Do some of you forget not everyone has proto gear? I've been playing for 2 months and have 5mil lifetime SP. Starting out, there was nothing ingame that helped me understand what to skill in. Just that certain things were locked until I got that skill up.

Naturally I went for different weapons because I tried the militia versions and thought it'd be nice to have a range of weapons to choose from. Then I discovered the benefits of certain suits and weapons combined. But I had already spent my starting SP and a few weeks worth of grinding on pretty useless skills.

I still don't have a protosuit. I barely have any complex mods. Skilling up the necessary dropsuit modules to fit more advanced equipment and weapons has set me back. I'm only level 3 in GalAssault and it's going to take almost 2mil more SP to unlock proto assault.

Playing against you officer gear/proto geared players sucks. I've got decent gun game and understanding of how to get WP while helping the team, but 9/10 times I will lose toe to toe against proto. And to compound the issue, the protostomps result in the noobs gaining next to nothing for SP and probably going isk negative. Then you guys tell them to git gud or just "run better kit"? Seriously asinine.

It doesn't even feel fair when I'm not missing shots and I get the drop on someone only for them to hop, spin and then near instant kill me. My most stacked assault suit has around 550ahp and 150shp and most proto/officer weapons with stacked damage mods and all the other bonuses from having more tertiary skills leveled makes the TTK damn near instant.

I am not afraid of dying, but I can't even use proto yet. So do I count as someone "playing their way" and forcing you to use officer/proto gear to carry?

I think the issue is proto/officer gear has such a large disparity in performance from std. or adv. gear, new players get steamrolled because we literally CANNOT equip the same level of gear as you guys. Yet you insist on using this gear against noobs and then complain about people not playing how you want them to?

There is no magic formula to go 20/0 you're right. It's a basic formula called stack gear that gives you an evident performance advantage over any player that does not have the same level gear... Proto should fight proto only.

Why do most level based games separate low level and high level players in PvP? Because they are so powerful stat wise (whether from gear or level) it's not fair to have them fight against the lower characters. Why do you feel this same situation doesn't warrant power segregation?

I used to call for bigger payouts, but it's not necessary anymore.

You can get insanely wealthy in Dust now without a ton of effort. I run proto and officer 24/7 and add at least 100 mil in wealth each month. People just don't like fighting. It's a behavior that scares me about mankind. How big of a fagina do you have to be to fear dying in a video game? It's completely absurd when you consider these people chose to play a FPS.

I think Dust tapped into some flawed gene in People. Like the third nipple gene.

All of my APEX suits, unmodified, have a Meta Level higher than 28. My APEX 'Spartan' Assault has a Meta Level of 43.

Not being able to use my APEX suits would be ********. A 28 Meta Level is ridiculously low. I would rather pubs be limited to APEX, Advanced, and Standard gear (Militia gear is trash and should be removed to save memory).

Proto and Officer gear can be used in Factional Warfare and PC.

You've been playing for months and have nothing to proto? I doubt that. And I don't run full proto although I can afford it, because I'm not my teams babysitter, I shouldn't have to run a 230k suit because my team rums starter/milita. The same goes for them tho, if I run adv should someone else have to run officer/proto? No.

I ran logi almost exclusively for a year and a half my k/d will never be "good", but I got tired of making everyone else look good while I ran proto reps/needle/links and was weak as hell. I also made very little due to the cost of equipment.

Now I am extremely versatile even if I'm not the best at any ( except logi ) this I why I do well. Teamwork is way more powerful than just good gear. Meta locks will do very little to stop good squads from stomping. Remove squads from pubs and you will get better results due to little communication and no squad stratagems.

I stated 2 months, that's actually an over statement. I've been playing for just about 45 days. And I have AR to level 5, as of yesterday. That's it, which I can barely use because of the pg/cpu requirements.

Make a new toon and start over, it's not some easy grind that you make it out to be. Especially when proto stomping and redlining noobs is so popular these days.

The reason I think this game can't be balanced is Corp pay and organized squads.

Corp pay ( for large corps making billions per week ) makes running pro/officer gear 24/7 easy, especially after trading was introduced.

Organized squads ( especially in pubs ) have a huge advantage vs randoms. Even if the other people are equally skilled the squad will be communicating, share passive scans, and score more wp ( throw in a couple warbarge strikes ) equaling better pay, furthering there ability to always run the best gear furthering the gap.

But if you remove Corp money making, squads from pubs, and reset wallets to zero half the players would quit overnight.

You get 100 mil every month? Teach me how!

As low as you think 28 is, have you seen what people have managed to do with it?

Actually made new toons to get extra death shroud's from the last event ( got 4 extra ) managed to get first place dozens of times even with limited abilities. It takes time to understand how this game works and how to counter things.

After 45 days you barely even understand the game even with help. You should have been around when the sp cap was about 175000 sp a week, you couldn't instant boost, you only got one active/passive booster, no extra isk and sp from daily missions and facing 12 guys from the same Corp in a pub was common ( not to mention no matchmaking levels at all ). Even hitting cap every week I took me 6-8 months to have 1 proto suit and a maxed weapon. It can now be achieved in 1 month. Don't complain about grinding to me.

You don't understand. The unmodified APEX Suits that people either grinded for or paid for have meta levels higher than 28. People with APEX suits would not be able to use them unless they play FW or PC which would end up being a really bad idea to do because everyone will be running Proto/Officer Gear in those game modes.

I don't care what anybody can do with a 28 meta level suit. If you want a Meta Lock in matches we should look at the highest Meta Level out of all the APEX suits and set that as the max; or we could just remove all Prototype and Officer Gear from Public Contracts with an exception to APEX Suits.

Like I was telling you before, the gear in pubs isn't the problem ( unless you're one of the guy's going 5--20 in milita thinking whooohooo profit while making the guy in proto think he must be invincible).

Just because I have the sp and isk dos the mean I should have to run pro/officer gear nonstop to carry the lower skilled broke lemmings who want to play "their way". If I did play that way I would be as broke as them, this game is economically based ( tho PC funds break that ). It seems like everyone wants to be the only guy who can go 20-0 and there's some kind of majic formula that will allow everyone to do that.

Every day I have several rounds that I run sucide mission's just to mess with the other team even if I gets me killed repeatedly it's fun to make 4-5 people panic and run breaking their organization long enuf for my team to get an upper hand.

I kinda do understand. This thread is about demonstrating the flaws in the combined meta level lock idea, so maybe we agree with each other? If people can run PRO and OFC and still come in far under an APEX, this type of meta lock will do the exact opposite of what it was intended for (improving NPE).