I am so late to this party, I know, but I wound up giving up on this game pretty early after launch. I was recently watching some videos discussing it's development and it got me sucked down a rabbit hole when it mentioned how the level 1 defender rifle was the best weapon in the game at one point. I remembered reading this at the time but couldn't even start to wrap my head around it f the damage numbers were higher on better weapons but despite them being higher the lower damage number weapons took less bullets to kill? I apologize for rezzing the dead horse only to beat it to death again, but my curiosity won't allow me to let this one go. So please, can someone help satisfy my curiosity and explain how this was possible? Did damage numbers actually have no reflection on damage done to actual enemy HP?

I'm sure all of this is fixed and this point and the game's in a much better state now, I'm not making any comment about the current quality of the game, just my personal curiosity about how the game systems worked back at launch.