For Stalker all weapons need better models. LR300 needs a model with the rhombus on top made a semicircle. Faster reloading, also related to stamina, stamina depleted and reload slower, reloading with less stamina otherwise risking a fuckup, not a smooth reload.
Different weapon properties having massive tradeoffs:
AKs
+don't jam, fast to maintain
-Heavier, recoil
ZM LR300
+Lightweight, precise, controllable recoil, fast fire rate
-Jams, long time to maintain, easily damaged
G53
+Not in game
-Was in game before being removed
Stalker doesn't have much gunplay. No endless wave gameplay. Should on objectives.
Otherwise weapon stats and the physical fitness focus determining play style.
Run around with a nonAK making precise shots.
Or swim around with an AK and shot at things that might be there, no time to check. Carrying a lot of ammo and moving slowly. Crawling over mudbanks etc. Weapon washed off in water to clean it if that. It getting about as much cleaning as you.
Stats evident by weapon performance.
Carrying more weight or more than 1 gun making more sound and deeper tracks, more foilage snapped as well. Less endurance.
AK used when conditions are bad or it will get dirty, LR when sniping and nimble, dropping the rest.
Game should play more like Ghost Recon though.
Make most maintenance and gameplay around survival. Around food and water. Even in setting up a camp and defending it, raising it. Step by step the camp becoming viable. Same for abbandoned areas, return them to livable. A higher sense of danger as they are venreble.
Keep that venrebility possible. Perks from that in better/worse sleep, could be a situational adaptation, you get more bonuses specific to the area the longer you are in it or by what you do.
Stop a town getting taxed and will get perks from sleeping in a bed etc, an the perks will increase with time. And vice versa. But perks for comfort always far higher, for the cost of more time required to do things. Sleeping close to objective may be tension filled, but saving time and being used to that. Or no perks.
Maintenance and activities that endow with perks like side quests, grind char to be stronger, but decrease action into objective.