No Rifles for the HA class???

[Erendil]

This post of mine was getting buried and forgotten in the Dedicated LMG's thread from a couple weeks ago. But Higby's comments in that thread got me concerned enough that I can't seem to get it out of my mind so I thought I'd start a new thread on it. Here's the part of his post that has me worried:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Higby

Right now Heavy Assault don't have any options for long range weapons (except for some of the AV stuff, of course), we want them up in the front lines taking hits and dishing out damage, not playing ghetto-sniper-hulk-hybrid. Although, depending on where we end up with HA weapon variants, theres a chance that we might end up with something like that, still playing around with it tbh.

Based on the above comments it sounds like the Heavy Assault class may not be able to use rifles, which means the role of the rifleman might get delegated to the light armour classes only.

I gotta say that I'm really not happy about this possibility. IMO HA's should get access to at least some form of long range AI weapon, and the most sensible option is also the most common infantry weapon in modern warfare: the assault rifle.


Say you're a Heavy using an AV weapon. You'll want to attack enemy vehicles from longer range since their big and heavy and as a softie you'll tend to go squish if you get too close to the nassssty vehicles. But if they're smart, the enemy vehicles will have infantry with them for support. So does this mean that said AV user won't be able to carry a rifle as a backup weapon so he can return fire on the enemy troops supporting the tank? Or will he have to resort to pulling out a pistol?

This would make me an extremely sad panda since in PS1 I've usually played the role of the second-line fire-support soldier, using AV to ward off vehicles and then switching to ESMA to provide covering fire for my HA comrades on the front line and take potshots at enemy front-line soldiers when I can. Is the MA/AV loadout not going to be an option in PS2?

I really really hope that it still is since it's the loadout I've used for 90% of my PS1 career. It gives me the ability to engage a wide variety of targets at range at the expense of sacrificing a bit of AI power up close since I'm not carrying HA. So it's versatile, but not all-powerful, and I do make compromises in AI power when using it.



EDIT: I just want to add that the rifle (and the musket before it) has been the mainstay infantry weapon for soldiers for the last 500-600 years. If I understand Higby correctly, it sounds like they'll be denying the HA class access to this weapon type.

If so, I'm asking the Devs that they please reconsider this decision and let the HA class use rifles since it is so central to modern warfare, and it feels counter-intuitive for one of the best-armed infantry classes to be denied use of such a omnipresent weapon.


So what do you guys think? Should the HA class be allowed to use rifles? Along similar lines, should the HA class be allowed to carry two rifle-sized weapons at all?