It is kind of silly to say that ARs should reign supreme when a Heavy is involved. HMGs are the king of CQB, followed by shotguns.

Only now do I finally understand why ARs have a 60m range, and heavies have 30. Still though, in open maps, heavies are just downright useless. They're immobile, and rangeless. I have been picked off by TARs at 60m quite often, and it's irritating because if I close the distance, they'll only do more damage. Thus, my only option is to run and find cover as soon as I can. And hope, he doesn't Sight camp me until more buddies have arrived.

[Solution]
All assault rifles including the tactical are blasters, which are suppose to be short range by comparison to other weapon types. Laser weapons are suppose to be long range. With this in mind, I think it would be a good idea to nerf the range of the tactical, and buff the range of the the scrambler. A scope with similar zoom as the tactical would be nice as well (though keep the current sight for the assault scrambler).A modest reduction in scrambler rifle heat build up would also be greatly helpful.

The scrambler is actually a pulse laser.

In eve every weapon system has a long range and short range equivalent.

Short
Blasters
Autocannons
Pulse lasers
Assault missiles (I think not a fan of missiles)

Long
Rail guns
Artillery
Beam lasers
Torps

The range difference between the two is pretty incredible...

Right now the tac ar and the scrambler (both short range) have basically the highest range in the game. Doesnt fit the lore...

In my opinion the tac should be removed and replaced by the caldari ar which will be a rail gun. Low rof but high alpha.

The charge scr should be made a beam laser while the assault variant is made a true pulse laser with its own skill set.

But who knows only time will tell what CCP has planned.

TARs can keep their range, but they should have to be using iron-based ammo to do so, meaning a lot less damage. The fact that there isn't the overheat mechanic (despite shooting plasma, which is heat given physical form almost) to balance out the RoF means that they shouldn't be doing similar damage to the SR at range.

Holy crap, actually overheated an assault scrambler rifle, took a lot of shooting and reloading. It still almost never happens, which makes the Amarr assault bonus almost useless.

I haven't used a scrambler rifle yet, but I want to. People never seem to factor in charge damage and headshot damage.

+1

I agree with this post.

But I disagree with the heat build-up reduction request.

That heat build-up is KEY in maintaining the weapon's balance.
If you remove that, and give it the other buffs, you're asking for QQ troubles. Right now, no one complains about getting downed by a Scrambler. I've gotten quite good at managing the heat on both the standard and assault variants.
SCR and SCAR users just need to adjust their management.

When the Heat meter says you can't keep attacking, then you simply need to pull back and cooldown. Don't move in for the assault unless you are 100% confident you can down your target without overheating.

Otherwise, the OP is spot on.

AR users also have to spend almost a mill. Extra SP to get all AR skills to level 5.
It's the ONLY weapon that has the sharpshooter skill.
It's the ONLY weapon that has 5 sub skills.

ALL other weapons only have 4 sub skills and you save a mill. SP
by training SR insted of AR but you want them to have the same stats.

Are AR users not supose to get a little bit extra for spending an extra
mill. SP on there weapon ?

AR users also have to spend almost a mill. Extra SP to get all AR skills to level 5.
It's the ONLY weapon that has the sharpshooter skill.
It's the ONLY weapon that has 5 sub skills.

ALL other weapons only have 4 sub skills and you save a mill. SP
by training SR insted of AR but you want them to have the same stats.

Are AR users not supose to get a little bit extra for spending an extra
mill. SP on there weapon ?

We'll be making some adjustments to the rifle ranges in the near future. We're currently testing the Rail Rifle and Combat Rifle internally (the two missing archetypes). Within the assault rifle class the four weapon types will break down as follows:

Assault Rifle (Hybrid - Plasma) - short range
Combat Rifle (Projectile - Autocannon) - short-mid range
Scrambler Rifle (Laser - Pulse) - mid range
Rail Rifle (Hybrid - Railgun) - long range

Keep in mind though that long range for an assault rifle is not equivalent to long range for a sniper rifle, so while they will adhere to existing category definitions don't expect massive differences in the distances between these weapons
A lot of the original assault rifle variants (Breach, Burst, Tactical) were created to fill the gaps these newer weapons will fill and so mightGÇÖve felt out of place (not to mention we just plain made mistakes with some of them). The scrambler rifleGÇÖs optimal range will be increased and weGÇÖll be releasing an iteration of the Tactical Assault Rifle with a smaller clip and much wider hip-fire spread making it less effective in CQC. If that change alone does not prove enough we will walk the damage of the TAR down slowly. No big, sweeping changes this time.

