Yea, we don't want to change the name because of having to change descriptions and skills and what not.

Though calling it the Plasma Rifle seems to be Rattati's thing, as he labels it as such.

i somewhat agree, weapons need a more clear definition of what weapon type they are as im still perplexed as to weather AR is blaster type or projectile type.. im just working off the assumption since gallente = blasters in EVE they mean AR=blaster in dust

When we have a choice spending time renaming the Assault Rifle to the Plasma Rifle (including localisation!) or fixing something else, the preference is to fix something else. We support changing it, it's just a matter of priority at the moment.

I'm going to assume that there's a lot more complications involved that your not telling us. Because from my limited past experience with programing, replacing a name with another name within an entire program should take less than 5 minutes.

1. Copy and paste the code to Word or some similar program.
2. Use the find and replace tools to find all instances of "assault rifle" and replace with "plasma rifle".
3. Copy and paste the code back to where ever it came from.

Again, my experience with programing is very limited and I don't know if there's complications preventing it from being that easy.

The basic answer to this is that there are so many places in the game where the name "Assault Rifle" is used, that trying to track down and find all of these instances (and then changing them in the code), would just be more work than it needs to be.

Not to mention that the Assault Rifle is the most common item in the game (there are more blueprints and variants of the AR than any other weapon).

While yes they could probably just change the AR to the PR for the item names and skills, it would cause some confusion for new players when it comes to descriptions and what not.

You also have to remember that the SMG, HMG, Sniper Rifle, and Combat Rifle are all generic names too. While they might not be as much of an issue, it just goes to show that re-naming these things isn't as important as making the game actually work. CCP agrees about that as well.

Exactly, I have answered this before.

The basic answer to this is that there are so many places in the game where the name "Assault Rifle" is used, that trying to track down and find all of these instances (and then changing them in the code), would just be more work than it needs to be.

Have you never heard of 'find and replace'?