I'll keep it short.

Is there truly no way to play online without having people pointlessly murder you for no reason at all? The first large match I got into I wasn't even able to do anything because there was some brat in a tank just running around blowing everything up, and he would go out of his way to kill me, like seriously out of his way to a point of being rather sad. I turned on passive mode but it doesn't seem to do a damn thing. He was still able to run me over and even blow me up with the tank.

If there is really no way to play this game with others without the mindless ganking then that would be an incredible disappointment. It makes the online portion of the game just about unplayable.