Assault rifles vs Pistols

I feel like most of you have forgotten that it was the same in ME3, pretty much every SMG outclassed pretty much every full-auto AR (hell, if you were to remove burst fire on the SHURIKEN and make it full auto, it would also outclass most of them). BioWare HATES ARs with a passion, it is pretty clear from their history.

Even in ME2, where it was less of a problem because of defense type damage variables between individual guns, SMGs and Pistols TENDED to outclass ARs (Though, this was mostly because ARs had a balanced damage mod, and Pistols were armour killers, which all the dangerous enemies had, and because the Locust was the Godgun, thing makes the hurricane in ME3 look like the Shuriken). At least in ME2 to damage modifiers vs defenses reinforced ARs as the jack-of-all-trades guns, hell, if they brought back the Revenant's damage mod vs armour(1.4x, iirc), nobody would complain anymore, it would have a niche.

This is all ignoring the weight arguement, which Pistols (and SMGs) will ALWAYS win. The entire weight system is just the final nail in the coffin for ARs. That said, I'd rather take a Halberd or a Sandstorm than the Sidewinder, or a Revenant rather than a Charger, but when you have Hurricane, Silhesh, Rozerad and Equalizer available, what is the point of any AR other than "not using the same gun in every match", which is something starting to bother me. What guns do I have on this character? Oh, Equalizer/Scattershot and Rozerad, I don't feel like playing them now. It really saps a lot of the enjoyment out of the game when the same 3 or so guns are UNIVERSALLY OP.

I'll still never understand why they did what they did to the Mattock between 2 and 3. Had hoped it'd return to its former glory in MEA, but that obviously didn't happen.

They might as well have just made it PC-exclusive as of the ME3 iteration, 'cause since then it's been an overstuffed bag of rotten whale dick markedly subpar on consoles unless you have a controller that'll convert it to auto.

*Edited to be more constructive, in case the devs read past the first post.

ARs also need to FEEL like they are doing SIGNIFICANTLY more damage than a pistol/smg, ESPECIALLY beyond close range.

I don't know anything about real-world ballistics and I'm sure some gun-nut is going to tell me about some pistol the Israelis use that is accurate out to 1,000 meters and kills rhinos... but, in a game, I feel like an assault RIFLE is what should be doing that. And a pistol should be only REALLY good up close.

Poor rhinos.

So the Israelis really do have a rhino-killing pistol?

KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK, MY PEOPLE!

I'm sure it's possible (with skill and/or luck) kill a rhino using a Desert Eagle with appropriate ammo, but that alone doesn't qualify it as a rhino gun. The pertinent question is never "can I kill X with Y?", but "can I reliably kill X with Y, and be sure to remain alive and uninjured afterwards?" For which the answer is: "NO! Don't even try!"

As ARs go, there's a reason why some variant thereof is the "standard issue" gun everywhere. And that reason is not "because they suck".

If that were true, ARs wouldn't exist in the universe at all. But this is a game and they put in another class of weapons to incorporate additional choice in gamplay for pros/cons on another set of weapons. They failed at that miserably with this class and should fix it.

The purpose of a soldier's side arm is "to fight your way back to your rifle".  Anyone who's not squeamish should look up wound characteristics of pistol vs rifle rounds.  The difference is remarkable.

For reference versus ballistic gel.  The first video is a pistol round (9mm) the second is a rifle round (5.56 NATO).  Not at all gory but you can use your imagination.

It isn't just pistols.

Inferno is the best semi auto assault rifle
Shadow is the most accurate full auto assualt rifle
Hurricane is the best RoF assault rifle
All burst fire weapons suffer from 2 burst per second, so without a patch I don't see this getting fixed(may be wrong idk)

AR vs pistols is another purely schizophrenic example of game design by recent Bioware. IDK how pistols, being smaller and lighter as they are, have more damage and less recoil than heavier AR? The only thing they can have is higher rof and maybe slightly better accuracy which is again not much of a case in Meda. Even space magic gets perverted inside out these days.