Pretty much nailed it. Which is why I am as passionate about the in-game economy as I am. I dislike that players have enormous wealths of ISK and I feel that a lot of problems stem from passive generation (PC farming, Warbarge modules) and exempted generation (BPOs, APEX BPOs).

A lot of the time I hear these arguments that skill > gear but no-one ever mentions what happens when you have skill AND gear or when a player has low skill and low gear. How do you balance that? IMO, tiercide is something we desperately need even still but something we can never get because of past sins. There shouldn't be this whole MLT/STD/ADV/Proto/Officer thing... but because we offered players BPOs and APEXs, we're screwed into having it. We can't get away from it without basically invalidating the real-life money players have spent. We also can't strip players of their enormous ISK wallets.

And because of that players will -always- have some form of mechanical advantage over others. Either because they paid real money and now never have to spend ISK again or because they were around for PC ISK farming and will never be able to spend all of what they have. They'll always be exempted from having to pay ISK and can use the ISK they save en masse to fund powerful gear. It's frustrating as hell. A new player coming into this game has neither of these advantages and must rely -EXCLUSIVELY- on their own player skill in order to just scrape by and survive.

I feel like there's nothing we can do about it because people want to retain their real money investments and want to keep the isk they -coughs- "earned". What's worse is that when we port - if we port - we'll likely have to carry these sins over and introduce them to a whole new player base. It's going to leave a pretty bitter first impression and I don't think it's going to go over well in the reviews and feedback.

But yanno. People want their "I Win" button. Game health be damned.

I have an AK.O Assault and Commando. Proto stomps are a problem. I don't partake in stomps but they rampant. I have 34 million SP and I can't stand a stomp. Here is a solution. Each game mode will have a max level of equipment that you can use in each mode.
Ambush-MLT ans STD equip only
Acquisition-ADV,STD,MLT ONLY
Dom-Proto,ADV,STD,MLT only
Skirmish,FW,PC- Anything goes

So you have proto but people in proto gear are automatic losses for you? How does that work?

Good job playerbase.

Soraya 2.0 only worse. Let's make Dust only appeal to people who hate themselves and want fun to come in the form of misery and grinding.

And let's be clear kids. This guy does not play Dust. He has no idea how these things are affecting gameplay aside from a spreadsheet shared with him by CCP. Honestly can you imagine how hard it would be for most of this playerbase if the only thing they could do for ISK generation was militia gear in pub matches? Oh yeah, we saw that for 2.5 years. It was clear for a long time that the only people that could afford to step up their gear were players willing to spend lots of AUR or had ridiculous KDRs, now that that's not the case some dude who doesn't even play Dust wants to take it all away.

Answering to the original post :

Isn't grinding to get a better gear and compete with other players the whole goal in DUST ?????

Pretty much nailed it. Which is why I am as passionate about the in-game economy as I am. I dislike that players have enormous wealths of ISK and I feel that a lot of problems stem from passive generation (PC farming, Warbarge modules) and exempted generation (BPOs, APEX BPOs).

A lot of the time I hear these arguments that skill > gear but no-one ever mentions what happens when you have skill AND gear or when a player has low skill and low gear. How do you balance that? IMO, tiercide is something we desperately need even still but something we can never get because of past sins. There shouldn't be this whole MLT/STD/ADV/Proto/Officer thing... but because we offered players BPOs and APEXs, we're screwed into having it. We can't get away from it without basically invalidating the real-life money players have spent. We also can't strip players of their enormous ISK wallets.

And because of that players will -always- have some form of mechanical advantage over others. Either because they paid real money and now never have to spend ISK again or because they were around for PC ISK farming and will never be able to spend all of what they have. They'll always be exempted from having to pay ISK and can use the ISK they save en masse to fund powerful gear. It's frustrating as hell. A new player coming into this game has neither of these advantages and must rely -EXCLUSIVELY- on their own player skill in order to just scrape by and survive.

