Anyone have any tips? Is it possible to be an effective player without buying a bunch of crap in the marketplace?

Four basic classes: assault, logistics, scout, and heavy. To play this game you should pick which suits your playstyle best and improve on that suit. I'm a WP *****, so I like to make lots of WP by reviving/repairing/resupplying team-mates, and therefore, logistics suits my playstyle. After using the logistics suit for a long period of time, I noted it's weaknesses and compensated for them with modules. That's the story of how I got accustomed to this game.

The end.

It is possible, yes. Unfortunately, it's more time intensive. If you haven't already tried it, I'd suggest playing skirmish rather than ambush. Then you can try to get more WP through hacking objectives rather than killing people.

Ah....thank you! I will give that a try! I do much prefer going after objectives than trading bullets anyway.

Maybe that's the end for you but it did very little for me.

So I choose 'Frontline Assault'. However, I can't figure how to be a decent frontline when I can't take more than 3-4 bullets without dying. Not only am I weak as a butterfly but I seem to be shooting rubber bullets since I unload...re-load and unload again into enemies and barely take half their armor.

I don't know....maybe it's just not my thing. I liked MAG, I liked EVE Online, I like Battelfield 3, I liked Vanquish, I liked Section 8, etc., etc., etc.....Dust though...I'm just not quite getting.

Glad it only cost me $20 to find out!

Well, that DOES help you, you even gave me some information to help you.
You say you die quickly, and this seems to be your largest problem, and therefore you have found your class weakness, now you compensate for it with Dust's form of the Create-a-Class system. By stacking shield extenders and armor plates, you will find yourself with much more HP, and you will be able to survive much more. By investing into the Assault Rifle Proficiency/Operation skills, you will be able to buy better equipment and you will also earn passive boosts yo your weapon.
It's all about SP unfortunately.

Maybe that's the end for you but it did very little for me.

So I choose 'Frontline Assault'. However, I can't figure how to be a decent frontline when I can't take more than 3-4 bullets without dying. Not only am I weak as a butterfly but I seem to be shooting rubber bullets since I unload...re-load and unload again into enemies and barely take half their armor.

I don't know....maybe it's just not my thing. I liked MAG, I liked EVE Online, I like Battelfield 3, I liked Vanquish, I liked Section 8, etc., etc., etc.....Dust though...I'm just not quite getting.

Glad it only cost me $20 to find out!

Well...I would honestly much rather it be about SP than money. I can't stand 'Pay-To-Win' games.

The tiny bit of 'Help' files I've read told me that I should retreat against enemy players who outmatch me...EVERYONE seems to outmatch me! I spawn in, shoot, get shot, die....that's about the full explanation of my game time in Dust. I know there must be more to it than that.

?

Qft. That made me lol. Fanboys will tell you that retreating and getting a team/corp together is the way to go but here's the thing... All matches include an even number of people, if one person has a vehicle or suit that REQUIRES more than one person to bring it down, than the match is already lost bc the other team has already won from a numbers perspective. So now the option is to deploy as many tanks as possible. Those with more tanks now win the game and all other infantry weapons are now totally pointless. In summary: buy Xp boosters, play non stop, join a corp with like minded grinders, and buy Aur based tanks for easy deployment and attainability. Congratulations you have just learned how to succeed to TANKS514....errr I mean DUST514

so many bittervets, "die inside like us but continue to play a game we claim to hate"

Its hard to give you advice because everyone has a different approach, my approach has been to upgrade tanking skills like Mechanics, shield management and fitting skills like electronics, engineering, light weapon upgrades ect.

But good tools can't make up for a lack of knowledge, you need to think about how you are playing and whats going wrong, do you run along paths directly to an objective or do you curve around keeping cover available?

Do you aim down your scope to shoot people or spray with your cross hairs?

ect ect you could probably google "how can i be better at FPS games" and find a lot of handy theory.

I've been trying for months to get into this game. I'll play a few days and then get irritated and hang it up for a month or so and then try again. I'm just not quite understanding it for some reason. I mean, I get the basic gist of it's purpose and storyline, I just don't quite get the game-play.

Looks like it's rapidly evolving into a 'Pay-To-Win' kinda game...am I wrong?

The tiny bit of 'Help' files I've read told me that I should retreat against enemy players who outmatch me...EVERYONE seems to outmatch me! I spawn in, shoot, get shot, die....that's about the full explanation of my game time in Dust. I know there must be more to it than that.

I see it's quite a complex program and there's a whole lot of intricacies and dynamics to the game and I'll get all of that eventually. Right now I would like to just know how to last longer than 3 seconds before dying. If I could just stay alive long enough to get some kills or accomplish some kind of objectives I might find some interest in this game. Right now though it's just frustrating, irritating and boring.

Anyone have any tips? Is it possible to be an effective player without buying a bunch of crap in the marketplace?

I'm actually very good at FPS games. I'm quite experienced at them and do very well. However, this is not a FPS like any I've ever played before. Can't tell whenn I'm being shot, not much indicator of how much damage I'm doing to an enemy I'm shooting, Seems like 2 bullets kill me but 2 full clips don't do any damage to enemies...etc., etc.

And no...spraying bullets is not my MO. In fact, down-sight aiming is something I do as a reflex, it's something I do so often it becomes a fault at times. If you're looking for a decent FPS player for your squad/team/clan/etc. you could do a lot worse than recruiting me. The problem here isn't FPS skills, it's the uneven matching of weapons/armor/etc.

LOL...a 'Google search of how to play FPS' is quite comical...maybe someone with quite a bit less experience with such things could benefit...I probably have well over 10,000 hours experience at FPS games. I have plenty of knowledge about FPS games and I've played nearly every one of them available on both PS3 and PC for hundreds (1,000s in some cases) of hours. I have nearly 2,000 hours into my favorite one alone. Believe me, knowledge of how to play FPS games is not the problem with DUST for me....I'm definitely steering more toward the equipment side of things at this point.

EDIT:

BTW...I know exactly what I'm doing wrong! I'm dying too easily!

I'll go toe to toe with anyone in any straight up gunfight on any FPS on the market. When I'm dying in a 1 on 1 duel against a guy who can kill me with 2 bullets but who isn't harmed by 2 clips of my bullets...well...let's just say that this is something new to me, and will take some time adjusting.

We Skill up to make our weapons more deadly and we skill up to be able to use dropsuits that protect and be able to equip more damage mod that make it easier to kill.You can do the same.

First Tip Join a Corp ,get a mic ,UVT,Aurum get all Aur BPO's Squad up with that corp and play as a team.
I believe your Corp is a default NPC Corp generated by the game.

Many of us spend the majority of our time in the cheap suits and do just fine. The thing FPSers have to adjust to with Dust is to slow WAY DOWN, and work more methodically with a squad. If your squad isn't on comms, and you don't have a good balanced group with logi,uplinks, range, CQC, working in tandem, then yeah... you're gonna die a lot.

So, do like 95% of the people who post here and do well do, put your squad together before you go into battle. Then make a basic plan, and do your best to execute it.

As far as guys in prototype gear, call them out for your squad and focus fire. If they die, they lose hundreds of thousands of ISK, if you die you lose basically nothing.

We Skill up to make our weapons more deadly and we skill up to be able to use dropsuits that protect and be able to equip more damage mod that make it easier to kill.You can do the same.