Trial by fire works for people who have calloused feet or the mind of a zen master, I'd suspect that alot of new players have neither. The game is tough, I came in at a decent time, i got to experience some protostomping but not to the level where people are saying they've run out of stuff to skill into. These guys are coming into a game where people have 35+ million skill points and tons of cash, do you really think telling them "oh it will get better a few months down the road" will convince more than a handful of them to stick around?

I do like the mentoring idea but it would have to be volunteer only, there would have to be players willing to join a designated corp that all new players came into where the volunteers could help acclimate them.

Still, going back to the metal gear online reference, I feel like this game would do better if the players had a little control over their matches, if they could make their own rooms with their own rules and number of clones or objectives or join anyone else's and stay in as long as they wanted, none of this getting kicked out to join an entirely new group of people. There was also a designated training section where players who were experience enough could share knowledge or just screw around with anyone who wanted to come in, in a room where stats weren't affected.