I disagree with gear-based tiers. The whole point of earning top gear is so you can have an advantage (at the cost of risking expensive stuff). If everyone in your match is wearing it, then it's no-longer an advantage and is simply PC without the big payout. That's not to say I'm happy with the current matchmaking process.

First, we need an optional 2nd tier academy that players under some threshold can join other low SP players (cap is something like 3-5 mill SP). This would help tremendously with new player retention. Next is finding a way to create good matches against the remaining players above that threshold.

I would give each player a talent index based on a variety of factors including total SP, average position at the end of the match, K/D, average WPs, ISK efficiency, etc. This number wouldn't be published to the players, but would be used to balance teams. Players who consistently finish near the top of their team will increase in rank, and those who consistently place lower will decrease in rank. Each player will eventually reach an equilibrium where they're in the top half roughly 50% of the time and the bottom half the rest.

While Scotty would do his best to pick 32 players closest in the talent index, the most important job will be to make sure that the sum of index rank of each team are close. As an example, if you have a full squad of excellent players some good players and a few mediocre players, it would put the mediocre players on the same team as the excellent players against a full team of good players. It's not perfect of course, but having a reasonably equal balance of talent index points on both sides should mean for more balanced matches, less stomping, and more intense fights that come down to the wire.

I realize that with low concurrent numbers, we face an uphill battle getting sufficient players to have good matchmaking, but what is most important is that each side is as evenly balanced as possible.

I laughed at it before as well but even with the couple thousand players extra we had during the MCC event the difference in matchmaking was noticeable and I have not ever seen as many even matches.