User blog comment:Zephalian/Next Battlefield 3 Patch/@comment-1142365-20120325164210/@comment-1080767-20120325192338

Of course we don't want them to be useless. The whole point is to balance them such that they aren't advantageous over other weapon options. That's what they are trying to do because the USAS-12 and MK3A1 suffered from a bug that prevented them from having a fire rate reduction with Frag Rounds which shotguns are supposed to have.