Some of the comments I've posted recently kind of sum up to this, but in hopes that someone at CCP consistently reads this stuff, I'm going to make a new thread. I love that this game is actively changing and evolving into something better, so I hope I can help.

It seems like it would be hard to constantly keep immersion in mind while working on the mechanics. On the forums you could read all day long about over-powered this and under-powered that and fittings and skills and stomping...and putting out all those fires has to be tough. Not discounting that. But it seems to me that efforts to "fix" specific issues are causing the game to lose self-consistency.

A fictional anecdotal example: A squad of guys working pretty well together encounters a tank in a moderately open area. That tank has two anti-personnel turrets and lots of armor, etc. In DUST, you throw a few AV grenades at it, or get your AV guy to take some shots at it and you can, at the very least, get the tanker to run and protect his investment. In real life, though, that squad would be pretty much screwed unless they can find cover and retreat or fire off some AV weaponry at it. But even then...you can fire several RPGs at a modern tank and there's still a pretty good chance the guys inside will be okay. Now, I'm not advocating that tanks become God Mode, but it's something to think about.

For another example, take the HMG. HMGs in real life are far from mobile, but I'm willing to accept that it's the future so maybe they can get carried around by hand now. Whatever. But let's say I'm an assault type character, and I come into a hallway where a HMG is looking right at me. In DUST, I could jump and strafe my way down the hallway, get to one side of the gunner and there's about a 50/50 chance I could take him out if I was firing my rifle the whole time. In real life, if that gun manages to open fire on me at the end of the hallway, I'm going to be swiss cheese in no time flat. But, let's take the same two guys at some distance in an open area; I'm on top of a building and the heavy gunner is guarding the door of an adjacent building. In DUST, I could take pot shots at the heavy with complete safety since his bullets literally don't go as far as mine. In real life, I could take pot shots, but if he opened fire on me, I'd be in trouble and have to seek cover immediately if I didn't kill him with the first couple of shots. So in that situation, the consistency is closer to where it needs to be, but not there yet.

One more. Drop ships (or most vehicles, really) and small arms. Shooting an SMG at a dropship at close range. In DUST, there's a good chance you could get its shields down after a short time, and if there's no pilot or he's really dumb, you might even be able to take it out. In real life, your gun would burn up long before you put enough rounds into its armor to do any real damage. And we haven't even invented shields in real life so who knows how much that would complicate things.

DUST, CCP and New Eden have this "play hardball or GTFO" kind of thing going, which adds to what little immersion there is in this game. So maybe, instead of always putting out fires and addressing specific user complaints with specific fixes, the balancing and design should be looked at from a different perspective. I think this would really go a long way toward building the team-oriented, tactical kind of shooter we're looking to see DUST grow into. Or at least that's what I'm looking for.

Please resist the urge to pick apart my little stories with geeky facts and stats...I'm not in the military nor am I particularly knowledgeable about tactics, technology, arms or anything like that so sorry if my impressions are wrong. All that I know is what I've picked up from games or friends or the news. But I think my point is fairly sound and hopefully fairly clear.