That was my thought. An ideal situation, then, would be to release a fully steadied shot and then a quick follow-up. This would deal enough damage to take care of most targets. At the same time, the limitations of the weapon would make this strategy only truly effective against solitary opponents, primarily when you have surprise (or the enemy is taking a suicide charge from some distance). I think that would indeed make for a solid midrange weapon, while still giving plenty of reason not to make it one's sole means of fighting.
Flintlock guns usually have a slight delay between pulling the trigger and the gun actually firing, which is the hammer falling down and the powder burning. Perhaps that could be introduced in this, which would nerf the theoretical 'Derringer Meryl' strategy somewhat
Flintlock guns usually have a slight delay between pulling the trigger and the gun actually firing, which is the hammer falling down and the powder burning. Perhaps that could be introduced in this, which would nerf the theoretical 'Derringer Meryl' strategy somewhat
That is something I hadn't considered. It actually sounds like a really good idea. Not only will it reduce the effectiveness of spamming shots, it also accounts for the people who worry about guns as an "instant damage" weapon, as you would have to keep the weapon trained on the target before the shot goes off, giving them more time to spot who's shooting at them (making guns flash like TNT during this period would be optional, but hilarious). I'm also of the opinion that firearms should be loud (they are in real life) and give a "tell" to show people who didn't see the person where the shot came from. Current idea is a flash, like lightning, and a tinted blue version of the smoke effect explosions give off, centred either on or above the user. I am not entirely sure this is necessary, but it would be a nice touch for realism nerds, and help prevent claims of "unfair sniping power".
I'd also like to see firearms spook nearby passive mobs, and possibly neutral ones, maybe even cause certain hostile ones in the "startle radius" to step back and recalculate pathing. It isn't necessary...just another of those "nice touches". However, it would give the bow an advantage as a hunting weapon.
Really now? I wasn't aware that any mobs had an armour rating. That actually does open up some options.
Edit: It seems they aren't the only ones. Magma cubes, for instance, can have quite a bit of armour. Suddenly, a weaker ranged weapon that ignores armour, either fully or partially, seems like a more viable option.
Flintlock guns usually have a slight delay between pulling the trigger and the gun actually firing, which is the hammer falling down and the powder burning. Perhaps that could be introduced in this, which would nerf the theoretical 'Derringer Meryl' strategy somewhat
You can't spam shots from a musket, because in real life after every time you fire a musket, you have to reload. There is no delay of process for pulling arrows from a quiver or inventory for the bow, likewise for muskets, there shouldn't be a delay for the shots, only a delay for the reload. This is because reloading is significantly longer than shot delay, such that it would make more sense to have a delay for reloading rather than shot delay.
But you can potentially spam them by having multiple loaded muskets in your inventory, so adding shot delay would help in spamming different loaded muskets.
But you can potentially spam them by having multiple loaded muskets in your inventory, so adding shot delay would help in spamming different loaded muskets.
I like the delay idea as well. Obviously, it would be a short delay otherwise the shot could be lost. As a personal opinion, anything more than a second would be egregious. So we're realistically dealing with delay that measures in the hundreds of milliseconds (because no one says deci-seconds, and about double no-one rarely says centi-seconds.). Any delayed fire from 250ms to 750ms would work, the finer definition of the amount can be hammered through playtesting. Using the most awesome measuring system ever, I think that the delay should be 1/2 a microfortnight (about 0.61 seconds, this is a rare occurance where Wikipedia manages to be funny despite it's attempts otherwise( check out the FFF measuring system)).
Personally, I think that guns shouldn't be added, as they're sort of unnecessary with bows (re:the weapon tier argument: remember, the big differences between weapon tiers is durability/damage, arrow stock is more important than durability with bows most of the time, charge time deals with damage)
However, if they are added, for starters, no more than one or two guns should be added, not the dozens of guns that seem to come up so often.
