Yea, asi/msi/trinkets scare away people. Because you know, new players come into the game expecting to be fighting others on equal grounds right from the start. It's like this in every game. Newbies will always be walked over until they learn the ropes of the game. If they quit because they refuse to learn and refuse to invest into PvP gear then it's their fault. They shouldn't be doing PvP in any game then.
Auto-Target is scaring potential PvPers away
In the end, it's all a result of Three Rings' poor design choices that led up to the community shutting out Lockdown from people who are legitimately curious and prior to joining had intentions of becoming a regular player. Nothing we can do about it, the damage has already been done because of poor game design.
You can play TF2 right from the start on equal grounds, in fact if you have experience playing other FPS games you will do quite well with some of the basic classes (Scout, Pyro, Soldier, Heavy, Sniper). Even the oldest of TF2 players have no STATISTICAL advantage, their fancy Killstreak Festive Austrualium Rocket Launcher does the exact same damage as the Stock Rocket Launcher.
In SK however the older players have Perfectly UVed gear, HP trinkets, Fully heated weapons, 2 extra weapon slots, a Max damage set, and +12 HP. New players don't and even the most skilled die in 2-3 hits. SK PVP is horribly broken and the P2W aspect makes even less want to play, at the end of the day it will just be a small percentage of players in their High dollar sets dashing about as striker and running to base when they get low on HP.
One should note that stock (i.e. default, available to everyone) weapons in TF2 are in fact often the most powerful and commonly used in competitive playing. You could also look at other competitive games. Here are a few that don't give stat advantages to experienced players:
- Smash Brothers
- Counter Strike
- DotA 2
There are of course other popular PvP based games which do give experienced players advantage, such as League of Legends and Hearthstone. The two significant differences between those and SK is that you'll be fighting people on your own level in those games and better stuff is given to you as you play more by gatheting IP (LoL currency) or more cards in Hearthstone. SK does not reward playing much LD - gear and LD experience are completely separated.
Asi and Msi scares new players away bkc is too overrated, aswell as msi stat given armor i think they need to disable those and Uvs in Lockdown in general to show who can actually hold on their own without depending on such disadvantages for the newer players.