www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tvSN2pezNA

In this episode of Extra Cedits, they talk about the idea of choice and how it is important to have meaningful decisions in your game.

If you skip to 2:14 (the important part), he explains how a choice that is able to be calculated with math in order to produce the best results is not a meaningful choice. He then goes on to say how WoW had this problem at one point, where a player's choice wasn't based on what was good for their playstyle, but was good to be competitive.
Basically, their choice of playstyle was meaningless because other choices were obviously better, so the only way to play the game "properly" was with a certain playstyle.

THIS IS THE PROBLEM WITH THE ASSAULT RIFLE.

I want my choice of weapon and playstyle to be about what I like to do, not about what will do the most damage or have the greatest effect. I choose to use the Assault Scrambler rifle because it has longer range and is good against shield tanks, but why choose this weapon when the Assault Rifle is clearly better?

Every other weapon is balanced and works well within their limits, yet the AR doesn't have any of these restrictions. CCP even said that the Assault Rifle is designed to be a short range weapon, so why is it that it can still snipe across the map with absolute precision? (i.e. it shoots where you point with hardly any spread when aiming down sights)

I watched this video and the next in the series, the illusion of choice. I understand your complaints about the AR, but to be fair it is mostly the Duoville, the proto AR that causes the most problems as the range on it is simply insane. This happens because the AR has two skills, reduction to dispersion and reduction to recoil, both make the gun steadier and the bullets less likely to miss the intended target. This can easily make the Duoville like a sniper rifle with how accurate it can be and how much damage it can put out compared with other guns. It can in fact make a lot of other guns a heavy disadvantage to use.

The skill trees do need to be reworked and that gun in particular needs to be toned down some, because the effective range is really big on it, however, I doubt this will really happen, the most they could do is take the range down a couple of meters before a lot of Proto players who depend upon it would cry a ton.

I think you are confusing the Duvolle with the Duvolle Tactical Rifle. The Duvolle you pay about 40k for while the Burst and Tac variants you pay around 70k for. These weapons are balanced by the cost of them. Are you seriously complaining that a Scrambler at proto level can't compete with an AR at proto level for damage and range as well as ROF? Take a look at all the stats, not just the most common range at which 1 stray bullet after a barrage from all sides kills you and in all reality there are generally more groups of people using focus fire to bring down targets that incorporate many types of weapons, most of which do not register on your death report, only the last bullet.