My idea is a revolver:
You get either four or eight shots (Because Minecraft likes powers of two), which require no charge time and deal fairly high damage (Around 4, I would imagine)
If you try to shoot an empty revolver, you would reload instead, which takes 1.6 seconds per one ammo, like eating (or more, definitely considerably longer than charging a bow). "Ammo" consists of a gold nugget and a gunpowder in your inventory. (Remember, bullets are often made of lead IRL, and gold is fairly similar to lead in weight and softness, more so than iron). You can also right-click to strike at melee distance for around 1.5 damage, which would use up 2 durability, instead of just one per normal shot.
A revolver would have reasonably high durability, I would imagine.
Basically, a revolver would be very useful against enemies in small numbers, as soon as enough show up, though, you'll quickly run out of ammo and have to start using the slower bow or closer-range sword.
Bow draw time might have to be slightly increased to justify the gun's existence more.
Furthermore, a gun requires iron and gold to use:
is my idea of the crafting recipe.
@Jeda45: First of all, thank you for putting a little extra time and thought into your post. I'm not being the least bit sarcastic when I say it was very mature of you to do so. I think I can speak for everyone when I say that people taking the time to actually explain their opinion in a little bit of detail, and especially to consider both sides of the discussion, is highly appreciated.
Having said that, please forgive me if I find your post a trifle ironic. I actually do agree that two guns would be the most that should really be added. However, I find your suggestion a bit contradictory. You claim that any firearms would be redundant to the bow. Yet the revolver that you suggest is perhaps the least distinct from bows of anything suggested thus far. It also has the lowest material cost.
You do make an interesting point about using gold in place of lead, though. Generally, gold is overlooked for such use, as it is "valuable". In Minecraft-land, however, this isn't really the case. Gold is plentiful, and used for a number of things. Further, an economy as we know it does not exist, so using gold for bullets is perfectly reasonable.
@Flash: I'll just address the armour debate. There are actually three mobs currently (that I know of) with armour. Zombies are one, Zombie Pigmen another, and Magma Cubes the third. Not a lot to work with, to be sure, but it sets a standard for new mobs with armour to be added. Also, it bears mention that the Magma Cube is already a significantly armoured foe, with full-size cubes getting an armour rating higher than that of a fully-armoured player. That said, I fully retract what I had said about fully ignoring armour. That would indeed be unfair. However, armour piercing doesn't have to be all or nothing. For instance, if a firearm did a minimum of two hearts damage to armoured opponents (as an example), that would still make it more effective than other weapons against armoured foes, without making the use of armour fully pointless.
As to the rest, I have not much to say. Thank you for taking the time to state your opinions in so much detail.
Hmm armor penetration can be incorporated into the blunderbuss concept where increased steadying would increase armor penetration instead of increasing crit chance, but keep the crit fixed or non-existant instead.
Hmm armor penetration can be incorporated into the blunderbuss concept where increased steadying would increase armor penetration instead of increasing crit chance, but keep the crit fixed or non-existant instead.
I don't think that penetration would provide as much incentive to steady the shot as the critical chance would. A straight increase to damage is beneficial against all targets, while armour piercing is only beneficial against three mobs and players. I'm not saying that a piercing weapon would not be of value to players, but if the issue is giving players a reason to expose themselves to added risk when using a weapon, the more universal benefit is probably preferable.
Then it goes back to what you was saying with the doubleshot of the blunderbuss. A steadied shot with a quick finishing shot.
Yes, but given the difficulty of pulling off a steadied shot, and the fact that even at best it's not a guarentee, the potential payoff makes it feel like a better tradeoff than it is. Like the lottory, it's high risk for high reward. On some level, you know that it's highly situational, and you'll be leaving yourself wide open if it doesn't work, but you'll go for it anyway to try and end the fight quickly. You might get a two-shot kill, assuming the target isn't armoured, but they might also spot you before you can get into range or steady your shot. You might miss, or fail to get a critical, or be left open to counterattack from other foes from the recoil. Put simply, it's a tactic that is most useful when the odds are already in your favour, and least so when they aren't. Perhaps, it might be a good idea to have a reactively low critical chance progression, capping at only sixty percent, but the idea is essentially just a risk-reward balance.
