Fatshark seriously needs to put more effort into balancing their weapons and abilities, because honestly it’s insane how much content in their games just ends up being completely ignored.
I don’t know who handles weapon balance, but it feels like this part of the game gets forgotten way too often. You have all these weapons with unique designs, animations, sounds and mechanics, and then half the playerbase never touches them because they are just bad or subpar.
If a weapon has terrible damage, an awkward moveset, or another weapon does the exact same thing but better, people aren’t going to use it. It doesn’t matter how cool it looks. At that point you basically created content that exists only on paper.
This is especially frustrating because balance is what keeps these kinds of games alive long term.
People don’t usually quit the game because one specific weapon sucks. Nobody goes “damn, my knife’s kinda weak, I’m uninstalling.” They usually keep playing the same few builds because those are the only ones that feel good, eventually everything starts feeling repetitive, and then they move on.
Having more viable weapons and abilities means more reasons to keep playing. People love experimenting. They like trying stupid builds, weird combinations, different playstyles.
But they also don’t want to feel like they’re actively making the game harder for themselves just because they picked something fun.
Most players want to feel strong. Very few people are going to intentionally pick a bad weapon for hundreds of hours just because it’s different.
That’s why balancing matters so much. You already made the content. The weapons are already there. The abilities are already there. Just make them actually worth using.
Look at the Skitarii right now. Why would I use something like the autogun when the Arc Rifle exists? Why would I use that awkward as hell power sword when I can simply use the Transonic Blades or even better the knife that bleeds everything it touches? Why would I bother when there are other options that simply do their job better?
Weapons don’t all need to be equal or feel the same. That’s not what people are asking for. They just need a reason to exist.
Some weapons can be easier, some harder, some more specialized, that’s fine. But when the community spends years saying “hey, nobody uses this because it sucks” and nothing changes, that’s where it gets annoying.
Fatshark needs to look at the stuff nobody touches and actually ask why nobody touches it. Because every useless weapon is basically wasted development time. And by fixing it and bringing it up to snuff? it makes all the work you already did actually matter.
