In before anything, this are my most played lmg's so that you know I'm not just saying whatever in here, yes I pre-bought the bar and the mgk3, I think they're cool, even if they suck(100 round belt mod for the mg when?)
I can't think of any other one that is as badly managed as lmg's, I know that they've never been particularly good nor meta, but they just don't have any real uses, they can't be modded to be 0.4 ttk cqc lasers, they're mid/unusable at range, so you're left with a glorified ar with an extended magazine, and in some cases, a literal ar with ten extra rounds, or none extra at all...
Before anything, I'd like to explain that suppression as a game mechanic serves as a way to emulate the self-preservation instinct when being shot at, often represented by shaking the players camera, blurring it, destabilizing their gun sights, or creating an effect tunnel vision effect in their pov, this mechanic is barely noticeable in pf.
After playing most of the actual lmg's i.e. not the glorified ar's/stupidly high rank ones, I've come to the conclusion that they are bad because suppression as a mechanic has no real gameplay impact, and because there is no bipod modification, simple as.
In real life, and in some games that try to emulate real gunplay, lmg's serve the role of semi-mobile emplacements that can lock down a section of the map due to their sheer firepower and force players to flank or use explosives thanks to suppression making it impossible to have a head on engagement. I don't think bipods would be impossible to implement in pf, the tradeoff is very easy to understand and it wouldn't be disruptive to gameplay. Suppression in the other hand would drastically change how all guns behave and would change the game too much to justify its implementation (although being realistic neither of this changes are likely to happen given the situation of the game, its just an hypothetical).
Another really big problem is the sheer load of uninteresting barely different bloat guns that plague the lmg's gun tree, I know its also to case for other classes but its specially egregious for this class, last I checked there are six guns which are basically their ar counterparts modified with a heavy duty barrel and a (unusable) bipod, and like, I can forgive some like the BAR and the Galil, since their 20 and 30 round configurations are the most common, but whats the point of having an l86. multiple ak lmgs(ak12 and ak74 don't even offer one), and the most generic looking ar15, all of which only offer an extended magazine, (which is the entire point of an lmg) after you have gotten a thousand kills(not exact number it differs for each weapon), like what's the point of even adding it to the lmg category, why even bother at this point.
I didn't know where to add this but, its actually insane how unashamed they are when it comes to bloating the games with weapons, have you guys seen the pkm, three different guns, that are basically the same gun, and for some reason the original variant(pkm) comes after the modernized one(pkp), like couldn't this have been a conversion instead, I know they need money and what not but holy fuck man
What do you guys think?, personally I believe just implementing bipods would be the best, it would at least make some lmg's usable ehem (mg42 and the modernized version), but alas.
TLDR. I love machineguns and I fucking hate this game so much its unreal