cramped maps of D3.
Darktide's solution to shotguns working long range: there is always a minimum number of pellets that are guaranteed to hit. The game artificially adds those pellets so they can be always used consistently at mid-far range
If only the shotgun could stagger enemies instead of them not feeling it at all. Best example are the Z-Secs and Chaingun Commando. Maybe then the outrage wouldn't be so bad.
@@Foebane72its not about whether the demons feel pain or not, the shotgun fires physical projectiles that exert a force on any objects they make contact with. You can still be pushed around without feeling pain.
The Doom 3 shotgun is literally that XCOM meme where the dude's gun is clipping with the alien's head, and it says "65% chance to hit". I get it's meant to be a close-range weapon and all, but I just wish it was a bit more consistent. The spread goes beyond limiting it's range, it makes it feel like a random diceroll on if the enemy (who is now in dangerously close range mind you) will be killed or not. Halo 2/3's shotgun is a perfect example of a close-range shotgun done well. Instead of giving it an insane spread, they just limited how far the pellets could go, and gave it significant damage dropoff. So you had to get close, but it would consistently hit your enemy, and deal a good amount of damage.
''Halo 2/3's shotgun is a perfect example of a close-range shotgun done well'' LMAO Halo 2/3 shotgun sucks, not as bad as Doom 3 but they are terrible.
H2 shotgun was garbo. It had like 7-8 pellets per shot in a wide spread. It was highly inconsistent. That’s why its nickname back then was the “Slotgun”. H3’s shotgun had a tighter spread and had 15 pellets but lower damage per pellet. The shots also disappeared past a certain distance. It’s better than the H2 one, but still pretty bad. It wasn’t until Reach when the shotgun became useful since H1. The Reach shotgun was a buffed H3 shotgun; tighter spread, and slightly higher max range. In terms of balance, Reach’s shotgun was just right where it wasn’t too strong or weak.
Given the real world fire power of shotgun I would say survival horror games give away the shotgun pretty quickly and underpower it intentionally like high pellet spread and slow reload animation like that done here in doom 3.
Fr. Shotguns are overpowered in real life, contrary to games, the spread isn't a gigantic cone, and buck shot has quite a range, not to mention how versatile they are: birdshot, buckshot, mini shells, magnum rounds, beanbags, slugs, etc. Slugs are also op
survival horror nerf the power of firearms in general to achieve a tense gameplay experience + making resource management an actual pain. If you have powerful weapons at your disposal it becomes much less scary. The other way is to severely limit ammos which would make exploration much less satisfying and limit your gameplay option even more. however i would still classify doom 3 as action horror ala resi4, fear, dead space rather than survival. You dont need to be stingy with your ammo usage, the game give you more than enough on its main route. The game favor killing enemies directly instead of moving around them. Health is not a resource you manage, the game decide when to heal you...
@@Nikolai1939 I wouldn't say shotguns are overpowered in real life, it's more that they are overpowered when treated realistically within the confines most FPS games operate. In real life most military shootouts are hundreds of yards away, and even in CQB you face the weight of the shells and the dexterity requirements of operation and loading while under adrenaline. In a game though? Sniper rifle distance is the real life maximum of shotguns, your character never gets tired, never fumbles a reload, and most other weapons don't kill instantly. A realistic semi auto shotgun with slugs dominates virtually encounter in games that have it like STALKER (especially with mods)
It was wild to me to discover people hated this shotgun cause when i was a kid i loved this thing. I love how enemies vaporize after one shot on their ass.
This video covers my love/hate relationship with the D3 shotgun. When I hear those imps and other lower level demons phase in, I make a mad dash TOWARDS their spawning point to kill them as fast as possible with a point blank blast. It works great on them, but if someone's out of range, well, time to switch things up. I treat it as a surgical instrument... in that it's for removing very specific problems and it has the effective range of one. That said, I'm the exact opposite of a speed runner and that's why I don't stream. I'm pretty sure I'll send someone to sleep, they'll wake up a century later like Rip Van Winkle, and I'll still be playing the run.
Fallout New Vegas has one of the best shotgun physics in gaming. It operates like a real shotgun, where each individual pellet is its own projectile, the spread widens slowly up to medium range and every pellet has the chance to crit individually and seriously injure or kill an enemy.
Yeah i've heard in somewhere that a single shotgun pellet can do same damage of a single 9mm bullet even if its not true imagine getting hit by a marble which travels 450 metres per second it should be lethal af and considering its rare to find shotgun ammo in most games game designees should increase damage even more
Don't forget that the knockdown effect from a higher level perk applies to every pellet. You do massive damage and basically stun lock anything until you have to reload. It trivializes the game like knockdown melee can, except you have much more range
If Civvie11 says the Shotgun is travesty, you know he is being sincere. Also back when I played it, I remember I always rammed that thing up their mid section and head while getting to melee range while praying that it would work..
I came upon this vid shortly after rewatching Civvie’s video, and I gotta say I love this comprehensive yet succinct video for a gun I personally enjoy a lot. I learned the art of the quick-dash-n-blast and it made it a fun weapon as a casual fan. I love hearing great insights like this and how speedrunners use them, so I’d love to see more content like this, even outside the Doom games!
When people say that they want the Doom 3 shotgun to have more range they dont mean a sniper, we just wanted something like the súper shotgun from the dlc, yes it has big spread but you can use it a SHORT DISTANCES and not only at point black
@@saeculiao7339 Yeah, that is what sensible people do. Honestly, I don't get why people take sides and exaggerate to get their opinions across, and I have seen both sides act like that almost equally. I understand why people love the gun but I also get why they would dislike it. I never felt the need to trash people whose opinion I might not share. The only thing I can say to everyone is try to form your own unbiased opinion by playing yourself. If you don't, you should probably refrain from saying anything because in that way you are just blindly supporting what someone else said, like a sheep.
Your Doom 3 content rocks man, its nice to see more people talk about my favorite doom entries in the series, even if most popular tubers see it as the black sheep, excited for more content!
In the long run, I ended up prefaring D3's shotty to the OG: the firepower to one-shots the majority of monsters feels way better than taking two to three shots to just kill an Imp or a Lost Soul.
Man I love this channel those b hopping segments look insane. after I saw your wr I tried doom 3 again for the first time since I was a kid and running around and jumping is just so much fun in this game
@1:16 good lord that shotgun barrel is clearly an illusion. Next time I play Doom 3 I will be modding this shotgun to make it not completely ridiculous.
2:32 this is the entire reason why i love doom 3 and its shotgun, its really good once you learn how to use it. theres no better feeling than steamrolling an entire room of enemies in a couple seconds with just the shotgun.
Doom 1 had a realistic shotgun with realistic range and yet Doom 3 which is the more slower and for lack of a better word "grounded" entry in the series its shotgun follows the videogame trope of "Power of a nuclear blast, range of a toothpick"
The shotgun is first acquired in the early horror survival stages of Doom 3, which paired along with the machine gun makes it the butter to your bread for the first quarter of the game. Then you find a chainsaw that kills hell knights in a second and a half.
i hope you do more of these analysis videos about doom 3. Its a game that i never really appreciated so seeing these videos definetly makes me want to give it a chance with a more open mind
@@mantrad0r Cheers. Yeah Doom 3 can be a fun playthrough if you embrace its flaws and features. You can always tweak things in the game files if you find them really unbearable, although I would refrain from doing that. "Balancing" the shotgun just ruins the game. You become OP so easily.
Civvie11 ranting about the shotgun while Ozzy Osbourne's shot in the Dark song plays in the background is my favorite rant on TH-cam. It's moments like that that makes Civvie11 my favorite TH-camr.
