Pistols are useless

[Inept]

Jumped back into this game after a few months off and spawned near the police station, managed to break in and find a good haul of ammo and a pistol to go with it. I decided to use the pistol as a means of escape as I wasn't really invested in the game so much, yet, I was met with the worst shooting 'mechanic' I have ever seen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pteiFIYDfQ4&feature=youtu.be

By all means, dont insta kill them, don't knock them back, but for the love of god, hit them, any of them!

[Gubernaut]

Haha I just started playing the game and I found a pistol and some ammo, I'll be sure not to use it

[Inept]

I wouldn't, unless you just want to attract a horde. Pointing your finger and saying "Pew Pew" is probably more effective, same result, no horde.

[Inept]

If I cut your hand and made you run for 20 mins, would you be able to shoot me at point blank/meter range with a pistol? Or, at least, one of the crowd of people walking slowly towards you...

[razberrie]

you need to build your skills.... pistol is very deadly accurate at higher levels...seriously, one shots from a block away.

Your toon is just a noob who doesnt know a grip from a barrel when he/she firsts grabs a firearm with a bare skill tree.

[asmileyfish]

Most guns at low accuracy lvl seem terrible. If you broke into the gun shop and have ammo coming out of every orrifice you can go on a gun toting rampage and lvl it up, youl be one shotting everything before you know it.

[Inept]

Which is fine, if it was at a distance, what happened in that video is awful design there is no 2 ways about it.

I'm all for increasing accuracy and stats with use but being unable to hit anything at all is stupid, its like being unable to use a baseball bat until you have swung it at a tree for 10 mins, then you can start to hit zombies with a greater RNG.

[asmileyfish]

Originally posted by Latch:

Which is fine, if it was at a distance, what happened in that video is awful design there is no 2 ways about it.

I'm all for increasing accuracy and stats with use but being unable to hit anything at all is stupid, its like being unable to use a baseball bat until you have swung it at a tree for 10 mins, then you can start to hit zombies with a greater RNG.

No, handling a firearm is a little different from swinging a baseball bat, in realism terms anyway. A bat anyone can swing, yet with firing a weapon would take a little time to get used to the recoil and actualy learning how to hit a target. If it's pointblank i can understand, but if you have never fired a weapon before and you pick one up and fire it, whilst under preasure of a walking corpse trying to eat you you're going to have problems.

[neededlotus5]

starting out your best bet is to find a golf club or bat (which can be turned into a nail bat for x2 the damage ) anything with a decent reach guns will only get you killed fast.

[crispy D pancakes]

You could try throwing the pistol at them!

[razberrie]

Originally posted by Latch:

... what happened in that video is awful design there is no 2 ways about it....

I disagree wholeheartedly.

eg: half the time when you were aiming at the zed, your hand was 'behind' his head....he was so close he was dry humping you..
step back if you 'have' to use ranged weapons.... no wonder you were missing.

ranged firearm weapons dont solve problems well within melee range.

[Tinedmovie4062]

New character = no stats = poor accuracy
Completely panicked = poor accuracy
Injured hand = poor accuracy
Zombie basically humping your leg = poor accuracy

[Inept]

A herd of zombies within touching distance and I miss 90% of the shots, no lack of training, status of panic or anything would make anyone miss that much!

Strange that, despite me (the character) being such a bad shot and especially under pressure, with a lack of training that I can reload perfectly and concisely each time isn't it.

"half the time when you were aiming at the zed, your hand was 'behind' his head....he was so close he was dry humping you.."

So, I shouldn't have missed them if he was that close.

[MaGicBush]

I agree with Latch here that is pretty stupid watching the video. I am new to the game as well and have yet to use guns(figured the noise would attract them) even though I have a pistol and ammo. They need to be tweaked slightly, I can understand if they were a ways away with his injured hand/tiredness/panicked that he would miss most shots. But it is damn near impossible to miss something that close even if your an idiot and try to fire it backwards your going to hit yourself at that distance lol. A gun should always hit it's target like 95% of the time within a meter or so, but not necesarilly kill them.

Obviously they are wanting us to use melee in that range, but a gun should still be effective up close in a pinch enough to kill a few here and there.

[Inept]

Rewatch the video, they only get close a few times. It's not about a head shot, its about actually hitting them, the mechanic is relativly easy to fix, based on the distance to the player and the skill, the chance to hit grows as they get closer.

With more skill comes a higher critical (headshot) chance and chance to hit at range, if a zombie is close enough you can touch it but far enough away that pressing fire doesnt result in the player pushing the zombie away, then you hit it, why would you not?

Imagine now you are stood up pointing a gun at a zombie that is 2 meters away and walking toward you, you pull the trigger... Did you miss the shot? Thought not.

It's just crappy, why bother using pistols if they are that bad, make a loud noise and are more 'expensive' to use than melee. The risk of using the gun should remain the same, but the reward should be greater than that of using a melee weapon, until then, I will stick to a spoon over a pistol.

[LeoCean]

It's not as bad as having 100-200 zombies in a huge horde and not killing one of them with 40 shotgun shells + the shotgun. It was on a multiplayer server though so it could be that, however it wasn't laggy at the time. It did give me a ton of exp though still couldn't kill anything with lvl 4 accuracy. I do know shotguns can kill them though cause I made a mod to test it and with 999 dmg not one zombie can tank it. But that's a real quick way to get bored.