I don't think this new system is a great idea. I'm sure when you were sitting around talking about it it sounded great, and maybe it even looked good on paper. You have people fending for themselves in a faction based game, you can barely even go around and kill NPC's solo, let alone walk around the core for 2 minutes and not get killed by some kind of swarm.
We were a group with a teamspeak and it still took us ilke 4-5 hours just to get to level 6. I know a lot of players were demanding factionless gameplay, but this just isn't it.
The overall idea isn't too bad, start in the sewer, you can get into the middle of the city very quickly, loot, and in theory head back to the sewer base ( when you aren't running around for 20 minutes looking for the hole that leads to base.)
It's neat that you can jump in, and start looting, but as I said, it's a faction based game, and even most NPC's are in huge hoards and will kill you in 2 seconds. When randoms join this game they aren't going to have a chance in hell at even getting to level 3, the game just wasn't set up for this kind of solo play.
This free for all hunger games thing is a neat idea, but people are running around in groups anyway even before they could join a faction, which just makes it even harder for the factionless player.
Maybe if you can join a faction as soon as you start, but you don't get access to the base until level 6? I will post to suggestions.