I propose that if a proper balance pass on damage isn't viable at this time that the sword simply does the same amount of damage as a fire axe.

Replica doesn't necessarily mean blunt, many replicas are sharp. I'd expect the one they put in the game to be sharp or else it's a bit silly without something like your idea (which is good, but probably a long way off if they did it).

The majority of melee weapons have awful/unreasonable damage. I believe its a case of them just copying stats/not configuring most of them. I think it's high time they looked at it though.

Hello Andy, I've just tried for several minutes to reproduce it and have failed to do so.

When I initially experienced it, it was several days ago. I am nearly certain it was about a week ago at most but it's possible it was longer. At the time I didn't make a report and honestly didn't think much of it.

Yesterday I encountered another player on that roof who seemed to have entered into the vent but it is possible that there was either desync or something more nefarious at work. He had vanished while adjacent to one, so having experienced it myself I assumed that to be the case.

In any case, I can not reproduce it and if you claim it is fixed then perhaps I'm simply mistaken on when I experienced it. If I experience it again I will be sure to make a new report or update this one. Sorry for wasting your time.

I encounter at least one hacker per full server. While the more severe forms of hacking from before seem to have declined, teleporting/speed hacking seems to be very common.

You are nearly guaranteed to run into these types of players in the active major cities like elektro if you are on a populated server.

My friends experienced this in the cherno firestation, trying to pick up fire helmets in the tower (I believe third floor) caused them to break their legs and in one case, die.

An additional bug some times occurs where you end up with a stack of 0 rounds loaded in the shotgun, after firing two shots. This leads to the shotgun effectively being completely broken, as you can't eject these phantom rounds to load new ones.

Dropping the shotgun/relogging doesn't work, and it appears this way to other players as well.

Had same thing happen to me and 2 friends, all our gear stripped from us. The hacker wasn't even in sight.

There is a new bug in which you can't eject loaded shells from the shotgun. I have submitted a tracker here:
http://feedback.dayzgame.com/view.php?id=14812

I can confirm that the shotgun fires a single "pellet" which seems to be doing a large amount of damage however.

Shooting walls/players/zombies only creates a single large impact. I've taken a screenshot of the impacts on a wall: http://i.imgur.com/84st9v3.jpg
That is 3 separate rounds from roughly 20m. I have tested further distances and the impact is the same, so it is not merely a very tight cone and stays consistent.

Can confirm.
short clip of evidence, sorry it's not better.
WARNING static at the start, watch your ears
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BV_iFYlJFWo

I definitely know how to aim with it, I've used it a lot. I'll do more extensive testing next time I grab one, but I am near certain it was shooting a single pellet.

The shotgun is basically the gun I've used for probably 75% of my time playing DayZ, both SA and the mod.

edit
sorry not the best test ever but here's a video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BV_iFYlJFWo&feature=youtu.be

I can confirm that on stable the shotgun is currently only shooting one pellet, at least some of the time.

Shotgun spread seems like it could stand to be tweaked. Damage seems very random. It's not uncommon to miss all pellets at very close range, especially with sawn off shotguns but also with regular.

The situation seems to usually be you either outright kill your target, or do very minimal damage. Seems a bit too random, and a slightly tighter spread may be the answer.

Pellets also seem to have strange travel time. Not uncommon to shoot and see them impact a wall at a significant delay, for even short distances traveled.

I'll add to this topic that you can't eject shells at all from a shotgun currently, so you can't remove the current shells to reload the full amount.

There is another bug that occurs where the stack of shells in the shotgun reads as 0 in quantity after firing both shots, resulting in a shotgun with a stack of 0 loaded shells which can't be ejected. This renders the shotgun completely useless.