bananablade

Recent shooters like modern warfare 2, bad company 2, and medal of honor beta use the weapon loadout system where you can spawn with any gun/attachment youve unlocked, and something tells me future FPS's will continue to follow this. I personally think this is a boring system.
 
No matter how hard a developer tries to balance every weapon to level the playing field, i believe there will generally always be a preferred assault rifle, smg, or sniper rifle in an fps. Give it a few days after a weapon balance update and the community will eventually discover which is best in spite of devs attempts to equalize the every gun. For example, the AN-94 and M16 are without question the best assault rifles in bad company 2 it didn't take long for the community to figure this one out. The M60 was by and large the strongest machine gun and was pretty much used by everyone who unlocked it but after it got nerfed and the MG36 concurrently got a buff, people turned to the MG36. Rarely will you see experienced players using the M249, MG3 or XM8 unless theyre messing around or trying to get platinum stars, simply because the guns are not good. Almost all shooters I can think of fall victim to this, admit it theres always that gun in a game that you never touch (again unless youre fucking around) not because it doesn't suit your playstyle/you dont know how to use it, but because everyone knows it clearly sucks balls and there are better ones. Trying to nerf, buff, and tweak the weapons in hopes to achieve perfect balance is also a fruitless effort because eventually the strongest/weakest weapon will be found, depending on how large the player base is.  By having a loadout system which allows you to pick ANY gun before respawning, it cheapens the feel of the guns making the game less fun, and allows players to abuse the strongest weapons that a game will inevitably have, thus leading to ppl whining and crying OP 
 
CS used a money system in which you were given monetary rewards for your performance in previous rounds. This system worked in perfect harmony with the fact that guns are never perfectly balanced in shooters. The differing costs of guns in the game forced you to occasionally purchase weapons that weren't your #1 pick, because you didn't have enough money, giving many of the cheap shitty guns an identity and justification for being used. Perhaps you wanted to get an M4A1 but you just barely didn't have enough cash so you had to settle with a FAMAS which has a smaller clip size, decreased accuracy in full auto, but still had the redeeming quality of accurate burst fire. Or in another round you wanted a sniper rifle but still needed an extra $1000. you could buy an AK47 with body armor but that would mean next round you couldn't afford the AWP. so you decide to keep your pistol and buy body armor + flash/explosive grenades to save cash and purchase that glorious AWP. Sure its a powerful weapon but you EARNED it by saving up, killing ppl, and winning rounds. I feel like in a competitive game, this rewards system is so much more dynamic and interesting than COD/BC2 where you use the same damn OP gun every round and change things up out of boredom. i love using the AN-94 but i eventually just switch it up because im bored of it even though its a strong weapon. I don't think I ever felt that way about the M4A1 or the AK47 in cs because I didn't have the luxury of using it whenever I wanted. In addition, I dont remember ever hearing people cry about how they were overpowered even though they were clearly the best assault rifles.  
 
I'm not saying that I think the COD/BC2 loadout should cease to exist, but if a game with a rewards system like CS was released I would be ALL over it because it allows for much more interesting play in place of accessbility