It's actually insane how much better Doom 3 feels when you tweak the spread for the shotgun. I actually found myself using it more often than when I had first played the game.
I love the feeling of using a big gauntlet to absolutely obliterate demons and zombies. It's like the game is trying to make you confront the monsters from up close to scare you but ramming onto them to kill them is awesome
My gameplay of Doom 3 was focused around shotgun, rocket launcher, plasma rifle, RoE artifact and grabber. Like any time i seen a hellknight or bruiser i just went into berserk or put so much plasma and rockets into it so i can use my shotugn on smaller enemies without worrying about ammo. Yes i missed sometimes one shot kills but i still love this shotgun. It actually gives chalange, high risk high reward, one shot imp without being scratched or hit by fireball is so good in feeling
Shotguns are supposed to excell at short range, not melee range, what Doom 3's shotgun essentially is, is a melee weapon. Also add that the spread is inconsistent, leading to the feeling of RNG as to whether you're going to do enough damage along with a long clunky pump-action and it just makes it feel clunky.
A more accurate sentence would be "Shotguns in video games are traditionally supposed to excel at short range" Saying just "shotguns" means you probably never seen what real ones can do.
As someone who owns a shotgun for home defense (SPAS-12, for anyone curious), the main issue is the real life limitation of shotguns is range. You have greater range IRL than in video games, but that’s because video games take place in unrealistically short distances than real life. 100 yards in a video game is sniper rifle distance. 300 yards in real life is intermediate caliber rifle distance (full power rifles are expected to be effective up to 800 to 1000 yards). So even though shotguns in real life can be effective up to 30 to 50 yards, that’s still 1/10th the range of an intermediate caliber rifle’s 300 to 500 yards. So video games balance shotguns relative to the rifles. If a rifle’s range is only 25 yards in-game due to the relatively short draw distance of levels (such as the machine gun in Doom 3), then the shotgun has to be shortened to basically barrel stuffing range otherwise it’d become laughably overpowered (just like IRL shotguns if you’re guaranteed to be in close quarters, like the trenches of WW1 or room clearing in Fallujah).
@@InternetHydra I thought when I made a comment about a video game shotgun, then commented about that said shotgun in the video game, I wouldn't need to specify that I'm talking about how shotguns should act in video games in general, not their IRL counter-parts and yes, I've seen what IRL shotguns can do, the original Doom shotgun acts much more like it.
@@gameragodzillaAgreed. I used to shoot for sport and hunting, and you can plink targets pretty effectively with even a standard 12g, usually at around 50-70 yards (depending on the type of shells, of course). I’ve never disliked the Doom 3 shotgun, but it always bothered me that it felt like your range was drastically reduced, simply for a gameplay convenience. By extension, a high tech, futuristic rifle should be able to hit stuff from 100-200 or so yards, but, Doom 3’s combat system was meant to be based on close-quarters and tension, so, I can’t hate it for what it was trying to pull off. Ya win some, ya lose some, but the game is still fun for what it is, even after all this time. :)
The biggest issue isnt just with this gun, it's that Doom 3s weapon and enemy balance is shit. Enemies are too slow, ammo is too plentiful, and the most useful weapons are the ones that can provide a constant stream of damage. The shotgun is an inconsistent unbalanced mess that has no reason to go to the extremes it has.
@@raptordan166 Nailed it in one 🎯 I'd even go farther and say that enemies are disappointingly squishy. The vaunted Arch-Vile takes less punishment than the classic Revenant, and skeleboi was already on the "light" end of "light shocktroopers". As for the shotgun, reducing its spread to 6/7/8 degrees and giving it 7 or 8 projectiles fixes it marvelously. That way it behaves like a _shotgun_ and not a boxing glove that requires shells: firing from across a bigger room won't do much, but it has more range than you could fling a booger at and deals well with smaller enemies (especially Trites). It also doesn't utterly disrespect later enemies like the Revenant or Commando.
In the original version (the one that released on pc and the original Xbox) had way less ammo. That was added for the bfg edition (the modern version that is on all major consoles.)
@@Idkwhattoputhere5123 Even in normal Doom 3 you would still have a giant surplus of ammo if you remotely bothered to look for hidden caches. BFG just ramps it up to 11.
Though it gets a lot of hate for being underpowered, I'll always adore the way it sounds. Hard to believe Doom 3 is 20 years old. Love deep dives on niche stuff like this, looking forward to more!
The Doom 3 shotgun is balanced for the extreme close range of Doom 3’s levels. It’s absurdly powerful if all shots connect so anytime the spread is narrowed (very easy to do via modifying the .def file), it destroys the balance of the game. As it stands, it’s a high risk, high reward weapon. If you know how to get up close to the enemy, it’s the single most useful weapon in the game. EDIT: Also, yeah, the double barrel shotgun kicks ass. I even use the CSTDoom 3 mod to make the DB Shotgun available in the vanilla game and it does make enemies like Chaingun Commandos less annoying since I can reliably one shot them to the body around a corner. I still make use of the single shotgun for grunt enemies since I’m good enough to get close with it and I can also save ammo, but it’s still a great addition to the arsenal.
You can buff the spread such that you don't literally have to be in physical contact to kill enemies and still retain a niche for longer ranged guns. And if you're modifying stuff, you can modify the damage values as well. I have modded it to have 11 spread, but loading 1 shell at a time to counter it, and I find it decently balanced.
@@EstonianFreedom100Loading one shell at a time doesn’t balance the shotgun that much due to it having a large magazine capacity of 8 shells and the slower pace of combat in Doom 3. I never had to reload my shotgun in the middle of combat so the tighter spread would simply make the gun OP. Only difference single loading shells would make is the downtime is twice as long.
Truth is... It isn't a shotgun. They wrote it's proper name but quality control team thought it's a typo and renamed it into shotgun. It's true name is shatgun.
@@lekolega Demons die from cringe from being shitten on xD Or stench... Not sure if in lore they're suppose to smell like hell themself... heh like hell.
The main "issue" with the shotgun is that people completely ignore that the game already has a designated mid range weapon like the smg or even the rocket launcher
I never disliked the shotgun as a kid personally, I simply thought of it as a decision to make the risk of getting close up to an enemy rewarding. Glad you made this video sir
This mentality is emblematic of society as a whole. A lot of people automatically assume the "least good" of something is automatically "bad," when that's not always the case. Sometimes it actually is good, just underwhelming because there's something better.
Well, that's why it's good to try things yourself. I love all Doom games but not every aspect of them, but at least I have my own reasons because I played all of the games myself. I encourage everyone to build their own opinions as well instead of appropriating others'.
When you were offered the incredible Doom shotgun and the GOAT Doom 2 super shotgun, anything less feels like a downgrade, and this certainly is one. I don't think this should be made into a "society bad" argument, because when something really good becomes downgraded to mediocre, you are allowed to call it "bad".
@@frds_skce Well, I mentioned the few people that actually had something to say about the game, and Joshi in particular had quite a funny take on it, so I had to include it. I just wish I didn't have to censor it.
When the first imp appears in game the doom guy turns around with a shotgun in his hand and the imp just sits there doing a screaming animation begging you to blast it right in the face and kill it. I’m fairly sure that was the devs saying “hey you need to be close for the shotgun to work.”
This is not true. Only sawed off unupgraded is comparable, otherwise the TOZ and the pump or semi auto ones are quite accurate. Upgraded TOZ is a mini sniper rifle with Dart or Slug.
For me, there is absolutely nothing good about the Doom 3 shotgun: the sound effects are like someone dropping some spoons in a tin, it has the aesthetics of something that fell off the bottom of a Ford Bronco, it's a close-up weapon you have to keep back-and-forthing with, and all in a game series that *champions* really fun shotguns.
