But how do we persuade players to change their ways?
First, we should look at the little things that draw them to the grunt play style-

• The favored "grunt gear" such as assault rifles, are cheaper and easier to fit than that of specialists
• The skills and gear needed to be a grunt are available very early, as starting skills and militia gear.

In addition to this there are some further causes to the AR proliferation.

Firstly, when people know that most of the enemy will be running AR then their best choice is to do the same. When the enemy isn't specialized then others don't need to specialize to counter them.

Secondly, when people know most of their teammates will be running AR then their best choice is to do the same. When you can't be sure if anyone can cover your weak points then your best bet is the jack of all trades gun.

Both of these factors are influenced by how early we are in the current skill progression. Most people still only have one weapon into which they've put SP. Vehicle drivers are still mostly in militia hulls and people are still working on basic skills (circuitry, engineering, etc). The same thing happened last wipe.

Don't get me wrong, I run AR because I prefer it. Nerf AR by buffing other things and I'll still run it. I would still hate to see people running nothing but AR at higher levels of play (as unfair as that sounds). I honestly think that we should see if the trend continues as people continue to accrue SP (does anyone have more than 2mil SP yet?) before doing anything as drastic as cutting fitting reqs or giving out bonus SP.

...about 3/4, if not more, of the players are simply frontline grunts on the battlefield, as either assaults with ARs, heavies with HMGs, or triage logis....

Actually, I think that when the entire other team is running ARs, there are better options to beating them than another AR- mass drivers, for instance, do a number on assault rifle users; laser rifles or shotguns are pretty good against MDs.

I am not sure what you are talking about OP. I get shot sniper rifles, mass drivers, Lasers, pistols, hmgs, smgs, forge guns, HAV, LAVs, grenades, remote explosives, ad so on...the only thing that hasn't killed me is the Nova Knife. There may be a lot of ARs out there but we have a lot of new players that have not specialized yet. There is variety but it takes an organized group to bring it to the battlefield.

I got killed by a nova knife, once. *hangs head in shame*

i actually do agree with most of your OP, but i have to point about that you just said that 3/4 of players are using 3/4 of the suit types. why not go that one step further and say :

"100% of the players are either assault, heavy, logitics or scouts"

it's like a real platoon, most of the troops are standard rifle men with %10 special weapons

Enjoyment of the game > realism.

Assault suit -> Assault rifle. Word association. Change the name of the Assaut rifle to blaster rifle or something. Then you'll see more variation.

These AR nerf threads are cringe worthy.

Ask yourself truly whether you WANT the really good AR players you know using Laser Rifles instead?

How about Mass Drivers?

Have you actually been in a match against someone like God-Nova using either of these weapons?

Hint - it's not the weapon that makes the player.

How about having just having more Laser Rifle in a match? 40% LR? 40% MD? Does that sound like fun gameplay?...

Lol.

The QQ in the forums when we had Laser Only Days and Mass Driver Only Days was pretty funny.

Be very careful what you ask for. You might get it.

TLDR; we are all waiting for different weapons, we should see some AR like weapons in the next few builds that will provide some fun variation. SoonGäó

How is this a nerf thread? This is an encouragement thread, that only involves slight buffs, if anything. If someone legitimately IS really good with an AR, they'll probably stick to it. The problem is that most of the player base never tries mass drivers, laser rifles, shotguns, etc.

The biggest problem with the game, imo, is actually the community.

That's your uninformed opinion about what the population does.

Where's your proof?

Most of our guys have tried almost everything.

I have a near infinite supply of AV grenades that say you are wrong.