Also, there's another factor. With just a piercing progression, players will see it as something that they have to do to avoid penalties, but seldom gives a reward outside PVP...assuming they are aware of which mobs are armoured to begin with. First of all, this makes the blunderbuss seem like a "PVP weapon", which won't sit well with the fanbase in general. Not only will this offend those who see it as just an excuse to pad PVP without adding anything truly useful to SMP, it will also offend PVP enthusiasts who see it as an "armour screw". Furthermore, still a third group would argue that it is, far from unfair, just plain useless, requiring added time and risk to do as much damage to someone in armour as they could have done just by using a better weapon.
Bonus damage, though, achieves roughly the same effect as piercing on armoured opponents, while also being useful on unarmoured ones. It feels more like a reward for using the weapon intelligently, as opposed to a penalty for using it outside of the "intended" situations. Finally, because it can be delivered as a percent chance, rather than an absolute value, it is able to appear more powerful than it is, without truly offering an absolutely devastating advantage.
I have added a ranged light source a few days ago, as well as few different bullets. The first is basically the wooden bullet:
The wooden bullet does no damage, but it does set the enemy on fire. It will also set the ground on fire, but the fire is small and won't spread. The light effect is the same as the light from the torch. You can use this bullet to shoot at dark areas far away from you to see what is there. This is like a flare, but made of wood. The fire burns out after some time. You can use this to explore deep ravine if you cannot use lava, which requires buckets and cannot stack.
Or if you caught at night in the ocean and it is too dark to see. You can try to see if land is in front of you by shooting your wooden bullet, such as to avoid crashes.
The bullet being made of wood and is burnt, is thus non-recollectable after being shot. This is okay because wood is renewable.
I also added stone bullets and diamond bullets. Diamond bullets do the same damage as iron bullets. Diamond bullets can hit an ender dragon 5 times per shot, due to the ender dragon's size. This means greater damage against bigger mobs.
Yes, but given the difficulty of pulling off a steadied shot, and the fact that even at best it's not a guarentee, the potential payoff makes it feel like a better tradeoff than it is. Like the lottory, it's high risk for high reward. On some level, you know that it's highly situational, and you'll be leaving yourself wide open if it doesn't work, but you'll go for it anyway to try and end the fight quickly. You might get a two-shot kill, assuming the target isn't armoured, but they might also spot you before you can get into range or steady your shot. You might miss, or fail to get a critical, or be left open to counterattack from other foes from the recoil. Put simply, it's a tactic that is most useful when the odds are already in your favour, and least so when they aren't. Perhaps, it might be a good idea to have a reactively low critical chance progression, capping at only sixty percent, but the idea is essentially just a risk-reward balance.
There's also the element of panic. Even if you don't two-shot the opponent, hitting an enemy player twice will force their eyes toward their health to see that they're down to shaky hearts which WILL affect the performance of most any player. Even knowing that, the mere sight of a blunderbuss can end up altering the morale of an opponent simply from the knowledge of what it can do unless they are heavily armored.
To end the argument of armor penetration, the blunderbuss would not have it at all, so we correct that oversight, and instead focus on the critical improvement. Critical caps are all the same to me. A 60% is no different than an 80% in a theoretical perspective as they're both considered "high".
Also, the burst damage is intended to make the blunderbuss much more friendly on use and much more effective at controlling large groups of monsters. To reduce the calculation overhead, the critical hit is only measured off of the main hit, if the main were to crit, all other blocks would be assumed crit as well.
This means instead of 3.5/.5 damage, it would become 7/1.5 damage on the crit. On a 2-hit tactic, this would net a maximum of 10.5 damage, this is enough to kill most any mob with few exceptions and all unarmored players. Which means that it is a very much devastating weapon in ANY context, but a player armored at all would be able to adequately survive a two-shot set-up and counteract. An especially crafty player would receive no damage and set up a counter-offensive. Given that two hits still deals less damage than a charged creeper, this is still survivable; but feared none-the-less.
