With the new patch, there was a ton of nerfs. I am a "medium" level player. I play in an assualt style militia suit right now, but I'm more of a logi style player; not to great at killing, my niche is drop uplinks and upscale nanohives in the right time and place. Now to the point: almost 90% of all players are using ARs right now. That's a tad boring, right? Bring back the HMG builds. Make the laser what it should be! Make the shotgun... uh... well don't un-nerf that too much ha ha but really nobody wants an all AR game. I never liked being killed by anything, but plz give a little bit of balls back to the LR, HMG, and (gasp!) Maybe even the SG guys. Variety is GOOD. Jus' sayin'. Who wants to play just AR vs AR every match? The old lasers were really cool, BTW. I wasn't good with them really but the graphics and sound kind of set the "tone of the future". I do miss my HMG fit, but that's a different tale...

Part of the problem is people who used those other weapons pretty much stopped playing already or changed to Assault AR . So, for there to be more of a variety of builds and weapons being used we really need to get that previous population of players back in to the game again. That's a pretty difficult thing to do.

Maybe if they offered starting fits that already contained different weapons builds it would help ease new players in to different play styles. Like a militia laser rifle build with flux grenades on an amarr medium frame, or MD on a Gallente etc. Get people away from a standard Caladari AR Assault build right at the beginning so they can see what other styles are out there.

I think the main issue with AR is the headshot multiplier and not it's base dps, it's much easier to score a headshot on them than to hit with the HMG or to score a direct hit with the MD.