The AR was far and away the best primary weapon in the game. Some people 'preferred' the semi - because at range, it could do work if your aim was good enough. But there was such a gap between the AR and the rest of the primary weapons that it defeated the purpose of even trying to bring in other weapons in PvP.
I loved the AR - but I'm not gonna pretend that it wasn't a beast just because I loved it. Reasonable recoil, high magazine size, solid damage all around, enough range to fukk with the Semi outside of those super-long-range back and forths. It had no flaws.
Shotguns/Fusion Rifles were secondary weapons.
besides hand cannons, ARs were the only primary weapon type...you had burst, semi, and full, but they were all ARs....so more than likely you were gonna bring an AR into pvp, but that didnt make them overpowered....all 3 handled differently and gave different results...
i know shotguns were secondary weapons, but that's just the classification...the shotties killed just as good if not better than the ARs in pvp...hell, the sniper rifles, the other secondary weapon were a beast in pvp....they were mostly 1 hit kills with headshots....
....i think yall confusing how the guns handled in the sp vs mp....in the sp, a lot of the weapons were powerful as shyt...but once you got in mp and they did that balancing shyt to everything, a lot of the guns werent as powerful as the sp....i know i had a different main gun for both....