I have looked at few lists and read some reports about the weapons in the game. It seems that there are only a handful of weapons that are worth using and that is a shame. While it is true that a rapier is a more effective weapon than a spoon, it is FUN to imagine that a character with a high proficiency in wielding spoons could be quite deadly.
A person with murderous intent can kill with their bare hands and most creatures are more fragile than we would prefer so the real distinction between weapons may not necessarily be a 1 vs a 30, but rather dead vs deader.
If you will entertain this idea, I suspect we can come up with a mechanic that is satisfying for a lot of people. I don’t know the full mechanic which is used in the game currently, but some of the variables seem to be weapon damage, character skill, one/two hands, weapon reach, attack speed, damage type, parrying, and target defenses.
A starting point may be to base weapon damage on the character’s proficiency with the weapon. D&D has classified lists of weapons which are similar and classifications like that could be used rather than specific proficiency in specific items. Something like a rifle with a buttstock and a bayonette might be classified as a piercing weapon at range when fired, and in close proximity it could still be fired, but it could also become a melee weapon which does either bashing, slashing, or piercing damage. If I understand it, some weapons have special attacks that are used randomly and this would be no different, as the character would randomly use one of the possible attack modes. Some weapons are currently programmed to inflict multiple types of damage. That’s cool, and a suggested way to keep that feature would be to ensure that the sum of all damage type scores equals 1 (100%) and to use each score as a multiple of the damage inflicted. As a consequence, if the character’s proficiency in short spears indicates that they will deal 100 damage and their rifle with a bayonette has an attack mode that does 80% piercing and 20% slashing then the damage would potentially be 80 points of piercing and 20 points of slashing. The defender would potentially reduce that damage with their skills and armor. A variant attack mode with the same rifle might be 100% bashing, or it could be 98% bashing and 2% cutting because combat is messy.
Each attack mode would have a defined reach. Weapons could also have one and two handed attack modes. If one hand is occupied with a ladder, a steering wheel, or a shield then the two handed modes would be disabled. If both hands are free, then the two handed modes might be used 75% of the time because they would generally be preferable. Two handed attacks might generally provide better reach and less chance of fumbling. Wielding two weapons might cut the rate of attacks for both by half. In that way a shield, which is also a bashing weapon, would get used about half of the time What’s the advantage? In addition to bash, slash, and pierce I think a portion of each weapon’s attributes should be allotted to parry. A shield might have 20% bash and 80% parry so a character utilizing a shield would get 80% parry 50% of the time and the quality of that parry would be determined by the characters skill with shields.
In the spoon vs sword scenario, the sword should have an upper hand. With some creative license we can imagine that blocking competes with dodging and that leverage is negated by finesse so all weapons are equal, but that’s a hard story to sell. Bigger weapons are better at blocking up to a point an then they are better at keeping the opponent at a distance. We already accounted for this by adding a parry attribute to every weapon and because some weapons have better range. It’s not realistic. Small weapons might be faster, but large weapons are not actually slow. A two handed axe can even be wielded in one hand. So here I have come full circle. If we give the better weapons a buff or the improvised weapons a penalty then players will be incentivized to ignore the lesser weapons. I don’t think that it is necessary or good. It’s a game. Most players will prefer the better weapons because they know they are better weapons. NPCs could likewise choose weapons because they see a hidden weaponness score that might be the old damage score. That decision should be random, but it would be weighted by their existing skills and the weaponness of the available weapons so they would generally choose the better real world weapon even though with enough practice that choice would not actually matter. If the player’s swordsman dies because an NPC bests them with a spoon, that’s actually funny.
It would only be a problem if it happened at a stupidly high rate.