Can we test them, and tell you what we think? Can I have an account to test server and give you honest feedback?

I wish you all could. We currently don't have A SiSi like server for DUST. Wish we did. Would love the feedback earlier.

You could create a separate Dust client for testing and let a few of us in on select days. MAG did that like a year after its released to let some players test out stuff that was coming in the MAG 2.0 patch.

We'll be making some adjustments to the rifle ranges in the near future. We're currently testing the Rail Rifle and Combat Rifle internally (the two missing archetypes). Within the assault rifle class the four weapon types will break down as follows:

Assault Rifle (Hybrid - Plasma) - short range
Combat Rifle (Projectile - Autocannon) - short-mid range
Scrambler Rifle (Laser - Pulse) - mid range
Rail Rifle (Hybrid - Railgun) - long range

Keep in mind though that long range for an assault rifle is not equivalent to long range for a sniper rifle, so while they will adhere to existing category definitions don't expect massive differences in the distances between these weapons
A lot of the original assault rifle variants (Breach, Burst, Tactical) were created to fill the gaps these newer weapons will fill and so mightGÇÖve felt out of place (not to mention we just plain made mistakes with some of them). The scrambler rifleGÇÖs optimal range will be increased and weGÇÖll be releasing an iteration of the Tactical Assault Rifle with a smaller clip and much wider hip-fire spread making it less effective in CQC. If that change alone does not prove enough we will walk the damage of the TAR down slowly. No big, sweeping changes this time.

I think the issue is more related to setting up/running/maintaining a separate server though I'm far from the right person to ask. I'll poke some people though and find out how feasible something like this could be.

We'll be making some adjustments to the rifle ranges in the near future. We're currently testing the Rail Rifle and Combat Rifle internally (the two missing archetypes). Within the assault rifle class the four weapon types will break down as follows:

Assault Rifle (Hybrid - Plasma) - short range
Combat Rifle (Projectile - Autocannon) - short-mid range
Scrambler Rifle (Laser - Pulse) - mid range
Rail Rifle (Hybrid - Railgun) - long range

Keep in mind though that long range for an assault rifle is not equivalent to long range for a sniper rifle, so while they will adhere to existing category definitions don't expect massive differences in the distances between these weapons
A lot of the original assault rifle variants (Breach, Burst, Tactical) were created to fill the gaps these newer weapons will fill and so mightGÇÖve felt out of place (not to mention we just plain made mistakes with some of them). The scrambler rifleGÇÖs optimal range will be increased and weGÇÖll be releasing an iteration of the Tactical Assault Rifle with a smaller clip and much wider hip-fire spread making it less effective in CQC. If that change alone does not prove enough we will walk the damage of the TAR down slowly. No big, sweeping changes this time.

Beam lasers have a shorter optimal range than their hybrid railgun counterparts, but do, as a whole, more damage. Advanced coolant technologies allow beam lasers to keep firing for a long time without overheating. The heaviest lasers, battleship-class tachyon beam lasers, are regarded by many as brutally devastating sniper weapons (although their range is limited) and are often used in fleet sieges.

Pulse lasers have better range than blasters, hybrid weapon from the same class, but do considerably less damage. Anyway, pulse lasers are in favor among skilled pilots because they provide good damage/range ratio. By contrast with beam turrets, pulses fire rapidly several times in a cycle.

We'll be making some adjustments to the rifle ranges in the near future. We're currently testing the Rail Rifle and Combat Rifle internally (the two missing archetypes). Within the assault rifle class the four weapon types will break down as follows:

Assault Rifle (Hybrid - Plasma) - short range
Combat Rifle (Projectile - Autocannon) - short-mid range
Scrambler Rifle (Laser - Pulse) - mid range
Rail Rifle (Hybrid - Railgun) - long range

Keep in mind though that long range for an assault rifle is not equivalent to long range for a sniper rifle, so while they will adhere to existing category definitions don't expect massive differences in the distances between these weapons
A lot of the original assault rifle variants (Breach, Burst, Tactical) were created to fill the gaps these newer weapons will fill and so mightGÇÖve felt out of place (not to mention we just plain made mistakes with some of them). The scrambler rifleGÇÖs optimal range will be increased and weGÇÖll be releasing an iteration of the Tactical Assault Rifle with a smaller clip and much wider hip-fire spread making it less effective in CQC. If that change alone does not prove enough we will walk the damage of the TAR down slowly. No big, sweeping changes this time.

