That got me thinking. Bungie has been trying to balance these same weapons for almost 15 years, and they've never gotten more than one right at a time. Here's my take on these weapons through the years:
When Destiny first launched I was marveling that for the first time Bungie had made Hand Cannons and Auto Rifles, not just both viable, but fun and effective. Time will tell with this patch, but I really hate PvE nerfs just to "encourage diversity".
Assault rifles have always been stupid. Too be honest I'm not sure why it takes them this long to roll out changes. It's not even the damage that is bad, it's the range. Sniping across the battlefield with an AR has always been a joke I don't remember the AR in halo feeling like this: it's the new iron sights that encouraged this design I'm sure
They tried nerfing ARs by just making them crappy with crap stability and low impact. But that made them a joke. The solution is better stability, but higher damage drop off at high range, which finally they seem to be doing. High rate of fire ARs should absolutely shred at close ranges
The real reason they probably designed all the guns with high ranges is due to the shotgun problem in PvE. Namely that enemies are way to dangerous up close to make close range tactics viable. They also need to change their enemy design a bit to encourage viable close range play. People laugh at arson priest getting into stagger locks from snipers.... I should be doing the same with shotguns at that close range. And enemies don't need 1 hit melee kills.... Or at least we don't need as many enemies that have them
Fusion rifles have spread across many at far ranges actually seems awesome if done right. No cheap one shots, but an FR user can soften a bunch of players that are near each other at range
