Why custom loadouts shouldn't return: Boredom

Games Halo 5: Guardians
1

I know this topic is talked about quite a bit and there is a great deal of dilemma going around about it. While I was lying in bed this morning, I thought of a pretty relevant reason why custom loadouts should not return in the next installment of the Halo saga.

That reason is variety. Now, I know what you’re thinking, “You wanna take away variety to bring in more variety? What?” Well, I’m not saying that custom loadouts don’t bring variety into the game. In fact, I believe that it really brought in a great new way of customization, personalizing each individual Spartan to his or her fighting style.

There’s only one problem with said system. It’s simply too predictable. It’s the same deal with Call of Duty’s system of custom loadouts (not comparing the two, just using CoD as an example). With the ability to choose whatever weapon you want to spawn with, one would look to the more dominant choice, and that’s exactly what happened. First it was the DMR, now it’s the Battle Rifle, and for secondaries, it’s always been the Boltshot. Then you got your stickies, jetpacks, a perk for an extra back-pocket-grenade and more life to your armor ability.

I saw it last night in the matches I played. Minus a few things like jetpacks and stickies, what I listed above was extremely abundant, most of the opposing team was using a Battle Rifle with a Boltshot secondary. You may ask yourself, “What’s wrong with that?” Well, in my sight, I see it as boring. Yep, that’s the whole ordeal, boring. You’ve seen it in the past. People left the game because they got bored of it. Well, this is a reason. They saw the same opposing forces almost every match. Everyone used the same primary and secondary with the exception of a few others that were barely noticed. And then those that used the same thing over and over again grew bored of the game and eventually left.

There’s the problem with custom loadouts. It simply causes boredom due to the predictability of the players and overuse of similar loadouts all around. So in the end, you say that custom loadouts brings more variety and excitement, but soon, everyone is using the same thing and the whole battlefield becomes predictable and boring. That’s my reason why custom loadouts should be left behind.

If you didn’t want to take the time to read the whole post, here’s the TL;DR version:

Remove custom loadouts so the game won’t grow boring with everyone using the same predictable loadout each match.

Discuss.

2

Boring? Because you see multiple people using the same starting weapons? That’s exactly how its been before Personal Loadouts were introduced. Everyone spawned with the same weapons, grenades, etc.

There are several things wrong with the current implementation of Personal Loadouts (all of which can be removed while still allowing balanced preferential choice), but monotony in what players spawn with is not at all one of them. Personal Loadouts give players the choice of what they want to use, whereas the absence of Personal Loadouts doesn’t. The problematic choices available… Well, that’s a different discussion.

3

> I know this topic is talked about quite a bit and there is a great deal of dilemma going around about it. While I was lying in bed this morning, I thought of a pretty relevant reason why custom loadouts should not return in the next installment of the Halo saga.
>
> That reason is variety. Now, I know what you’re thinking, “You wanna take away variety to bring in more variety? What?” Well, I’m not saying that custom loadouts don’t bring variety into the game. In fact, I believe that it really brought in a great new way of customization, personalizing each individual Spartan to his or her fighting style.
>
> There’s only one problem with said system. It’s simply too predictable. It’s the same deal with Call of Duty’s system of custom loadouts (not comparing the two, just using CoD as an example). With the ability to choose whatever weapon you want to spawn with, one would look to the more dominant choice, and that’s exactly what happened. First it was the DMR, now it’s the Battle Rifle, and for secondaries, it’s always been the Boltshot. Then you got your stickies, jetpacks, a perk for an extra back-pocket-grenade and more life to your armor ability.
>
> I saw it last night in the matches I played. Minus a few things like jetpacks and stickies, what I listed above was extremely abundant, most of the opposing team was using a Battle Rifle with a Boltshot secondary. You may ask yourself, “What’s wrong with that?” Well, in my sight, I see it as boring. Yep, that’s the whole ordeal, boring. You’ve seen it in the past. People left the game because they got bored of it. Well, this is a reason. They saw the same opposing forces almost every match. Everyone used the same primary and secondary with the exception of a few others that were barely noticed. And then those that used the same thing over and over again grew bored of the game and eventually left.
>
> There’s the problem with custom loadouts. It simply causes boredom due to the predictability of the players and overuse of similar loadouts all around. So in the end, you say that custom loadouts brings more variety and excitement, but soon, everyone is using the same thing and the whole battlefield becomes predictable and boring. That’s my reason why custom loadouts should be left behind.
>
> If you didn’t want to take the time to read the whole post, here’s the TL;DR version:
>
> <mark>Remove custom loadouts so the game won’t grow boring with everyone using the same predictable loadout each match.</mark>
>
> Discuss.

