The mod is pretty neat so far, but there's a problem I've noticed. Several classes, mainly on the NVA team, have way too many weapons to choose from. This is a long read, but I hope the developers of this mod will read it all and consider my points.

TL;DR: You should probably cut back on the number of weapons.

I hear some people say that you can never have too much variety, but there are several reasons not to have a huge variety. Firstly, the more weapons you have, the harder it is to be sure that they're all balanced properly. Consider the infamously bad weapon balance in Battlefield 4. That game boasted about the giant number of weapons to choose from, but any experienced player will tell you that only about 1/3 of the weapons in each category are worth using. I haven't been able to test every single weapon so far, but I'd imagine that several weapons (especially in the NVA sharpshooter class) are just worse overall when compared to their competitors, even when taking their point costs into account.


Second, having so many weapons with very similar stats results in each weapon feeling less unique. Let's compare the pistols availible to the NVA in this mod to the pistols availible to the Insurgents in vanilla Insurgency, for example. I opened the mod files and went through the actual programmed stats to be sure these were accurate.

Insurgent pistols in vanilla Insugency:
Makarov - A free, 8-round pistol with low recoil and high fire rate but short range and average damage.
Model 10 - Also free, a 6-round revolver with almost no recoil, very low weight, and a high fire rate, but also a very slow reload time and low damage.
M1911 - Costs 1 point. A 7-round pistol with very high damage and good range, but high recoil.

NVA pistols in Born To Kill:
Model 10 - Free. Stats seem pretty similar to the vanilla Model 10 overall.
Nambu - Costs 1 point. An 8-round pistol with moderate ROF, but low damage.
Tokarev - Costs 2 points. An 8-round pistol with moderate ROF and damage.
Makarov - Costs 3 points. An 8-round pistol with moderate ROF and damage.
P38 - Costs 3 points. An 8-round pistol with high ROF and moderate damage.
Luger P08 - Costs 3 points. An 8-round pistol with high ROF and moderate damage.
C96 - Costs 4 points. A 10-round pistol with high ROF and moderate damage.
Vz.61 - Costs 8 points. A 20-round machine pistol with extreme ROF and low damage.

That's a lot of redundancy. Don't you think it would be better looking something like this?

Nambu - Costs 1 point. An 8-round pistol with moderate ROF, but low damage.
Tokarev - Costs 2 points. An 8-round pistol with moderate ROF and damage.
C96 - Costs 4 points. A 10-round pistol with high ROF and moderate damage.
Vz.61 - Costs 8 points. A 20-round machine pistol with extreme ROF and low damage.


Third, having weapons so similar can be so confusing. As stated before, the NVA sharpshooter is one of the worst examples of this. What's the difference between the K98 and the Mosin? Heck if I know. What are the advantages and disadvantages between the SKS, G43, SVT-40, and SVD-63? I could guess from the prices that the SVD and SKS might have the best and worst stats, respectively, but that's about it. You might as well just randomly pick a weapon. Compare this to the Insurgent sniper and sharpshooter classes in vanilla Insurgency, where your options are:
A bolt-action rifle
A semi-auto rifle
An expensive battle rifle
Anyone can easily get a general idea of what each weapon is like in comparison to the other choices, just from deduction. The bolt action is obviously going to be powerful. The semi-automatic rifle will be better for closer ranges due to a much higher fire rate. The battle rifle is much more expensive, so obviously it's going to be better than the other two. Since it's in the sniper/sharpshooter class, you can assume the battle rifle will be powerful, even without knowing what a FAL or a battle rifle is.


Finally, there are psychological benefits to cutting back on variety. Studies show that people tend to become overwhelmed, confused, and sometimes even stressed when faced with excessive amounts of choice, even choices about little unimportant things. Decision-making becomes more difficult when you have to think over more options. It has also been found that as the number of options to choose from increases, the amount of satisfaction from making the choice goes down, and the chance of becoming frustrated with a choice goes up. Many inexperienced game developers seem to confuse complexity with depth. In most cases, you should aim to keep complexity as low as possible without harming your depth. Extra credits has a good video on this matter.

Thank you for taking the time to read this mini-essay. If you're one of the developers of this mod, I hope I've managed to convince you.

I just finished writing a lot of essays in a very short period of time for school and now I can't stop.