[...] if it's so damn commonplace and inevitable why didn't we just make 2 tiers? Proto and Officer : Purchase & Salvage.


TLDR:
Seriously flawed system of ranking. More competition and fun is wrung out of proto use so really proto should've been the norm. Jussayin'.

Can't say I understand your point.

But there'd a disconnection here between some players. Because there's people like me - who don't care for this lobby shooter, that wants Skirm 1.0 back, for PC to be main focus of this game along side FW, and allow the hard-core community to thrive while letting casuals enjoy the lobby shooter aspect that we have now.

And for those people like me - we enjoy the meta of the weapons and gears. You brought that stuff into the battle with a purpose and a reason, you spent that ISK to accomplish something. It adds to the game seeing the level of gear people will go to to get something done.

Then there's players who have given up on this game, or maybe never had faith in a real game to begin with. Players who are satisfied with a lobby shooter experience and just want that improved - those players would be in favor of a tiercide system, regardless that it keep top players on top still.

So I'm basically for how CCP has done the meta set-up for weapons/gear. Removing it for a standardized set stats for equal play would take away the few things left that still make Dust an EvE game.