I have added a ranged light source a few days ago, as well as few different bullets. The first is basically the wooden bullet:
The wooden bullet does no damage, but it does set the enemy on fire. It will also set the ground on fire, but the fire is small and won't spread. The light effect is the same as the light from the torch. You can use this bullet to shoot at dark areas far away from you to see what is there. This is like a flare, but made of wood. The fire burns out after some time. You can use this to explore deep ravine if you cannot use lava, which requires buckets and cannot stack.
Or if you caught at night in the ocean and it is too dark to see. You can try to see if land is in front of you by shooting your wooden bullet, such as to avoid crashes.
The bullet being made of wood and is burnt, is thus non-recollectable after being shot. This is okay because wood is renewable.
LOVE THIS PART. Having a momentary light-source is amazing. For the most part, having a burn effect is bad because it lasts so damn long, but if the burn effect only lasted for 1.5 or 2 hearts of damage, then it would be cool (pardon the bad pun here).
Not terribly fond of the diamond bullet set-up simply given it's limited usage, but the wooden bullets sound fun in any gun so long as their damage output is capped.
Ironically, I'm more sold by the idea of a diamond bullet that can penetrate multiple targets in a line or damage a large target more than once. Maybe if the light shot were more a proper flare, using paper, extra gunpowder, and glowstone dust. Having the equivalent to a signal-flare would be a valuable tool, in my eyes.
Actually, add that to my reasons that a blunderbuss might require separate bullets. Due to its nature, its better suited than some weapons to work with multiple types of ammunition, such as buckshot (standard), incendiary (low damage but chance of flame, using blaze powder), and the aformentioned flares (mostly harmless, possibly blinding). Selecting a type of shot to use would be as simple as selecting it from the hotbar and right clicking (which would also work for multiple arrow types, but I'm not sure that falls within the realm of this topic).
How about a blunderbuss having a higher usage: 128 or so uses would be fine.
When you right-click on the buckshot stack, the stack would be consumed into the blunderbuss. The old stack would be refunded.
This means that a blunderbuss can be hot-equipped with specific ammo. Ammo will stack in the inventory up to 64, but must be loaded into the device as seen below, reloading the device is as simple as right-clicking the ammo when held and hot-keying back to the gun:
Flares can be shot upwards of 16 meters before dispersing. If a flare hits solid ground before then, then it sticks there for 64 seconds (powers of 2) as a glowstone equivalent. If a flare were to hit a monster, it instead deals 1/2 heart of damage(1 1/2 on crit), and pisses the monster off (let's face it. You'd be pissed off too, if you were hit by a flare. I'm just not sure if you'd be pissed before or after the Emergency Room visit...)
Diamond having a piercing effect would be nifty, especially with a capped distance and gives solid PvE usage that would be ill-suited toward PvP. Since it would pass through the target with quick velocity (and it being a single ballistic versus buckshot's 8+), it's damage should be noticeably lower than with buckshot. Perhaps 2 points less meaning it's damage would be 1.5 (crit 3.5), and the ammo would not have it's explosive qualities or bewildering effect.
Using any of the three proposed ammos above would still provide kickback from the gun.
This is a personal perspective here, and by that right, is probably misled or incorrect. Thought stating, it is personal and honest.
Quote from Personal Perspective »
Balancing things around PvP in Minecraft is a pointless endeavor. PvP was added as an afterthought, and while many seem to enjoy the mechanics; this is, was, and will be, an afterthought and will continuously be a backseat to PvE environment.
Though the voice of the PvP community is loud, I personally feel that the PvP community is, in itself, a fair minority. The smaller the group, the louder the voice.
