Started playing on a couple of new characters and i'll continue to use them a bit into 1.7, I'm skilling them up to eventually use the rail and combat rifle and try them out effectively, will pretty much put all of my skill points into those guns.

Something that I've noticed so far...being a new guy is f***in hard. Now to alot of you this isn't news, but lemme tell ya it doesn't really matter how good of a shot you are (which most people out of academy are not), unless you get the jump on someone or they forget how to aim for some reason you're probably not going to get the kill. I also noticed the skill of the people in academy, there was none, these were people who didn't know they had to hit the inertial dampeners and were being turned into merc pancakes on the way down from the MCC, we're pitting these people against proto stomping vets?

I'm going to continue torturing myself over the next couple of weeks to try to get this SP up and I'll come back with the results, I'll put up my analysis on the matches from the new guy's side of it (or at least as close as I can get to that), the usefulness of the guns (measured of course being used on suits with no defense or other capabilities and a player who will probably be using guerilla tactics), probably be varying playing solo and with squads, sometimes with randoms and some with people I know, hey I might even learn something :)

Already I can tell something needs to be done to keep the new guys away from anything prototype if they're going to make any progress and not just get frustrated. Several ideas come to mind including PVE (please put this project back on the table CCP...). "difficulty settings", for example a basic domination would restrict any advanced or prototype suits from coming on the field but give less of a payout than a prototype domination where any suits could be used. Perhaps raising the limit for war points in academy to VERY high levels like 200k (but still giving the option to select modes outside of academy). And definitely just being able to make matches where stats aren't affected and money isn't lost (I highly recommend that CCP look into the lobby mechanics and settings of metal gear online at it's later part in life).

Let me know if you support any ideas to help out the little guy or disagree with mine and why, more importantly lets try to make SOMETHING happen to attempt to solve this, we're getting some new content so I think we can hold off on getting the rest to push the devs to make the game more welcoming. I'll keep posting any new developments.