If you really want to make them like EVE then they have to get less damage than the TAR.
In decreasing order ARs and SRs should have such damage outputs then:
Breach AR
Basic AR
Assault SR
Burst AR
Tac AR
Basic SR

I think the issue is more related to setting up/running/maintaining a separate server though I'm far from the right person to ask. I'll poke some people though and find out how feasible something like this could be.

weGÇÖll be releasing an iteration of the Tactical Assault Rifle with a smaller clip and much wider hip-fire spread making it less effective in CQC. If that change alone does not prove enough we will walk the damage of the TAR down slowly. No big, sweeping changes this time.

...and weGÇÖll be releasing an iteration of the Tactical Assault Rifle with a smaller clip and much wider hip-fire spread making it less effective in CQC. If that change alone does not prove enough we will walk the damage of the TAR down slowly. No big, sweeping changes this time.

I have a question about the bolded part:

So when the remaining two do release, will the two relevant Assault variants be removed?

No change to rate of fire planned? That is the number one issue most players have with the gun. If the rate of fire described in the OP is acceptable to CCP then why not just make it fully auto to be fair to those who don't have modded controllers and who can only pull the trigger 2-3 times per second?

Changing the RoF to something that would ameliorate the advantage given by modded controllers would likely make the weapon feel a bit worse when using a standard controller (some people can press the fire button faster than others... I have years of Track & Field defeats to prove that. Man, I miss that game. But I digress!). Using modded controllers is tantamount to using a GameGenie or GameShark back in the day. It might be fun, but it ain't cool. We'll need to address it, but not by making the intended behavior worse. That said, we'll look at making adjustments to the RoF to prevent the shameless exploitation currently being seen.

They won't be removed, no, but they will be tweaked slightly. The idea being that each race will have it's base variant be Assault, (Gallente) Burst (Minmatar), Breach (Caldari) or Tactical (Amarr) and then the variants are a specific race's take on the others using their own tech. So, you'd get an Assault Rail Rifle that attempts to somewhat mimic the behavior of the Gallente Assault Rifle and a Tactical Assault Rifle that attempts to mimic the Amarr Scrambler Rifle and so on.

I have a question about the bolded part:

So when the remaining two do release, will the two relevant Assault variants be removed?

So would each races standard version be the (arguably) most effective for that niche? (ie: Amarr Tactical > Gallente Tactical, Minmatar Burst > Caldari Burst)

The idea being that each race will have it's base variant be Assault, (Gallente) Burst (Minmatar), Breach (Caldari) or Tactical (Amarr) and then the variants are a specific race's take on the others using their own tech. So, you'd get an Assault Rail Rifle that attempts to somewhat mimic the behavior of the Gallente Assault Rifle and a Tactical Assault Rifle that attempts to mimic the Amarr Scrambler Rifle and so on.

Amarr = TAC, Caldari = Breach, really? I was expecting it to be the other way around. This affects my skill respec greatly.

I hope these changes come kinda soon,won't be easy hanging on to sp after respec but with this it would be really dumb not to.

This is probably what's holding back the respec.

We'll be making some adjustments to the rifle ranges in the near future. We're currently testing the Rail Rifle and Combat Rifle internally (the two missing archetypes). Within the assault rifle class the four weapon types will break down as follows:

Assault Rifle (Hybrid - Plasma) - short range
Combat Rifle (Projectile - Autocannon) - short-mid range
Scrambler Rifle (Laser - Pulse) - mid range
Rail Rifle (Hybrid - Railgun) - long range

Keep in mind though that long range for an assault rifle is not equivalent to long range for a sniper rifle, so while they will adhere to existing category definitions don't expect massive differences in the distances between these weapons
A lot of the original assault rifle variants (Breach, Burst, Tactical) were created to fill the gaps these newer weapons will fill and so mightGÇÖve felt out of place (not to mention we just plain made mistakes with some of them). The scrambler rifleGÇÖs optimal range will be increased and weGÇÖll be releasing an iteration of the Tactical Assault Rifle with a smaller clip and much wider hip-fire spread making it less effective in CQC. If that change alone does not prove enough we will walk the damage of the TAR down slowly. No big, sweeping changes this time.