I personally don’t think boredom is a legitimate reason to remove Loadouts. What I do find to be legitimate reasons for certain things in the Loadout to be removed is the perks, PP, Promethean Vision, Camo, and PG because these make the game much more unbalanced and ruin vehicular combat. Also some of these things such as Camo, and Promethean Vision more or so I see encourage camping because now you can see if someone is sneaking up on you, and with Camo the glitch still occurs and people take advantage of it.

4

It’s not like everyone spawned with the BR before custom loadouts…

If anything loadouts are always going to be predictable and making them too ‘wacky’ (yes I didn’t have a thesaurus at that moment) would interrupt which halo’s core mechanics.

Why remove such a good concept which can be balanced and offers something else to the game and doesnt exclude peoples more exotic weapon tastes of the CC fans for example being made to spawn with the BR.

5

When certain items in a loadout system are getting selected more than others by players then apparently there exists either a balance issue among the different items or certain playstyles or certain personal preferences are just more common.

Balance issues can be fixed but you cannot dictate a player what items he/she has to select, since that is up to the player’s choice and preference.
Nonetheless, a fair and balanced loadout system still offers potential variety plus equality, while identical starts do only offer equality.

6

I still don’t get it.

"Options = Boring

No options = Not boring"

What?

Even if one option is stronger than the others, at least you HAVE those other options. And it’s not like things can’t be fixed.

7

All loadouts will be replaced with a Fiesta loadout setting. All random all the time… No Boredom there.

8

> <mark>All loadouts will be replaced with a Fiesta loadout setting</mark>. All random all the time… No Boredom there.

throws laptop against the wall

Would be a horrible decision lol. I want them to stay, just tweak further.

9

You say you want to remove Loadouts for the sake of “variety”, yet you think having everyone spawn with the same weapon over and over again won’t harm variety…

…Am I missing something?

If you think that Personal Loadouts would just lead to four reskins of the same weapon, you’re half right, but also half wrong.

When 343i designed the sandbox for Halo 4, there is no doubt that many weapons became reskinned UNSC weapons (The Storm Rifle and the Promethean Weapons are great examples of this). However, this was not because of balancing them for Loadouts, it was because of this picture right here.

343 Industries (or Halo 4’s Creative Director, Josh Holmes, to be precise) wanted Halo to be more accessible to newcomers. While that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, the execution of it was very poor. The original weapons for the Prometheans included some very unique designs, such as the Stasis Cannon. However, as we know, these weapons were cut from the game and sadly replaced with weapons that were clearly reskins of existing weapons.

This didn’t happen to balance Personal Loadouts, it happened to do exactly what that picture said: Make Halo 4 more accessible.

Now, assuming that the overly redundant Storm Rifle and Promethean Weapons are redone, and that they are all no longer reskinned UNSC weapons, that wouldn’t necessarily harm balance.

Let’s look at the Plasma Rifle from Halo CE.

It was very different from the Assault Rifle, yet it was also balanced with it. If an AR user wanted to beat a PR in a 1 v 1 battle, you’d want to use short bursts with the weapon. If your PR-opponent got too close, the close-range excellence that the Assault Rifle used could save you from the Plasma Rifle’s stun abilities if you had enough skill. Now that’s called balance.

Let’s also take a look at the relationship between the Battle Rifle and the Carbine.

Both of these weapons were mid-range precision, yet they functioned in clearly different ways. The Battle Rifle had a slower ROF, and it’s power was confined into bursts of three rather than single bullets. On the other hand, the Carbine had a high ROF, single bullets, and less damage per shot. Having steady aim and good shot-leading skills could win you and your high-spread BR against the Carbine. Having a good strafe and great pacing skills could allow you and your Carbine to mop the floor with the guts of that “MLG try-hard BR user”. That’s also a great form of variety and balance within the same coin.

If I take these two sets of weapons and see how they are balanced with each other, I’ll get positive results.

