Surprise me

I'd say no, it doesn't. Remembering that other weapons excel situationally yet tend to suffer greatly outside of specialty and considering how frequently a frontliner may find themselves outside of that specialty, it's fair for a general purpose weapon to find a home in the hands of a large portion of the player base.

- shotgun can OHKO with a wider reticle at close range.

- sniper rifle, forge gun, laser rifle have obvious range advantage.

- CFLP and mass drivers do increased damage to armor

- nova knives can OHKO without giving opponent chance to react.

- scrambler rifle offers ability to charge for high alpha headshots.

- mass drivers are better at assist farming / lolareadenial

have said before...

think in terms of RL military (shut up, i know it's a game)

... it's built around everyone being able to use a standard weapon (AK-47, M16, w/e). this is your baseline.

... everything else in the military's inventory is specialized and brings certain advantages/disadvantages compared to that baseline. so in a sense, the predominance of ARs makes some sort of sense - everyone is playing average joe infantry guy because it's what they are able to play best.

having said baseline doesn't necessarily hurt anything in this game.

diversity? is not a goal in itself. the goal is to make sure that specializing has proper advantages as well as disadvantages and then everyone can play within their playstyle. long range, close range, or mid range ... using a specialized weapon to leverage its advantages and compensate for disadvantages requires additional time commitment, tactical awareness, ... whatever. not even sure what my point was now.

in conclusion: AR's fine, other weapons are ok. except for CFLP. nerf that ****.

All those weapons suck, even in their own niches, the AR might not be the best at anything, but it certainly is second best at everything, and definitely not a true "jack of all trades, master of none" weapon, it simply isn't average enough for that.

Oh, but this fine because they don't have the range of snipers and can't OHKO

This argument, IMHO doesn't really hold water though. Unlike the real military forces of the world, CCP designs each and every weapon to be a part of the game. It takes time to design them. They wouldn't spend this time if they weren't meant to be useful.

It's sort of my point. Useful does not have to mean abundant. Niche does not mean useless. Popular does not mean OP. And rarely seen can sometimes only mean people haven't explored all of the options yet. Forge guns and drop uplinks (modules being relevant to tangential discussion as well) have shown their true worth with the advent of PC, for example.

Well, I would say that this is partially true. Having said that though, ARs and SRs together amount to more kills than all 10 other weapons combined. Of those two, ARs and Sniper Rifles, ARs are twice more popular than Sniper Rifles.

To me, this is not good diversity. It makes the game AR 514. It means there's no point in using the other weapons at all really because the times they're useful are so far and between the overwhelmingly useful AR that they have become irrelevant.

Diversity isn't being represented. I find it a problem. Do you?

Oh and I forgot ... in CQC or against armor an SMG is boss compared to the AR

While the SMG does beat AR when it comes to armor, the AR has an even bigger advantage when up against shields.

These aren't real numbers, it's just an example.

An AR does 200 dmg to armor, a SMG does 250

That's a 50 point difference in favor of SMGs

Now shields, an AR does 300 to shields, a SMG does 200

That's a 100 point differnce in favor of ARs

I'd use real numbers but don't feel like logging in
Of course, there are those would claim it's a side-arm and should be inferior, so we'll just have to wait for the combat rifle.

While the SMG does beat AR when it comes to armor, the AR has an even bigger advantage when up against shields.

These aren't real numbers, it's just an example.

An AR does 200 dmg to armor, a SMG does 250

That's a 50 point difference in favor of SMGs

Now shields, an AR does 300 to shields, a SMG does 200

That's a 100 point differnce in favor of ARs

I'd use real numbers but don't feel like logging in
Of course, there are those would claim it's a side-arm and should be inferior, so we'll just have to wait for the combat rifle.

Real numbers:

AR +10% shields -10% armor

SMG +10% armor... -5% shields

Including their RoF and dmg per shot

All those weapons suck, even in their own niches, the AR might not be the best at anything, but it certainly is second best at everything, and definitely not a true "jack of all trades, master of none" weapon, it simply isn't average enough for that.

Oh, but this fine because they don't have the range of snipers and can't OHKO