What I don't get...

[Ryllharu]

I mentioned that I don't find it to be a legitimate complaint to begin with.

It doesn't "limit" players in any way. It just means that they suddenly have to think about what they're doing in an FPS, and this is probably the real reason they're complaining. I get the feeling that some people dislike that they can't just run a weapon down to empty then switch to the next and so on.

Their side of the argument frequently is that the developers use this tactic because, "they don't trust players to be able to handle more than two weapons at a time" and follow it up by saying that there's all sorts of ammo scattered around, but not the type for my chosen weapons. They call the developers "lazy" or accuse them of poor level design.

...that's kind of the whole point of scattering around the "wrong" type of ammo. To force you to switch, or make the decision whether it is worth it to keep your preferred weapons. They're distinctly not treating players like idiots. They have an expectation that the players are intelligent enough to make decisions under pressure.

If they were really lazy, there wouldn't be ammo strewn about to begin with. There would either be no reloading at all, or infinite reserve ammo.

There are plenty of run and gun FPS games out there. They have their own place, but not every game needs to be the same.

edit:
Clarification: None of this post (or the initial one) refers directly to anyone on this forum.

[Splash!]

It doesn't "limit" players in any way. It just means that they suddenly have to think about what they're doing in an FPS, and this is probably the real reason they're complaining. I get the feeling that some people dislike that they can't just run a weapon down to empty then switch to the next and so on.

Their side of the argument frequently is that the developers use this tactic because, "they don't trust players to be able to handle more than two weapons at a time" and follow it up by saying that there's all sorts of ammo scattered around, but not the type for my chosen weapons. They call the developers "lazy" or accuse them of poor level design.

...that's kind of the whole point of scattering around the "wrong" type of ammo. To force you to switch, or make the decision whether it is worth it to keep your preferred weapons. They're distinctly not treating players like idiots. They have an expectation that the players are intelligent enough to make decisions under pressure.

If they were really lazy, there wouldn't be ammo strewn about to begin with. There would either be no reloading at all, or infinite reserve ammo.

I have never found lack of ammo to be much of an issue for modern FPS single player campaigns. If anything, there is usually more ammo lying around than in older games. Also, I am not sure how forcing players to use a particular weapon in certain areas makes them actually think about what they are doing. As you pointed out, it is made blatantly obvious to players by scattering ammo of a specific type. I don't think the designers actually want players to think about the pros and cons of sticking with their preferred weapon. More like they want to encourage players to switch as much as possible without having to automatically reset their inventories at checkpoints (which would be quite bizarre).

Again, I am hard pressed to find any valid arguments for why severely limiting the amount of guns one can carry is actually 'better'. It is just different, and in cases where combat realism is desired above all else, it would be more appropriate. But that isn't always the case.

Also, I would like to point out that shying away from design complexity (when possible) isn't the same thing as laziness, but I don't really want to get into that discussion.