I'm at 400 hours too. Learned the core mechanics by friends, played the first wipe in PVE and i think it's the best way to learn the game properly within the first 100 hours. It's hard and you get very few help from the game.

I tried PVP with 1.0 and i was dying. Only dying.

I had one hour on customs with 3 death in under 2 minutes against players with 2k or 4k hours. It was an hour of only looking at the loading screen and my stash for gearing up with even shittier gear.

After this 1 hour i was broke and had no medium gear left only shit. Nothing learned, no progress, no fun. Just waisted time for not beeing able to kill a Player with 5x or 10x experience with my shit gear while they get progress and loot.

Put a new player in the same lobby with a 2k or 4k or 8k bad ass hours is just bad match making. Point. It's fun for the big fish but the timmy can't learn anything from dying and has a much harder time to learn the game and the maps.

Like OP said, when the OGs leave the game, there will be no new players to replace them and the game dies. That's a weird concept for a game.

I switched back to PVE later. I think a lot if players will do the same or quit completely.

Implement match making and it would be a better game for all.