That being said, there are some dangers to consider for those that do strive for a PvP atmosphere that must be countered. Concepts like instant-kill mechanics and mechanics that further the prospect of griefing are prospects that must be considered and removed. Those who would consider this do NOT think for the well-being or enjoyment of all players and only themselves and a good suggestion must look at all aspects of the game.
For this, PVP mechanics added simply for the improvement of PVP should be ignored unless they are intended for a patch-wide improvement in the fundamentally broken PvP system.
For my part, when I discuss the mechanics of anything not directly PvP; I will ignore these as non-issues when related to the game.
PVP was/is/will-be a horribly implemented afterthought, and while it has become an important issue in this game despite it's casual constant dismissal by Mojang, I do my best to only acknowledge the PvE side that every player will foreseeably entertain.
This next part is certainly true, if it's fun in PVE, it WILL be fun in PVP.
Infinite health is NOT fun, it's boring.
Instant death is NOT fun, it's boring.
Griefing can be fun, but is still childish and undesirable.
That is something I hadn't considered. It actually sounds like a really good idea. Not only will it reduce the effectiveness of spamming shots, it also accounts for the people who worry about guns as an "instant damage" weapon, as you would have to keep the weapon trained on the target before the shot goes off, giving them more time to spot who's shooting at them (making guns flash like TNT during this period would be optional, but hilarious). I'm also of the opinion that firearms should be loud (they are in real life) and give a "tell" to show people who didn't see the person where the shot came from. Current idea is a flash, like lightning, and a tinted blue version of the smoke effect explosions give off, centred either on or above the user. I am not entirely sure this is necessary, but it would be a nice touch for realism nerds, and help prevent claims of "unfair sniping power".
I'd also like to see firearms spook nearby passive mobs, and possibly neutral ones, maybe even cause certain hostile ones in the "startle radius" to step back and recalculate pathing. It isn't necessary...just another of those "nice touches". However, it would give the bow an advantage as a hunting weapon.
apparently
Edit: It seems they aren't the only ones. Magma cubes, for instance, can have quite a bit of armour. Suddenly, a weaker ranged weapon that ignores armour, either fully or partially, seems like a more viable option.
You can't spam shots from a musket, because in real life after every time you fire a musket, you have to reload. There is no delay of process for pulling arrows from a quiver or inventory for the bow, likewise for muskets, there shouldn't be a delay for the shots, only a delay for the reload. This is because reloading is significantly longer than shot delay, such that it would make more sense to have a delay for reloading rather than shot delay.
But you can potentially spam them by having multiple loaded muskets in your inventory, so adding shot delay would help in spamming different loaded muskets.
I like the delay idea as well. Obviously, it would be a short delay otherwise the shot could be lost. As a personal opinion, anything more than a second would be egregious. So we're realistically dealing with delay that measures in the hundreds of milliseconds (because no one says deci-seconds, and about double no-one rarely says centi-seconds.). Any delayed fire from 250ms to 750ms would work, the finer definition of the amount can be hammered through playtesting. Using the most awesome measuring system ever, I think that the delay should be 1/2 a microfortnight (about 0.61 seconds, this is a rare occurance where Wikipedia manages to be funny despite it's attempts otherwise( check out the FFF measuring system)).
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However, if they are added, for starters, no more than one or two guns should be added, not the dozens of guns that seem to come up so often.
My idea is a revolver:
You get either four or eight shots (Because Minecraft likes powers of two), which require no charge time and deal fairly high damage (Around 4, I would imagine)
If you try to shoot an empty revolver, you would reload instead, which takes 1.6 seconds per one ammo, like eating (or more, definitely considerably longer than charging a bow). "Ammo" consists of a gold nugget and a gunpowder in your inventory. (Remember, bullets are often made of lead IRL, and gold is fairly similar to lead in weight and softness, more so than iron). You can also right-click to strike at melee distance for around 1.5 damage, which would use up 2 durability, instead of just one per normal shot.
A revolver would have reasonably high durability, I would imagine.
Basically, a revolver would be very useful against enemies in small numbers, as soon as enough show up, though, you'll quickly run out of ammo and have to start using the slower bow or closer-range sword.
