Progression of Rust's weapons | Rifles

[Hydra]

Rust's weapons feel out of place in a post-apocalyptic world where decay and salvage is such a prominent theme in the design aspect of the game. This is due to a main issue which the game is facing right now and that's the progression system. It simply doesn't feel clean, and the progression towards the infamous AK47 is very straight forward and commonly used every wipe, and can be described as the go-to meta of Rust.
A wipe will usually play out with you obtaining a revolver, finding a python or semi rifle, and then advancing onward until you get an AK47 and that's it. The AK47 is extremely powerful and easy to use, therefore it's the go to weapon for anyone who wants to have a good time in the game, and nothing offers the killing potential of the weapon.
Problem
There's no variance that the game offers when it comes to end game weaponry. Any other weapons that are equally as hard to obtain have different roles anyway, such as the MP5 which is an SMG and the Bolt Action which is a SNIPER.
However when you look into the structure of progression for the SMG area, it's a steady increase in power, bullet capacity and range. The custom could be described as a pea shooter at end game, the thompson is a slightly upped version of the custom and the MP5 is more powerful version of the others however they all share the same properties, with the added range as they go up.
When you look at the rifles it's a very radically changing progression upwards, with the semi automatic rifle being semi automatic, and is the only gun before jumping the gap towards an automatic weapon such as the assault rifle which is what people want, and the LR just seems to be a military variant of the AK but less useful and less powerful which is odd.
When comparing the two, the rifles seem very inconstant when it comes to there viability going upwards and that's why the assault rifle is favoured.
Fix
In order to fix that there needs to be more guns in the rifle area instead of using the python, which is a pistol as a gap before reaching the semi rifle. Perhaps a gun should also connect the gap between the semi rifle and the assault rifle so it isn't immediately preferred and such a high priority.