Hello. I have found much the same things as the original poster. I have also given this a try, again- and there simply is no entrance curve to welcome new players. I played for an extended period at the beginning of this continuing beta launch. I've done a considerable amount of playing. This is not simply an issue of quests to help new players or learning to survive. It is the nature of the game at its core despite all else and the small, stagnant, exclusive elite that remain the focus. Overspecialized characters and abundance of timeouts are certainly an issue- it is never fun to wait on a timer, and I think it is important to remember that fun should be a primary focus in regards to a game. More creative limitations and slowdowns to crafting economy, or to keep pace between gamespeed and worldspeed(FA, Doc, weakness timeouts, etc.), are a dire need. As for overspecialization of characters- or perhaps under? Either way, a crafter is best as an alt as the requirements are simply so high, and in the best case, alts piloted by your buddies. They are much less an in-character character as an out of character machine at any rate, and I do not think that was the original intent behind encouraging specialization to encourage working together.
Finally, the issue, or at least feeling to players like myself, is the elite clubs that seem to be the focus of the game that a new player has simply no access to. Levelling is slow, and without skills you have little to offer. I am not one to welcome the idea of grinding solo on the wasteland out of a tent a combat character to offer limited skills either. Not with my previous, earlier experience in FOnline either, when it was a little rougher and newer and exploring the wastes with an equally clueless bunch was fun in of itself- surviving a friendly molotov that hit a little too close or spending one of my few precious shotgun shells to save my buddy with an uncanny resemblance to Tor from a Brahmin he managed to piss off. In fact I have little desire to be a part of those elite gangs in the first place, for from the outside it seems just like a bunch of community circle-jerking. Appearance of power tripping GMs and the delivering or collecting of "ultimate" level items do not help in the least.
Wait.
Why do I not find others like myself to work together with? Because despite everything, we are not encouraged to do so. The logical, efficient thing to do is indeed grind the wasteland out of a tent- befriending someone out of town is as much as a potential liability as it is a boon and between death timers, cooldown timers, weakness timers, and walking the wastelands, having time to look around for just the right individuals in town is not easy. Thank god you have made the towns safer, at least. What I want to say is: there should be something, some PvE activity really, that changes this. Encounters, especially if these encounters involve more than just combat. Scavenging, perhaps? You can make new encounter maps; then make MANY more encounter maps, that have many skill and special checks to be impossible under one man.
Reading my post, I'm afraid I might not quite be getting home just what is a problem. So I will attempt to describe the experience.
I am pretty damn familiar with the crafting and the combat in this game. I laboriously create a new character. I try to make him interesting in design for a bit of non-obvious roleplay. Annoyingly I can't get too creative, because such a limited number of things really "work". I have to be ABSOLUTELY SURE that he is planned out right all the way to level 21, with perks and skill points. When I start, with a lot of "luck", patience, and foreknowledge of location and the skill checks involved, I boost myself up with quest xp and items. Then I hunt for brahmin hides. If I die at any point here, with penalties more designed for limitation of high-level play with gangs of support, it will only take a couple of times before I and many others with worse patience to feel discouraged and simply quit, not even looking back at what they might be missing. There is a tent, and then what? It is not AS bad when I die now. I scrape encounters for xp, either with the determination of a monk to eat dirt in melee at regular intervals, or under expensive ammo and gun consumption that forces you to roll a crafter alt- a heavy and boring timesink. I still find no entertaining interaction with others, town hubs are not a good enough meeting place(even trading and bartering between players is done on a scale and level done under the activity of many alts, giving me no place in the system), and accidental death of even one I might work with quickly brings any collaboration to a halt. Most likely, a critical chance one way or another will happen eventually and lose me time and push my patience too far. Then I'm gone and don't look back and the game continues to revolve around those in their own elite groups, attentioned a little too much by GMs and the work done by the devs.