Despite the fact that the Assault Rifle and the Plasma Rifle excell at closer ranges than the BR and the CC, they have ways of getting a possible victory. The Plasma Rifle has an increase in accuracy, and headshot multiplying abilities. This can allow you to potentially beat a BR a CC at mid range if you have enough skill. Also, the Assault Rifle can be burst fired to increase accuracy at longer ranges. If you burst your shots, and strafe as well, you could emerge victorious against a BR or a CC at mid-range.

On the other hand, despite that they will naturally get out-performed by the Assault Rifle and the Plasma Rifle at closer ranges, the Battle Rifle and the Carbine have their own ways of winning a fight at closer ranges. In Halo 3, giving your opponent two full bursts and a melee attack with a Battle Rifle would kill your opponent. And when using the Carbine, circling around your opponent while shooting them to hell was a great way to wipe out a hapless automatic user.

Overall, Personal Loadouts don’t have to include reskins to be “balanced”.

10

> You say you want to remove Loadouts for the sake of “variety”, yet you think having everyone spawn with the same weapon over and over again won’t harm variety…
>
> …Am I missing something?
> .

No Andycu5, you are not missing something.

Yes lets remove Variety by giving you no variety and say that this is more variety.

Did you think this post through.

I have to again agree with AndyCu5. Balanced and equal does not mean identical. I think it is possible to have custom loadouts and the Halo still be an Arena Shooter.

The custom loadouts available in Halo 4 however is a FAIL. But let learn from this, and implement a loadout system that is not a fail.

11

That is not the loadout system’s fault that players are using BRs and Boltshots, or DMRs and Boltshots pre-weapon update. That fault goes to the multiplayer team for not making a proper weapon balance with each weapon. By making a weapon that has very little problems available, people will flock to it.

Removing loadouts will not fix that issue. It will instead go straight back to the original issue Reach, Halo 3 and Halo 2 had: Everyone picking BR/DMR starts because the automatics and the magnum is pathetic in comparison to it.

Weapon balance must be nailed down. Otherwise, we’ll constantly have this 1-gun-show Halo has been having.

12

> You say you want to remove Loadouts for the sake of “variety”, yet you think having everyone spawn with the same weapon over and over again won’t harm variety…
>
> …Am I missing something?
>
> If you think that Personal Loadouts would just lead to four reskins of the same weapon, you’re half right, but also half wrong.
>
> When 343i designed the sandbox for Halo 4, there is no doubt that many weapons became reskinned UNSC weapons (The Storm Rifle and the Promethean Weapons are great examples of this). However, this was not because of balancing them for Loadouts, it was because of this picture right here.
>
> 343 Industries (or Halo 4’s Creative Director, Josh Holmes, to be precise) wanted Halo to be more accessible to newcomers. While that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, the execution of it was very poor. The original weapons for the Prometheans included some very unique designs, such as the Stasis Cannon. However, as we know, these weapons were cut from the game and sadly replaced with weapons that were clearly reskins of existing weapons.
>
> This didn’t happen to balance Personal Loadouts, it happened to do exactly what that picture said: Make Halo 4 more accessible.
>
> Now, assuming that the overly redundant Storm Rifle and Promethean Weapons are redone, and that they are all no longer reskinned UNSC weapons, that wouldn’t necessarily harm balance.
>
> Let’s look at the Plasma Rifle from Halo CE.
>
> It was very different from the Assault Rifle, yet it was also balanced with it. If an AR user wanted to beat a PR in a 1 v 1 battle, you’d want to use short bursts with the weapon. If your PR-opponent got too close, the close-range excellence that the Assault Rifle used could save you from the Plasma Rifle’s stun abilities if you had enough skill. Now that’s called balance.
>
> Let’s also take a look at the relationship between the Battle Rifle and the Carbine.
>
> Both of these weapons were mid-range precision, yet they functioned in clearly different ways. The Battle Rifle had a slower ROF, and it’s power was confined into bursts of three rather than single bullets. On the other hand, the Carbine had a high ROF, single bullets, and less damage per shot. Having steady aim and good shot-leading skills could win you and your high-spread BR against the Carbine. Having a good strafe and great pacing skills could allow you and your Carbine to mop the floor with the guts of that “MLG try-hard BR user”. That’s also a great form of variety and balance within the same coin.
>
> If I take these two sets of weapons and see how they are balanced with each other, I’ll get positive results.
>
> Despite the fact that the Assault Rifle and the Plasma Rifle excell at closer ranges than the BR and the CC, they have ways of getting a possible victory. The Plasma Rifle has an increase in accuracy, and headshot multiplying abilities. This can allow you to potentially beat a BR a CC at mid range if you have enough skill. Also, the Assault Rifle can be burst fired to increase accuracy at longer ranges. If you burst your shots, and strafe as well, you could emerge victorious against a BR or a CC at mid-range.
>
> On the other hand, despite that they will naturally get out-performed by the Assault Rifle and the Plasma Rifle at closer ranges, the Battle Rifle and the Carbine have their own ways of winning a fight at closer ranges. <mark>In Halo 3, giving your opponent two full bursts and a melee attack with a Battle Rifle would kill your opponent. And when using the Carbine, circling around your opponent while shooting them to hell was a great way to wipe out a hapless automatic user.</mark>
>
> Overall, Personal Loadouts don’t have to include reskins to be “balanced”.

