New players just need a chance to get acclimated, Academy should last until someone hits 6 mil, there should also be a fix to not let alts join academy if you have a character over like 10 mil by recognizing IP address or something. Other than that maybe try to balance but I'd still like a little flexibility. With this setup I'd only be fighting people from nyain san or teamplayers or ancient exiles or sver and so would people in my squad who are no-where near 15 mil, that would make us want to rage quit lol. I still get proto stomped because I don't run with a proto suit or a proto squad, I'm good but I'm also trying to make a profit lol.

I would like to add that lifetime SP is not the issue. Allocated SP is. There are many running around with unspent SP waiting for the vehicle changes or saving up for a lvl 5 Proto suit.

Horrible idea, having 22 milion ish SP among three characters why should my lowest SP character have to deal with playing with other low SP characters.

If there are Hordes of militia red berries, they will be made into wine whatever the suit we use. Sorry your friends feel but hurt but how do you think we learned to play this game in the first place? We have all been there. Welcome to New Eden.

I don't support SP based Pub Matchmaking in any way. They are meant to be one sided matches, with many losses on the enemy side. Try using some sort of tactics to assault the enemy, running solo as a squad is a sure way to die.

One of the most fun matches I've played was when we won with only 1 pixel left on the MCC health bar. That game was a real challenge, where we took over key points, lost them, took them back, made a stand, ninja other key points, etc etc.

Matches like those are what make your blood pump, seeing you're equal with your enemy, and the game can roll either way. Pubstomping doesn't give you that. At some point, the loosing side is going to give up, and just camp on the red line, waiting for the timer to end. Games like that will come to a crawl, and no thrill will come out of it, for both sides.

They need to implement balanced matches, yes, but I don't think it's as simple as "Group by SP". Say you got 20 mil SP and got proto gear and all that. But you can't afford using proto gear all the time, so once in a while you play with cheap/free gear to earn some ISK, to balance the proto gear expense. But if it's "Group by SP", you'll end up with playing with other proto gear people. So while you run around with militia gear, everyone else is gunning you down with proto gear. And as you said, dying over and over again because your opponent is wearing superior gear is no fun.

So, sorting pub matches with only SP is simplifying it too much.
But perhaps divide matches into categories where they allow only types of gear like "Militia gear only" or "Advanced and lower tier gear only". Fittings containing higher tier gear will become red and not usable in that match. You want to run around with your proto gear? Join "Proto gear" matches.
Off course, if you have lots of SP you'll have an advantage in skills, like more armor or shield or weapon proficiency. But it's better for new players to run into a player with 25% more armor then into someone with 25% more armor AND 3x complex armor plates AND 3x complex damage modifiers.

Or, maybe a sorting with the combination of both gear and SP. The problem is, with the current numbers of players, the waiting queue is going to take a while...

An sp based matchmaker would be a perfect solution to all of our current imbalance issues. However, the sad truth is that we simply do not have enough players on at any given time for it to work. It seems like out of the 2500 average players on, 500 do nothing but afk farm, and another 500 are completely ********.

The writing is on the wall for dust. Ccp has about a month to figure out how to keep the remaining 2500 here and at the same time try to attract new players. Otherwise balanced matchmaking will be a moot point.