Hi CCP

All the current weapons in Dust have a variation at all levels, apart form the Scrambler Rifle My suggestion is this have the following three types:

Assault
Breach
charge

on all levels and amend the stats as you go up through the levels (as is done with the assault rifle)

But CCP is not planning on removing them, they said so themselves. If AR gets to keep all their variants, even as new racial rifles are added (scrambler = tactical, yet tactical AR wasn't removed when scrambler was added), then those racial rifles should have as many variants as well; its only fair.

current Gallente assault rifle = assault
current Amarr scrambler rifle = tactical
Minmatar combat rifle = burst
Caldari rail rifle = breach

Yes yes, I know each base racial rifle will be a specific type, I know, but that's not the point. I'm not trying to argue about whether or not each race will have a different variant as their base rifle, I'm not trying to argue about why the AR has all these variants so don't give me justifications.

I'm saying that if they get to keep all those variants (which they will) while the new racial rifles don't have that level of variety, then the assault rifle weapon class will have a severe advantage because of versatility; why skill into a Minmatar combat rifle for burst when the AR has assault (base), burst, tactical, and breach?

Sure each racial rifles will have an advantage over their AR counterpart, but that is a moot point since it will apply to the base AR having an advantage over the other racial rifles' assault variants.

Skilling into the AR instead of another racial rifle shouldn't give you more options than other rifles. Why should one racial rifle get to keep all these variants while others don't get to have them?

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.

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.

EDIT: I think I initially misread your first comment, though I don't know why you didn't just correct me on that, I don't know what you thought I was arguing about, or how I'm "clearly not understanding". Nothing I said was incorrect.

But CCP is not planning on removing them, they said so themselves. If AR gets to keep all their variants, even as new racial rifles are added (scrambler = tactical, yet tactical AR wasn't removed when scrambler was added), then those racial rifles should have as many variants as well; its only fair.