If the differences are minimal, how can one gun be OP?
And high weapon damage weapons work especially well for a game like Battlefield 3 because you can be healed and revived.
If i flank a group of 3-4 enemies and manage to sneak up on them, then i expect to kill them more or less unnoticed.
This isn't quake or UT where it's about maximizing damage, predicting the movement of a single player, etc. That wouldn't be balanced due to unlockable perks and attachments.
This should be about tactics and flanking and those should be rewarded. Bad Company 2 on PC failed at that since it sometimes took a whole magazine to kill a single person after they nerfed everything.
And don't tell me to play hardcore, because i don't want to miss out on basic features like a health indicator, map and spotting.
I'm not saying BF3 is bad the way it is, i'm just saying the gunplay in the beta with higher damage output felt better and more rewarding.