I can handle the many, many flaws of this game because it has some unique characteristics that have enticed me to play an online fps for the first time in my life. I hear everyone whinning about respecs and nerfing and op, but i don't think these are killing the game. a f2p game needs a large player base to survive. For all the arrogant, look down your nose at the 'noobs' talk on the forums, all the vet players need the noobs to stick with this game.

Many noobs are going to leave because of the poor fps mechanics, redundant maps and battle types, and lack of pve. I am not concerned about those who leave for the poor fps mechanics because this game will never be able to beat the fps big players. I've played a bit of CoD and Halo and Battlefield and the mechanics are leagues ahead, but I never wanted to play those games because they were hollow to me. As a product manager with 10 years experience, I can say Dust needs to focus on its differentiators (designing fittings, skill tree progression, eve universe, etc.) and mitigate the right weaknesses. Noobs like me don't care about respecs (one way or the other), and nerfing and op. And if enough noobs don't turn into vets, the player based will never grow to a viable level for this game to survive.

I've seen some great suggestions on other forumns (sadly not often on the official dust ones) for how to improve the redundant maps/battles, add some really interesting pve, and tie into the eve universe better for noobs and vets alike. These suggestions would be great for keeping noobs in the game like me that want something different but are not hard core gamers or hard core online fps players.

But the number one thing that needs to change to stop the noob churn is pub stomping. I have only been playing 2 months now and cannot explain how frustrating it is to go into battles that are brutally lop-sided where one team has no perm squads and militia to basic gear and the other team is one or more perm squads and full out proto gear. I don't even like it when I am 'lucky' enough to be on the proto gear team. I want a challenge not a slaughter regardless of who is doing the slaughtering.

I want two basic settings for the public instant battles: no proto gear and no perm squads. That's it. I just want to skim off the top 20 odd percent of pub stomping. There will still be lots of lop sided battles, but not much outright pub stomping. For those of you who say things like "a really good player can still survive on basic gear", a game can't be designed just for the top 5% of skilled players. I'm not amazing at this game and probably never will be. I've got a job, a family and friends, but I still like to play video games 5-15 hours a week, have money to spend, and for the first time I found an online fps that actually interests me.

Better maps, okay quality pve and better tie ins to the eve universe would be great, but the thing that will keep me playing after my current booster expires is those two basic filters for the public battles. These two settings will also stop me from advising my friends and co-workers to avoid this game. I tell those people this game has potential, but unless they want to spend most of their time being completely slaughtered in 45 to 0 ambushes for the first 300+ hours of game play they should keep away from this game. And it's that word of mouth from noobs like me that is going to kill this game. Not because some of the vets left do to respec, op, nerfing, etc. This game will die because the noob churn steadily lowers not because people are staying but because no one is giving the game a try anymore.

So to all you vets that genuinely care about this game: push ccp to mitigate the pub stomping problem asap or better yet: stop knowingly pub stomping. Without some action by ccp or you, this game WILL die.