In standard this is false. In Halo 3 MLG you can do this. However, in Halo 3 MLG there are no ARs. In every other playlist 3 shots + a beat down is needed to take down an opponent when his health bar (Not the shield) is full. If his health is weakened you could kill someone with 2 burst fires + a beat down, but you must however, hit every single burst-fire bullet - Playing online, with lagg and where hit registration is a problem, it almost never works.

The best way however to kill in AR in close combat Halo 3 while you, yourself has a BR, is to use grenades or back away while you shot. Strafing definitely helps, but if you can predict or know that the player can/has come so close to you the AR will deal more damage than your BR, or that he is able to beat you down, you should walk backwards while shooting to curb the damage output from the AR and try to hinder a beat down.

In my opinion, the AR is almost always a better choice than the BR in Halo 3 when it comes to close combat.

13

> > You say you want to remove Loadouts for the sake of “variety”, yet you think having everyone spawn with the same weapon over and over again won’t harm variety…
> >
> > …Am I missing something?
> >
> > If you think that Personal Loadouts would just lead to four reskins of the same weapon, you’re half right, but also half wrong.
> >
> > When 343i designed the sandbox for Halo 4, there is no doubt that many weapons became reskinned UNSC weapons (The Storm Rifle and the Promethean Weapons are great examples of this). However, this was not because of balancing them for Loadouts, it was because of this picture right here.
> >
> > 343 Industries (or Halo 4’s Creative Director, Josh Holmes, to be precise) wanted Halo to be more accessible to newcomers. While that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, the execution of it was very poor. The original weapons for the Prometheans included some very unique designs, such as the Stasis Cannon. However, as we know, these weapons were cut from the game and sadly replaced with weapons that were clearly reskins of existing weapons.
> >
> > This didn’t happen to balance Personal Loadouts, it happened to do exactly what that picture said: Make Halo 4 more accessible.
> >
> > Now, assuming that the overly redundant Storm Rifle and Promethean Weapons are redone, and that they are all no longer reskinned UNSC weapons, that wouldn’t necessarily harm balance.
> >
> > Let’s look at the Plasma Rifle from Halo CE.
> >
> > It was very different from the Assault Rifle, yet it was also balanced with it. If an AR user wanted to beat a PR in a 1 v 1 battle, you’d want to use short bursts with the weapon. If your PR-opponent got too close, the close-range excellence that the Assault Rifle used could save you from the Plasma Rifle’s stun abilities if you had enough skill. Now that’s called balance.
> >
> > Let’s also take a look at the relationship between the Battle Rifle and the Carbine.
> >
> > Both of these weapons were mid-range precision, yet they functioned in clearly different ways. The Battle Rifle had a slower ROF, and it’s power was confined into bursts of three rather than single bullets. On the other hand, the Carbine had a high ROF, single bullets, and less damage per shot. Having steady aim and good shot-leading skills could win you and your high-spread BR against the Carbine. Having a good strafe and great pacing skills could allow you and your Carbine to mop the floor with the guts of that “MLG try-hard BR user”. That’s also a great form of variety and balance within the same coin.
> >
> > If I take these two sets of weapons and see how they are balanced with each other, I’ll get positive results.
> >
> > Despite the fact that the Assault Rifle and the Plasma Rifle excell at closer ranges than the BR and the CC, they have ways of getting a possible victory. The Plasma Rifle has an increase in accuracy, and headshot multiplying abilities. This can allow you to potentially beat a BR a CC at mid range if you have enough skill. Also, the Assault Rifle can be burst fired to increase accuracy at longer ranges. If you burst your shots, and strafe as well, you could emerge victorious against a BR or a CC at mid-range.
> >
> > On the other hand, despite that they will naturally get out-performed by the Assault Rifle and the Plasma Rifle at closer ranges, the Battle Rifle and the Carbine have their own ways of winning a fight at closer ranges. <mark>In Halo 3, giving your opponent two full bursts and a melee attack with a Battle Rifle would kill your opponent. And when using the Carbine, circling around your opponent while shooting them to hell was a great way to wipe out a hapless automatic user.</mark>
> >
> > Overall, Personal Loadouts don’t have to include reskins to be “balanced”.
>
> In standard this is false. In Halo 3 MLG you can do this. However, in Halo 3 MLG there are no ARs. In every other playlist 3 shots + a beat down is needed to take down an opponent when his health bar (Not the shield) is full. If his health is weakened you could kill someone with 2 burst fires + a beat down, but you must however, hit every single burst-fire bullet - Playing online, with lagg and where hit registration is a problem, it almost never works.

