This was a bug caused by the adaptive FX and quality options in the menu. It was defaulted on, if you turned it off and were on epic, it gets pretty gory.
Thanks for the write up, you are pretty close to accurate on how penetration works.
We might change the stats to bars to simplify the read on weapon stats, I'll talk to our UI lead about adding base damage values. The weapon stats are pretty complicated, so they are difficult to show in any easy to digest way.
We tried to add as much contrast between the weapons while keeping them semi grounded. I think you guys are right though, a lot of what makes them unique is hidden.
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