Why player retention is so bad

A lot of emphasis should be placed on the tutorial and the "social" side of the game. Outfits should try to recruit in-game more heavily, but SOE should also take the time to teach players about squads, the chat, and voice communication. Otherwise, the information is buried and not all that intuitive. I remember the first time I received a "tell", I was scrabbling for someway to respond and finally had to settle for just using /yell; and for a long while, I thought something had been done to my account to keep me from using /region, until I just realized that in big fights, there's a good chance that /region is broken, heh. So I've learned, but it's been primarily thanks to actively seeking out information online, rather than learning anything from SOE's work, let alone the anemic tutorial.

I can go to indar during an alert at Primetime on the weekend as free playing VS on Matherson. Haven't seen a que screen in months.

Perhaps players simply moved to different servers or switched empires? Just saying, there could be many factors causing this issue which may not be related to players leaving the game entirely. Even then, can you really use the pop-lock as an indicator of player retention? Did this server used to have queues but not longer has them? Anyways, you would have to look at it from an all servers perspective to get he appropriate info to even discuss something like this. I can tell you that on the two servers I play on primarily that I have seen (just this past weekend) Indar queues.

Anecdotal

You forgot population imbalance, which results in massive zerg unstoppable steam rolls which will just be the icing on the cake to get people to flat out quit. Mix in faction weapon imbalance, and wa-la, one quitting player.

Every play Halo PC?

Go try it, and you'll realize pretty quickly why server side hit detection is awful.

I think the issue of player retention is much much simpler than everything that has been listed.

Think about it, how many times do you see low BR's running out of spawnrooms to fight, only to be shelled constantly by HE rounds? One or two shotted before they can even react to what is going on.

Combined arms in this game roughly translates to "Farm infantry" or in some cases "Remove obstacles, to farm infantry" e.g. kill the other guys tanks so you can farm their infantry.

To the casual starting player, most of their play session can be eaten up trying to find a fight where they aren't A. completely outzerged and dying constantly running out of the spawn room. (or dying in the spawn room, thanks to the hoards of people exploiting a known issue) or B. Siting there staring at a spawnroom full of camped opponents as a friendly tank zerg rolls around them.

*Edit* and lets not forget, after dying to vehicles constantly, getting into one and dying quickly to stuff you never see coming.

Its a very unfriendly game for new players.

Kinda like how a witness in court tells their side of the story, huh?

Well, it depends on the BR 100. For example, if it's someone like Stew360, you probably have a good chance to kill him with uncerted weapons. Good players, on the other hand, will have their skill magnified by the attachments they're using, so a new player would have a much harder time competing against them without those attachments.

meta meta meta meta...

Very true.

However these problems can be mitigated

A) With the tutorial highlighting certain scenarios they need to either avoid or be made aware that they will need certain weapons to engage effectively. Basic guides on what they would be best of certing for their desired role

B) Making the joining of outfits more straight forward so they can get some leadership from more experienced players, so they won't find themselves in such dire situations

This is being worked on with the Outfit Recruiting overhaul coming this month.... hopefully. Really needed to be in the game alot sooner though

As for your edit, yep Strikers and the AV turret are getting fixed next GU I believe