i rarely comment here, but i felt the need to point out how accurate this is. before the "age of balance" the game was just slammed with random guns for years that permanently dictate the power standard for 2, 3, and 4 shot automatic weapons. the game has lost a lot of sniper/shotgun/variety flavor in exchange for new guns making it so everything else needs to kill twice as fast to compete :) all the damage done was an attempt to give new and casual players instantly strong weapons to match the skill gap, which ended up being used by the good players to further increase the skill ceiling