So, I've only been playing for about a day, browsing the forums, yadda yadda. So far, what I've seen is unique in certain ways (high-level customization, RPG-style skills) and very much the same in others (people very reasonably advising me to learn the maps).

The former is what I signed on for. The latter is very, very not.

I fully realize that DUST is in an early stage, so this is more about the future than the present. For now, I will be content to hone my skills and develop my character. But for that future....

I do not want "Battlefield" by another name, only with crafting and RPG elements. I do not want an even match, with "shields" and "structure" for my team's FAV functioning as a slow countdown of "points." I do not want to look on the field and see something well-worn and familiar.

I want to plan an assault on familiar, standardized structures on unfamiliar terrain. I want to plan that assault as though I were cracking Fort Knox. I want to watch the defenders setting static defenses a good five minutes before my boots hit the ground, knowing that the ideal-- wearing down their clone supplies or destroying their field command unit-- might not be achievable, but also knowing that, failing that, a few demolitions charges around the facility's reactor will produce an acceptable outcome where my client is concerned.

On the flip side, I want to lay down defensive kill zones in advance, knowing full well that the enemy only has to get through once to claim victory. I want to have real reason to grimace when orbital bombardment starts raining on a hardened position. I want to curse as I watch hostile troops solidifying their control over the complex, and to direct our team's demo expert to blow the charges we set on the main reactor ourselves, knowing that denying the invaders vital assets is more important than the facility's survival.

DUST 514 is an addition and expansion, functionally, of Eve Online, one of the most cutthroat, merciless games in existence and proud of it, a game in which a "fair fight" occurs when somebody makes a terrible mistake. The kind of matches we have been playing would work for Alliance Tournament-style organized fights, and might (MIGHT) be passable for faction warfare, but for nullsec control? Conquest of PI sites? It's hard to imagine Eve players, accustomed to hardened facilities and massive fleets, feeling comfortable leaving the fates of their holdings up to a more-or-less even fight on a battlefield everybody has memorized-- a "match" that has more in common with a sporting event than a battle.

And Eve has so much more to offer than a few terrestrial planets.

I want to watch something huge and living pass overhead in the depths of an ocean world, yell in surprise as a slaver dog drops on my face, see a teammate blasted off a walkway to plummet into the swirling, multicolored clouds below, and get sniped right through my visor by a sniper hidden in an alien forest. I want to drive a tank through a freaking plasma storm.

If that comes at the cost of having to fight the occasional battle that was over before it began, I say that's all to the good. Perhaps you can have an "arena mode," complete, at the high end, with seasons and televised viewing, for those who favor playing a sport over going to war.