Talking of both shotguns and a melee, I immediately start to think of Tribes: Vengeance.
T:V had a weapon called the blaster, which was basically an energy shotgun. To new players (and old players who never bothered to try), it was basically useless because it did fairly low damage. However, I've seen it used to great effectiveness (and joined in on it eventually) as a short-fairly long range MA weapon. It works quite well for constantly withering away at the enemies health. The Fast projectile speed means that you don't have to lead by much (and there's less time for the enemy to react and dodge), and the slight weapon spread meant that it was fairly easy to do a small amount of damage with each shot, and with the close-mid range shots and good aim, fairly easy to get more shots to hit, and thus do faster damage. Also, the fact it drained your energy (a little per shot, but a player with an energy pack just standing on the ground could fire continuously for nearly a minute before his energy is depleted. Jetting players obviously can't fire that much, but they can still afford a shot every few seconds) meant that players can afford to use it more often, as they can't run out of ammo (in the same sense).
Also in T:V there was a fallback weapon, which some called a knife, some called a sword. This was a energy filled blade, which when the fire key was pressed, would shoot forward as if it was spring loaded and release all the energy inside it directly in front of it. That's just the effects, It could basically be considered to be a lunge attack.
Now in the Vanilla game (unmodified original release, for those who aren't aware), the knife was bordering on utterly useless, except in duels where both players have completely used up all their ammo. It had extremely short range, and did something like 25 damage max.
However, in a later mod (called x2) they Upgraded it somewhat. It's effective range was increased (but not so much to be no longer regarded as a melee weapon), and it was given two points on a players body where it did much more damage. Knifing someone in the back (called a"Brutal Back Stab") did roughly twice the damage as the basic attack (i.e. about 50 damage). Now this hitbox is just centre mass in the back. Arms and legs don't count.
The Other location was a knife hit to the Head (called a "Lobotomy"). This was the main game Changer for the knife. I don't know the exact damage amount for a lobotomy, but all I know is whether you were light, medium or heavy, If that knife hit you in the head, you're dead.
This means that it's very effective against heavies who let a light fly too close to them (say a HoF being attacked by a capper or LO. HoF stands on (or near) flag trying to shoot the incoming capper. Said player flys directly over the HoF's Head, aiming down with the knife, and presses fire just as he passes over the HoF's head, and the Hof drops dead.
Now, I can imagine such a lobotomy thing getting overused on noobs, or to annoy and make HoF's too easy to defeat, So I would recommend that a headshot would do around 100, or 150 damage, so as to kill lights or mediums in one shot, but to require additional shots from other weapons to get the heavy.
Disclaimer: I've never actually researched exact damage amounts for the knife, any numbers I'm throwing up are approximations from where I saw them
Personally, I'd quite like to see both of these weapons (or at least similar weapons) tried out in the game, as they offer very different tactics (and knife duels are fun as hell
).
(If they have actually been tried, and just don't work, then I withdraw my comments).
