I hate bunny hopping. It is silly, unrealistic, and in no way a practical way to advance on an enemy while firing a weapon.

Same with side to side quick strafing. No one does this in reality, it is only in FPS's and I wish it too could die in New Eden.

Eventually people will finish optimizing their primary fits and start skilling into their AV fits. Then the Tank dynamic will change a bit.

Because removing bunny hopping = standing still.

Go watch our military units (Seals, Recon, hell any unit at all) advance / retreat in combat. None of them jump up and down like morons while advancing and firing. Doing this is ridiculous, unrealistic, and would cause you to fall over due to recoil / losing your balance. It's stupid, and the only reason it exists is because the controls allow it. Just make it so you can either jump or fire. Not both.

There's "suspension of disbelief for the sake of balance" and there's "completely immersion breakingly ridiculous." Dropsuits and spaceships and giant lasers from the sky fall into the former category because, while impossible, they at least fit into the theme of the universe where they're set. Circle-strafing and bunny-hopping are the latter, because they don't fit into any universe.

That said, I haven't the foggiest idea what would help to fix it. Cover mechanics don't work in a game where it takes this many bullets to die.

Nope. Don't turn Dust into Quake. Nor CS. Those were good games in their own right, but no.
Those games functioned the way they did because of the hardware limitations of their times. People made the best of it.

Comical bunny-hoping and strafing. Bullets coming at you, that you could "Neo" yourself around. That gameplay just doesn't match Dust, imo.

Imagine how pathetic it would look if you could do that to a tank... (Stupidity starts at 3:50, watch Solid Snake jog himself to a victory.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnVvOQ0VtDM

lol...
No infantry-only game modes, where they can go into their own little world and make ISK and SP from.
Who the hell would "realistically" issue a contract for that? lol
Doesn't fit the game.
Just make a Corp HQ arena, where folks can run around and fight their little ARs. Let them bet money on who would win.

...infantry-only game mode.... lol


Imagine, "I play Dust, but I only do infantry-only Ambush. because folks that use tanks and vehicles are gay."
The game would break, because now every AR user and his mom would run there for the sake of ease.

Bad move to make a game mode like this.

Here we encounter fundamental issue #2 with this discussion: the myth of the invincible HAV. I do like that your mental image of me is that I'm just trololo-ing through the map mowing down enemy troops with impunity. I'm not going to bother pointing out how easy it is to kill a HAV with any reasonable amount of AV. You'd just say some crap about how you shouldn't have to deal with that. Let's instead talk about why vehicles are necessary.

You see, there are a lot of games out there, those crappy generic FPSes. Call of Duty, and all of its clones. You're more than welcome to those. You can be as infantry only as your heart desires there, because they're not like DUST. DUST is a sandbox. This will be especially true if (as I dearly hope) they implement an open world structure. Even if they don't, they've discussed in at least one video 5km by 5km maps and have hinted at internal tests of 64v64 players.

Can you imagine trying to fight on a 25 square kilometer map with only infantry? It'd take you fifteen minutes just to find one enemy. You're going to need vehicles to get around at that point. HAVs are going to be an important strategic piece in those games. At best you'll be shooting yourself in the foot by developing bad habits fighting without them. At worst you'll be stifling those game modes by channeling all the infantry into your silly infantry-only matches. Then we just have another Call of Duty clone.

TL;DR: this isn't Call of Duty, vehicles are here to stay and you're either going to have to deal with them or die to them.

No! That is a bad Movado.

Never add restrictions, if anything lift restrictions.

Sandbox games do not benefit from adding restrictions.

To people complaining that this is unfair or that doesn't work for me: This is a game based on war and pvp. Gaining the unfair advantage is entirely what those two things are about.

I grant you, almost no one starts off an ambush with av gear, but the second a tank starts raking in heads, people do actually bring it out. If you find that, after the tank is down, you are no longer useful, adapt. Try an smg, or forge sniping. Or, just go feed the other side a kill and spawn a new suit. It's not that hard.

For those who are complaining that they want an infantry experience: try playing without dropping some vehicles. You will get a boots on the ground experience. And, when you come up against armor, you will either run and cower, or you will get at it with some av.

If you can't adapt to a non-CoD type game, then go play something else. This is NOT CALL OF DUTY. Get over it.