The Story of a shotgun -
http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/761/761738p1.htmlIGN: What's funny about designing a game, and I'm sure you've thought about this many times, is that you design a game with certain goals in mind. You have this idea that the game is to be played according to the rules you set out, and then you bring it out to the public. The public takes it and maybe turns it into a different beast altogether. Have there been any instances in which people are playing the game in ways you'd never thought you'd see and that surprises you?
CliffyB: Um, yeah. They were using grenade tagging way too much in the beginning. Holy s#*%. It's one of those things we put in on a whim. We knew we didn't want to do the authentic grenade, like Halo. We wanted you to have to swap to grenades and actually have to toss them and pick them up in the battlefield, which actually takes a second; our pacing is a little bit slower. But it's one of those things that for the first few weeks online, it was just non-stop grenades stuck to my head. It was like, "Dude!" That was far more popular than we ever could have anticipated. And that's just part of organic game design and development. You never know what's going to be more popular online, so grenade tagging got to be a little too useful,so that got nerfed in one of the updates.
IGN: Anything else that surprised you?
CliffyB: I think the shotgun is pretty popular. Honestly, it's a shotgun. People are drawn to it because they can run up to opponents and blow them into itty bitty pieces. That's the path of least resistance for gamers. And it's one of those things in any game where there is one preferred weapon. With Quake 1 it was the rocket launcher, Halo 1 everyone complained about the pistol, and in Halo 2 it was the energy sword, and in Gears it's the shotgun. Ultimately, online guys are killing each other with the shotgun, and it's all good.
IGN: What about the torque bow, do you think that turned out well? I did. I love the bow.
CliffyB: Yeah, I'm a fan of it. I think the torque bow is one of the coolest weapons in the game. A lot of people like the active reload with that weapon. You get one of those quick reloads and people have gotten really good at it.
IGN: What about issues revolving around the shotgun being a little too powerful for the game host? How do you counter that?
CliffyB: That's true with any online game. If you are the host you will have a better connection and your game speed will be slightly better than everyone else's. That's an issue with online gaming in general.