Hello Everyone,

I urge you to read this entire post before responding.

It has become evident to me that IW does not have a particularly good dialogue with the community about weapon balance and they seem a bit out of tune to what the majority of MW3 players think about weapon balance.  When I look at the general feedback on MW3 weapons, whether it be on Twitter, YouTube, these forums, or chat in game, and then compare it to IW's current stated stance on the current weapon balance in MW3, there seems to be a bit of a disconnect.

I believe part of the problem is the fact there isn't one centralized, organized place to discuss weapon balance and only weapon balance.  There are "X is OP" and "X is underpowered" threads here and there, and then those general complaint threads that have weapon balance feedback but usually become flooded with other topics and complaints anything in the game, resulting in a thread with no clearly defined topic or direction.  Twitter also isn't exactly an ideal place to discuss weapon balance either as fourzertwo won't be able to keep track of all the feedback by himself amidst a mountain of tweets ranging from lag to spawns to glitches where weapon feedback often gets lost in the mix.

So this is a thread specifically dedicated to feedback and suggestions about MW3 weapon balance.  This thread will be limited to ONLY weapons, both primaries and secondaries, and should not include discussion about perk balance, killstreak balance, or anything else.  At some point I might also create specific threads for those as well, but currently there seems to be more dialogue about weapons than perks or killstreaks or attachments.

If you want your feedback to be heard and considered by the developers, it must be clear, concise, and coherent.  This means you can't come in here throwing insults and profanity and raging/screaming "OMFG!!1!!! DIS GUN iZ S000 OVERPOWERDZZZ U GUIZ SUCK IW iZ GAI NERF IT NA00WW!!!!11!ONE!!" and expect your feedback to be read, let alone taken seriously.  If you are going to claim that a weapon is overpowered/underpowered, you need to back up your claim with well-constructed arguments.  Don't just state that a weapon is imbalanced and walk away; give reasons as to WHY a given weapon is imbalanced, and give suggestions about how you believe it should be adjusted.  It would certainly help you to provide statistical proof to back up your arguments as well.  A good example would be: "X has a fire rate of 850 rpm, but it should be 700 instead because it has a bullet damage of 42 combined with recoil values of 30-30 (horizontal) and 40-10 (vertical)."

All weapon statistics can be found here:

Assault Rifles, Submachine Guns, Light Machine Guns, Machine Pistols, and Handguns: https://docs.google.com/a/students.calvin.edu/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmWEaU8N7Nedd EprUWFkQi1ZWFU0eGItNGwzZG1oSXc#gid=0

Shotguns: https://docs.google.com/a/students.calvin.edu/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmWEaU8N7Nedd FlNRk44SHkydC1ucE54YmVBS2FJT0E#gid=0

Snipers: https://docs.google.com/a/students.calvin.edu/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmWEaU8N7Nedd HNhUlJxZ3RMd1NnVUVDNEtmYUR4SWc#gid=0

OR an easier to read but only partially-completed list here: http://symthic.com/?s=mw3

If you need any help interpreting any weapon data, feel free to ask me.

I will largely be staying out of the conversation in this thread, and instead I will be "moderating" it (i.e. reporting posts that need to be, like flaming/insulting, or posts that generally lead the discussion off-topic) and doing my best to keep the discussion guided and on-topic.  I will be updating this post every day to make sure it stays near the top until it hopefully gets stickied at some point.

Post away!