Modding the spread and projectile count made even the aesthetics work better for my brain. If the shotgun has any actual range (like 2m with a 7º spread), it doesn't feel like the barrel is only that curved bit at the start, and with less pellets it's a lot less absurd.
No, it still sucks. I call the sprint function the "Doom" button, because thats when Doom 3 feels like Doom the most. It was fun jamming it up everything's nose and pulling the trigger, but its not intuitive to players that that's what they need to do, and the spread is so bad most players will end up missing a pellet or 2 and getting punished, so why use it when there are safer options with marginal opportunity cost? The shotgun is bad.
I love the shotgun in Doom 3 I know a lot of people don't like it but it is made for Doom 3 especially with the close corridors that's what it's meant for. Good video I just stumbled upon your channel and I just subscribed keep it up
Great breakdown. Editting is also top tier. Speaking of the shotgun, I've never had an issue using the shotgun in this game, even back when it first released. The weapon is surprisingly well balanced and fits extremely well within the game. If anyone has an issue with the shotgun, then it's honestly just a skill issue.
it's not fine, it's spread is so bad it might as will be a nerfed super shotgun. Personally I think it should have been a copy of the Halo CE shotgun, or the Quake Champions shotgun.
Just open the .def file and reduce the spread to 7 if you want a tighter spread. And then marvel at how it completely desecrates the balance of the game since the spread is the only thing keeping it balanced.
"Yes this game has reloads. Get over it" Ya and so did the Super Shotgun in 94 and made the room coverage of this shotgun look like a it's a pinpoint accurate, but it balanced itself with high stagger/pain animation ticks to make up for it when not stuffing it down a targets throat. Honestly, if ID would've just made it so it had high chance for enemy feed back like it's far superior cousin a literal decade earlier, it would be remembered much more fondly. Also, I love the video after Civvie's at the start talking about how inaccurate it is while the person complaining is literally never on target themselves. lol
@@allpapiodin They definitely went in another direction in Doom 3. Both Doom 3 and Far Cry, which are 2004 games, kinda feel like they were just games to show off new and impressive graphical capabilities. In the older games, they probably thought everything out much better. And yeah, the guy missed the shots. I mean, his point was a bit over the top and exaggerated, but the fact remains that the spread is atrocious 😅
Doom 3's shotgun creates this derpy gameplay look where you are sprinting towards and away from the enemy. The whole experience is a frustrating comedy compared to original DOOM's combat.
That’s part of the gameplay loop. You get into range of the enemy’s really powerful close range attacks to deal high damage, and then back out. It’s a mobility based dance for the close quarters the game takes place in.
If you're talking about damage numbers, you should probably contextualize with other weapons, enemy hp helps, but knowing how it stacks up to other weapons is important too. Knowing that each pellet does the damage of a pistol shot provides more meaning than flat out telling us it does 14 dmg per pellet. If we were talking about Borderlands and telling someone an endgame gun does 30K damage and 80K on a crit, that might sound like a lot until you find out damage is on the scale of millions.
I never had a problem with Doom 3 shotgun, was one of my fav weapons. But again, my preferred strategy was to run straight up to the enemies and then unload on them, so I guess I never noticed the spread problem
Indeed, the majority of people just have a severe case of skill issue. This shotgun has top tier damage output if you use it up close; if you can't reliably get close and personal, git gud
considering Doom 3 is more of a horror game rather than an action game, the thing about getting close to the enemies to have this gun act effectively makes sense. it's like "hey man try fighting your fears and go face to face with them, the strenght of your shotgun will do the rest".
It was this video that made me get Doom 3, happy to report I am now through the base campaign and lost mission campaign, currently stuck in resurrection of evil but I'll get through it
Weirdly enough the spread on this thing isn't my biggest gripe with it; the firing speed is. It takes just _slightly_ longer to fire again than it feels like it should. I love the silly clank melee gun, but the marine really needs to learn how to pump it faster.
The Doom 3 Shotgun isn't the worst but then you realize that it being useful at very close range makes you wonder: Why wouldn't we just use the chainsaw instead? It's faster, it has no cooldown, it kills monsters more consistently. So yeah, the shotgun isn't a bad weapon, but it is a bad GUN. The shotgun is one of the reasons why I made Doom 3: Golden Edition. Not to fundamentally change Doom to be more like the originals like so many other mods out there. You still have to reload, you still need to whip out your flashlight. Golden Edition only may have changed like 500 stuff but they're all mostly tweaks. The Doom 3 shotgun was actually very close to being excellent, just a minor reduction in spread made it so much more consistent.
The shotgun does instant damage while the chainsaw takes time to build up enough damage to kill. And enemies with low pain chance can still hit you through the chainsaw’s attack and deal damage, while the shotgun instantly killing them eliminates that possibility. You can even interrupt them mid attack. Of course, the spread argument has always been moot, since if you do dislike it, you can tighten the spread if you wish. Don’t even need a mod for it like you have, just open the .def file and tweak it to your liking.
@@gameragodzilla Yeah, that makes sense, well... if I'm to be pedantic, technically, editing a def file is modding. But I get it. However, the shotgun really isn't faster than the chainsaw. If you need to fire more than one shot, it actually is literally faster to use the chainsaw. Just watch any speedrun. And of course, any monster too strong for the chainsaw is also too strong for the shotgun, like semi-bosses or whatever.
@@GTXDash Yeah, but if you need to fire more than one shot from the shotgun, you can safely shoot the second shot from a further distance away. Enough pellets would've landed at close range that the enemy is basically one cat scratch away from death anyways, so you'd be out of the range of the chainsaw. Speedrunners, as explained in this video, still use the shotgun primarily for instant kill, and they've practiced enough such that they won't miss. So it's an instant kill if you're skilled, and if you're not, you can always pull back at fire again from a much safer distance. I always do that if I happen to be off with my aim.
@@gameragodzilla And you're not wrong. Maybe I'm just not good enough at the game to be more successful with that tactic. If the first shot doesn't kill, it is absolutely faster if I just used the chainsaw right from the start instead. I'm probably not pro enough to understand its greatness. But I'm just not getting the satisfaction I want from a shotgun. Again you're not wrong. Many of us just don't like it.
@@GTXDash Yeah but the shotgun is safer. Get in, get a shot off, then back off to a further distance for a follow up. Then once you’re good enough to land all the pellets, it’s an instant kill.
I like doom 3, and i like the shotgun. It's still a joke, though. Letting it be effective just past RANGE ZERO is not gonna make it any more broken than it already is.
I didn't know that the D3 shotgun was that OP actually. I guess it makes more sense why ID made the spread absurd to compensate for it killing so many enemies easily. Doesn't really make me want to play D3, but it's still cool.
"The Doom 3 shot gun is fine, you just got to treat it as a melee weapon." -Decino
But the game already has two melee weapons that nobody ever uses.
Fists is like better shotgun
@@Ckoz2829 Because of general skill issue. The chainsaw is nuts.
I found that the pistol was a wonderful complement to the shotgun. Even if you weren't point-blank with the latter, it was much easier to bring imps down if you fired a couple bullets on your way to a close-range buckshot.
It still didn't guarantee a kill from 5 feet away, but it guaranteed a point-blank. Once I figured that out (in following playthroughs!) the gunplay got a lot better.
I played the Xbox version of Doom 3 and the flashlight was a surprisingly effective weapon to use for zombies and save ammo.
