if i had to buy an 16, id buy KWA without any hesitation. so for what its worth, thats my vote.

my friend had a kwa m4, and it was amazing until he tried upgrading it. anyways i still really like kwas tho

Honestly if youre gonna put tons of upgrades into the gun just get a clone because most of the bodies are pretty decent then that way you dont shell out cash for stuff youre gonna end up changing

So my suggestions are to look into ics, tm, g&g probably as well if you want a better platform to upgrade. The main advantages to those are that you get a nice quality external body, good hop up and pretty good internals. There isn't much left to buy other than get a tightbore and new spring. The other parts aren't mandatory even though every little thing will boost performance. If you're not looking to do any work on it, a kwa may give one of the best stock performances, plus it's relatively high fps is nice to have for outdoor games. Otherwise kwa guns run pretty well for just throwing a lipo in them.

If your budget is limited to 500 you may need a cheaper platform but then it would probably be a good idea to get a new v2 gearbox shell to put in it as well. It's not really any absolute advice, I'd just look for they style of gun youlike, then compare the available brands/prices.
If your budget is more than the cost of a high end stock gun you'll probably have to do the upgrading yourself. Even some companies like tas that sell the "ajax" line I wouldn't trust. For the parts they put into the guns, they must measure their ranges using milimeters rather than feet or something. Imo it's a bunch of bs.

As for 'revolutionary' ideas, as a customer it's more economical to allow other people to be the pawns and purchase new revolutionary designs. That way if it's ever a big hit, you'll be joining the trend on the 2nd or 3rd release which will probably have most of the bugs worked out. That way you're not stuck with an expensive and flawed alpha design haha. Though for now there's not anything other than a standard aeg that can really match up for near the same price. I also don't like the quick spring change design idea for any gearbox. It's really just another way to weaken the gearbox because they use a uniform casting of pot metal for all the parts. Also ares guns are pretty bad. They just sell a few unique guns. If you want good performance and anything near reliable you'll have to replace almost everything internally.

i assumed this was an issue with the hopup components i had installed and the higher than average fps. btw i was running a king arms hopup metal unit with i believe a systema bucking and a plastic hnub.

i put a standard nub back in in place of the hnub because, well, it flexes more and seems like it would jam less....

it now works with both weights of bbs.. BUT the bucking is pushing down too much, so when the hop is off, it is actually the perfect amount for .28s, but too high for .25s....

this leads me to the questioning of hnubs being practical, or not... the accuracy seemed to have had no noticable difference when i switched back to the normal one.. and it just seems better for jamming purposes to use a more flexible nub rather than the hard plastic.

does anyone have a favorite or preferred hop up setup they could share? im thinking maybe i could shave down the middle of the bucking bump, so the hopup has 2 points of pressure, like the hnub was designed to do, but still have the flexibility of the standard rubber nub

Some of the standard buckings that are alright are prometheus, madbull and systema. I've never tried firefly. Kwa buckings are really good but if I recall, they are very thin and don't work with most hop ups. The entire process is mainly trial and error.

As for the h/x/fishbone,/shs nubs I've had 0 success with any of them. I tried various combos with different buckings in both my ak and mp5. The mp5 is a pain because you have to take it apart down to the last screw pretty much to get to the hop up. Anyhow, all they ever did for me after hours and hours of adjustments was add fliers and screw up my already good groupings. I tried using a bucking with and without the nub as well. However if you take off the nub, you lose a lot of the sensitivity and you may need to make a small extension on the hop up arm to compensate.
However, I'm also very picky about which standard 'noodle' nub that I use as well. I don't take the short or thin ones, it can't collapse easy and I clip off any of the flash around the outsides to make it as consistant as possible. I'm in the process of making my own solid core nubs so they'll have the flex of a silicone nub but they won't collapse over time. No idea how it will work though but I figure I'll give it a try.