[esyir]

I'll strongly disagree there on the shooters though. Old shooters has a plethora of weapons with inventory (perfect dark, goldeneye, half life) modern shooters have primary, secondary and sidearm. That's simpler, if anything. The shooter experience has been heavily streamlined.

[pathartl]

I think the article addresses this. It calls into question the disposable nature of guns in games now and how balance affects gameplay. We've seen this with the new CoD Modern Warfare where the over-under is way unbalanced and is being abused. When you're only given a primary and a sidearm, every other gun in the game becomes useless.

It becomes complex when you start adding perks to your overall character or class, or when you're able to upgrade weapons. That complexity increases exponentially when you throw in 30 other possible primary weapons that someone can be using, along with their skills and upgrades. That's why when we have a cycle of balance issues, there's always one gun that gets swapped as being the new favorite amongst players.

Of course there's some games that thrive on an uneven balance. There's a reason why the AK and M4 have been the most sought after weapons in Counter-Strike for nearly 20 years.