I like how every time you gib an enemy with the shotgun a brain just
appears and falls straight down
Like, not only did Doomguy completely shred apart an entire torso with a single shotgun shell, but that shot had to have so much force behind it that the entire rest of the head *immediately disintegrates* at such a speed that the inertia from the body flying backward doesn't reach the cranium
The brain going 'plop' always makes me laugh. I can't get over the silliness of it.
This made me laugh too much
Funnily enough this still happens even if the enemy is missing their head already, the brain just, appears.
Fun fact! The spread on this shotgun - which is supposed to be a shotgun from *the future* - is actually greater than that of a common blunderbuss from the 1600's, which would start to "depattern" (e.g. spread aggressively) after about 25 feet. By contrast, Doom 3's shotgun starts to depattern in under 5 feet... which makes the accuracy of this shotgun about 400% worse than a 17th-century Blunderbuss.
The Doomerbuss
@@lekolega 😳😳😳
Any modern game basically has blunderbuss spread
i mean they dont even have duct tape lol what did u expect
...that's sad considering a blunderbuss can actually work at long range it's just not a great shot
Here's an example of how insane the spread on this thing is. While I was replaying Doom 3, I reached the pit with the shotgun and zombies. I shot the closest one at nearly point blank range but did not kill it, however the one behind and to the right not only died but was insta-gibbed.
John Carmack works in mysterious ways.
LOL
The Wanted movie effect, hmmm. Bullets just do whatever they want, I guess hahahaha
I've had this same thing happen, but with Trites. I can count on both hands the number of times that I shot at a group, killed two way in the back or side, and the one in my crosshairs stayed alive.
Mind, Trites die with two pistol shots, that's how frail they are.
Wacky stuff.
John Carmack did the stencil shadows. This was a design issue. I bet Tim Willits did it.
Carmack has never been the brightest bulb.
Its funny how the original doom had a decently realistic shotgun in terms of its range, being able to bop demons from a good range and then doom 3 has the most cartoonishly short range shotgun in the history of gaming
Ironically, that shotgun might be the only realistic thing about the OG Dooms.
But the problem is then that's basically the only weapon you use the entire time. At least that's what I did playing the ps1 version as a kid. I barely touched anything else.
@@BigWheel.I'm guessing you were either playing below Hurt Me Plenty or you were having a tough time?
@@zekeram129 tbf doom 1 shotgun does genuinely carry you through most of that game. there's really not a whole lot that makes you want to use rockets or plasma till episode 4
@@zekeram129 i played Doom and Doom 2 UV as a kid and i _almost_ exclusively used the shotgun and SSG
i don't say that as a brag, but i'm just saying that _it's not so unbelievable_ that you could go through the whole game with only the shotguns. _they were just that good._
that said, i didn't have Ultimate Doom, TNT, nor Plutonia back then. maybe i would have been forced to use the other weapons more often in those map packs.
The reason that the shotgun reload animation only loads 5 shells is because in the leaked Doom 3 beta, the shotgun only held 5 shells. They changed the animation for first person but not for third person for one of two reasons 1. they never expected anyone to see doom guy in the third person or 2. they just forgot to change that animation, but I think that's unlikely.
So yeah, it's a leftover from the Doom 3 E3 beta.
If you're talking about the 2002 alpha build, you're mostly wrong. The shotgun in that version is near identical in function to the retail one, the only difference being that it reloads one shell at a time, like the player animations would imply. If you have footage of it only loading up to 5 shots, I'd be interested to check it out
@loltheno what I was trying to say was that the shotgun in the Doom 3 Alpha could only hold 5 shells, whereas in the final game, the shotgun holds 8 instead. So the animation where Doom guy only loads 5 shells was probably a holdover.
Also, in the third person view, Doom guy should load 4 shells, not 5, because since he loads them 2 at a time, 5 would be 10 shells, not 8.
At 2:26 is the part of the video that I am talking about.
The video is Doom 3 Alpha (full gameplay) at 4:54.
@@Yubl10 I checked it and you're correct, whoops. Thought it was 8 for the longest time.
That is really great info man, I love it. Thanks 🙌
Not expected to see the reload animation? On the original Xbox version of doom 3 you could play the campaign coop over xbox live.
I remember doing a script change to give it 0 spread, and it was insanely op. Felt like a pump action nitro express
Yeah I mean, at that point you have a railgun that deals almost 200 damage 😀
0 spread is straight up cheating, it automatically make shotgun in any game top tier.
@@RichterBelmont2235 Not necessarily, I think itd nerf some shotguns frankly. But yeah, it was done to test raw power with spread not being a factor, and it was insane, very, very broken.
So you literally turn their buckshot into slugs
@@juancho650 Basically, yeah. No other changes, but it would send an imp flying from across the room. Blew MOST other guns out of the water.
Fun fact: Whenever you try to shoot an imp with the shotgun from Doom 3, it leaves an imp shaped bullet spread pattern instead.
goofy ah cartoon bullets
regular players: "Shotgun sucks!"
speedrunners: "I can make this work."
Probably still fucked up enough so that many of then still cursed at its inconsistent performance destroying runs.
Too be fair there are a lot of bad strats that are used if its for speed running
@@leeshang6419 he literally just stated in the video that speedrunners will use a more consistent weapon against targets that are barely able to be killed via shotgun for that reason
Speedrunmers make everything work. Good weapons, glitches, exploits, bad weapons, RNG manipulation... nothing's off the table.
Soldiers with body armour have less HP than a random fat guy haha
as if anything else in Doom makes any sense 😀
@@lekolega masa je mama 😅
@@KL0P5J6 HAHAHAHAHA weird but true, maybe it's a fact in real life too
Power of sandvich!
Demoman: *Literal Bomb Vest and Pain Killers 'only 175 hp'
Heavey: *FAT FUCK*
Doom 3 shotgun “I’ve got terrible distance damage.. Halo 2 shotgun “hold my beer”…
Halo 2’s shotgun is ass. But it does extreme bonus damage against the flood. It’s the second best weapon against them next to the energy sword.
But against anything else, it sucks.
There’s a really good weapon tier list video by the Vengeful Vadam that goes into the finer details of every weapon. He talks about the absolute weapon damage, all its strengths and weaknesses. It’s very insightful if you got the time.
@@Ckoz2829 nah, lets be honest, even sucks against the flood on low-mid range encounters
The Halo 2 shotgun just sucks ass compared to the first halo shotgun, Now that is a good shotgun
It was probably just a drastic over correction seeing how strong the CE shotty was. Hell as soon as the shotgun is given to the player it’s a weapon that will never leave your arsenal for the rest of the game. Either that or with an increased weapon roster it just got lost in the shuffle.
@@Nekros-t9e the CE shotty is only powerful against flood, against other enemies? Nah use plasma or bullets.
H2's shotty is a downgrade of CE's. It only got worse with H3 with the range and mag size nerfed.
As someone who has beaten Doom 3 on nightmare at least a dozen times with more and more ridiculous handicaps...
The Doom 3 shotgun is one of the most strange shotguns in all of gaming as it's a touch melee weapon instead of and range weapon. The low range is meant to compensate for the cramped levels and force you to dodge the enimes slow moving projectiles. It's the main workhorse gun for the player and creates artificial challenge thru a silly high spread. It's max ammo is a joke and you couldn't run out of ammo for the gun even if you wasted half of your shotgun ammo each level by shooting a wall and ran the whole game with just that weapon. The reload animation doesn't make any sense since it shows one shell at a time but each one counts as two. The shotgun soldiers can pick you off across the room while you have to touch them with it.
I love the shotgun model they used for it and once you get used to the stupid problems of the shotgun in Doom 3 you can see why they went with the design and function it had.