Bow draw time might have to be slightly increased to justify the gun's existence more.
Furthermore, a gun requires iron and gold to use:
is my idea of the crafting recipe.
Having said that, please forgive me if I find your post a trifle ironic. I actually do agree that two guns would be the most that should really be added. However, I find your suggestion a bit contradictory. You claim that any firearms would be redundant to the bow. Yet the revolver that you suggest is perhaps the least distinct from bows of anything suggested thus far. It also has the lowest material cost.
You do make an interesting point about using gold in place of lead, though. Generally, gold is overlooked for such use, as it is "valuable". In Minecraft-land, however, this isn't really the case. Gold is plentiful, and used for a number of things. Further, an economy as we know it does not exist, so using gold for bullets is perfectly reasonable.
@Flash: I'll just address the armour debate. There are actually three mobs currently (that I know of) with armour. Zombies are one, Zombie Pigmen another, and Magma Cubes the third. Not a lot to work with, to be sure, but it sets a standard for new mobs with armour to be added. Also, it bears mention that the Magma Cube is already a significantly armoured foe, with full-size cubes getting an armour rating higher than that of a fully-armoured player. That said, I fully retract what I had said about fully ignoring armour. That would indeed be unfair. However, armour piercing doesn't have to be all or nothing. For instance, if a firearm did a minimum of two hearts damage to armoured opponents (as an example), that would still make it more effective than other weapons against armoured foes, without making the use of armour fully pointless.
As to the rest, I have not much to say. Thank you for taking the time to state your opinions in so much detail.
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I don't think that penetration would provide as much incentive to steady the shot as the critical chance would. A straight increase to damage is beneficial against all targets, while armour piercing is only beneficial against three mobs and players. I'm not saying that a piercing weapon would not be of value to players, but if the issue is giving players a reason to expose themselves to added risk when using a weapon, the more universal benefit is probably preferable.
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He said
"It would be an insta-kill, but take 2 minutes to reload"
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Yes, but given the difficulty of pulling off a steadied shot, and the fact that even at best it's not a guarentee, the potential payoff makes it feel like a better tradeoff than it is. Like the lottory, it's high risk for high reward. On some level, you know that it's highly situational, and you'll be leaving yourself wide open if it doesn't work, but you'll go for it anyway to try and end the fight quickly. You might get a two-shot kill, assuming the target isn't armoured, but they might also spot you before you can get into range or steady your shot. You might miss, or fail to get a critical, or be left open to counterattack from other foes from the recoil. Put simply, it's a tactic that is most useful when the odds are already in your favour, and least so when they aren't. Perhaps, it might be a good idea to have a reactively low critical chance progression, capping at only sixty percent, but the idea is essentially just a risk-reward balance.
Also, there's another factor. With just a piercing progression, players will see it as something that they have to do to avoid penalties, but seldom gives a reward outside PVP...assuming they are aware of which mobs are armoured to begin with. First of all, this makes the blunderbuss seem like a "PVP weapon", which won't sit well with the fanbase in general. Not only will this offend those who see it as just an excuse to pad PVP without adding anything truly useful to SMP, it will also offend PVP enthusiasts who see it as an "armour screw". Furthermore, still a third group would argue that it is, far from unfair, just plain useless, requiring added time and risk to do as much damage to someone in armour as they could have done just by using a better weapon.
Bonus damage, though, achieves roughly the same effect as piercing on armoured opponents, while also being useful on unarmoured ones. It feels more like a reward for using the weapon intelligently, as opposed to a penalty for using it outside of the "intended" situations. Finally, because it can be delivered as a percent chance, rather than an absolute value, it is able to appear more powerful than it is, without truly offering an absolutely devastating advantage.
The wooden bullet does no damage, but it does set the enemy on fire. It will also set the ground on fire, but the fire is small and won't spread. The light effect is the same as the light from the torch. You can use this bullet to shoot at dark areas far away from you to see what is there. This is like a flare, but made of wood. The fire burns out after some time. You can use this to explore deep ravine if you cannot use lava, which requires buckets and cannot stack.