Okay then. In Halo 4, after the Weapon Tuning, 2 bursts + melee attack with a BR would result in a kill.

Also, dedicated servers would certainly work to curb the lag and hit registration problems that always seem to be present with “Host-based connection”. So we may not have to worry about that as much when it comes to creating a sandbox.

> The best way however to kill in AR in close combat Halo 3 while you, yourself has a BR, is to use grenades or back away while you shot. Strafing definitely helps, but if you can predict or know that the player can/has come so close to you the AR will deal more damage than your BR, or that he is able to beat you down, you should walk backwards while shooting to curb the damage output from the AR and try to hinder a beat down.

I normally ghandi-jumped with the BR when facing an AR in Halo 3, it was much more effective than just backing away. Also, since the BR is confined to high spread bursts, strafing almost never works effectively.

> In my opinion, the AR is almost always a better choice than the BR in Halo 3 when it comes to close combat.

That’s probably because the AR is supposed to defeat the BR in CQC in general. However, the BR does have potential ways to emerge victorious.

14

All you need to do to fix loadouts is breakup matches into different weapon categories. For example you would have the choice of precision vs automatics that is decided before the match and those are the only primary weapon types you can spawn with. Also spawning with armor abilities is fine if they would run on a battery system and have disadvantages when you use them. . Also moving powerful armor abilities like active camo to on map pickups as equipment would help. More in depth ideas:

Armor Abilities

Selectable, spawn with them, reusable, present in Infinity game modes only. AAs now require battery packs meaning you can not endlessly spam them. Battery packs can be picked up from fallen enemies or dead teammates like grenades. Amor abilities can now be picked up from dead players Armor abilities are:

Thruster Pack

Promethean Vision (with stun damage to player using it and high energy usage.

Regeneration Field

Auto Sentry

Power ups

Picked up on map, are fought over like power weapons. Short duration buffs. Powerups are:

Overshield

Damage Boost

Speed Boost

Jump Boost

Equipment

High powered and tier armor abilities, reusable, replaces your AA, picked up on map, eats twice as much as energy as AAs. Armor Abliities are:

Active Camo

Jetpack

Damage Burst (allows a player to send out energy pulse damaging enemy and teammates alike)

Medic (can revive non assassinated players at a cost of no shields for either player for 5 seconds)

15

> It’s not like everyone spawned with the BR before custom loadouts…
>
> If anything loadouts are always going to be predictable and making them too ‘wacky’ (yes I didn’t have a thesaurus at that moment) would interrupt which halo’s core mechanics.
>
> Why remove such a good concept which can be balanced and offers something else to the game and <mark>doesnt exclude peoples more exotic weapon tastes of the CC fans for example being made to spawn with the BR.</mark>

THIS load-outs do not need to go but they do need tweaked for instance everyone is over obsessed with BR starts…all I ask is let me choose my AA and my CC and or BR as they are both mid range and a pistol…thats all I ask…really :’(

16

I say they need tweaking I dont care about weapon used i think however more low end weapons should be added to the game so some can be removed from loadouts the boltshot for example never got the tweak i think it should have gotten but hey its not as overpowered as it was but it still is. I also think the grenade armor mods should be removed so it focuses more on the use of your weapons instead of three frags narrow hallway you die guy gets them all back ,no you should always have resupply or not at all so people will try varying play styles there’s your variety OP like GoW you can’t be on a spree using the same tactics unless your enemy uses the same weapons as you you eventually will have to change weapons or go out of your way to pick up the enemies ammo or grab a power this can also be said for in the previous halos you run outa ammo you get more or you get a new weapon and you use your AAs and equipment to help you get new tools of destruction or supplement your current ones.

