The ergos are clunky, without a doubt. But, from the standpoint of the era in which it was designed and produced, it hardly matters. The most important factors for an infantry rifle are reliability, life cycle maintenance costs, and ease of mass production.
That said, I don't get what the HK fanboys of the 1990s were going on about without how everything from Heckler und Koch is so slick and sophisticated. The G3, and all of its derivatives, are stamped-steel service weapons designed to be simple to manufacture and use. They're not the pinnacle of firearms technology.
You really don't see a lot of HK fanboys these days, though. (The limited availability and high cost of HK guns is the most likely culprit.) They've been supplanted in droves by AR fanboys. The AR has had the benefit, though, of a couple decades of aftermarket development and envelop-pushing redesign, which is what allowed it to evolve. I think the roller-locked system could have similarly benefited, had it been given the same amount of intellectual and engineering investment. (Almost any design, really.)
But the G3 got replaced with the G36, a glorified AR-18 with too much plastic where there ought to be metal. But hey, they only melt if you use them, like, a
lot.
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