I thought most competitive shooters just regurgitate what works even if some other game chewed it for them already.

I'm sorry but what does map size and team size have to do with making the game survive? Look at MAG. They had Commander Mode, the largest battles, and extremely large playing maps, yet the game went downhill. If it's as bad as you and OP say in Dust those gimmicks ain't gonna help. We need them to dive deeper into New Eden with Dust 514 and allow for some dynamic stuff to really happen.

I guarantee you it'll be way more inviting if corporations could do something like, actually help toppling an EVE empire.

Isn't that what lead Medal of Honor getting stomped out of existence almost though?

MAG's fault was not in the game's basis but what the developers did after that.
There is the imfamous 1.3 patch that Noc mentioned
There were two DLCs that were completely worthless
The developer went under and yet the game still survived for a bit after

Map/Team size
a - Allow for more diversity in vehicles (air ground)
b - Allow for more diversity of players. A couple new guys can survive in a bigger group when they have more support
c - Makes dropships and transport vehicles mean more than just getting to an objective a tad bit quicker
d - Bigger and more complex facilities mean that more strategy is involved and allows for more diversity in vehicles as different ones will be suited to different environments

Adapt & Die - This shouldnt mean that you have to overcome bad mechanics, sloppy development and poor communication. It should mean that you have to be able to field the best fit for the environment that is put in front of you. The ability to take stock of the situation and put yourself in the best possible gear to have your and your team win.

Right now we are just playing ring-around-the-rosie trucking from objective to objective.

Pretty much this.

Sony is actually ambitious for their game, CCP doesn't actually care enough about Dust514 to have wanted something on the scale of Planetside2.

Instead they tried to make a poor Battlefield clone and have even failed that.

This doesn't really even get into how badly they've failed to capitalize on their unique features ie integration with Eve Online.

They have no plans to have meaningful -combined arms- combat between Eve fleets and Dust514 mercs.

There are no plans beyond space farming of some kind that Eve industrialists (carebears) might want.

Noone that actually pvps in Eve (ie the actual good players) will care about Dust514 with any of their plans.