Just spitballing here, but what if instead of constantly nerfing all the guns to try and get more Operators picked; wouldn't it be better to just add more guns to the Operators?

Ubisoft has had a long-standing trend of seeing Operators being picked often as a bad thing in many patch notes. But Operators are picked so often because of two things - what they bring to the team and what they have as their weapon selection. The desire is to make more Operators be picked as alternatives to the meta, but rather than buffing the lesser picked Operators; we see them constantly nerf Ops and mostly through the means of making adjustments to their weapons kit in a desperate bid to reduce their pick rate.

So... why not just add more weapons to their arsenal?

The way it is right now, most Ops have 2-3 Primarys and 1-3 Secondaries. And a lot of them are being picked because of a good gun that is desired for the FPS side of the game; causing a lot of Utility Operators to be under picked since Ubi cannot seem to balance the weapons as they want. But I'd argue that the weapons stats are not the issue; rather the Ops that have said weapons.

Here is my proposal.

Remember how back in the early days Recruit used to have a wide selection of guns available to use based on what faction you had picked as their host CTU?

Why not do something a tad similar to this?

Take a look at ZOFIA for example. Her primaries are an Assault Rifle and LMG, while her Secondary is a Pistol. Ubi has hard nerfed her weapons selection despite the reason people picked her often back in the day was due to her gadget being great anti-utility.

Why not allow her access to a wider selection of Assault Rifles and LMGs? Why not do this across the board with the Operators on a test server to see how the pick rates adjust?

Imagine ALIBI equipped with the MP5 as an option? SENS getting the C7E as an option? WAMAI gets access to the F90? NØKK gaining access to the PDW9? What if SMOKE had access to the Vector.45 ACP? How about FLORES using the G36-C?

Basically if an Operator has an SMG, that means they are assigned submachine guns by Rainbow's Quartermaster and therefore can requisition more SMGs to choose from. Pump action shotguns exchanged for Pump-Action shotguns. Machine Pistols for Machine Pistols. Assault Rifles for Assault Rifles. And et-cetera. Unless the gun is specific to that Operator's kit for their gadget - such as GLAZ and KALI - why not pass them around to more Operators?

The experiment of this proposal would be to see if on a test server, how would such an option affect pick rates? Ubi wants less picked operators to be used, and plenty of picks are done in part due to what weapons that specific person brings. If every Operator had two options of every weapon type they already have - such as giving GRIM the option of using the C8-SFW as an alternative to the Commando 552 - would this diversify the pick rates a bit?

Ubi gets their desire to reduce the picks of some ops. Players who want certain guns can be enticed to play other operators. And lesser picked Operators will be more likely to be chosen not just for utility but also because they have offensive options that lure people to play them more frequently.

Of course, the balancing will require certain weapons to be directed towards certain kits based on what works. For example, giving SENS the PDW9 would essentially negate the entire point of the POF-9.

Thoughts on such a concept anyone?