Yeah, that does feel kind of off. I was thinking:

Burst = Minmatar
Breach/Standard = Gallente
Tactical = Caldari
Standard/Tactical = Amarr

It's possible that CCP's intentions is to make the Rail Rifle fire like a Breach, but at TAC ranges. A steady stream of fire over long distances with a low enough recoil to not get you off target.

That's how I see it anyway. Otherwise it's just weird.

The way i understand it, every racial rifles will have all variants guys : full auto, burst, breach and tatical. But every race will have its favorite type that's gonna outmatch the others in their own field of expertize.

Gallente, short range and DPS. Making their full auto variant the best choice for close fights.
Minmatar. Overall balanced, decent range and accuracy. Less DPS (through lower rof perhaps) than gallente overall.
Caldari. Higher Range, less DPS. Making the breach variant the logical choice to inflict pain from a distance
Amarr. High DPS output through charged laser weapon. Way bigger dispersion and recoil than any other racial rifle

Overall, all the rifles need one main advantage and one main downside that will make one variant the most balanced choice for that specific rifle.

If you want early feedback, could you give us the range you have in mind for each racial rifle once they're all added ? I really hope the gallente wont get a nerf or then it's gonna be a useless AR compared to the others.

Changing the RoF to something that would ameliorate the advantage given by modded controllers would likely make the weapon feel a bit worse when using a standard controller (some people can press the fire button faster than others... I have years of Track & Field defeats to prove that. Man, I miss that game. But I digress!). Using modded controllers is tantamount to using a GameGenie or GameShark back in the day. It might be fun, but it ain't cool. We'll need to address it, but not by making the intended behavior worse. That said, we'll look at making adjustments to the RoF to prevent the shameless exploitation currently being seen.

Speaking of shameless exploitation... does CCP plan any counter-measures (e.g. banning players who used modded controllers)?

This is really annoying especially in PCQ battles. I'm afraid that if CCP is not going to curtail such exploits very quickly and with draconian measures, this misbehavior may spread among the player base until PCQ becomes a total mockery.

I like the overheat idea some of the players suggested.

The way i understand it, every racial rifles will have all variants guys : full auto, burst, breach and tatical. But every race will have its favorite type that's gonna outmatch the others in their own field of expertize.

Gallente, short range and DPS. Making their full auto variant the best choice for close fights.
Minmatar. Overall balanced, decent range and accuracy. Less DPS (through lower rof perhaps) than gallente overall.
Caldari. Higher Range, less DPS. Making the breach variant the logical choice to inflict pain from a distance
Amarr. High DPS output through charged laser weapon. Way bigger dispersion and recoil than any other racial rifle

Overall, all the rifles need one main advantage and one main downside that will make one variant the most balanced choice for that specific rifle.

Breach variants are the shortest range ARs in the game.

I wish you all could. We currently don't have A SiSi like server for DUST. Wish we did. Would love the feedback earlier.

Here's what I envision for the ranges of the rifles - a couple might seem high compared to what we have now, but we seriously need more range on this stuff.

Blaster Rifle (Gallente) - ~60m optimal
Combat Rifle (Minmatar) - ~75m optimal
Scrambler/Laser Rifle (Amarr) - ~90m optimal
Rail Rifle (Caldari) - ~100m optimal

I've suggested some high ranges for a couple of the weapons, but as long as the damage is noticeably lower that shouldn't be a problem.
And we seriously need more range. Sharpshooter removal was a good thing in some ways, but we have all these open maps, and we need range to use them properly.

weGÇÖll be releasing an iteration of the Tactical Assault Rifle with a smaller clip and much wider hip-fire spread making it less effective in CQC. If that change alone does not prove enough we will walk the damage of the TAR down slowly. No big, sweeping changes this time.

I get the feeling CCP won't make everything have more range than it does now. The Minmatar and Amarr tech will likely have around the range AR's have now (60-70m), the Gallente will likely have a shorter range (40m), and the Caldari tech will have longer range (90-100m).

I wish you all could. We currently don't have A SiSi like server for DUST. Wish we did. Would love the feedback earlier.

