1. Gameplay - Loot, Shoot, and Scoot. The best explanation I can come up with is that the game is like looting NW Airfield in DayZ Mod but in a raid format. You can jump in and out in 10 minutes or you can stick around and push your luck for a full hour. The longest raid timers are 60 minutes. The shortest limit (Factory map) is 25 minutes. There is 8-15 other players in a raid, depending on the map size.
Firefight length & TTK depends on a lot of factors. Squad versus solo player will probably end quickly unless the solo player has the positional advantage. If the numbers are even, it might come down to who brought the better ammo or armor. There are dozens of ammo types and 6 classes of armor (modeled after Russian GOST standards). End-game armor can be countered by low level players two ways - aim for the legs (no leg armor in-game currently), or aim for the face hit box. All face shields can be penetrated by low level/cheap ammo. A lot of helmets don't have mounts for faceshields.
Current ammo table:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...hix6mFTXuVHWcNKZgBrjQ/htmlview?sle=true#gid=0
Current armor pen stats:
https://imgur.com/a/SUkfj
Armor and ammo balance is always being tweaked. Right now we're in a state where armor is very strong, which causes the players to use just a few ammo types. Everyone is kind of avoiding using 9mm or any kind of soft-point 7.62/5.45/5.56. The argument for strong armor is "Hey, I played all this time to level my character and spend tons of in-game $$$ on high end armor, I don't want to die in less than 2 seconds". The argument against strong armor is that a lot of ammo seems useless and if you're not following the current meta, you'll find it hard to get kills.
My personal preference is that armor should stay a little bit overpowered. The game
should be rough for low level players and players who don't want to risk bringing their good gear into a raid. Plus, nothing is more exciting than taking an end-game geared player down with a well placed pistol shot and taking all of his stuff.
SMG/AR/Sniper - since most of your engagements are going to take place between 25m and 100m, the game is a bit biased towards assault rifles. SMG are really fun to run in confined areas but you'll be limited in your ammo choices. Snipers are going to be more fleshed out later on. Right now there are two bolt action snipers (SV-98 and DVL-10) and roughly a dozen long range (800m-2000m) scopes in the game. If you want to snipe, you'll typically want a backup AR or auto pistol in case you get ambushed. Players like to converge on shots, especially when it is the distinctive sound of a high value sniper rifle. The amount of assault rifle choices is absolutely mind blowing. I could run a different setup everyday for 6 months.
Also - two things are being implemented that will significantly slow down combat - Mag Reloading and Medical Animations. For loading magazine, you have to load each round one-by-one and it will take a few moments to load a full magazine (you can interrupt it at anytime). You have to make sure you bring at least 3-4 loaded mags into the raid so you can avoid having to do this during combat. This is currently in the game via the inventory screen but they will be adding the animation soon. Mags can be loaded instantly when you're not in raid.
For using medical items, you press a hotkey. There is a 5-6 second delay between uses right now but the effect is instant. They've started releases previews of the medical animations and they look really good and should be added soon. You won't be able to heal while running/shooting anymore and it is going to change how people play the game quite a bit.
2. Matchmaking is 100% random and will stay that way. This is the overwhelming preference of the player base. You never know who/what you're going to run into in a raid.
3. Friends list and groups are in right now. Distance based VOIP will be in shortly (maybe a month or two, IIRC). Right now we just have voice commands that can be mapped to F-keys on your keyboard (or double tap Y to bring up the list). There are maybe 50 different options and it actually works really well. Check out Smoke (Twitch streamer). He has mastered the voice commands and does some really fun stuff with it.
Clan support, I believe, is further down the road map. They recently released colored arm bands and there will be more clothing options in the future to help distinguish your squad members.
There are global chats and direct messages. Trading markets are available but unofficial. There will be an in-game auction house being released very soon. They've releases a couple of teaser screenshots this month. Everyone is looking forward to it.
4. Just the one-time cost of the game. There are no micro-transactions and they are adamant that the game will stay that way.
I recommend buying the standard edition of the game ($40) if you are interested. Play it for a while, get a feel for things, and if you fall in love with it then upgrade to the EOD edition ($100 upgrade). The only thing you get is a bigger out-of-raid inventory size. Playing with a standard edition is in no way a disadvantage. You have all of the same gear and items as EOD edition, you just won't be able to horde as much of it at once.
5. Hackers were a minor issue until a month or two ago. The developers released their anti-cheat implementation and it appears to be working great. There was a huge ban wave last month and I haven't seen a single cheater since. Despite what a few teenagers on Reddit will tell you, the devs are taking it seriously and doing a good job to combat it.