But It's still one of the worst shotguns in all of gaming.
Last time I played Doom 3 I modded the game and tighten the shotgun spread just a little bit and it made the game feel 20 times better.
What spread did you use?
@@boomerkobold3943 I think defaults is 22 so I think I lowered to 18 or 20 it's been awhile I don't remember. I remember I had to do some testing to see what felt right. I remember that 15 was too much it turned the shotgun into a sniper rifle.
@@chief664 Well you could "snipe" people with shotgun pellets IRL, just not too far away. So it'd make it more realistic.
@@VladTepesVEVOsometimes realism isn’t the best choice
I lower the 22º spread to 7 or 8º. But at the same time, I also knock down the projectile count per shot (in the script file) to 7 or 8. It's a bit more open than the classic Doom shotgun but it works super well in the cramped maps of D3.
Darktide's solution to shotguns working long range: there is always a minimum number of pellets that are guaranteed to hit. The game artificially adds those pellets so they can be always used consistently at mid-far range
@@jUppers That's been a thing since Resident Evil 4 though. Left 4 Dead uses it too.
They also added a shotgun with a slug round special.
If only the shotgun could stagger enemies instead of them not feeling it at all.
Best example are the Z-Secs and Chaingun Commando.
Maybe then the outrage wouldn't be so bad.
They're DEMONS from HELL, they THRIVE on pain! The Doom 2016/Eternal demons are SISSIES!
@@Foebane72its not about whether the demons feel pain or not, the shotgun fires physical projectiles that exert a force on any objects they make contact with. You can still be pushed around without feeling pain.
The Doom 3 shotgun is literally that XCOM meme where the dude's gun is clipping with the alien's head, and it says "65% chance to hit".
I get it's meant to be a close-range weapon and all, but I just wish it was a bit more consistent. The spread goes beyond limiting it's range, it makes it feel like a random diceroll on if the enemy (who is now in dangerously close range mind you) will be killed or not. Halo 2/3's shotgun is a perfect example of a close-range shotgun done well. Instead of giving it an insane spread, they just limited how far the pellets could go, and gave it significant damage dropoff. So you had to get close, but it would consistently hit your enemy, and deal a good amount of damage.
haven't played doom 3 but halo 2 shotgun is easily the most useless in any game I've seen
''Halo 2/3's shotgun is a perfect example of a close-range shotgun done well''
LMAO Halo 2/3 shotgun sucks, not as bad as Doom 3 but they are terrible.
Yeah nah. Halo 2/3 Shotguns are garbo. 2's has Doom 3's spread & 3's just zaps your pellets from beyond melee range.
H2 shotgun was garbo. It had like 7-8 pellets per shot in a wide spread. It was highly inconsistent. That’s why its nickname back then was the “Slotgun”.
H3’s shotgun had a tighter spread and had 15 pellets but lower damage per pellet. The shots also disappeared past a certain distance. It’s better than the H2 one, but still pretty bad.
It wasn’t until Reach when the shotgun became useful since H1. The Reach shotgun was a buffed H3 shotgun; tighter spread, and slightly higher max range. In terms of balance, Reach’s shotgun was just right where it wasn’t too strong or weak.
Given the real world fire power of shotgun I would say survival horror games give away the shotgun pretty quickly and underpower it intentionally like high pellet spread and slow reload animation like that done here in doom 3.
Fr. Shotguns are overpowered in real life, contrary to games, the spread isn't a gigantic cone, and buck shot has quite a range, not to mention how versatile they are: birdshot, buckshot, mini shells, magnum rounds, beanbags, slugs, etc.
Slugs are also op
survival horror nerf the power of firearms in general to achieve a tense gameplay experience + making resource management an actual pain. If you have powerful weapons at your disposal it becomes much less scary. The other way is to severely limit ammos which would make exploration much less satisfying and limit your gameplay option even more.
however i would still classify doom 3 as action horror ala resi4, fear, dead space rather than survival. You dont need to be stingy with your ammo usage, the game give you more than enough on its main route. The game favor killing enemies directly instead of moving around them. Health is not a resource you manage, the game decide when to heal you...
And that's why people hate it...... they came to play a DOOM game........ not a horror game
@@Nikolai1939 I wouldn't say shotguns are overpowered in real life, it's more that they are overpowered when treated realistically within the confines most FPS games operate. In real life most military shootouts are hundreds of yards away, and even in CQB you face the weight of the shells and the dexterity requirements of operation and loading while under adrenaline. In a game though? Sniper rifle distance is the real life maximum of shotguns, your character never gets tired, never fumbles a reload, and most other weapons don't kill instantly. A realistic semi auto shotgun with slugs dominates virtually encounter in games that have it like STALKER (especially with mods)
@@wikipediafollower I was thinking about them in civilian life. There's a reason why most people prefer it for home defense
It was wild to me to discover people hated this shotgun cause when i was a kid i loved this thing. I love how enemies vaporize after one shot on their ass.
They're bitches. They can get out of here with their trash
Every Doom 3 content is always appreciated . It-s my favorite game ever. Thanks for your videos !
when i first played doom 3, the shotgun was one of my favorite weapons, i didn't even know people hated it
Loved this video! Happy birthday Doom 3!
10:44 damn those bhops are satisfying
Just found your channel today, love this video and the one you did on the BFG! Doom 3 is an underappreciated masterpiece ^_^
Video Game Logic: "Shotgun is harmless outside 1 meter/yard range."
Most infuriating trope in any FPS.
Mutltiplayer shooters ruined shotgun balance
Thank you for the awesome video. Always look forward to Doom 3 vids
This video covers my love/hate relationship with the D3 shotgun. When I hear those imps and other lower level demons phase in, I make a mad dash TOWARDS their spawning point to kill them as fast as possible with a point blank blast. It works great on them, but if someone's out of range, well, time to switch things up. I treat it as a surgical instrument... in that it's for removing very specific problems and it has the effective range of one.
That said, I'm the exact opposite of a speed runner and that's why I don't stream. I'm pretty sure I'll send someone to sleep, they'll wake up a century later like Rip Van Winkle, and I'll still be playing the run.
I’m really digging your new informational videos for Doom 3. Thx for putting this together. It was a fun watch before I hop back into this game.
Fallout New Vegas has one of the best shotgun physics in gaming.
It operates like a real shotgun, where each individual pellet is its own projectile, the spread widens slowly up to medium range and every pellet has the chance to crit individually and seriously injure or kill an enemy.
Yeah i've heard in somewhere that a single shotgun pellet can do same damage of a single 9mm bullet even if its not true imagine getting hit by a marble which travels 450 metres per second it should be lethal af and considering its rare to find shotgun ammo in most games game designees should increase damage even more
I feel like playing FO NV again just for the hunting shotgun.
Shotgun-crit builds with the "Shotgun Surgeon" & "And Stay Back" perks are absolutely broken.
Don't forget that the knockdown effect from a higher level perk applies to every pellet. You do massive damage and basically stun lock anything until you have to reload. It trivializes the game like knockdown melee can, except you have much more range
someone hand me my dinner bell
This reminded me of those beloved yellow-background thumbnail videos, by Decino.
Very cool analysis.
If Civvie11 says the Shotgun is travesty, you know he is being sincere.
Also back when I played it, I remember I always rammed that thing up their mid section and head while getting to melee range while praying that it would work..
Its a good weapon when used right, it being bad can only be the result of a skill issue
@@antondavidovic3996Fr. Tired of people whining about it. Just becomes a meme in of itself.
@@TyrannoWrightsKiLl iSsUe
"SkIlL IsSue"
Oh look, Jarek's furball pals are here.
