First reaction was "oh god what have they done!!"
But actually it's really good. I think it works very well indeed. As predicted, AKs and M4s are really expensive, galils and stuff are cheap and become the norm. Only the leet players buy things like autosnipers. Makes the game a little bit more exciting, instead of seeing crowds of ts with AKs and teams of cts with their M4s.
Good stuff valve.