That is nice input to think about! I will definitely incorporate some of this into the game.
The laser pistol was supposed to be weak and a little bit clunky, since I already added another weapon. You can try it out in arena mode. Just switch the weapons.
I wanted to give the player the typical doom/quake weaponry like pistol, rifle, shotgun and rocket launcher. And also tie this to certain gating mechanisms like shielded doors which require different weapons to open up, but I haven't found the time to implement that. So I just added the pistol to the campaign.