It seems to me that dispersion isn't the issue, but rather there is no increase in dispersion as you hold down the trigger. So a 3 second burst is just as accurate as a spray and pray, leading to the problems you described earlier. I think if you line up a head shot and burst fire then you deserve 4-5 consecutive head shots and the person should be dead to rights, but laying some fire into someone's chest while you make your way up to the head shooting the whole way is flawed IMO. Not sure if this is what you meant but thought I'd make he distinction.

AR's have lots of recoil .. more than any other weapon... what the kitten you talking about ? and the range is horrible..

Let me guess.. you got kill few times in a row by one of the AR gods, and you come to the forums crying about it...The AR got nerfed enough in Uprising, it doesn't need anymore nerfing.

And BTW.. i use the SMG too for close range, and is alot more effective than the AR.. for some reason the AR sucks at close range, so i have to use the SMG to finish off people if they get to close...

You guys are..... (-------- )

I actually using both the Scrambler Assault Rifle ,and The AR... SCR Assault have better range, but lest damage. The AR have better damage but shorter range... and guess what.. i can use both with very similar results, if anything the SCR Assault is better because the range, and the low recoil... SO..... go a head, nerf the AR, i will still kill you with the SCR Assault, or even with my SMG ....

Bottom line... ; Learn to play the game.

I think it makes sense for it to have a little more recoil. I'd be fine with it shifting in relation to movement and position.

For instance, crouched/not-moving minimum recoil while ADS, slowly builds if you hold down full auto.

Not crouched, but not moving either; recoil builds quicker, but first few shots of a full auto (a burst basically) are mostly on target - but not as accurate as a burst AR.

Moving, ADS; recoil should ramp up after first shot. Moving, not ADS; recoil from the get-go.

Something like that I guess. As-is, the point of using a "burst" rifle isn't quite there because you put more rounds down more accurately when ADS with a full-auto.

I'd assume all the ARs have some sort of balancing element that's intended to be a drawback. To a certain extent this is provided by range, and damage type.

Optimally:
Gallente Plasma: Short-range, full-auto rifle, hybrid-balanced shield/armor dmg (slightly higher to shields?)
Minmatar Combat: Short-Mid range, burst rifle, projectile-greater armor than shield dmg
Amarr Scrambler: Mid range, tactical rifle, laser-greater shield than armor dmg
Caldari Rail: mid-long range, breach rifle , hybrid-balanced shield/armor dmg (slightly higher to armor perhaps?)

That's... roughly the sort of intent they've described. The AR (Plasma) should excel in short-range engagements with high rate of fire and damage. The Scrambler (laser) is intended to be more apt at longer range precision attacks, and so on. All the rifles will supposedly get variants that ape the traits of some of the other rifles, but you'd presume that the racial rifle would be the best at it's optimal role (or that the weapon traits would bleed over into the variant).

All the rifles presumably have drawbacks that prevent them from being perfect as well. The scrambler has dispersion on a very large margin with the assault variant. The scrambler can also overheat (though if what people say about the heat being per-second instead of per-shot is true, they should probably fix that). So, the scrambler has some built-in drawbacks. The heat (damaging the user) is a big one - and can probably be worked into all variants.

Now, it's hard to say what the drawbacks of the Combat or Rail rifle are supposed to be, since we haven't seen them. We should probably still ask what the drawbacks of the plasma rifle are supposed to be. What's "bad" with the AR if you just unload clip, etc.? Because if the recoil is such that it's a non-issue on fully unloading a clip with razor accuracy... why would you use something else?

In that sense, I think this thread has a point - the AR isn't meant to be perfect. Buffing everything else isn't necessarily a solution either. I still think people sometimes suffer from the idea that everything in the game should kill people quicker. This isn't that kind of shooter - it's a more old-school game where gunning down people is more time consuming (as we wear custom armored & shielded suits).

I already made some suggestions for recoil earlier, but if recoil/kick are meant to be an issue at all with the AR - they're mostly non-existent right now. If recoil/kick are going to be more of a "Combat rifle" issue (or whatever), then some consideration should be given to what the AR's drawback -should- be. If all the new rifles have drawbacks, and the AR does not... that implies issues with balance. Removing all the drawbacks might "balance" things in a way, but at the expense of giving the weapons character. If the AR is the no-drawback weapon, it implies it should be the weakest.

I'd rather AR wasn't the weakest, or at least... that things be balanced so that it can dominate at its intended role (short range, high rof/damage encounters) while not showing up other weapons in theirs. If the AR is better at burst than the Combat rifle, that's bad. We probably don't need to worry about the breach version being better than anything at this point - but that's a separate issue.

Has anyone ever considered the AR's are so good mostly due to the fact they are hybrid weapons, decent against both shields and armor equally? There are some hidden stats with all of the weapons that we can't see. I've always suspected ROF + damage output + any damage bonuses are where it's reliance is based from.

I refuse to use them just for the fact everyone uses them, but I would really like it if my weapons tore people down in 1.2 seconds as well.

I think this thread gets to that point in a way. If you can put a highly accurate stream of fire anywhere, you can drop a heavy quicky. With an AR, you can use the RoF of something like a Duvolle AR, ADS, and enough of those rounds aimed at a head drop anything quickly. The recoil issue is part of that. It's also why that sort of tactic works better than burst I think, despite the fact burst-fire is conventionally a means of keeping accuracy up in comparison to full-auto. In that sense, the game mechanics are a little borked.

How much of that should be directed at dispersion vs. recoil is a matter for debate. Dispersion amounts to your shots not necessarily going where you aim, regardless of your skill. Recoil means failure to control your rate of fire will make your aim suffer, probably to a somewhat similar effect. The gun has both in theory...