The developers shouldn’t be looking at this game as a balancing ouroboros because it’s a PVE coop game, not a competitive PVP game. For this reason fun and fluidity is most important, far more important then whether or not everything is balanced so every weapon has its pro’s and cons.
The game’s based off of 40k. Even without looking at lore, there are many weapons on the table that are just better then other weapons. There’s a reason you can only give the Sergeant in a squad of Guardsmen a Bolter, because if they all had Bolters, things would play out very differently.
Simply put, weapons like the Bolter, the Flamer, the Eviscerator, the Power Sword, and so on, should just be better then the earlier weapons below them.
Delaying how fast the player can ready a weapon, especially with an action that would eject and waste an unfired round, is silly. The Bolter already has a relatively low amount of ammunition and is interesting to control, fun to use when you’re shooting - and the reload is quite long. So from a gameplay perspective, it’s very powerful but it’s unwieldly.
I have started to reload the Bolter when I am done using it, switching to melee before I chamber the first round. The next time I need the Bolter, it comes out with a swifter finish of the partially completed reload. I’ve half started doing this just so what’s happening on screen makes more sense, but it does feel faster too.
Anyway, the game will only have true hybrid combat if the switch between weapons is not necessarily instant, but responsive.
Overall, I am very worried the developers will repeatedly nerf what is fun in the game chasing the dragon that is “balance,” when there is no reason to. They should focus on every weapon feeling fun, fluid, and responsive, weighty and interesting. Worrying about meta is silly, majority of players will gravitate towards what they find fun. Some players will want to optimize everything to pursue their own set challenges - and why throw a wrench in their plans? Speedrunners are quite popular nowadays. Let them nose around and “break” the game.
The game is quite difficult on the higher levels already and it’ll stay appropriately challenging if the players are allowed to have fluid fun.
I’ve typed so much here because I’m really worried the “balancing question” will eat this game entirely and what is currently satisfying will one day be satisfying no more. Please buff instead of nerf. If the players and their arsenal seems too powerful, give us stronger opponents to compensate…