Let me balance this game

[Vanquish]

He has had more competitive experience (in AC and other games) than anyone in this thread and probably 95% of the forum...

This is irrelevant.

It's not irrelevant, don't you think someone with seven years experience of playing games at a high level could help us get the weapon balance right? He clearly knows what does and doesn't make games work. Plus he's a very capable coder. I don't see the irrelevance at all.

There is a way to go about helping the game, making a poll and whining "let me do it, you're doing it wrong" is not that way.

Admittedly, I agree. But I'm trying to look past Larry's directness and understand that what he's trying to do for the game is more important than my pride and some forum etiquette, neither of which relates to the original topic of weapon balance.
I'd like to see Larry code a fork of the game for people to test out, and then hopefully some more people will start to agree with me that the weapon balance could be much better than it is.