but instead of running by he hops up on top of my tank and starts firing at one of the guys shooting rockets at me (completely ineffectually, fired a whole clip and didn't kill the guy). Rather than get killed by incoming rockets I just backed up into cover, which killed him. Then he has the audacity to complain about me running him over.
They just started a new invite wave (at the same time they reduced it to two servers, because they want to know how it goes when the servers are maxed out all the time, apparently). Ask yourself if jumping up on a tank sounds sensible. It sounds sensible to me! Hell, I'd expect to be able to jump on top of one and run across it and jump off, or jump on top of one that's driving towards me, and then jump off again.
So I ask is it really that people are really "being stupid," or is it that people are doing something entirely sensible and the game is penalizing them and especially you for it (until they either become paranoid about going anywhere near friendly vehicles, or until you quit driving vehicles or quit the game out of frustration)?
To top it off, in addition to new players having to learn counterintuitive things like "You mean I can't walk behind or near a tank while it rolls forward without being anywhere close to touching me, and I can't stand on it or walk on it or crouch on it either? What. I won't magically go splat because I'm sitting on a tank in real life." they also have NO PENALTY for it themselves.
It may even be argued that at this point it is your duty* to deliberately throw yourself onto tanks in order to demonstrate the flaws in the system before it gets out of beta.
* in the hope that it will actually get fixed. But so far the only result when someone whines on Twitter has been Smedley tweeting that he is "sending help."