17

Um, it would seem the data on Halo3’s damage values is inaccurate:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkQ5sPQZUbw

The H3SMG can kill quicker than an H3BR or H3AR, but unlike the H4SAW, bursting won’t help increase effectual range, nor are the H3SMG’s individual shots as powerful as an H4SAW’s (2 kills per SMG mag. Up to 7 per SAW barrel.) And unlike the SAW, the SMG is very weak against vehicles.
(ie, the SAW is better than an SMG, not a replacement.)

The H3BR actually headshot kills quicker than an H3AR kills, by a rather large margin where frames are concerned.

Infantry-wise, there’s little balance and the AR looses “on paper” to the dual-SMG (and barely with single) in short range and at any range against the BR. It requires a lot of skill of an H3AR user to dominate, or a large lack of skill of the opponents.
With vehicles involved, the AR damages said vehicles very well and can even eventually destroy tanks. However the BR barely damages most vehicles, its only “godsend” against armour is that it shreds tanks when shooting the weak-points and the shots affect mass (try it on local, the H3BR will cause a 'Hog to flip in the air, as well as affect turning.)

Now onto H4’s sandbox and balance. I’m going to ask where this idea of the H4BR, as annouyingly dominate as it is, how has it removed the variety of weapons being used within the game…?
I’ve noticed an increase in BR users but nothing to the degree that would make me feel like I’m playing H3 (Either by frequency of BR users or the need to use the BR instead of any other non-heavy or non-powerweapon.

18

> Um, it would seem the data on Halo3’s damage values is inaccurate:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkQ5sPQZUbw
>
>
> The H3SMG can kill quicker than an H3BR or H3AR, but unlike the H4SAW, bursting won’t help increase effectual range, nor are the H3SMG’s individual shots as powerful as an H4SAW’s (2 kills per SMG mag. Up to 7 per SAW barrel.) And unlike the SAW, the SMG is very weak against vehicles.
> (ie, the SAW is better than an SMG, not a replacement.)
>
>
> The H3BR actually headshot kills quicker than an H3AR kills, by a rather large margin where frames are concerned.
>
> Infantry-wise, there’s little balance and the AR looses “on paper” to the SMG in short range and at any range against the BR. It requires a lot of skill of an H3AR user to dominate, or a large lack of skill of the opponents.
> With vehicles involved, the AR damages said vehicles very well and can even eventually destroy tanks. However the BR barely damages most vehicles, its only “godsend” against armour is that it shreds tanks when shooting the weak-points and the shots affect mass (try it on local, the H3BR will cause a 'Hog to flip in the air, as well as affect turning.)
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Now onto H4’s sandbox and balance. <mark>I’m going to ask where this idea of the H4BR, as annouyingly dominate as it is, has removed the variety of weapons being used within the game…?</mark>
> <mark>I’ve noticed an increase in BR users but nothing to the degree that would make me feel like I’m playing H3</mark> (Either by frequency of BR users and the need to use the BR instead of any other non-heavy or non-powerweapon.

Welp, gotta agree with ya there. Can’t argue against that.

19

You’re statement here is really an eye for an eye. Everybody spawning with one weapon leads to more map-pickups generally so I can see that standpoint. However spawning with those extra map-pickups generally leads to the same effect, so like I said…eye for an eye.

20

This makes no sense.

While I strongly dislike Halo 4’s Custom Loadouts, your argument is entirely invalid.

Honestly, I don’t mind Loadouts.
As long as everyone’s weapons have similar stats and function.
For example, the BR is similar to the Carbine, and the AR is similar to the Plasma Rifle.
Some other examples might be DMR and NR.
So I’d have no reason to complain if players chose a BR over a Carbine, or an AR over a Plasma Rifle.

Therefore, I believe Loadouts should be limited to a choice of a Mid-Range Precision weapon as Primary and a Close-Range Automatic weapon as Secondary.

One user suggests having the following options available in Loadouts:
Primary: BR, Carbine, AR, Storm
Secondary: Magnum, Needle Pistol

I don’t like this setup.
It’s not much better than our current system and still has some issues.
What if I choose an AR and my enemy chooses a BR?
I’m gonna’ be aggravated.