I remember a time when I was pretty jazzed to play this game because it looked like it was going to present an FPS with more choices for character customization than ever before.

Currently, that impression, and any hope of seeing something like that, is beyond dead.

Every single guy I know that can pub stomp/kill well all have two things in common. Natural Skill and shields to 11.
The Skill part is just them.

The Shield part however, is all CCP. In this game, if you want to run assault, the hot trick it to actually choose the Arbiter as your starting fit, than choosing the Enforcer, which is the actual Assault starter fit, just to get the headstart on the shields.
Everyone I know that goes for a "tanked" AR build goes straight for Complex Shield extenders and then drop suits to hold more complex shield extenders.

There are players that spec for glass cannon, ie damage mods, but against 2 tanked ARs or a Heavy, they usually end up on the losing side. However, one tanked AR vs two lesser tanked ARs or a Heavy can absolutely win.

The suit that all my guys are wearing right now is the Type II Assault suit....why? ...MOAR Shields. Right now, I'm using the Type II Heavy suit for the exact same reason...over the Type III....it's Type III, why is it not better than the type II, even running twin Tier III reppers?

And it makes sense. Shields regen naturally, armor doesn't. Additional Shields don't slow you down, armor does. You get more Hi slots than low as you progress through the suits. Speaking of which, several players have remarked that the Level 5 Logi suit may be the best in the game....why?.....four complex shield extenders or combo'd with shield regen mods.

Now, granted, it costs more SP to get to those shield extenders, but it's not unattainable by any means and you can get to enhanced extenders just by specing right at the outset of your build.

My biggest gripe here is that I thought Dust was supposed to be different than CoD and BF3 in it's "meta" game. But in reality, it's very much the same. You have to go for shields. Shields trump everything. Armor tanking isn't even an option for ground troops.

I thought that in EvE there were advantages/disadvantages for shield tanking vs armor tanking (I never got too into EvE past PVE missions and mining)....there appears to be ZERO incentive in this game to armor tank, which means that it's just a much more complex CoD/BF3, but at the end of the day, it's the same game in the aspect that there are few options for players to choose if they really want to compete.