Far Cry 2

[CaptHawkeye]

See, once you unlock all the super guns the weapon degradation sort of falls off. I had thought you would have to buy new guns, but at a reduced price or some such. So the advantage of running around with the AK and its absurd lifespan would never fall off in the long run compared to the death spam guns. This way they also wouldn't need those annoying "stop the convoy" quests.

[PREDATOR490]

The only 'super gun' in Far Cry 2 is the MGL140 from what I have seen and it is the last weapon you get to unlock so I imagine that is intentional. It allows the ability to waste infantry and vehicles from sniper-like ranges because of the scope. Destroying checkpoints is rather easy with this weapon since it sets the place on fire and blows everything up so a rocket launcher or M-79 pale in comparison.
Carrying the saw with the MGL allows you to fight enemies that get too close to use the MGL and the amount of ammo means you can still fight if the MGL runs out of ammo before the next restock. Sadly the alternatives for the secondary weapons lot are rather lacking for my loadout, I resorted to the silenced pistol because it allows a moderate stealth ability which can be used to take out a few enemies before your eventually discovered.

For the most part I never touched any of the secondary weapons except the silenced pistol. The assualt weapons were pretty lacking compared to one of the sniper rifles and the 'special' weapons are mostly useless.
The Dart Gun has limited ammo, falls apart quite easily and is redundant if you have the more powerful sniper rifles in your arsenal or the MGL140.
The flamethrower... is traditionally useless in the open settings of the game, maybe if there was a few bunker complexes where the flamethrower could be used in closer surroundings but there isnt enough to justify using this. If your that keen on starting fires then just use the molotovs or the flare fun.
The Mortar... was a complete enigma to me, I tried using it and all I got was the yellow marker smoke, never saw any proper explosions but even then raining down artilery with that thing was pretty weak rather than just using the more direct MGL140 for explosive destruction or Snipers to kill troops.

I really think the MP5 should have been moved to the secondary weapon catagory because by the time you get it better weapons are made available that makes stealth less useful and the gun is fairly weak for stealth work due to poor range, poorer accuracy and crappy damage. The silenced pistol can get a nice clean headshot on a target without much trouble but the MP5 fires in bursts that make doing that harder and if you miss the head your stealth approach is fucked along with you when your having to unload clips into each soldier for the entire area while they gangbang you to death.
The rest of the assualt arsenal is fluff, the FNL, AK-47, G3 etc. are essentially the same and achieve the same results. The AR15 is the only one with a scope which makes it slightly more useful since you can use it to snipe a little bit but once again, if your going to be sniping then using the AS50 or Druganov is far more effective.
Hence, the loadout I have defaulted to is:

MGL140 / Silenced Pistol / SAW

I found it extremely useful for that special twist that happens for the diamond recovery mission and I intend to restart a new game so I can save all my diamonds by just getting these weapons. That or maybe get all the weapons just to fully stock the armory for show.

[Darwin]

The Mortar... was a complete enigma to me, I tried using it and all I got was the yellow marker smoke, never saw any proper explosions but even then raining down artilery with that thing was pretty weak rather than just using the more direct MGL140 for explosive destruction or Snipers to kill troops.

you hit the reload key to switch between marker and explosive. marker smoke doesn't consume ammo, but if you're using an enemy mortar, the damn thing falls apart after 3-4 shots. Anyone really wanting to use the mortar needs to buy one at the gun shop and practice, practice, practice.

I really think the MP5 should have been moved to the secondary weapon catagory because by the time you get it better weapons are made available that makes stealth less useful and the gun is fairly weak for stealth work due to poor range, poorer accuracy and crappy damage. The silenced pistol can get a nice clean headshot on a target without much trouble but the MP5 fires in bursts that make doing that harder and if you miss the head your stealth approach is fucked along with you when your having to unload clips into each soldier for the entire area while they gangbang you to death.

the MP5 fires quickly, but at ranges up to about 30 yards, it's easy to get headshots with and is plenty accurate. I'm fine with it being primary really, considering how useful it is at nighttime.

The rest of the assualt arsenal is fluff, the FNL, AK-47, G3 etc. are essentially the same and achieve the same results. The AR15 is the only one with a scope which makes it slightly more useful since you can use it to snipe a little bit but once again, if your going to be sniping then using the AS50 or Druganov is far more effective.

I have to agree that once you have a full arsenal, the assault rifles are pretty useless unless you haven't unlocked competent machineguns and sniper rifles. And in that case, the gold AK is free (though it does benefit from the accuracy upgrade)

[Stark]

Man I'm glad someone decided to talk about how awesome the MGL is, it's not like some guy called 'Strak' or something told the world half a dozen pages ago or anything lol.

The lack of late-game weapon jamming etc really kills the mood for me. I'm not the kind of lamer who enjoys tooling around constantly ruling everyone for hours - it was fun at the start with the very high per-shot likelihood of jams, trying to make the early AS50 last for as long as possible, etc. Once you're past the midpoint (and own the 5 good guns) it's all too easy, jamming is irrelevant on everything but the minimi, and they try to make it 'hard' by having the points full of 30+ guys. It's lost it's unique feel of scrabbing in dirt to win, and is just another 'player massively overpowers opponents, how will he mercilessly and danger-lessly destroy this army'.

[Singular Intellect]

Those bastard's still didn't fix the issue with the binding key for leaving gun turrets, ground or vehicle ones.

[Stark]

Yeah, JSF tells me this patch doesn't do very much. Since they've accepted several issues, I'd imagine this was a maintenance release and they'll push out another patch soon to fix the actual game problems.

[CaptHawkeye]

I'm open to the idea an expansion pack will happen, but more than likely it would just be some extra content. Nothing that would rebalance the late game super guns and player's El Mariachi class armory.

[Darwin]

Yeah, JSF tells me this patch doesn't do very much. Since they've accepted several issues, I'd imagine this was a maintenance release and they'll push out another patch soon to fix the actual game problems.

It's a first patch. It just brings the game from 'not ready but we're going to release it anyway' to 'all the fixes we thought of between printing and retail'

[Stark]

Er... thanks for agreeing, I guess?