Unnecessary? They've been needed for quite some time now. It's good it's happening.

The only real headscratcher one is for the SMG. (lol, like really?)

The thing is, there are no variants i.e Tactical Rail Rifle or Breach Scrambler Rifle to compare the AR variants to, while announced they would fall in line with appropriate ranges, damages and shortcomings. Arguably if you adjust the AR variant damage/range ect you mess with the logical place the future variants will have....once we do have all the variants I think that it would be easier to make radical stat changes to suit all of them more appropriately especially once they are placed in the hands of the players, much like they did with range changes on the rifles.

They are getting damage reductions. That's it. Also, long range weapons can have higher DPS than rifles. It's actually pretty common.

I'll use hypothetical numbers that I squatted down and purged from my buttocks:

Say a gun does 100 damage in ten seconds. That is ten damage per second. This gun can only shoot once per second. That means each bullet does ten damage. Let's cut the damage down to five damage per second. That is 50 damage in ten seconds. The gun can still only shoot once per second. Now let's increase the rate of fire to two shots per second. That is ten damage per second once again, regardless of the damage decrease. This last product has the same DPS, despite each bullet no longer doing ten damage per bullet.

Rate of fire increase or decreases are just another way to change DPS. The current issue with all the rifles are that they do too much damage in too short of a time for a considerable TTK.

To reiterate, that is not to say those stats wont be change to increase relevancy as regardless of the rifle it should still have its place.

What you may not expect is that should one variant be change, say the Tac AR, I.E a increase in damage, the RR may have to increase it's damage up from the Tac Combat rifle to the Tac Scrambler ending in a number of other possible problems. I am sure it's a complicated mathematical thing and eve concept that will be debated and nailed down with CCP's endless tweaking but it's hard to grasp from the community view point with the weapons we have and little variance that is available. Essentially we need to wait awhile until everything is in place to comment on what needs to be balanced.

Though the Plasma Rifle's various variants are just, well, copies of the other races' own rifles, they shouldn't be expected to outperform Gallente's design. They are, after all, imitations. They are, yes, underwhelming, but that is more or less an acceptable outcome of what they are. I do remember the days where the TAC underwent what is going on with the Scrambler Rifles right now.

Tactical was the Scrambler Rifle, Breach was the Rail Rifle, Burst was the Combat Rifle. That's all they are. Imitations. In a sense, we've had all the racial rifles for a while- they were just poorly made by Gallenteans.

So by your logic the other racial "Assault" variants should be just as 'underwhelming' compared to the AR as the AR variants are to them?

How many times will I post this before this "they are cheap copies" argument dies.

I was more referring to Kasote however on the subject of the 'Assault' variants I feel it is necessary to mention they are not fine.

Take the Assault Comat Rifle for example. The ACB out ranges, has better DPS, and a better damage profile then the AR. While some might argue the AR has more potential damage per clip if one can't get close enough to apply said damage OR dies before even half of it leaves the gun it remains a moot point.

From highest damage reduction coming in 1.8: RR, SCR, CR, AR, SMG (which is still weird). Each and every variant of these listed weapons are having their damage reduced. For now, you can say anything you want about the CR's, RR's, and (possibly?) ScR Assault variant outpreforming the Plasma Rifle- I promise you that it's going to change in 1.8. All we are really doing right now, you and I, are pissing back and forth about things that are going to be changed, though I'm extremely sure the CR, SCR, and RR are going to lose a bit of popularity when they no longer do nearly twice the damage of the Plasma Rifle, if not more than that. I'm extremely positive, that against a shield tanker, the Plasma Rifle will devastate better (faster) than the Assault Combat Rifle can against an equally healthed armor tanker in 1.8. The problem right now with CR and RR is that they are armor killers with far too much damage being dealt to even be slowed down by shields. In 1.7, CR and RR are superior to every other rifle. In 1.8? We'll see.

Am I saying the Plasma Rifle variants will find use in 1.8? No, I'm not. I really can't. People will use pretty much whatever they want to use.

DPS is based around the ideal that every bullet will hit and every bullet will do the exact same amount of damage constantly. In Dust 514, that's incorrect. We have armor, shields, headshot bonus, headshot bonus while shielded, headshot bonus for only armor, distance of attacking, the skills of the attacker, the skills of the defender, modules of attacker, modules of defender, and various other variables. It can be static, but only after every possible situation and outcome are calculated. While people can "what if" these, application is still questionable.

That's why DPS isn't a viable choice to use to argue.

DPS really isn't important. Do you know what "alpha damage" is? You can shoot at a heavy and do 1200 damage to him and he still lives. He can turn and shoot you once with a FG while you're shooting. You will die.

Necessary, the rifles can be internally balanced later, but our first port of call should be getting the general TTK right first.

Not necessarily when you consider the amount of stuff added its qute easy to see how they may not have had time for full rifle rebalancing.
Also we only know of changes to damage values, other in-game mechanics may have been tweaked.

Keep Calm, but keep at it, the Plasma Rifle is gimped against the other rifles, yes, but it is still grossly overpowered against the majority of niche weapons, until that is fixed I would say its unlikely they will balance the rifles internally, its just easier.

Sorry misunderstood you there.
Well youve got a choice nerf an overpowered set of weapons so that people stop bitching about them for a while, which gives you time to actually completly rebalance them and ALL of the associated mechanics. (Recoil, Mag Size, Reload Time, Zoom Fidelity, TTS, range, damage, ROF)

Or you wait 3 months before making any changes, the rifles become more prelevant, player retention drops and people continue to whine making stupid demands that when 100's of people agree seem rather reasonable. All while your tryimg to balance these overpowered weapons, create new ones that aren't overpowered and build more mechanics into the meta of the game.

From a developers point of view the first option is the best one, shut up the majority (keep em happy) deal with the fine tuning in piece.

all this "omg damage nerf" bullshit is not going to affect medium and light suits that much

you're still going to be able to kill them. especially if you're using the AR on a caldari.

Nope, needs to be done. RR and CR are way too powerful as they are. AR has been going out of style for a while so might as well. SMG and ScR I like where they are, but they aren't nerfed that badly. I think dmg mod nerf might be a bit overkill, but we shall have to see. I think it's good, on paper at least.