Weapon Balance and Gameplay Discussion

[Panda]

The old SMG had a very attractive learning curve combined with raw power and spraying abilities. It was second only to pro snipers, which required much training (and/or tricks), so it was less widely used.
That's why I and many others played SMG. It was very strong (too strong), the AR was no real option and the shotgun was too limited.

Now you have to use different weapons depending on the map and mode and they are all pretty well balanced unless you use the wrong weapon on the wrong map. The only all-around halfway decent gun is the AR now, but it loses vs. SMG on a few maps and vs. sniper on other maps and in very full games the reload time is way too high and you will get shotgunned. So it's balanced.

Unless you think about changing weapon (or better pickup) stats depending on the number of players, the balance cannot be improved much imo.