I feel like there's nothing we can do about it because people want to retain their real money investments and want to keep the isk they -coughs- "earned". What's worse is that when we port - if we port - we'll likely have to carry these sins over and introduce them to a whole new player base. It's going to leave a pretty bitter first impression and I don't think it's going to go over well in the reviews and feedback.

But yanno. People want their "I Win" button. Game health be damned.

Why not take babby steps into fixing that MLT/STD/ADV/Proto/Officer disparity like is currently being done with Officer gear?
Have mechanics in place to drain the current supply SLOWLY OVER TIME and incentivizing a switch to tiericide. If there was a proper market with Buy & Sell orders like EVE has, I think this process could be sped up to spread out the current supply of gear among many players whom will then use it up, as opposed to powerful gear being in the hands of few that drain it slowly.
TLDR, have mechanics to very slowly get rid of the currently existing gear and incentivize switching to a tiericide model

What could be done is to give new players a stat boost like 300 more hp and 5% more weapon damage for the mean time while they reach better gear and skills. That's what they do in elder scrolls online.. it doesn't hurt anyone. The isk is the biggest problem.

Isn't ISK supposed to be part of the balance when it comes to competing?

What could be done is to give new players a stat boost like 300 more hp and 5% more weapon damage for the mean time while they reach better gear and skills. That's what they do in elder scrolls online.. it doesn't hurt anyone. The isk is the biggest problem.

Answering to the original post :

Isn't grinding to get a better gear and compete with other players the whole goal in DUST ?????

Yes a newberry with no SP or skills will get rekt. But we all got rekt (and still are sometimes), but we kept playing and we grinded more SP to become "vets".

Dust would've been a really bad call of duty if the difference you get by grinding would've been less than what you're saying. That's the RPG part of dust and what makes it different than any other FPS.

We also have to look at skill level and not just level of gear because some people just suck at the game while others are better.

Through all of this meta talk thats one bigass factor that people are leaving out of the equation.

Some people suck at the game.
Some people are really good at it.

In a PC you can kinda expect guys like D4GG3R and Arianna to do well. In a meta locked/tier locked game mode they're still gonna be styling on hoes.

What could be done is to give new players a stat boost like 300 more hp and 5% more weapon damage for the mean time while they reach better gear and skills. That's what they do in elder scrolls online.. it doesn't hurt anyone. The isk is the biggest problem.

The people advocating for stripping the game down want a free call of duty clone with poor performance, sloppy controls, and bad maps I guess.

Something like this would give a new player a place were they can learn the game with people there own level and make a profit but if they want to run better suits the will step up to adv and believe me they will because better suits will bring better rewards.
And to all proto stompers if the drop down to lower meta games just remember that they are meta locked so everyones in same suits so it will be hard even for a good sqaud.

I don't now the numbers but i think there extra damage and cores wont be that much giving a lower meta and who would run a low reward meta game anyway at least new players will have a better chance at killing them.

But again who would run in the lower meta game.a good player who is with a good corp would not be able to run lower meta games and pc and still think he can rake in th isk.

You think it is about the isk? Ask most vets, they don't care about isk, they care about having fun and winning.

And it is. Some players are just crazily rich because of previous broken PC mechanics. But a majority of the playerbase can't afford proto or officer gear.

And I don't see where it changes the fact that grinding SP is the main goal in Dust. You can quote 1/5 of my post if you want, it won't change this.

Proto gear is nothing compared to teamplay and personnal skills. PC is the best proof. So many times we destroyed teams playing full proto because we were better coordinated and better players (in Apex or STD suits).
Saying proto gear is killing the game is stupid.

I'd personally rather just give them a set of base skills, unallocated SP, and remove Militia from the game.

Extra HP and damage "Just because" isn't very EVE like. Work with the system, rather than just slapping on bonuses.

I only quoted the part of your post that I was addressing. My point is that ISK is way too prevalent, and you usually see those who run proto saying they run proto coz why not? That statement there shows something is broken.

The other points you make I agree with but that doesn't mean stuff ain't broke - ISK is not a balancing factor that it should be because of exploits, that BTW still continue today. It's broke.