The problem with trying to establish perfect imbalance:

A) We don't have enough content to do so yet and we're working with placeholders. (Refer to the AR and Heavies)
B) There was never an accurate way to gather information on how to balance game mechanics. (Matchmaking)
C) We still have a large portion of players that still don't understand that this isn't just an FPS and have no grasp on the metagame through damage types resistances, optimal ranges, and most important of all counterplay. (Refer to Tutorials and every QQ thread in existence)

All three of this issues one time or another could have been resolved months ago in beta. More content, especially for heavies since having one suit and one AV/AI weapon forced the heavy class to be scaled down to medium suits and light weapons. Proper matchmaking would have helped collect better data on what game mechanics needed to be properly adjusted. Tutorials would have been an excellent way to give players a better understanding that this game isn't about being the best at everything ant that everything has a cyclic imbalance.

Sadly, CCP had openly stated that the above weren't their top priorities. Hindsight really is 20/20...

Well at the moment there isn't any proper form of metagame or counterplay. Except for PC strategy, and that only goes so far.

I'm referring to the other meaning of metagame that involves the FotM, and cyclic metagaming you see in a lot of PVP based MMORPGs and MOBAs.

DUST514 had perfect imbalance in the private trials. CCP only needed to work on the core, but that never really happened.

I want that Dust 514.
Not this POS of a game we have now.
And no, I don't mean player owned structure.

I want that Dust 514.
Not this POS of a game we have now.
And no, I don't mean player owned structure.

Game development should be a Dictatorship... not Anarchy. Democracy will work too.. but when is the last time we have voted for anything is Dust 514 ?

Oh... this is true but this is why I believe all suits should be able to do the same but with the fact that some suits can do it better. This will give people who really don't give a crap, or don't understand this, the ability to be what they want to be and not be severely underpowered or overpowered and those who want to play meta a small advantage.

That's another issue, the meta game shouldn't be a choice, it should be the only choice. The only reason I'm not completely crap at this game is because I do little things like use flux grenades with kinetic/explosive weapons, engage heavies outside their optimal range with a (rebalanced) TAC AR, lay out proximity mines when I see a large abundance of murder taxis. I came from 5-8 years of EVE, so I knew what I was getting into on day 1.
Imagine if there were an actual tutorial system to explain what was what to players so they knew since day 1. People would probably use more cover while regen tanking instead of trying to play CoD while buffer tanking 24/7 and crying on the forums because they couldn't kill a tank with an AR.

THey are way to overpower.need to be brought down with other weapons.no way they should be kill someone so fast.please nerf the shotguns in this game.

More proof that point B) needs to be addressed:
Link

How should this post reaffirm that point B) needs to be addressed, legitimate question. To me it seems he got killed be a shotgun and isn't happy, I am also assuming he isn't a very experienced player.

People getting killed is not a problem. If everyone uses the same weapon/fit and it owns everyone else of similar SP then there probably is an issue.

When there are issues we need to be careful about the nerf bat which leaves people no longer having fun. There is more than one way to change the balance -- and multi-characteristic nerfing is perhaps the easiest and most painful.

Apologies to those who have now read this a dozen times, but an example is the sniper rifle sway that fixes quick scoping. You could alternately have a dispersion effect that fades with "warm up" so that quick scoping is not effective and the endless need to fight against the weapon is not hitting you in the face every time you use it. Remove the problems without making the game less fun.

They're just getting around to doing this recently with the TAC AR. Instead of bringing down the nerf Mjolnir like most of us expected, they tweaked the weapon to make it a longer range option for an already too versatile weapon class without it overpowering the other 3 variants like it did before. I still use the TAC AR, and find it more fun to use because it's not an "I win button" it once was and the other variants are still viable.

But I wish they would have learned to do the same with the laser, HMG, and MD. Instead they completely neutered those weapons, bringing Dust 514 into another step closer to CoD with a shade of futuristic chrome.

Everything in uprising suffered from big sweeping changes and trying to fix elements that weren't broken to begin with. I hope that they learned from this mistake in the future. Judging by the imbundance of dev threads today, they have.