@@DinnerForkTongue He says as he's planted firmly on Civvie11's weiner
I came upon this vid shortly after rewatching Civvie’s video, and I gotta say I love this comprehensive yet succinct video for a gun I personally enjoy a lot. I learned the art of the quick-dash-n-blast and it made it a fun weapon as a casual fan.
I love hearing great insights like this and how speedrunners use them, so I’d love to see more content like this, even outside the Doom games!
When people say that they want the Doom 3 shotgun to have more range they dont mean a sniper, we just wanted something like the súper shotgun from the dlc, yes it has big spread but you can use it a SHORT DISTANCES and not only at point black
@@saeculiao7339 Yeah, that is what sensible people do.
Honestly, I don't get why people take sides and exaggerate to get their opinions across, and I have seen both sides act like that almost equally.
I understand why people love the gun but I also get why they would dislike it.
I never felt the need to trash people whose opinion I might not share. The only thing I can say to everyone is try to form your own unbiased opinion by playing yourself.
If you don't, you should probably refrain from saying anything because in that way you are just blindly supporting what someone else said, like a sheep.
Your Doom 3 content rocks man, its nice to see more people talk about my favorite doom entries in the series, even if most popular tubers see it as the black sheep, excited for more content!
Another issue people have with it is that the firing sound is very underwhelming
@@procow2274 You can easily mod it to use the dummied out beta sounds, they're meaty and still in the files.
The BFG Edition Shotgun sounds amazing tbh
@@SpongeTerryit sounds the same pretty much
@@Idkwhattoputhere5123 not even close
i hope you keep making these kinda videos, i love doom analysis videos! i consume them like crazy! its math and video games together!
In the long run, I ended up prefaring D3's shotty to the OG: the firepower to one-shots the majority of monsters feels way better than taking two to three shots to just kill an Imp or a Lost Soul.
Man I love this channel those b hopping segments look insane. after I saw your wr I tried doom 3 again for the first time since I was a kid and running around and jumping is just so much fun in this game
Always nice to inspire people to play themselves. 🙂
Doom 3 is a really interesting game,
even if you hate the shotgun, you will probably like this game a lot.
I love it and Quake 4.
This was absolutely excellent, can't wait to see more from you
@1:16 good lord that shotgun barrel is clearly an illusion. Next time I play Doom 3 I will be modding this shotgun to make it not completely ridiculous.
So what I'm getting from this is:
Doom 3's normal shotgun is just every other Doom game's Super Shotgun
I played D3 recently (Vanilla and BFG) - I absolutely fell in love with this shotgun. It works lika a boxing punch.
That is 100% the Ballistic Fist, only attached to a shotgun frame 😜
2:32 this is the entire reason why i love doom 3 and its shotgun, its really good once you learn how to use it. theres no better feeling than steamrolling an entire room of enemies in a couple seconds with just the shotgun.
Doom 1 had a realistic shotgun with realistic range and yet Doom 3 which is the more slower and for lack of a better word "grounded" entry in the series its shotgun follows the videogame trope of "Power of a nuclear blast, range of a toothpick"
The shotgun is first acquired in the early horror survival stages of Doom 3, which paired along with the machine gun makes it the butter to your bread for the first quarter of the game. Then you find a chainsaw that kills hell knights in a second and a half.
@@Mecceldorf Yep. If you don't get rekt by 1 punch 😀
Doom 3 shotgun my beloved
one of the few shotguns that require skills.
It really is great once you can use it with skill 😊
As far as ammo-consuming melee goes, it's pretty alright.
@@DinnerForkTongue LOL
@AugustoV8Cesar how is walking right up to an enemy skillful?
i hope you do more of these analysis videos about doom 3. Its a game that i never really appreciated so seeing these videos definetly makes me want to give it a chance with a more open mind
@@mantrad0r Cheers. Yeah Doom 3 can be a fun playthrough if you embrace its flaws and features. You can always tweak things in the game files if you find them really unbearable, although I would refrain from doing that. "Balancing" the shotgun just ruins the game. You become OP so easily.
Civvie11 ranting about the shotgun while Ozzy Osbourne's shot in the Dark song plays in the background is my favorite rant on TH-cam. It's moments like that that makes Civvie11 my favorite TH-camr.
His perpetual yelling makes me giggle 😃
It's actually insane how much better Doom 3 feels when you tweak the spread for the shotgun. I actually found myself using it more often than when I had first played the game.
Ah the best melee weapon in Doom 3
I love the feeling of using a big gauntlet to absolutely obliterate demons and zombies. It's like the game is trying to make you confront the monsters from up close to scare you but ramming onto them to kill them is awesome
Yeah, but does it have that awesome reload sound like the Plasma Rifle?
I wish. Plasma indeed has an amazing reload sound.
1:45 almost made a smiley face :)
Loving it kolega ❤
My gameplay of Doom 3 was focused around shotgun, rocket launcher, plasma rifle, RoE artifact and grabber. Like any time i seen a hellknight or bruiser i just went into berserk or put so much plasma and rockets into it so i can use my shotugn on smaller enemies without worrying about ammo. Yes i missed sometimes one shot kills but i still love this shotgun. It actually gives chalange, high risk high reward, one shot imp without being scratched or hit by fireball is so good in feeling
Hey that was a fun little video.
5:37 that dodge was clean af
@@DistrbdChikn I actually got hit there but that dodge move generally does work. I had god mode on during that demonstration. Forgot to turn it off.
Shotguns are supposed to excell at short range, not melee range, what Doom 3's shotgun essentially is, is a melee weapon.
Also add that the spread is inconsistent, leading to the feeling of RNG as to whether you're going to do enough damage along with a long clunky pump-action and it just makes it feel clunky.
A more accurate sentence would be "Shotguns in video games are traditionally supposed to excel at short range"
Saying just "shotguns" means you probably never seen what real ones can do.
As someone who owns a shotgun for home defense (SPAS-12, for anyone curious), the main issue is the real life limitation of shotguns is range. You have greater range IRL than in video games, but that’s because video games take place in unrealistically short distances than real life. 100 yards in a video game is sniper rifle distance. 300 yards in real life is intermediate caliber rifle distance (full power rifles are expected to be effective up to 800 to 1000 yards). So even though shotguns in real life can be effective up to 30 to 50 yards, that’s still 1/10th the range of an intermediate caliber rifle’s 300 to 500 yards.
So video games balance shotguns relative to the rifles. If a rifle’s range is only 25 yards in-game due to the relatively short draw distance of levels (such as the machine gun in Doom 3), then the shotgun has to be shortened to basically barrel stuffing range otherwise it’d become laughably overpowered (just like IRL shotguns if you’re guaranteed to be in close quarters, like the trenches of WW1 or room clearing in Fallujah).
@@InternetHydra I thought when I made a comment about a video game shotgun, then commented about that said shotgun in the video game, I wouldn't need to specify that I'm talking about how shotguns should act in video games in general, not their IRL counter-parts and yes, I've seen what IRL shotguns can do, the original Doom shotgun acts much more like it.
@@gameragodzillaAgreed. I used to shoot for sport and hunting, and you can plink targets pretty effectively with even a standard 12g, usually at around 50-70 yards (depending on the type of shells, of course).
I’ve never disliked the Doom 3 shotgun, but it always bothered me that it felt like your range was drastically reduced, simply for a gameplay convenience. By extension, a high tech, futuristic rifle should be able to hit stuff from 100-200 or so yards, but, Doom 3’s combat system was meant to be based on close-quarters and tension, so, I can’t hate it for what it was trying to pull off.
Ya win some, ya lose some, but the game is still fun for what it is, even after all this time. :)
@@gameragodzilla this guy. This guy gets it.
