I agree with OP regarding anti-cheat, but two things seem to be commonly missread by the community. First, SD is testing a different anti-cheat system internally but as it is yet unstable, they need to fix bugs before being able to launch it for us. Secondly, many people complain of cheaters yet I play and play over 6h a day and I rarely see one. Some people are actually very good players on this game.
Now I disagree on the forcing competitive on players. This is definitely not the way to go. Free will is still a thing and the recent competitive based missions have proven that people playing that mode for it just make the experience worse overall, by not caring if they leave mid game and just not being in the right mind set of cooperation.
Same thing goes for games being shorter, disagree. If you’d play pubs you would be able to play objective games and those are the rght time. Besides, games like CS that you seem to use as example have games that can last longer than any of DB’s stopwatch game.
Then you go on and list issues with the game like difficulty. Increasing the player base will just make that problem more dominant. You can only have so many elite or good players playing this game, the rest of the number increase will be of players on the lower end of the scale, because good players are those who stick around and are now playing competitive. Now forcing the rest of insecure, more modest players to competitive will only make things worse.
Regarding pubs, when have they been boring? Now just as you say, competitive regroups most cheaters, if any, and also best players. Reshuffling mid-game is impossible and a teammate that leaves is a huge penalty. Hence, most competitive games are set in stone right after the first 5min. Pubs are dynamic, with a constant stream of incoming players if others leave, the possibility to switch teams to balance it out. More than just 5players on each side. Good players and bad players. In the end it’s less boring than competitive to me. Matches can be neck a neck till the end in pubs and rarely are in comp. Saying that comp is boring is just a personal view and shouldn’t be part of a list of things that takes players away from the game. Because those who don’t like comp, might be sticking around because of pubs.
Finally you’re saying it takes too long to get a match. I don’t know where you’re from but if you play in Europe during evenings you wait around a minute or two and that is really not much. There are games out there making you wait much more. This alone, cannot be the culprit of people leaving.
Now curiously, what I believe is driving people away is the mixed identity of the game. Things like thriwing for skill by rewarding headshots, yet inplementing things like Nader with a grenade launcher for less aimskilled people or simple rhino and his high spread minigun. Many people don’t like encountering a merc they don’t own that is soo OP that he/she can kill them repeatedly and there is nothing they can do about it without the experience to deal with them.
Now that the game has a bigger pool of mercs and that even the tutorial isn’t forced on people, that general servers still allow access to players with less than level 5, that there is no direct access in game for the merc role call infos which could inform new players about tactics and that access to competitive is allowed at level 5, I believe that many new players just leave out of frustration. Competitive should only be allowed at level 10, 8 at lowest. I rarely have seen level 7 players do well and play their merc properly so I think that’s a fair enough limit.
Also parties should be allowed for pubs. People end up playing together anyway, just with more effort by chosing the servers manually and bypassing the quick join. This to me is a vital point.
Finall, DB has become a game for the elite that knows its maps and mercs. Any new player is lost without crutches and gets crushed. Repeatedly. The tutorial should be updated to include all mercs and add info as to how to counter them and it should be forced on the first launch. Maybe not all mercs, but Aura and Skyhammer should be, with other merc’s tutorial being optional. Now it would adress two problems at once. Which banned hacker will enjoy going through all the tutorial over and over again, while the first time player will get valuable experience as to how to handle the game. A clear warning to new players that DB is not like other FPS is needed and that happens right at the start.