Hmm... first of all, I don't necessarily agree that fewer weapons is better. I *do* agree that the controls need to be much easier that is a major design consideration. The UI improvements in D3/Q4 will go a long way towards making things easier. There will be no binds for reloading, repairing, and upgrading the sentry for instance. There will be a UI for doing these tasks on the sentry itself and a player just has to walk up to it and click the UI. Things like this eliminate the need for huge class configs.
My design calls for one set of key binds for all classes. The idea of class specific configs is old and needs to be buried. With the invention of voice over IP for teams to communicate the need for super complex text binds are gone. That alone was a huge hurdle for new players joining the mod.
As for positioning... we will never beat mods like Rocket Arena or OSP to launch. It is just physically impossible. Their mod is such that they make very few changes to the basic gameplay... they just add convenience features and improvements. TCs like WF change EVERYTHING. We have to rebuilt most game functions from the ground up to support what we do.
My goal this time around is to have fun making something other people will enjoy. I learned a lot from WFA and one lesson I learned well is not to engage in discussion about the game directly with players too often. That is why you haven't heard too much about WFR from me yet and probably won't. Someone else will do the talking and I'll just keep tabs on the discussion. That way the discussion stays focused on the ideas and not on flaming me personally because the kiddies feel like they can hide behind the intarweb and be a badass in front of their friends.