Cacodemon: is all head
Also Cacodemon: _doesn't have a headshot multiplier_
The biggest issue isnt just with this gun, it's that Doom 3s weapon and enemy balance is shit.
Enemies are too slow, ammo is too plentiful, and the most useful weapons are the ones that can provide a constant stream of damage.
The shotgun is an inconsistent unbalanced mess that has no reason to go to the extremes it has.
@@raptordan166 Nailed it in one 🎯 I'd even go farther and say that enemies are disappointingly squishy. The vaunted Arch-Vile takes less punishment than the classic Revenant, and skeleboi was already on the "light" end of "light shocktroopers".
As for the shotgun, reducing its spread to 6/7/8 degrees and giving it 7 or 8 projectiles fixes it marvelously. That way it behaves like a _shotgun_ and not a boxing glove that requires shells: firing from across a bigger room won't do much, but it has more range than you could fling a booger at and deals well with smaller enemies (especially Trites). It also doesn't utterly disrespect later enemies like the Revenant or Commando.
In the original version (the one that released on pc and the original Xbox) had way less ammo. That was added for the bfg edition (the modern version that is on all major consoles.)
@@Idkwhattoputhere5123 Even in normal Doom 3 you would still have a giant surplus of ammo if you remotely bothered to look for hidden caches. BFG just ramps it up to 11.
@@soundtea4939 What if you ignored the lockers? That’s extremely easy to do and likely that’s what many players did
its by far the easiest doom game
10:34 Thank you for mentioning that!
Though it gets a lot of hate for being underpowered, I'll always adore the way it sounds. Hard to believe Doom 3 is 20 years old.
Love deep dives on niche stuff like this, looking forward to more!
The reload and pump sounds are incredible, best in gaming for 20+ years and counting.
It definitely sounds like it does DAMAGE.
May not be my favourite shotgun, but that pump sound is iconic!
I'm glad this was on my recommended page. Great vid. It's basically an instant-k knife in the shape of a shotty 😎.
That speedrun montage has some proper Doomslayer vibe to it
The Doom 3 shotgun is balanced for the extreme close range of Doom 3’s levels. It’s absurdly powerful if all shots connect so anytime the spread is narrowed (very easy to do via modifying the .def file), it destroys the balance of the game.
As it stands, it’s a high risk, high reward weapon. If you know how to get up close to the enemy, it’s the single most useful weapon in the game.
EDIT: Also, yeah, the double barrel shotgun kicks ass. I even use the CSTDoom 3 mod to make the DB Shotgun available in the vanilla game and it does make enemies like Chaingun Commandos less annoying since I can reliably one shot them to the body around a corner. I still make use of the single shotgun for grunt enemies since I’m good enough to get close with it and I can also save ammo, but it’s still a great addition to the arsenal.
☝️🤓
You can buff the spread such that you don't literally have to be in physical contact to kill enemies and still retain a niche for longer ranged guns. And if you're modifying stuff, you can modify the damage values as well. I have modded it to have 11 spread, but loading 1 shell at a time to counter it, and I find it decently balanced.
@@EstonianFreedom100Loading one shell at a time doesn’t balance the shotgun that much due to it having a large magazine capacity of 8 shells and the slower pace of combat in Doom 3. I never had to reload my shotgun in the middle of combat so the tighter spread would simply make the gun OP. Only difference single loading shells would make is the downtime is twice as long.
Pretty interesting, didn't knew this depth of the shotty. Thanks
What is the game at 0:50? It looks almost like far cry but im not sure
you got it. it is far cry 1.
@@lekolega thanks i wasnt sure
Far cry 1 :]
@@sylph69420 i love early 2000’s game look, 2004-2006 bracket
@@benjaminmaher8896 YEAH, every game was a revolution
I loved the shotgun the sound was amazing and getting close up is what made the game scary 😂
Truth is... It isn't a shotgun. They wrote it's proper name but quality control team thought it's a typo and renamed it into shotgun. It's true name is shatgun.
haha the shit do be doing damage though 💩
@@lekolega Demons die from cringe from being shitten on xD
Or stench... Not sure if in lore they're suppose to smell like hell themself... heh like hell.
The main "issue" with the shotgun is that people completely ignore that the game already has a designated mid range weapon like the smg or even the rocket launcher
I never disliked the shotgun as a kid personally, I simply thought of it as a decision to make the risk of getting close up to an enemy rewarding. Glad you made this video sir
to bad they forgot the reward part😂
Doom 3's shotgun is inconsistent, but it is actually stupidly strong when all the planets align.
This mentality is emblematic of society as a whole. A lot of people automatically assume the "least good" of something is automatically "bad," when that's not always the case. Sometimes it actually is good, just underwhelming because there's something better.
Well, that's why it's good to try things yourself. I love all Doom games but not every aspect of them, but at least I have my own reasons because I played all of the games myself. I encourage everyone to build their own opinions as well instead of appropriating others'.
When you were offered the incredible Doom shotgun and the GOAT Doom 2 super shotgun, anything less feels like a downgrade, and this certainly is one. I don't think this should be made into a "society bad" argument, because when something really good becomes downgraded to mediocre, you are allowed to call it "bad".
0:27 Black Yoshi/Joshi mentioned, I gotta subscribe to you now (honestly love all the mentioned TH-camrs in the beginning)
@@frds_skce Well, I mentioned the few people that actually had something to say about the game, and Joshi in particular had quite a funny take on it, so I had to include it. I just wish I didn't have to censor it.
When the first imp appears in game the doom guy turns around with a shotgun in his hand and the imp just sits there doing a screaming animation begging you to blast it right in the face and kill it. I’m fairly sure that was the devs saying “hey you need to be close for the shotgun to work.”
@@Nekros-t9e True. Prime example of show me, don't tell me, which is great.
In order for a shotgun to realistically have the spread that this thing has, the gun would need to have a barrel shorter than the shell being fired.
Its a sniper compared to the stalker shotguns
This is not true. Only sawed off unupgraded is comparable, otherwise the TOZ and the pump or semi auto ones are quite accurate. Upgraded TOZ is a mini sniper rifle with Dart or Slug.
@@CharcharoExplorer The only games where TOZ isn't a budget or desperate choice I guess.
@@Hiddenus1 So ... Clear Sky and CoP?
Its decent there.
And all other shoties are pretty strong. Especially in CoP
haha I haven't played so I wouldn't know.
@@lekolega He isnt correct :P I have so I know. I mod both games (DOOM 3 and Shdalker) so I know the weapon values.
Every negative video isn't using the sprint button. Having a gun that you have to run AT an enemy with in a horror game is genius.
For me, there is absolutely nothing good about the Doom 3 shotgun: the sound effects are like someone dropping some spoons in a tin, it has the aesthetics of something that fell off the bottom of a Ford Bronco, it's a close-up weapon you have to keep back-and-forthing with, and all in a game series that *champions* really fun shotguns.
Modding the spread and projectile count made even the aesthetics work better for my brain. If the shotgun has any actual range (like 2m with a 7º spread), it doesn't feel like the barrel is only that curved bit at the start, and with less pellets it's a lot less absurd.
Bro is the new Decino
"Doom 3 Shotgun Bad" = "I didn't know there was a sprint key"
Seriously. The way you dance around and close distances just by sprinting is how Doom 3 is meant to be played.
"Doom 3 shotgun good" = i think melee weapons should need ammo
@@kyle8952You’re at basically melee range through most of the levels anyways, so that’s not a big deal.
