When did shotgun nerfing begin?

[KillerKrieg]

I remember in Returns shotguns were pretty devastating, however, it seems like in SRHK shotguns were *drastically* nerfed(which is stupid because they were never OP to begin with.) They ALWAYS miss, and they rarely crit, maybe about 8 - 9% of the time do they land crits, even though my guy trained shotgun just as much as he did rifle. *edit* he was also using smartlinked shotguns in the later half of his campaign life. What does smartlinking even do? Do you need to train decking so that you can do marked target to take advantage of smartlink?

[KillerKrieg]

Yeah, I was having pretty crappy luck with the SG man. I don't know why. I was always pretty close, usually clear enemies, and usually very high chance to hit. 88% or sometimes more, and with alarming frequency - nothing. I suppose I could have just gotten unlucky a bunch of times?

[red255]

genereally with ranged weapons I take a point or whatever in cyberware affinity and add on the arms that give +1 quickness and +1 ranged weapons which is 18% accuracy in both arms. and can be taken really early.

[dwarfpcfan]

Shotguns are fine, but they are close range, they loose a lot of accuracy at mid and long range. Honestly, nothing has changed since returns. As far as guns go, riffles are still the best.