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.

CCP should also at least try to incorporate SOME kind of matchmaking. Many times I've been put on a team with fresh-out-of-academy scrubs, and with Proto-stomping, q-syncing, gankers.

I really dont see any problem with scouts, there should be stealthy its their role. I one shot most scouts with a Bolt.
My biggest problem is modded controllers and the whole strafing crap, its one thing to move around as a skill its another to move in such a way that bullets or pellets or projectiles or rails dont register hits. Thats why I dont use rifles, gun fights are pointless.
Everyone is stacking a bootload of eHP and thats not my style, even if I land more shots most wont register so my Combat Rifle skills feel rather useless.

Bolt and Scrambler pistol for me
Nova Knives and flaylock

The other weapons are rather useless
I personally not really mind the strafing, I can live with it, I just need to learn to use head shots
But the modded controllers are a problem, I have seen scouts go head to head with a 1000eHP heavy with a rifle and won in less than 2 seconds even before warlord

Maybe a tier system based on your wins/losses or wp points

I have heard that one of the reasons that CCP wanted to move Dust to PC in the form of Legion is because of this modded controller problem.

Lawl, has absolutely nothing to do with the 200 dmg/shot bolt pistols, insanely high alpha of Scrambler Rifle's, Shotguns, Nova Knives... Extremely high DPS of the HMG... Nothing to do with things like cloaking devices, EWAR, and 25% splash resistances to Sentinels who receive a healthy 15% resistance toward racial weaponry while toting around a 600+ DPS death mini-gun that gains accuracy as you shoot it.

Nope. Not a thing to do with that. All Aim Assist.

Come on guys, seriously..? The Aim Assist thing is a red herring, it's a symptom to a larger disease that's plagued the overall game for a long time now. Even with the Aim Assist there are ways of increasing TTK and making gun-game more skill based.

Aim assist negates strafing, dispersion, and human error.

It turns the theoretical DPS of a hit-scan weapon into nearly guaranteed DPS.

Yes, I do agree that the high-alpha weapons are a pain point, but AA turns almost every rifle into a "Burst Alpha" weapon, and that contributes greatly to the low TTK. If AA stays in the game, every aim assisted weapon would need a humongous nerf(think at least 30%), which would cause a huge cascade of rebalancing. And then if Dust/Legion comes out on PC, AA will have to be removed regardless, and now you'd need another re-balance.

Better to rip the bandaid off now.

The more troubling issue is that somewhere within CCP's organization low TTK is the intended goal(which is reflected in the points you brought up), and I don't know what will convince them that they are ruining Dust with their gank oriented gameplay.

Honestly, I think it would be better to get nerf the damage on weapons instead of AA.

It's supposed to be pro player vs pro player = strafing = longer fights, but most people are either getting ganked or simply outstrafed/outperformed by gear.

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.

Leave weapon damage as is

Remove Aim Assist

Remove Strafing

Encourage tactics other than running here and there chasing kills because "I'm elite".

My personal beef is with "smart deploy" in ambush placing me in front of the enemy (no beacons on the map) and dying before I can finish turning around to face them (it spawned me in a cargo container both sides covered by reds).

At least I am no longer loading into a game as it ends.

Remove.... strafing?

Aim assist negates strafing, dispersion, and human error.

It turns the theoretical DPS of a hit-scan weapon into nearly guaranteed DPS.

Yes, I do agree that the high-alpha weapons are a pain point, but AA turns almost every rifle into a "Burst Alpha" weapon, and that contributes greatly to the low TTK. If AA stays in the game, every aim assisted weapon would need a humongous nerf(think at least 30%), which would cause a huge cascade of rebalancing. And then if Dust/Legion comes out on PC, AA will have to be removed regardless, and now you'd need another re-balance.

Better to rip the bandaid off now.

The more troubling issue is that somewhere within CCP's organization low TTK is the intended goal(which is reflected in the points you brought up), and I don't know what will convince them that they are ruining Dust with their gank oriented gameplay.

AA is only part of it (though a large part in a manner of speaking).

The problem with removing it is that the post-uprising engine has always kinda sucked. The AA and hit-prediction they have in place now was their way of working around the latency, framerate issues, and generally wonky mechanics we inherited post-chromosome. It was the easier way to "fix" things as opposed to reworking the engine, and I don't think the Dust team has engine programmers anymore?

I don't think they can realistically remove AA unless they: make a new engine, rework this one a lot, or roll back to Chromosome. The problem with most of the options is that Legion is still very question marky and not spoken of, and Dust's future is also pretty hazy considering the last official word from corporate was "Dust is canned." I'm not sure if their skeleton crew is equipped to do the sort of adjustments the game would require without AA.

However, I agree with you about the apparent goal of lower TTK. There seems to be a push towards that sort of mainstreaming with their current content.

Unfortunately, considering Dust's relative lack of success, it seems problematic to persuade them to be less mainstream given they probably want "as many players and as much income as possible." It's the same mistake companies like EA make when they try to make X game a game for everyone instead of excelling in a particular area or filling an under-served niche. It's not always clear why a game failed, and there's always a hundred voices to give you a hundred different explanations, even here.

the game for me since last year has been get as much wp as humanly possible a match, which i do if you check out my leaderboard wp. it isn't as fun as it used to be. i think cloaked scouts fuked this whole game up.

And why, exactly, is having a reasonable TTK bad for this game?

CoD TTK in a game where all your assets cost money you have to earn or else you'll be down to suits which get instagib'd instantly (instantly twice? Yes im aware, i just needa put a lil "EMPH" in it). Then it's just constant death and failure.

No human want's constant failure, especially if it destroys your ability to compete.