Secondaries are now primaries; primaries are fall-backs (Destiny)

by Kahzgul, Wednesday, December 16, 2015, 17:59 (3360 days ago) @ ChaosSociety

The new meta is sniper or shotgun, period. All "primary" weapons are actually just fall backs in case you run out of either shotgun or sniper ammo.

In Vanilla, it felt like primaries were good "well-rounded" weapons that worked in a variety of ranges, while secondaries were role specific, for either up very close or from very far away (which is why fusion rifles rocked in vanilla; they were effective in more diverse situations than other secondaries). The result was that primary weapon use wasn't concerned as much with "role" as with "feel."

We've been steadily moving away from that and towards a situation where primary weapons cannot compete with the TTK of secondaries, and there are both snipers that are effective at medium (or even close) ranges and shotguns with extremely long ranges are also easy to find. In addition, primaries are now "role" weapons - designed to specifically be effective as certain ranges rather than to simply be general purpose weapons with different feels. So you gear for your sniper or shotgun and then fill in your primary slot with a complementary role weapon (sniper + TLW, shotgun + pulse rifle).

In short: They've over-designed their weapons and the result is the elimination of choice in competitive play.