Or if you caught at night in the ocean and it is too dark to see. You can try to see if land is in front of you by shooting your wooden bullet, such as to avoid crashes.
The bullet being made of wood and is burnt, is thus non-recollectable after being shot. This is okay because wood is renewable.
I also added stone bullets and diamond bullets. Diamond bullets do the same damage as iron bullets. Diamond bullets can hit an ender dragon 5 times per shot, due to the ender dragon's size. This means greater damage against bigger mobs.
To end the argument of armor penetration, the blunderbuss would not have it at all, so we correct that oversight, and instead focus on the critical improvement. Critical caps are all the same to me. A 60% is no different than an 80% in a theoretical perspective as they're both considered "high".
Also, the burst damage is intended to make the blunderbuss much more friendly on use and much more effective at controlling large groups of monsters. To reduce the calculation overhead, the critical hit is only measured off of the main hit, if the main were to crit, all other blocks would be assumed crit as well.
This means instead of 3.5/.5 damage, it would become 7/1.5 damage on the crit. On a 2-hit tactic, this would net a maximum of 10.5 damage, this is enough to kill most any mob with few exceptions and all unarmored players. Which means that it is a very much devastating weapon in ANY context, but a player armored at all would be able to adequately survive a two-shot set-up and counteract. An especially crafty player would receive no damage and set up a counter-offensive. Given that two hits still deals less damage than a charged creeper, this is still survivable; but feared none-the-less.LOVE THIS PART. Having a momentary light-source is amazing. For the most part, having a burn effect is bad because it lasts so damn long, but if the burn effect only lasted for 1.5 or 2 hearts of damage, then it would be cool (pardon the bad pun here).
Not terribly fond of the diamond bullet set-up simply given it's limited usage, but the wooden bullets sound fun in any gun so long as their damage output is capped.
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Actually, add that to my reasons that a blunderbuss might require separate bullets. Due to its nature, its better suited than some weapons to work with multiple types of ammunition, such as buckshot (standard), incendiary (low damage but chance of flame, using blaze powder), and the aformentioned flares (mostly harmless, possibly blinding). Selecting a type of shot to use would be as simple as selecting it from the hotbar and right clicking (which would also work for multiple arrow types, but I'm not sure that falls within the realm of this topic).
How about a blunderbuss having a higher usage: 128 or so uses would be fine.
When you right-click on the buckshot stack, the stack would be consumed into the blunderbuss. The old stack would be refunded.
This means that a blunderbuss can be hot-equipped with specific ammo. Ammo will stack in the inventory up to 64, but must be loaded into the device as seen below, reloading the device is as simple as right-clicking the ammo when held and hot-keying back to the gun:
buckshot (max 8 stack)
flare (max 4 stack)
diamond slugs (max 8 stack)
Flares can be shot upwards of 16 meters before dispersing. If a flare hits solid ground before then, then it sticks there for 64 seconds (powers of 2) as a glowstone equivalent. If a flare were to hit a monster, it instead deals 1/2 heart of damage(1 1/2 on crit), and pisses the monster off (let's face it. You'd be pissed off too, if you were hit by a flare. I'm just not sure if you'd be pissed before or after the Emergency Room visit...)
Diamond having a piercing effect would be nifty, especially with a capped distance and gives solid PvE usage that would be ill-suited toward PvP. Since it would pass through the target with quick velocity (and it being a single ballistic versus buckshot's 8+), it's damage should be noticeably lower than with buckshot. Perhaps 2 points less meaning it's damage would be 1.5 (crit 3.5), and the ammo would not have it's explosive qualities or bewildering effect.
Using any of the three proposed ammos above would still provide kickback from the gun.
This is a personal perspective here, and by that right, is probably misled or incorrect. Thought stating, it is personal and honest.
So, yeah.
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