so far from what i have seen its like in a lot of other games save up and play matches to earn the content or wave your fat wallet and get all content at level 1 as for being slow well no one looks at the map it seems so i get the advantage of sneaking up on them time after time and they dont check the screen to see where im coming from so they take ages to find me and by then they die
The map is super important to doing well imo. I think it would be really sweet to have a group on the same team, power in numbers does make a huge difference for focus fire, but (in the little time I logged) I did not see anyway to make a "party" but I may have missed it or it may be a feature not available in the open beta.
friends list and teaming up is disabled as is the store and a few other things they said they would add it soon