☝️🤓
No, it still sucks. I call the sprint function the "Doom" button, because thats when Doom 3 feels like Doom the most. It was fun jamming it up everything's nose and pulling the trigger, but its not intuitive to players that that's what they need to do, and the spread is so bad most players will end up missing a pellet or 2 and getting punished, so why use it when there are safer options with marginal opportunity cost?
The shotgun is bad.
I love the shotgun in Doom 3 I know a lot of people don't like it but it is made for Doom 3 especially with the close corridors that's what it's meant for. Good video I just stumbled upon your channel and I just subscribed keep it up
Great breakdown. Editting is also top tier.
Speaking of the shotgun, I've never had an issue using the shotgun in this game, even back when it first released. The weapon is surprisingly well balanced and fits extremely well within the game. If anyone has an issue with the shotgun, then it's honestly just a skill issue.
Simple yet informative documentation of shotguns.
That's what I was going for 🙂
The Doom 3 shotgun is fine... I just wish it had a slight rate of fire boost, maybe 10%
it's not fine, it's spread is so bad it might as will be a nerfed super shotgun.
Personally I think it should have been a copy of the Halo CE shotgun, or the Quake Champions shotgun.
Just open the .def file and reduce the spread to 7 if you want a tighter spread. And then marvel at how it completely desecrates the balance of the game since the spread is the only thing keeping it balanced.
"Yes this game has reloads. Get over it" Ya and so did the Super Shotgun in 94 and made the room coverage of this shotgun look like a it's a pinpoint accurate, but it balanced itself with high stagger/pain animation ticks to make up for it when not stuffing it down a targets throat. Honestly, if ID would've just made it so it had high chance for enemy feed back like it's far superior cousin a literal decade earlier, it would be remembered much more fondly. Also, I love the video after Civvie's at the start talking about how inaccurate it is while the person complaining is literally never on target themselves. lol
@@allpapiodin They definitely went in another direction in Doom 3. Both Doom 3 and Far Cry, which are 2004 games, kinda feel like they were just games to show off new and impressive graphical capabilities. In the older games, they probably thought everything out much better.
And yeah, the guy missed the shots. I mean, his point was a bit over the top and exaggerated, but the fact remains that the spread is atrocious 😅
Doom 3's shotgun creates this derpy gameplay look where you are sprinting towards and away from the enemy. The whole experience is a frustrating comedy compared to original DOOM's combat.
That’s part of the gameplay loop. You get into range of the enemy’s really powerful close range attacks to deal high damage, and then back out. It’s a mobility based dance for the close quarters the game takes place in.
@gameragodzilla ☝️🤓
Not away, only towards
If you're talking about damage numbers, you should probably contextualize with other weapons, enemy hp helps, but knowing how it stacks up to other weapons is important too. Knowing that each pellet does the damage of a pistol shot provides more meaning than flat out telling us it does 14 dmg per pellet. If we were talking about Borderlands and telling someone an endgame gun does 30K damage and 80K on a crit, that might sound like a lot until you find out damage is on the scale of millions.
@@masonmario495 Definitely a good idea. Thanks for the input ❤️
It's a melee weapon thinking anything else is on you
You're the one calling a shotgun, emphasis on "gun", a melee weapon... and then suggesting other people come in with false assumptions...
Except a shotgun is NOT a melee weapon by standard. Not even the classic SSG was melee like this thing.
@@DinnerForkTongue but it's functionality in the video game is the same as a melee weapon
I never had a problem with Doom 3 shotgun, was one of my fav weapons. But again, my preferred strategy was to run straight up to the enemies and then unload on them, so I guess I never noticed the spread problem
Indeed, the majority of people just have a severe case of skill issue. This shotgun has top tier damage output if you use it up close; if you can't reliably get close and personal, git gud
@@thatdude3938 That has always been the case with Doom games. The idea has also been to be in the thick of things.
considering Doom 3 is more of a horror game rather than an action game, the thing about getting close to the enemies to have this gun act effectively makes sense. it's like "hey man try fighting your fears and go face to face with them, the strenght of your shotgun will do the rest".
Classic resident evil shotgun is better and the game is way more grounded lol
It was this video that made me get Doom 3, happy to report I am now through the base campaign and lost mission campaign, currently stuck in resurrection of evil but I'll get through it
@@saxtonturner2240 It always feels nice to have inspired people to try things for themselves. I hope you like the games 🙂
If you can't use this then you can't use anything
Weirdly enough the spread on this thing isn't my biggest gripe with it; the firing speed is. It takes just _slightly_ longer to fire again than it feels like it should.
I love the silly clank melee gun, but the marine really needs to learn how to pump it faster.
The Doom 3 Shotgun isn't the worst but then you realize that it being useful at very close range makes you wonder: Why wouldn't we just use the chainsaw instead? It's faster, it has no cooldown, it kills monsters more consistently. So yeah, the shotgun isn't a bad weapon, but it is a bad GUN.
The shotgun is one of the reasons why I made Doom 3: Golden Edition. Not to fundamentally change Doom to be more like the originals like so many other mods out there. You still have to reload, you still need to whip out your flashlight. Golden Edition only may have changed like 500 stuff but they're all mostly tweaks. The Doom 3 shotgun was actually very close to being excellent, just a minor reduction in spread made it so much more consistent.
The shotgun does instant damage while the chainsaw takes time to build up enough damage to kill. And enemies with low pain chance can still hit you through the chainsaw’s attack and deal damage, while the shotgun instantly killing them eliminates that possibility. You can even interrupt them mid attack.
Of course, the spread argument has always been moot, since if you do dislike it, you can tighten the spread if you wish. Don’t even need a mod for it like you have, just open the .def file and tweak it to your liking.
@@gameragodzilla Yeah, that makes sense, well... if I'm to be pedantic, technically, editing a def file is modding. But I get it. However, the shotgun really isn't faster than the chainsaw. If you need to fire more than one shot, it actually is literally faster to use the chainsaw. Just watch any speedrun. And of course, any monster too strong for the chainsaw is also too strong for the shotgun, like semi-bosses or whatever.
@@GTXDash Yeah, but if you need to fire more than one shot from the shotgun, you can safely shoot the second shot from a further distance away. Enough pellets would've landed at close range that the enemy is basically one cat scratch away from death anyways, so you'd be out of the range of the chainsaw.
Speedrunners, as explained in this video, still use the shotgun primarily for instant kill, and they've practiced enough such that they won't miss. So it's an instant kill if you're skilled, and if you're not, you can always pull back at fire again from a much safer distance. I always do that if I happen to be off with my aim.
@@gameragodzilla And you're not wrong. Maybe I'm just not good enough at the game to be more successful with that tactic. If the first shot doesn't kill, it is absolutely faster if I just used the chainsaw right from the start instead. I'm probably not pro enough to understand its greatness. But I'm just not getting the satisfaction I want from a shotgun. Again you're not wrong. Many of us just don't like it.
@@GTXDash Yeah but the shotgun is safer. Get in, get a shot off, then back off to a further distance for a follow up.
Then once you’re good enough to land all the pellets, it’s an instant kill.
This was one of the first game of this kind for teenage me, so i was counting pellets and noting differences between headshots and bodyshots as well.
Thank you!
Now I can use this as an argument against Doom 3 Non-enjoyers
I like doom 3, and i like the shotgun.
It's still a joke, though.
Letting it be effective just past RANGE ZERO is not gonna make it any more broken than it already is.
This and the BFG vid were great! Would love to see the machine gun and chain gun next!
I didn't know that the D3 shotgun was that OP actually. I guess it makes more sense why ID made the spread absurd to compensate for it killing so many enemies easily. Doesn't really make me want to play D3, but it's still cool.