Replacing spawn weapons

Remember that the shotgun melee is actually a very close-range weapon, nerfing it would make it pretty useless, since people aren't that eager anyway to swap to their shotgun in the middle of a fight. It also makes the fighting more fast-paced in beginning, and actually gives you a chance to do something when all weapons are already picked up for the moment.

Once I was playing while a new player joined. First thing he said literally:

Finally a game that doesn't have a useless starting weapon!

Besides, most people don't find it hard to get used to how things are at the moment, so changing/nerfing the shotgun/laser might only cause problems for the ones that already got used to it.



If there would be one change I would maybe approve, it would be a seperate melee weapon, that should have some kind of shield as secondary that stays for half a second, and with a very low refire rate. It should look like some kind of energy blade, look at the one from Tribes Vengeance for example (picture below), but then also with an obvious place for a shield to generate (and with a softer look).

The shotgun should get more powerful then, maybe some kind of combined attack as secondary, that fires a more accurate and powerful round, but also consumes more ammo and has a low refire rate. The laser should stay the same, I really love it, it's even a pretty good weapon to kill with if you use it the right way

It would be necessary to assign a new key though, maybe some kind of special key for the melee then, and keep the rest as it is now.