Please read the entirety of this and try to understand where I'm coming from before responding critically.

It feels, to me, like all the good gunfights are gone in favor of gimmicky game mechanics. It feels as though I'm always getting killed by cloaky/prof damped scout predator kills or high EHP, resistanced heavies with offensively high DPS HMGs that I'd never win against. Missile Pythons which can two/three shot just about anything that you have to have a specific AV fit for, which puts you at an extreme disadvantage to the aforementioned. That's just a few.

I never feel like I fought hard and died trying in a firefight anymore. I feel like I got ganked - cheated - I feel like I was boned the minute I hit 'x' to deploy. That I was doomed to lose ISK and spend the next thirty seconds respawning; that the deaths just don't feel genuine anymore, they feel cheap.

I want to enjoy the gameplay but it has been getting more frustrating with every update ever since Uprising 1.5, at least for me. Chromosome had it's faults but I genuine miss the high TTK firefights where you had to stand toe-to-toe with your enemy and player skill decided the outcome more than equipment. The TTK feels like it's getting lower, with every build. I get this impression that for every step we take forward in Dust 514, we take four more steps backward in the overall combat. Things seem more balanced but for some reason it just doesn't feel... quite right. To put it simply, I really just miss not rolling my eyes and thinking, "Oh, another one of -THOSE-" whenever I die. I miss legitimate gun fights between rifles and I don't know how to find that enjoyment again.

Anyway, just thought I'd express that to get it off my chest as objectively as possible. Feel free to respond however you like.

I have to agree somewhat, all the new content is cool, but I rarely get into good fights these days. It's usually getting ganked, or ganking someone in a sort of cyclical rock paper scissors where the loser is simy the person with the wrong fit for the job. See someone running av? Gank. Am I running Av? Ganked. Mlt fit player? Gank. Proto fit player? Ganked. Some matches I find myself in a roulette wheel of spawns where I just brought the wrong fit and I pay for it, only to spawn in the fit I should've had, and paying for it because that part of the fight is over.

I really wish we'd achieve true balance and just do away with the power leveled gear all together, honestly. That's another one of those things I genuinely hate. The feeling that, because I don't want to just shell out millions of ISK a day that I can't be -as- competitive as someone who joined at the same time or later than I did. That I have to run low-tiered gear if I want to keep ISK stability and suffer through my gameplay experience because of that.

And yanno, as much as I personally complain about BPO's ruining the 'economy' and all.. I start to realize that my issue isn't with the BPO's so much as the fact that BPO's are a thing to stim the losses from constantly getting your *** handed to you by guys who -can- afford to permanently run the high tier stuff. Which isn't their fault, they're just doing the smart thing and playing within the game rules to the greatest advantage they're allowed... but it certainly doesn't do the gameplay much justice as a whole.

I can't help but wonder what is actually achieved from this power-level gimmick at all. It doesn't offer any meaningful progression, you don't see forum threads of new guys saying, "Gosh, I sure can't wait until I can run that and be as powerful as them".

Chromosome had it's faults but I genuine miss the high TTK firefights where you had to stand toe-to-toe with your enemy and player skill decided the outcome more than equipment. The TTK feels like it's getting lower, with every build. I get this impression that for every step we take forward in Dust 514, we take four more steps backward in the overall combat. Things seem more balanced but for some reason it just doesn't feel... quite right. To put it simply, I really just miss not rolling my eyes and thinking, "Oh, another one of -THOSE-" whenever I die. I miss legitimate gun fights between rifles and I don't know how to find that enjoyment again.

What see see pee needs to do is take all the money from anyone involved with the district farmi-nyainsan-ng and punish them

Okay because I'm an idiot, what does TTK stand for?

Time-to-Kill.

Lower means it takes less time to kill someone, higher means it takes more time. Chromosome had a very high TTK where as lately we have a very low TTK from certain weapons.

Okay because I'm an idiot, what does TTK stand for?

Also, since I skipped out on Dust for like 6 months, I have no idea what Chromosome is, was it the name of the updates before Uprising?

Please read the entirety of this and try to understand where I'm coming from before responding critically.

It feels, to me, like all the good gunfights are gone in favor of gimmicky game mechanics. It feels as though I'm always getting killed by cloaky/prof damped scout predator kills or high EHP, resistanced heavies with offensively high DPS HMGs that I'd never win against. Missile Pythons which can two/three shot just about anything that you have to have a specific AV fit for, which puts you at an extreme disadvantage to the aforementioned. That's just a few.

I never feel like I fought hard and died trying in a firefight anymore. I feel like I got ganked - cheated - I feel like I was boned the minute I hit 'x' to deploy. That I was doomed to lose ISK and spend the next thirty seconds respawning; that the deaths just don't feel genuine anymore, they feel cheap.

I want to enjoy the gameplay but it has been getting more frustrating with every update ever since Uprising 1.5, at least for me. Chromosome had it's faults but I genuine miss the high TTK firefights where you had to stand toe-to-toe with your enemy and player skill decided the outcome more than equipment. The TTK feels like it's getting lower, with every build. I get this impression that for every step we take forward in Dust 514, we take four more steps backward in the overall combat. Things seem more balanced but for some reason it just doesn't feel... quite right. To put it simply, I really just miss not rolling my eyes and thinking, "Oh, another one of -THOSE-" whenever I die. I miss legitimate gun fights between rifles and I don't know how to find that enjoyment again.

Anyway, just thought I'd express that to get it off my chest as objectively as possible. Feel free to respond however you like.

Correct. The update people were playing before Dust officially "launched" or ended the "beta", was Chromosome. The new build after that was "Uprising". Chromosome wasn't the first build either.

Awesome, thanks. I'm kind've bummed out about missing half of Dust history, but I came back like a year ago, and I haven't discovered the forums until a couple months ago.

S'all gravy. Basically, everything was different in Chromosome - apart from us just having hope back then (hard pressed for that now, lawl).

I suggest looking up some closed beta videos and seeing what it was like back then. There were a lot of faults (Sharpshooter skill applied to all light weapons and allowed for 100m optimal range ARs, for instance) but it was probably some of the best tactical shooter gameplay I've ever seen. Somewhere along the line, however, we went from tactical to twitch.

Dust 514 needs to live up to the name "tactical shooter", it's nowhere close to the twitch shooting of COD but it's going in that direction. I believe maybe buffing the ehp of suits slightly might help? But this is just contemplating.

I doubt it'd happen. According to rumor there's consideration toward nerfing the HP values of armor plates across the board, which would further reduce TTK.

EDIT: another thing you have to remember is that CCP does not state, anywhere, what Dust 514 is supposed to be. No-one legitimately knows what they're going for. Tactical/Twitch, FPS/MMO, etc. We really have no idea other then the fact that CCP Rattati keeps hinting at features that are more closely aligned to other shooters, so the theory is that Dust 514 is slowly becoming a twitch shooter in order to cater to familiarity among the community.

Which, honestly, I think is what is causing Dust 514 to lose it's uniqueness. Perfect balance insinuates that all weapons do the same DPS - but at that point, what is the incentive to have use any of them? We need perfect imbalances. Things like the ASCR which is difficult to punch through armor, for instance. Things for people to specialize in that isn't revolving around the highest DPS or highest Alpha Damage.

Well, I'm sure the flat 5% weapon damage bonus without stacking penalties from the Warbarge will help matters. Experimental weapons too...