We'll be making some adjustments to the rifle ranges in the near future. We're currently testing the Rail Rifle and Combat Rifle internally (the two missing archetypes). Within the assault rifle class the four weapon types will break down as follows:

Assault Rifle (Hybrid - Plasma) - short range
Combat Rifle (Projectile - Autocannon) - short-mid range
Scrambler Rifle (Laser - Pulse) - mid range
Rail Rifle (Hybrid - Railgun) - long range

Keep in mind though that long range for an assault rifle is not equivalent to long range for a sniper rifle, so while they will adhere to existing category definitions don't expect massive differences in the distances between these weapons
A lot of the original assault rifle variants (Breach, Burst, Tactical) were created to fill the gaps these newer weapons will fill and so mightGÇÖve felt out of place (not to mention we just plain made mistakes with some of them). The scrambler rifleGÇÖs optimal range will be increased and weGÇÖll be releasing an iteration of the Tactical Assault Rifle with a smaller clip and much wider hip-fire spread making it less effective in CQC. If that change alone does not prove enough we will walk the damage of the TAR down slowly. No big, sweeping changes this time.

We'll be making some adjustments to the rifle ranges in the near future. We're currently testing the Rail Rifle and Combat Rifle internally (the two missing archetypes). Within the assault rifle class the four weapon types will break down as follows:
Keep in mind though that long range for an assault rifle is not equivalent to long range for a sniper rifle, so while they will adhere to existing category definitions don't expect massive differences in the distances between these weapons

They won't be removed, no, but they will be tweaked slightly. The idea being that each race will have it's base variant be Assault, (Gallente) Burst (Minmatar), Breach (Caldari) or Tactical (Amarr) and then the variants are a specific race's take on the others using their own tech. So, you'd get an Assault Rail Rifle that attempts to somewhat mimic the behavior of the Gallente Assault Rifle and a Tactical Assault Rifle that attempts to mimic the Amarr Scrambler Rifle and so on.

I wish you all could. We currently don't have A SiSi like server for DUST. Wish we did. Would love the feedback earlier.

I wish you all could. We currently don't have A SiSi like server for DUST. Wish we did. Would love the feedback earlier.

Are you saying you do not have a way to test anything that is added? So we're gonna do this routine where you add stuff, it doesn't work, we cry, you add stuff to market, we cry hard, you announce fix, we cry less?

I am offering you a service that some guys charge $20 an hour to do, for free. Slide that client to me under the table, nobody needs to know.

I have a question that might be off-topic, what of other weapon balancing? The skill tree has questionable skills that effect weapons. For example, Plasma cannon operation reduces charge, but the charge is 0.6sec so the skill is pointless(I also believe it is broken, but since the difference is infinitecimal it is hard to guage). Another example is flaylock pistol optimization reduces PG, but by design the pistol uses no PG. There are other imbalances that do not make sense.

There is also the matter of misfiring weapons. Several complaints have been made about guns not shooting. If possible I would like this post forwarded to Wolfman.

We'll be making some adjustments to the rifle ranges in the near future. We're currently testing the Rail Rifle and Combat Rifle internally (the two missing archetypes). Within the assault rifle class the four weapon types will break down as follows:

Assault Rifle (Hybrid - Plasma) - short range
Combat Rifle (Projectile - Autocannon) - short-mid range
Scrambler Rifle (Laser - Pulse) - mid range
Rail Rifle (Hybrid - Railgun) - long range

Keep in mind though that long range for an assault rifle is not equivalent to long range for a sniper rifle, so while they will adhere to existing category definitions don't expect massive differences in the distances between these weapons
A lot of the original assault rifle variants (Breach, Burst, Tactical) were created to fill the gaps these newer weapons will fill and so mightGÇÖve felt out of place (not to mention we just plain made mistakes with some of them). The scrambler rifleGÇÖs optimal range will be increased and weGÇÖll be releasing an iteration of the Tactical Assault Rifle with a smaller clip and much wider hip-fire spread making it less effective in CQC. If that change alone does not prove enough we will walk the damage of the TAR down slowly. No big, sweeping changes this time.

Changing the RoF to something that would ameliorate the advantage given by modded controllers would likely make the weapon feel a bit worse when using a standard controller (some people can press the fire button faster than others... I have years of Track & Field defeats to prove that. Man, I miss that game. But I digress!). Using modded controllers is tantamount to using a GameGenie or GameShark back in the day. It might be fun, but it ain't cool. We'll need to address it, but not by making the intended behavior worse. That said, we'll look at making adjustments to the RoF to prevent the shameless exploitation currently being seen.

as follows:

Assault Rifle (Hybrid - Plasma) - short range
Combat Rifle (Projectile - Autocannon) - short-mid range
Scrambler Rifle (Laser - Pulse) - mid range
Rail Rifle (Hybrid - Railgun) - long range