Pretty sure most of the people here have played different shooters before and pretty much all of them have some equivalent to the M4 and the AK's. Generally in other shooters you have the AK with less fire rate, higher recoil but also higher damage while the M4 is suited with less recoil, higher fire rate but less damage.
Now… I'm not expert in weapons at all but given that the AK caliber (5.45) is smaller than 5.56 it seems logical to me that this caliber is generally less potent than 5.56.
My issue here now is that AK's are pretty much worse in every aspect than 5.56 weapons from the get-go and even in terms of meta-builds they are worse. 5.45 weapons generally aren't bad weapons it is just that they are generally outshined ( Even with meta builds ) by 5.56 weapons. The caliber is generally equipped with better pen and damage, 5.45 just has a bit of a smoother progression there because more ammo is available but the kinda rude part is that the bigger AND stronger caliber comes with weapons that have less actual recoil than the small caliber.
I feel like this wouldn't even necessarily be a too big issue, mainly because the time to kill should be roughly the same, if it wouldn't be for the fact that the M4/HK416 are guns with a way higher RPM ON TOP of having LESS recoil than their smaller caliber counterparts which makes the time to kill way lower.
These 2 guns are just straight up outshining AK's in pretty much every aspect. Recoil, mods, ammo, RPM, even the freaking bullet velocity.
It's not wonder that 5.56 specifically the M4 is basically the go to meta weapon as soon as we hit mid-wipe if this gun alone is the reason why at least half of the weapon cast in Tarkov is beaten by this gun alone. If it AT LEAST would have worse recoil than the smaller AND slower firing calibers I actually think it would cause some variation but like this it is literally a no-brainer to run an M4 over any 5.45 weapon.
